Space for God

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
August 27, 2023

16 Proper A 

            Last Sunday, I had the joy of baptizing our youngest grandchild at Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati.  So when our vestry meeting on Tuesday began with the question “Where have you seen God this week?” I was ready with my answer.  Clearly the privilege of baptizing my granddaughter, watching her 4 year old sister hold the baptismal candle, and being surrounded by family at the font was a place where I saw and experienced God.  However, that is pretty much the revelation of the obvious.  I also saw God in the gracious hospitality of the Dean of the Cathedral who invited me to participate well beyond simply baptizing Sabrina.  He invited me to help distribute communion and to offer the blessing at the end of the service, which well exceeded the basic hospitality of allowing me to baptize my granddaughter.  The hospitality of the Cathedral included a marked bulletin with my name on it, a locker for my vestments, and a place at the table.  The Cathedral offered me the hospitality that we try to offer here, and that hospitality made space where I could see and experience God.

          If you think this is yet another of Charlotte’s sermons on hospitality, despite the odds being in your favor, you are wrong.  The Cathedral was using its gift of hospitality to make space for God to work, so people could see and experience God.  That is what I believe Shiphrah and Puah are doing in this morning’s reading from Exodus.  The two women are using their gifts of midwifery, birthing babies, to make room for God to work. And God does work, using the Hebrew midwives to subvert Pharoah’s evil plan to kill all the baby boys.  God was working through these women to advance the story of God’s people.  God continues to work in the space the midwives created when the Pharoah’s daughter finds the baby Moses crying in the basket his mother put him in, presumably hoping he would be found by the Pharoah’s daughter.  Our God is a crafty God as Moses’ mother winds up getting paid to nurse her own child. 

          When Jesus asks his disciples “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” they answer John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.  Then Jesus asks “But who do you say that I am?”  And Peter scores with the answer “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”  The disciples have followed Jesus as he taught, worked miracles, and taught them to pray.  Jesus has made space for God to work so the disciples can see and experience God.  This leads Peter to proclaim that Jesus is the Son of the living God.  As we will see next week, Peter does not have a clue what that means, but for now, Peter is the golden disciple who will become the bedrock on which the church will be built and he is given the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Those keys are not about power but about trust.  In Jesus, the kingdom of heaven has come near, breaking open in the disciples’ midst.  Jesus is entrusting the disciples and especially Peter to make space in their lives and in their work for God’s kingdom to continue to emerge in the midst of the people. 

          As followers of Jesus, we are inheritors both of those keys and of the trust Jesus placed in the disciples.  We are entrusted with making space for God to work, making space for the coming Kingdom of God to be a present reality that people can see and experience in our midst.  How on earth are we supposed to do that?  Lest we think that we have to do something grand and glorious to make space for God to work in our midst, like turn water into wine, or miraculously heal the sick and raise the dead, Shiphrah and Puah remind us that simply doing the work we have been given to do can make space for God to act.  Paul reminds us in the letter to the Romans that this will look different for each of us, as we are each given different gifts.  Paul lists prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, compassion and cheerfulness as examples of gifts we have been given to make space for God to act in our midst.  And I will sneak hospitality in here as well as any number of other gifts for ministry that we use day in and day out, from making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, to using our building and grounds skills both here and at Habitat for Humanity, to sending cards and notes of encouragement, to teaching, singing and everything in between.  Much of this we probably do without even really thinking about the impact of what we are doing. 

          Shiphrah and Puah used their gifts as midwives to make space for God to act in their midst.  Their work and the space they made for God to work made a clear and profound statement about who God is.  Likewise, Jesus trusts his followers to use their everyday actions and God given gifts to make space for God to act.  What we do with our actions and how we make space for God to work matters.  The world is watching to see what followers of Jesus do and people form their understanding of God and Jesus based on those actions, good, bad, or indifferent.   Jesus certainly invites us to ponder our answer to his question “Who do you say that I am?”  But Jesus also invites us to ponder the answer to his first question “Who do the people around you say that I am?” and to think about how we might best be a place where people around us see and experience the living God.

                                                                             Amen.