Ron L. Buford

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Terry Gross is one of my two favorite interviewers; she always seems to get to the heart of matters. Terry says that whenever she has someone who is guarded and will not open up, she asks them to recall a time they were near death and that it usually causes the person to open up.

What if Terry Gross could interview Moses and ask that same question this morning? This morning’s text might be his answer . . . and given recent moves of my own I feel this text deep in my soul this morning:

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In my tee-shirt days, I collected and wore tee shirts with all sorts of clever messages. One of my favorites was one with a drawing of the traditional Jesus with his arms outstretched that even now, you can imagine without seeing it. The music group Timbuk 3 and Holly Near both call this image, “The Standard White Jesus.” You know the dashboard pose.

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This guy Phillip is bursting with news. He runs into his childhood friend, Nathaniel. “Nate,” he says, “Me and the guys have found the Messiah! Oh, and yeah, it turns out to be some guy from New Jersey, or was it Cleveland?”

Can anything good come out of Cleveland?

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Let us pray.

Gracious God, help us to be masters of ourselves that we may rightly be the servants of others. Take our eyes and help us to see the open possibilities you set before us; Take our ears and open them to the call of the Stillspeaking God in our midst. But most of all, O God . . . take our hearts and set them on fire for you. In the name of the Christ we pray. Amen.

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The year is 1761, or so. Imagine a young Black girl, front teeth missing, perhaps 7 or 8 years old, very slight of build, and a bit sickly after having barely survived a journey across the middle passage, and no doubt traumatized and flinching at every sound after the shocks, horrors, beatings, the hunger, the death on the ship all around her … and now she stands … a stranger in a strange land, surrounded by all sorts of different vegetation, sounds, and entirely different looking human beings.

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Well, you may not have noticed, but it’s political campaign season – the time when politicians seem to have answers for everything. Imagine Solomon as a young national leader in modern times dealing with our current problems, about age twenty-something and saying things entirely different from the double talk we’ve grown accustomed to hearing from our politicians.