Sermon: Draw Near to the Lord, for he has heard you Complaining AKA Righteous Dissent
Preached September 20, 2020, at Highlands United Presbyterian Church, Jacksonville, FL
Scripture: Exodus 16:2-15, Jonah 3:10-4:11, Matthew 20:1-16
I began the weekend on a Zoom Call with the UNF Jewish Student Union, where we wished each other “Shana Tova!” These words are the greeting of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Year 5781 to be exact. They’re a bit ahead of the Roman calendar!
By one of those happenstances of life, the Rabbi joining our Jewish students last night was my girlfriend’s Rabbi 20 years ago in Tallahassee. Gabby at one time considered being a Rabbi, and I could hear that vocation in some witty and poignant words she shared on Friday night, along with a picture of a delicious board with Challah bread and other sweets.
She said: “Whether you’re Jewish or not, I think we can all agree that this year has gone on long enough. It’s Jewish tradition to have apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) with the thought that it brings a healthy and sweet new year. So please everyone feel free to dip some apples in honey and celebrate the coming of 5781, which honestly has a very low bar to be a better year than 5780. L’Shana Tova.”
Our reading from Exodus today has quite a different tone. The Israelites have gone out from bondage in Egypt only to find themselves thirsty and hungry in the wilderness. In the previous chapter, Moses and his sister Miriam’s songs of triumph over Pharaoh and his military forces are followed by three desperate days without water. The people complain and God delivers them drinkable water and an oasis.
But their journey continues in our reading, and so does their complaining. They are now growing desperately hungry. They grumble in anguish, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
The scene escalates as Moses and his spokesperson brother Aaron complain against their people for complaining and insist the people are in fact complaining against God, the higher authority. Who are you to complain against us, they ask. And they imply, who are you to complain against God?
I get Moses and Aaron’s irritation. When you’re in charge, it’s easy to take complaints personally. A couple years ago, my daughter Lila showed me a new diary she had and noted, “Dad, there’s a place in my diary for complaints.” I said, “Is that right?” And she replied, “Yeah, I’m writing the first one about you.”
I actually have a picture of the complaint form. It says, “Please state your complaint,” and she wrote, “My Dad did not let me find my Harry Potter glasses. I wanted to wear them to school.” Now, how can I argue with that? That is a righteous dissent and a fair complaint.
And how can we fault the Israelites for complaining? Should God not be concerned for their plight? Just out of slavery and oppression, now wandering in the desert, thirsty and hungry. Who could fault them? It seems Moses and Aaron, like any beleaguered leaders, do, but who does not fault them? The Lord.
In fact, God does not delay, he does not pause to chastise or discourage their complaint. He registers their righteous dissent and immediately responds to meet their need and honor their complaint.
Though authorities don’t enjoy our complaining, it is indeed righteous. Are you hungry and thirsty? Are you homeless? Is your health in crisis? Are you lonely? Is your family struggling? Is work from home or school from home depressing your spirit and creating conflict?
God can hear our complaints in our time of need. I know it’s hard for me to complain! I have a tendency to tie a bow on things. I have had a 3 month health problem that has sent me to the ER twice and I’ve had more appointments at Mayo in the last month than I’ve had almost in my whole life.
So, friends, again, God is ok with you complaining in your time of need. And though our lived experience may not always receive an immediate response to meet our need as in this story, we are still wise to heed these funny and yet serious words: “Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.”
That phrase cracks me up. Because we don’t normally think of complaining as something that goes with drawing near to the Lord. It’s not exactly a Psalm of exaltation or loving praise song.
I mean, when I was growing up, I learned not to complain. Some of you may know what I’m talking about, while others of you may have grown up in a family where complaint was a primary form of communication. Now, of course, in some cases complaint can be hurtful or corrosive to relationships. Sometimes it can be petty and wrong. But it can be just dangerous not to complain. To just go along to get along. To accept what we should not accept. In these moments, we need a good complaint, a righteous dissent.
I was thinking about righteous dissent on Friday night when the sweet greetings of Rosh Hashanah turned to the bitter news that Supreme Court Justice and hero for gender equality Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. Many people struggle between their grief for Ginsburg and her family, and a complaint that we would lose such an important leader in such a difficult and divided moment for our country.
The religious timing was not lost on those who grieved. Ginsburg was Jewish and I learned that a person who dies on Sabbath, and especially on Rosh Hashanah, the new year, is regarded as especially marked by righteousness. This seemed a fitting tribute for this icon committed to justice, who had framed on her Supreme Court chamber wall the Hebrew words “Tzedek, Tzedek, tirdof,” from the book of Deuteronomy, a reminder of her life’s work: “Justice, justice, you will pursue.”
Ginsburg lived a life in the Jewish tradition of righteous complaint. When my friend Josh saw that I was studying this passage from Exodus, he said, “Israelites complained is practically my whole religion summed up.” Stereotypes aside, stories from the Hebrew scriptures frequently remind us that arguing with God and complaining for what is right are righteous acts. And Ginsburg spent her career in this mode, pursuing justice and equality for women. She dissented and transformed from within from a male power structure that diminished women. She first made her mark as a lawyer arguing successfully for a female Air Force officer who was denied a housing allowance due to her gender, famously quoting a feminist predecessor when she insisted, “All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet off our necks.”
I just want to read a couple of other things she helped establish by her righteous dissent: women have the right to sign a mortgage without a man, the right to have a bank account without a male co-signer, the right to have a job without being discriminated against based on gender, and the right to be pregnant and have kids and work. She dedicated her life to others. She said, “That’s what I think a meaningful life is – living not for oneself, but for one’s community.”
Righteous complaint, then, is not just an individual matter, and that is clear in our scriptures and our history. God hears me and you, yes, but God also hears his people. Crying out from slavery in Egypt. God heard Black Americans calling out from slavery and era of lynching and Jim Crow, just as God hears the cries of Black Lives Matter now. God hears the righteous complaint about the refugee and immigrant families, women, and children caged and abused by our government at the U.S./Mexico border. God heard the complaint of LGBTQ members of our PCUSA denominations, who for decades cried out against their denigration, in a wilderness of unacceptance. God heard their cries and, in time, justice and inclusion prevailed. God responds with generosity to real need.
In contrast, our Gospel reading and a reading we didn’t do from the book of Jonah show that unrighteous complaint seeks to limit God’s generosity.
In the Parable of the Laborers, Jesus portrays a landowner who hires workers throughout a day, promising each one a fair wage. Some work the full day, while others work half a day or even just a couple hours. In the end, the landowner pays all of them a living wage, an amount they can survive on and support their family on. The workers who labored through the heat of the day complain. But the landowner says, is your eye evil because I am generous? Jesus wants us to see that God’s generosity is not limited by our faulty predictive economic models but meet the needs of people so they can live and thrive. This is God’s work, but this earthly example of the landowner and workers suggests it is our work too, to complain for a more just distribution of resources so that all may live and thrive.
God’s generosity is also not limited by our complaints about who gets let in, about who is our neighbor in God’s kingdom. In another lectionary passage from today we didn’t read, the prophet Jonah, who you may remember ran from God’s mission to preach to the people in the city Nineveh, Jonah has of course failed spectacularly to avoid God’s mission of generosity. Storms in seas and a trip in the stomach of a big fish ferried him to the great city, where he finally, reluctantly preaches to the Ninevites. And what do they have the nerve to do? Repent from their evil. They choose to turn and live. And man does that miff Jonah off. The last thing he wanted was for THEM for THOSE people to be included. He even tells God. He says “I knew you would do this!” And God replies, Are you right to complain? Should I not be concerned for these people and this city too? Unrighteous complaint limits who we welcome in our communities and who God welcomes in his kingdom. May we not complain against God’s generosity, but rather, like the generous landowner take part in it. May we even complain for that generosity.
So, friends, do not be afraid to complain for what you need and for what all people of our communities need and what all the people of the world need. Do not be afraid to complain for what is right. Like the Israelites, like Sojourner Truth and John Lewis, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, complain for God’s generosity and justice.
Amen.
Matt Hartley 