Preached at St Johns United Methodist Church (Memphis)
Summer Preaching Series
(Assignment: Select a children's story and use it along with a scripture text for the sermon. I chose Rumpelstiltskin and Exodus 3:1-15)
July 14, 2013
My name is Elaine. I’m told that my mother chose the name.
She liked it because it was not too
common and not too unusual. I wouldn’t meet my name coming and going and I
wouldn’t be thought odd. At least not because of my name. It wasn’t until I was
an adult, pregnant with my own baby and looking in the Dell Book of Baby Names (something
I got at the grocery store check-out line,) that I learned what the name
“Elaine” means. Light. Bright. Ahh. That fits. I was amazed that my mother,
only minutes after meeting me, could have known me so well.
Through the years there have been those who have given me
other names. I have been known by some as the one who gets invited and
included. I have been known by others as the one to shun and leave out. I am recognized as wealthy by some while
others would wonder how I get by on what I have in this world. In some
situations I might seem the victim and in other situations I appear to have
power. You have probably had the same experience. The world around us will do
its best to define and categorize us, to name us and identify us according to
the needs and pleasures of the world. Home, work, play and out on the sidewalk
in the anonymity of the crowd. If we let
them, the people around us, will end our deeply personal and spiritual search
for our name, our true identity.
We come to this earth as we are, perfectly ourselves. And
from the moment when we first breathe air into our lungs until the moment we
breathe our last, we are living with the forces of sexism, racism, economic
injustice, jealousy, resentment, self-doubt and fear. In the midst of this sea
of sinful forces, how do we know our own name? How do we learn to recognize and
claim the power of our own identity?
Rumpelstiltskin saves the girl (She’s never given a name.)
whose father, a poor miller, wanted to impress the king. So he has made an
outrageous claim to the king: My daughter can spin straw into gold. Wow! This
pleases the king and he demands that the girl get to work. He puts her in a
room with straw and a spinning wheel. If the straw has not been spun into gold
by morning, she is doomed to die. Notice that it is not the father’s life on
the line here. He is apparently off safely doing whatever millers do. We never
hear another thing about him. Instead the story leaves us with this girl who
has been identified as one capable of doing the impossible. We feel helpless
sitting beside her as she stares at all that straw, stifling and trapped.
All of a sudden a little man walks in the room and he spins
the straw into gold for her. She gives him her necklace in return. The next
night he spins again when the king greedily demands more gold be spun by the
girl. She gives her ring for his service. But on the third night when the little
man spins straw into gold, the girl has nothing more to give in return and so
the little man demands her first born should she and the king marry and have a
child. “Of course!” she says. All of this seems unlikely to her. After all-she was three days ago only a poor
miller’s daughter, an ordinary piece of straw herself.
The king is no dummy. He wants to keep for himself this
spinner of gold. So he marries her and she has a child. Sure enough, the little
man shows up again and insists that the baby belongs to him. Again the girl is
challenged. Is she helpless? Is she only a victim? Her strategy involves broken hearted sobs which soften the heart of the little man.
“Well, if in three days you can call me by my name—then I will relent and you
can keep your child.”
Being the wife of the king, she utilizes her resources and
sends royal messengers out into the kingdom in search of the little man’s name.
One of the messenger’s overhears a little man singing as he danced around a
fire in the woods: “Oh soon I’ll make my
royal claim; the queen will never guess my name! Rumpelstiltskin in the wood;
she would guess it if she could!” The queen’s messenger left the light of
the burning camp-fire and returned to the palace with enough information to
redeem the queen. The ordinary straw of her own life and identity became gold
when she speaks the name: Could it be, then, Rumpelstiltskin? Ahhh. We are so
satisfied by this ending! The nameless girl becomes the smart girl, the queen,
and she leaves helplessness behind.
In the scripture story from the book of Exodus, we find
Moses standing beside a fire while keeping sheep for his father-in-law. A bush
is burning. A bush that oddly enough is not burning away. In the light of this
strange fire, Moses hears the sound of his name. And he is called to do the
impossible. “Go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” Who am I?
Moses wants to know. He reminds God, the one who is calling from the burning
bush, about his speech problem, his manslaughter charge back in Egypt and his
deep longing to live in peace with his family. An ordinary life in Midian is
not so bad.
But the light of the fire burns on and Moses is feeling
challenged. Is he not the victim any longer, the baby in the basket at the
mercy of pharaoh’s fears and jealousy? Is he no longer the outcast running from
Egypt and pharaoh’s palace where he was a foster child never really belonging
in the first place? The bush burns and pressure mounts for Moses to respond. He
is being challenged to accept a new identity, to become somebody he is not—not
yet.
“Well,” and we feel Moses’ frustration as he asks, “Who are
you and what is your name? If I were to return to Egypt, who shall I say has
sent me?”
And God responds from the light of the fire: I am who I am. Tell them you have been sent
by I am.
It seems to be enough information. Moses begins his journey,
living into his true identity; becoming the person he was created to be before
the sins of this world caused him to see himself as something less than who he
was. Moses moved into a deep relationship with God and he moved God’s people
out of captivity and into freedom. The ordinary straw of his life was spun into
gold.
Our God is a liberating God. The story that brings us
together for worship today (and every Sunday throughout the year) is a story of
a redeeming and liberating God. We have placed our faith in a God who names us,
claims us and sets us free to be co-creators with God—to take the ordinary
straw of our lives and spin it into gold with God’s love as our inspiration. We
identify ourselves as people who are moving toward the Promised Land with the
God of love and life who created us and created the Promises that keep us
moving forward with hope.
A few years ago I was fortunate enough to go to Tijuana on a
mission trip with the feminist theologian, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and nine
other women. We saw first-hand the United States Border Patrol. We saw the
walls, multiple walls that our tax money has built, each one with gaps and each
one costing millions of dollars. We went into Tijuana, the television making
capital of the world. The television in your home was most likely made by
workers, probably women, in Tijuana. Many of the men leave their wives and children
in Tijuana and they go north with hope that they might find the Promised Land.
So the women work in factories owned by citizens of the
United States. These factories are called miguiladoras.
Women work long hours for very little
pay in these maguiladoras. You and I own televisions, toasters, radios and cell
phones made by our neighbors to the south. These women faithfully go to work,
leaving their children in huts and shanties, breathing air, drinking water and
playing in sand made dangerous and toxic by the pollution created by the waste
from the maquiladoras where they work. The women work with a Velcro band around
their wrist. When they need to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water the
band is removed and the time- clock stops. They are not paid while taking care
of their human needs.
Nameless women, put in positions where they are asked to do
the impossible. Provide for your family and keep them safe while the very
factory where you work is spewing pollution in to the air, water and soil.
On our mission trip we had the privilege of meeting the
twelve women of the Tijuana Colectivo. They are mothers who want a safe
environment for their children. They are women who have devoted themselves to
the struggle for justice. They are committed to exposing the illegal practices
of the maquiladoras. Globalization gives corporations the freedom to move
around the world seeking cheaper labor and more lax environmental regulations. There
are environmental regulations in Tijuana but those regulations often have no
teeth, no one to see that they are enforced. Because after all—these neighbors
to the south of us are simply straw, ordinary poor people. We don’t even know
their names.
The twelve women of the Colectivo are at work every day,
focused on cleaning up the environment by forcing the maquiladoras to change
their practices. These women are poor; they live in an area they call
shantytown with ten thousand other families. Their homes are made of discarded
garage doors; three garage doors leaned against each other with a piece of tin
for a roof.
Yet the women of the Colectivo are wealthy in their
understanding of each person's right and responsibility to find purpose. They
are wealthy in their capacity to connect with other people. They are rich in
their respect for hard work and its rewards. The women of the Colectivo see
themselves as stewards of the earth. They are training their children and their
neighbors to respect the earth and to recognize responsible care of the earth
as everyone’s sacred duty. The women have adopted as their slogan: “Tijuana is
no trash can!” Supported by the San
Diego Environmental Health Coalition, a cross-border group advocating for a
safer environment, the Colectivo has an office building in Tijuana and a plan
for the future. And they have been empowered to spin straw into gold, to
convince even Pharaoh to do what is right.
Their faith has been rewarded with some big victories in Tijuana.
The women of the Colectivo took us to their office where we
were served lunch. They were so poor. (If you had seen the huts where they live
and raise their children. Pictures of Jesus on the wall. The dirt floor swept
clean. Colorful rugs.) So poor in my eyes. Yet they prepared a wonderful lunch
for us and they were so happy to be hosting us at their work site, so delighted
to be serving us good food. We ate tostados until we were full.
And then we asked questions. I wanted to know, since the
living conditions are so dreadful and dangerous in Tijuana, why the women stay.
“Why don’t you go further south where the land is greener and safer?”
Maria responded to my question and Carlos translated. “I do
not stay in Tijuana for myself. I do not stay here for my children although
they are a big part of my inspiration and motivation. I stay in Tijuana and I
work for justice because the earth depends on me. She is my mother. She gives
me life and because of her goodness and generosity I was able to give life to
my children. We work together: me, the air, the water, the soil. Together we
make life. The earth is being spoiled by those who have forgotten to love their
mother. The earth is being abused by those who care more for personal profit
than life itself. I am here and I will stay here in Tijuana not because I want
to but because I heard my name called from the burning furnaces of the
maguiladoras.”
This is how we know our name. This is how we learn to
recognize and claim the power of our own identity. As people of The Story-we
turn, turn, turn and trust the one who brought us here in the first place. We hear
the great I Am calling our name and inviting us to spin the ordinary straw of
our lives into gold.
Amen
