Rev. Diane K. Hooge Mark 4:35-41 Early in our marriage Ken and I moved to Nova Scotia. We made the journey in our VW van with a port-a-crib that replaced the middle seat, where our 11 month old son traveled for the 13 day camping trip that took us to from Oregon to Nova Scotia. …
The invitation to Moses by God to go on sabbatical to Mt. Sinai had to have been a welcome reprieve. It was an opportunity for him to refuel is own soul. With the laws that had been established the people were not to go near the sacred mountain, or to even touch the mountain; therefore, he was assured of a place of rest and renewal.
For most of my life I’ve taken water for granted except on my grandparent’s ranch, located on the Mojave Desert in Lancaster, CA. As a child I was well aware of the anxiety of the adults in my family regarding the well– “THE well”. The well had a pump outside of it that channeled water to my grandparent’s home.
In order to fully appreciate all the dynamics that are a part of the setting and scene of this scripture from Exodus we need to back up and review an earlier piece of the story. Jethro, the priest of Midian, who is Moses’ father-in-law, has just escorted his daughter Zipporah and his grandsons, back to be reunited with Moses. They met at the wilderness site where Moses was camped at Sinai.
In order to better understand the story of Moses, we need to back up to chapter two of Exodus which gives us some key background information. Moses was raised as the adopted son within the ruling family of Egypt. He was denied the family and cultural connections with his own family of origin. Moses was raised under the influence of the finest Egyptian palace educators, but he failed to find a place of belonging.
We’re called over and over again to expand our vision to include those who don’t fit into the norms…our norms. The great healing power of the Spirit is its capacity to change us and to expand our ability to open ourselves to the other. It’s the interior work that we do in accepting the various parts of ourselves that often determines how we will embrace another.
As I was walking around the plaza this past Wednesday evening viewing all the painful history from the August 6, 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. I was reminded of the horror of that history as I read of the 80,000 who were killed, and the tens of thousands who would die later of radiation.
The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle story included in all four of the Gospels. To more fully understand this text, it’s important to back up and figure out what’s been going on.
Some years ago, I found my way to the Hilton Hotel in Oakland, California for a clergy women event. The speaker was Dr. Reneta Weems, an Old Testament Professor from Vanderbilt University. She was the first African American woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Princeton.
When my grandmother died many years ago, some of her children and spouses gathered to sift and sort through 90 years of saved letters, documents and a lifetime of gathered keepsakes. In the sorting, came the shocking discovery of some family secrets. One of her daughter-in-laws discovered the adoption papers of a grandchild.