7/10/22 “My Grandma’s Favorite Saying” by Nancy E. Petty
Deuteronomy 30:9-20
Language is constantly evolving, especially when it comes to each generation’s hip or slang phrases. Believe me when I tell you that a hip phrase you learned in the 80’s and 90’s can land you in a heap of trouble in 2022. “In a world dominated by meme culture, ever-changing social media platforms, and the ability to cram your thoughts into a 280-character tweet, your grasp of basic slang can make or break your credibility as a functional and supposedly cool human.” Born in 1963, my generation designation is Baby Boomer. This is why I tremble whenever I attempt to post on twitter or give into the pressure of my Gen Z and X colleagues and agree to do a TikTok. The fear of not being up-to-speed on all the hip phrases and slang words can be paralyzing. I remember some years back when I came to work wearing my jeans, a collarless shirt, and a blazer and Laura Foley told me I looked “fly.” I immediately texted Karla to ask if “fly” was a good thing or if I needed to come home and change clothes. Instead of “fly” this younger generation might look at Ian and say he looks “drip.”
In the 1960’s, if you said an event was a “gas” it meant that the event was fun or inspiring. Now, you might hear a Gen Z’er say, “That new Adele album just hits different. “Gas” has been replaced with “hits different.” And yes, generation Alpha I do know that the slang “gas” now has an even newer meaning. Here’s one: in the 50’s and 60’s if someone ask you to the “submarine races” where did they want you to go? The slang term was a subtle way to ask if a significant other wanted to make out in the car. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out the new slang for that!
Back to my point: language and the words and phrases each generation uses to describe things is always evolving. I thought about evolution of words and phrases when I read what Moses said to the people in our text for today. “…the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” As I read those words, I could hear my grandmother’s voice. To set the context, my grandmother could be a bit of a hoarder. Not like the stories on TV but her home was full of “treasures.” You dared not open a closet door unless you were prepared for an avalanche of fabrics or books and magazines or clothes or really anything in mass to descend upon you. As a child, going into her home was truly like going on a treasure hunt. But here’s the other side of all that treasure. She was constantly losing things amongst all those treasures. She would spend hours, sometimes days looking for something she had misplaced. And when she would find it, her response was always the same, “Well, if it had been a snake it would have bit me.” Usually, whatever she was looking for was somewhere in plain view, not far from her reach. And when she could stop the frantic rummaging and get still enough to observe what was around her, she would find her lost treasure.
This is the same lesson Moses is reminding his people of in our text this morning. God’s commandment to turn to God with all their heart and soul is as near to them as their breath and their beating heart. To love God, and therefore to love one another, Moses tells them is not hard, nor is it far away. I love these lines Moses speak: “It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”
I started thinking about all the ways wisdom teaches us this lesson: that near us, as near as our heart and mouth is to us, so is the innate ability to love God and to love our neighbor. Moses reminds the people that it is not hard to keep this commandment. You don’t have to send someone up into the heavens to fetch it for you or sail across the ocean to bring it back to you. No. Moses says “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart.” Like every generation, Jesus updated Moses. Jesus said it this way, “the kingdom is not in things to be observed outside of you—somewhere off in a distance—is it among you and within you.”
In his Confessions, St. Augustine said it this way: “I entered into the innermost part of myself…I entered and I saw with my soul’s eye (such as it was) an unchangeable light shining above this eye of my soul and above my mind…[The one] who knows truth knows that light, and [the one] who knows that light knows eternity. Love knows it.”
I have spent a good portion of my existence seeking from others the answers to life’s most complex questions. Finding meaning and truth was “out there” somewhere and my job was to go find it. I longed for affirmation and validation from others—my peers, my professors, my pastors, my lovers. Even my faith has, at times, served as a crutch to not have to do the internal work to discover the wisdom and truth that my own life and experience has been teaching me for 58 years now. To trust the divine light within my own heart and soul—to trust that it was near me and within me sadly was not something I learned sitting in the pews of a church.
I get the idea of setting out in the world to find oneself. I understand the desire and need to for mentors and teachers and spiritual guides to help us along the way. Those experiences and relationships are invaluable. But I remember something one of my mentors said to me some years ago as I was beginning my ministry. I had mentioned to him how easy it seemed for him to explain scripture and relate it to everyday life and how I felt I was struggling to do the same in my ministry. His response to me was: “Nancy, you have to internalize your faith. You have to make it yours. As long as it is something external, outside of you, it won’t mean as much.” Mahan was reminding me of what Moses was reminding his people: “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe” make it yours. Trust that it is within you just as it is within those teachers and spiritual mentors. It is what Parker Palmer speaks of in his book, Let Your Life Speak when he writes of “listening to your life” and “leading from within.”
Why is this such an important lesson, this understanding that God, Love is so near to us; in our mouth and in our heart? Because if we can’t observe and hear the word within us [the word being to love God with all our heart and soul], how can we ever expect to observe and hear it outside of us? If we can’t know that we are God’s beloved and that God is within us, how can we see that belovedness in another? On an individual/personal level we need to be reminded that God is near to us, that love is near to us. That it is among us and within us. We need to hear and observe that keeping God’s commandment, to turn to God and love God with our heart and soul and to love our neighbor, is not hard if we know that love is near us and within us. We need to know that the meaning of life is not out there somewhere in the distance where we have to depend on someone to get it for us or give it to us. It is within our reach. It is near to us. It is actually within us if we will risk seeing and feeling it. You, we have what we need inside of us.
Maybe you will remember that some 27 chapters earlier, Moses had an encounter with God in which God said to Moses: Remove your shoes from your feet. We usually read that as meaning that because Moses was near to God, the ground was holy, and shoes were disrespectful. Now hear the same thing another way. If we believe that God is ALWAYS near, in this very moment, in each moment, then the phrase “remove your shoes from your feet” comes to mean, stop!, be still, be here, take off the habits and routines that keep you busy and asleep, take off the plans that keep you separate from this very moment, take off the shoes that separate your skin from the skin of this planet, and you will recognize that the place on which you happen to be standing at this moment is holy ground. For there is no rung of being on which we cannot find the holiness of God everywhere; there is no place where God is not close; there is not one moment when God is in our very breath. Our text today is Moses living out that experience. He is reminding not only the people but himself that Love/God/Life is always near to us; it is within us and among us.
While we need to hear this message individually, we also need to hear it communally. Our nation needs to hear and be reminded that keeping the commandment to turn to love with all our heart and soul as a nation—as one humanity—doesn’t have to be hard. We need to be reminded that Love is near to us if we will only observe it. We need to be reminded that if humanity is to choose life and blessings, instead of death of curses, we must turn to love and we must turn to love with all our heart and soul. And here is the kicker: Moses says it is not hard—to keep this commandment to love with all our heart and soul. When I first read this I wanted to say to Moses: yeah but you are not living in 2022. You are not trying to love five Supreme Court justices who are weaponizing God to oppress woman and other vulnerable populations. You are not trying to love neighbors who believe their right to own an AR-15 gun is more important than keeping children safe in their schools and on their neighborhood streets. But then I remembered the powers and principalities of his day and I pondered some more his words, “It is not hard to keep the commandment to love with all my heart and soul.”
On July 4th, Mitt Romey penned an article in The Atlantic titled, America Is in Denial. In that article he writes of removing the shell that encloses us and keeps us from recognizing the holy ground on which we stand. He writes:
Even as we watch the reservoirs and lakes of the West go dry, we keep watering our lawns, soaking our golf courses, and growing water-thirsty crops.
As inflation mounts and the national debt balloons, progressive politicians vote for ever more spending.
As ice caps melt and record temperatures make the evening news, we figure that buying a Prius and recycling the boxes from our daily Amazon deliveries will suffice.
When TV news outlets broadcast video after video of people illegally crossing the nation’s southern border, many of us change the channel.
And when a renowned conservative former federal appellate judge testifies that we are already in a war for our democracy, and that January 6, 2021, was a genuine constitutional crisis, MAGA loyalists snicker that he speaks slowly and celebrate that most people weren’t watching.
What accounts for the blithe dismissal of potentially cataclysmic threats? The left thinks the right is at fault for ignoring climate change and the attacks on our political system. The right thinks the left is the problem for ignoring illegal immigration and the national debt. But wishful thinking happens across the political spectrum. More and more, we are a nation in denial.
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What clears the scales from the eyes of a nation? Pearl Harbor did. 9/11 did. A crisis can shake the public consciousness. But a crisis may come too late for a course correction that can prevent tragedy. The only cure for wishful thinking is leadership. Winston Churchill emboldened a complacent Britain and rallied the world. Abraham Lincoln held the Union together. Ronald Reagan shook us from our malaise. Lech Walęsa inaugurated a movement that brought down the Iron Curtain. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired us to “believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” And Volodymyr Zelensky’s stunning display of courage—“I need ammunition, not a ride”—showed us what real character looks like.
President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man, but he has yet been unable to break through our national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust. A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable. Congress is particularly disappointing: Our elected officials put a finger in the wind more frequently than they show backbone against it. Too often, Washington demonstrates the maxim that for evil to thrive only requires good men to do nothing.
I hope for a president who can rise above the din to unite us behind the truth…While we wait, leadership must come from fathers and mothers, teachers and nurses, priests and rabbis, businessmen and businesswomen, journalists and pundits. That will require us all to rise about ourselves—above our grievances and resentments—and grasp the mantle of leadership our country so badly needs.
I share Mr. Romney’s words because he asks a critical question. What clears the scales from the eyes of a nation? What clears the scales from our eyes as individuals? Mitt says leadership. He’s not wrong. But more foundational and fundamental than leadership, I believe, are those moments when we individually and collectively observe the commandment to remove our sandals, to take off our blinders, to turn to Love, by whatever name you call that Love, with all our heart and soul and observe that love is already near to us; that is it within us and among us. We don’t have to go into the heavens or across the seas to find it. We don’t have to fight it. It’s not in a political party. It’s not in a specific religion or a specific church or temple or mosque. It is in our heart. And it has been there from the very beginning. And it is that to which we must return with all our heart and soul.
Love is near to us, everywhere and at all times. Moses says it is so near to us that it is in our mouth and in our heart. Jesus says it is within you and among you. And my grandma would say that if it were a snake it would have bitten us. May we individually and collectively observe just how near to us Love is and turn toward that Love. That is the mantle we must all grasp if we want to choose life and blessings. Moses says it is not hard. I say, even though it feels hard, it is our calling as God’s people.
