The following three stories pair well with the Narrative Lectionary passage for the coming week. They are followed by my sermontelling footnotes which explore the stories’ theological connection to the passage as well as insights into craft and performance. My advice is to read the story first before digging into the footnotes. These notes are best experienced in a browser or in the substack app. Subscribe to receive this newsletter in your inbox every Monday morning.
BIBLE STORY: Midrash, Murder, and Magic
Aaron was an important figure for the Bible’s earliest Jewish interpreters. After all, he was the first High Priest and the brother of Moses. In the Hebrew Midrashic writings, Aaron is praised as a humble and virtuous man and lifted up as a an example for the faithful to emulate. But how could such a holy person be complicit in the worship of the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai? This created a problem for ancient interpreters. So they looked between the lines of scripture for clues that might let Aaron off the hook. Here are a few examples of the excuses they came up with…
THE DEVIL DID IT!
Why would the people say “This man, Moses,”1 when Moses nowhere in sight? Who could they have been pointing to?
It turns out the devil was playing a trick on them! See, Moses was up on Mt. Sinai for 40 days and in that time, the people patiently waited. But Satan waited patiently as well. He was waiting for the people to lose faith and abandon God and Moses. But they never did. So on noon of the 40th day, Satan came to the foot of Sinai and conjured an image of Moses lying stretched on a bier, slowly ascending to heaven. When the people saw this, they ran to Aaron and pointed to the lifeless body of their leader drifting into the sky and said: “Look at this man Moses! We don’t know what has happened to him! But he will no longer be here to lead us so we need you to make us gods who will go before us!” When they pointed to Moses, Aaron looked up and saw his brother ascending. Grief stricken, and fearful, he gave into their request.
THE PEOPLE COERCED HIM!
Surely Aaron would never go along willingly. It says, ‘they gathered around Aaron.’ Why would they surround him, if not to menace him?
It was actually Jannes and Jambres,2 the two magicians at Pharaoh’s court who came up with the idea. They had converted to Judaism after Aaron’s snake had swallowed up their snake and they left with the Hebrews in the Exodus. But their pagan ways died hard. Jannes and Jambres, after 40 days, convinced the people that God and Moses had abandoned them and they needed new gods. After being whipped into a frenzy, they went to demand Aaron make them these gods. But a righteous man named Hur stood between them and tried to deter the Israelites from doing this detestable thing. So the people slew Hur3 where he stood. Surrounding Aaron and pointing menacingly at Hur’s body, they said, “Come, (if you know what’s good for you) make us gods!”
Even so, Aaron was not afraid of martyrdom. But he thought to himself: “God will never forgive Israel if they commit such a terrible sin as to kill their high priest and prophet.” So Aaron selflessly took upon his own shoulders the sin of the golden calf rather than see the people bear the sin of his death.
HE TRIED TO STOP THEM!
Why did Aaron ask for the earrings of the wives and children? Surely the men had gold of their own? And then why does it say they took off their own earrings?4
Aaron tried to outsmart the people so he told them to go back to their tents and gather the gold earrings their wives and children were wearing. This was shrewd. Aaron knew the Hebrews had gone their whole lives in slavery admiring the fine things their captors wore. It was only just before they left, that the Egyptians gave them all of this beautiful jewelry when God ‘disposed their hearts favorably toward them.’ Aaron knew that these earrings were precious to the women and children and that they would refuse to part with them. And that’s exactly what happened. The wives protested and the children cried. Everything was going according to plan until one of the women shouted, “Give him your own earring, you’re not taking mine!” At that, the men remembered that they had their own earrings which they wore in the Arab style. So they took off their earrings and gave them to Aaron. Now he had no choice but to continue.
THE COW JUST JUMPED OUT!
Why did Aaron say ‘and out came this calf?’ He surely wouldn’t have expected Moses to believe such a foolish tale, unless it were true! And why did he say ‘these are your gods’ when there was only one image?
For centuries,5 the Israelites had hidden the bones of Joseph in the Nile river. But when it was time to leave, they had to fulfill their oath to Joseph and, with God’s help, raise the coffin out of the Nile river to take with them on their journey.6 God helped Moses by having create four golden of leaves. Each one was engraved with the image7 of one of the four creatures that surrounded the celestial throne: a lion, a man, an eagle, and a bull. Each of these golden leaves were endowed with magic power.
First Moses, cast the leaf with the image of the lion on the river. The waters became tumultuous and roared like a lion. So the bones which had long since been scattered were unearthed at the bottom of the river. Along with the open coffin.
Then Moses cast the leaf with the image if the man on the river. So the bones assembled themselves in the coffin like a man and pulled the lid shut.
Finally, Moses cast the leaf with the image of an eagle on the river. The coffin ascended from the bottom of the Nile like an eagle and rested before Moses’ feet.
Because Moses had no use for the fourth leaf, he asked one of the women to keep it safe for him. This magic gold leaf with the image of the bull found its way into the pile of gold objects that the people gave to Aaron. Aaron knew that it was the 40th day and that Moses was due any minute.. As he threw the pieces one by one into the fire, he thought, “It will take so long for this gold to melt. Surely Moses will return before I have to decide what sort of object to form it into and then this madness can end.” But when Aaron threw the magic gold leaf into the fire, immediately the bull-calf jumped out from the center of the fire!
Aaron naturally believed it to be a miracle! Surely the invisible God must have caused this to happen and must have been present with them in the camp. What’s more, when Aaron had crossed through the Red Sea, he had been granted a vision of the celestial throne with the four creatures surrounding it. But he hadn’t understood they were Angels because Moses hadn’t yet explained it to him. So when he saw the bull and imagined the presence of the Holy One, in his confusion he cried out: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt!”8
Stories retold from THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS Vol. 2, by Louis Ginzberg
LIFE STORY: Love Me Like a Rock…
Last Spring, the internet became fascinated with a male bald Eagle named Murphy.9 Murphy lives at the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis Missouri. And he spent the spring nesting. Eagles usually nest on the tops of tall trees or cliffs to keep their young away from high predators. But Murphy was injured as a chick and could not fly. So he spent the Spring nesting on the ground.
But this is not why people were so fascinated by Murphy. They were fascinated with Murphy because he was nesting a rock.10
Murphy had found a rock about the size of an Eagle’s egg and spent the next 35 days sitting on it, waiting for it to hatch.
He did all the things good Eagle dads do. He built a nest for the rock, kept the rock warm, and turned the rock with its beak several times a day.
Murphy was also very protective. There are cute videos of Murphy squawking at other eagles that that approach to close to his egg. I mean rock.
While this story is a novelty to the internet (some users named the rock ‘D’wayne’), bird experts say that it is more common than we think. There are documented cases of birds sitting on pebbles, golfballs, bones, seashells, and even sticks. The experts call these ‘pseudo eggs.’ Sometimes they mix in harmlessly with real eggs. Other times, birds will roll perfectly good eggs out of their nests in favor of these pseudo eggs.
There are many theories about why this may happen but most have settled on the simplest: Confusion. Birds have an overriding drive to nest and so in the absence of real eggs they will choose the pseudo eggs.11
In Murphy’s case, the story has a happy ending.12 At the end of the allotted 35 days, the staff at the Bird Sanctuary, swapped the rock out for a rescued eaglet, which Murphy now raises as his own.
Such heartwarming miracles can happen in a bird sanctuary but out in the world it is different. Untold numbers of God’s creatures, without ever knowing it, lavish their devotion on false things! Out of misguided instinct, they waste their hours tenderly nurturing and fiercely defending these object they have gathered that will never love them back. In short: these sad creatures give their lives in service to that which cannot give them life!
And, apparently, so do birds…
WISDOM STORY: The Church Window
Once there was a little Church13 on a high hill. The church didn’t have a stained glass window like most churches. Instead, just behind the altar, there was a great big glass window that overlooked the bustling town below.
Every Sunday morning, the congregation would gather for worship. Then, after singing hymns, and shaking hands, and listening to a message, they would kneel at the altar together and gaze adoringly at the town below. Through the window, they would watch all their neighbors going this way and that and they would pray for them. But they would do more than just pray for them. They would notice which neighbors looked hungry so that during the week they could bring them a meal. Which neighbors looked lonely, so that during the week they could visit them. And which neighbors had fallen ill, so that during the week they could take care of them. Every Sunday they knelt and prayed for their town and every week they served their town.
Now one of the town’s elders passed away. He was a very wealthy man who had never come to Church. So the congregation was surprised when he left them a large sum of money in his will.
The next Sunday, after Church, the congregation had a meeting to decide what to do with the generous donation. They were excited about all the wonderful things they could do for the town below with the money. They talked about opening a soup kitchen for the hungry, or a communal living space for the lonely, or a free medical clinic for the sick. Then one of the older men in the congregation stood up.
He said, “These are all worthy ideas and any one of them would be a good use of our resources but may I suggest we do something first. Every week, we gather together to pray at the big window behind the altar rail. That window means so much to us but frankly it looks a little drab. Why don’t we allow ourselves this one indulgence: why don’t we pay someone to adorn the edges of the window with pure silver. Then after that has been done, we can meet next week about what to do with the rest of the money.”
They all agreed this was a wonderful idea.
The following Sunday they met together after Church to decide what to do with the money. They talked about the kitchen, the community, and the clinic,14 but someone pointed out that when they were praying, they could barely notice the silver trim on the edge of the window. Perhaps they should ask the craftsman to add a little more. Then next Sunday they could decide what to do with the rest.
Each Sunday, the congregation met together and each Sunday they talked about what they could do with the money but each Sunday they wound up adding little more silver trim to their window. After a little while, they didn’t even discuss kitchens or communities or clinics. They just skipped to the part where they added more silver trim to their window.15
And eventually they ran out of money.
These days, not many people go to that little Church on the high hill. Few people are aware it even meets. After all, the congregation is never seen in town feeding the hungry, visiting the lonely, or caring for the sick. Rather, Sunday after Sunday, they gather for worship. Then after singing hymns, and shaking hands, and listening to a message, they kneel at the altar together. And they gaze adoringly at their own faces reflected in the solid silver mirror in front of them.16
My twist on a classic parable
The Sermontelling Circle
Stories are meant to be developed and told in community! So feel free to enter the circle and start a conversation. I’d love to hear your own sermontelling thoughts and tips. And of course your stories. I long to hear your wonderful stories!
I also appreciate your help widening the circle!
SERMONTELLING NOTES:
The stories I’ve presented here are a form of Midrashic interpretation called aggadah. One way to think of aggadah is ‘stories interpreting stories.’ Rather than expounding on the stories of the Bible with doctrinal statements or explanatory bullet points, ancient Rabbis retold the stories with their novel interpretations folded in. These retellings are imaginative but they aren’t invented from whole cloth. The ancient interpreters worked within the confines of the text: filling in its silences, making inferences from its quirks of language, finding meaning in its redundancies, and resolving its apparent contradictions. The Rabbis saw opportunities in all of these things to discover the hidden stories: stories that weren’t being told outright, but were waiting to be discovered by one with a wise and discerning eye.
At the beginning of each of these Midrashim, I’ve tried to provide the interpretive questions that would have given rise to the story.
In this instance, the ancient Rabbis noticed a quirk of language in Exodus 32:1. The people approach Aaron and say, “As for this man Moses, who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” It’s odd phrasing. After all, isn’t this man something you usually say when someone is present? Maybe even while pointing at them? Why didn’t they say “As for that man Moses?”
This is the sort of detail that most of us would skip right past. But for the ancient interpreters, it was a tantalizing clue to an untold story.
It must have been that Moses was visible to them somehow for them to be able to point, the ancient interpreters reasoned. But that only created more questions. How could the people see Moses if he was at the top of Mount Sinai with God? And if they were able to see him, why would they say, “We don’t know what’s become of him?”
The imaginative answer the ancient interpreters came up with was that the people only thought they saw Moses. It was an illusion meant to mislead them. The people saw Moses but they didn’t know what had happened to him because the Moses they thought they saw was dead, ascending to heaven! Now who would lead the people astray with so devious a trick? It could only be the ancient deceiver, himself: Satan.
To modern readers this probably seems like a highly speculative, if not downright irresponsible, way of interpreting the scriptures. But I hope you see that these stories aren’t merely flights of fancy; they come out of an imaginative dialogue with the text. Furthermore, even though the ancients approached interpretation in a very different way than we are taught to, they did so faithfully. And you have to admit: they seemed to be having a lot more fun.
Though the Bible doesn’t name the magicians at Pharaoh’s court, the ancient Rabbis named them Jannes and Jambres. Jannes and Jambres are name checked in 2 Timothy 3:8. One good reason to be familiar with ancient Rabbinical traditions is that they crop up in the writings of the New Testament.
This midrash is helped by the fact that Hur occurs at Aaron’s side a couple times in the book of Exodus, but for the last time in Exodus 24:13. After that, only Hur’s children are mentioned. Where did he go? Furthermore, the context of his last appearance is that when Moses is going up the mountain, he leaves Abraham and Hur in charge of resolving disputes. But where was Hur when the people approached Abraham? To the ancient Rabbis, the answer was obvious: the people must have killed Hur! the Bible was silent on the matter because the deed was so shameful but how else was his disappearance to be explained? Surely Hur, who never left Aaron’s side, wouldn’t have let the mob surround Aaron without trying to stop them. And if he tried to stop them, they would have killed him in Aaron’s presence.
Here again, a quirk of language hints at a hidden story. In Genesis 32:2, Aaron tells the men to “take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing.” But in the very next verse, it says "So all the men took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.” Why did the men take off their own earrings when they were supposed to take the earrings off their wives and children? Something must have transpired between these two verses.
Saving the longest for last! This is a tried and true storytelling technique. When you are telling a couple stories right in a row, the best strategy is two to three short ones followed by a longer one. This is psychologically satisfying. In this case, the first three aren’t much in the way of stories. You could dispense with each of them in about a minute. But the story of the golden leaves could really be developed into something special.
The basis of this Midrashic tale is the wording of the oath Joseph made the people swear in Genesis 50:25 (and repeated verbatim in Exodus 13:19): “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.”
While its easy enough to see that “Up from this place” probably means out of Egypt, the ancient interpreters wondered why Joseph would repeat the promise he had just made a verse earlier: “God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land…” Wasn’t this redundant?
The ancient Rabbis didn’t believe the Bible was needlessly repetitive. If something was said a second time, it usually had a different connotation or meaning.
In this case, if Joseph said a similar thing twice, he must have actually been talking about two different things. A variation in the language helped the ancient interpreters along. The second time, Joseph didn’t say “up out of this land.” He said “up out of this place.” And he wasn’t talking about the people; he was talking about his bones. They reasoned that Joseph must have been prophesying that God would aid the Israelites in raising his bones out of a place where they couldn’t raise them by human strength. Where else would this be but the Nile river?
Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of Hebrew Midrash.
This would have been before the prohibition against graven images at Mt. Sinai.
These stories are entertaining and will most likely strike the hearer as fanciful avoidance of the obvious fact: Aaron was complicit in the idolatry of the people.
These stories may help modern hearers to think about their own revisionist accounts. The ways they artfully let themselves off the hook for their own unfaithfulness. It was the devil! I was forced! I tried to stop it! I was confused!
I could envision a sermon that begins with these fanciful legends, and lulls the hearer into a smug self satisfaction, only to pull the rug out from under them and force them to confront their own lame excuses. If you can get away with it, you could call them “Bull Stories.”
Most of this has been adapted from a 2003 CBS news story about Murphy the Eagle. It’s the kind of weird story I see and clip never knowing exactly if or how I’m going to use it. If you can get in the habit of clipping things with one of the many note taking apps that are out there, you will find that over time you will have an arsenal of stories at your disposal. I like to, as soon as I clip something, add some keywords that will help me find it later when I’m looking for something on a particular topic. Here are the keywords, I used for the Murphy the Eagle story:
KEY WORDS: eagle’s wings, gather you under my wings, rocks, stones, nest, idolatry, real thing, fatherhood, parenting, adoption, hope is a thing with feathers, faith, waiting, birth, Advent, Easter eggs
It takes an extra minute but it’s worth it. This week, I searched my notes for ‘idolatry’ and Murphy flew up to greet me.
I spent a lot of time wording and rewording this introduction. I wanted to paint a picture of the eagle quickly so I could cast a ‘story spell’ right out of the gate, but I also wanted to surprise the hearer with the revelation that Murphy was nesting a rock. This is one of the reasons I recommend writing out your stories before internalizing them and telling them by heart. When we write out our stories, we think through the order we’re going to present our images in. I’ve also found that I discover clever turns of phrase or witty asides in the process that often make it into the version told orally.
The information about pseudo eggs comes from an article from Audubon. I found it when I wondered if the thing with Murphy was a one off or if it happened often. In addition to this information, I learned there is a whole cottage industry devoted to fake eggs that are used to control the breeding of birds in captivity. There’s probably a great message in that fact too. I’ll leave you to work it out…
The heartwarming ending to the story about Murphy the eagle presents a dilemma. I am wanting to draw a parallel between idolatry: devotion to a ‘pseudo god’ and the story of Murphy’s pseudo egg. Because this story is meant to create tension and get the hearer thinking about idolatry, I don't want to resolve the tension for them by giving the story a happy ending. I want the story to bother them so I can resolve the tension in other ways later in the sermon. However, I also don’t want to create the wrong kind of tension: I don’t want the hearer to be wondering what happened to Murphy for the rest of the sermon. Especially kids are going to be drawn to the story of Murphy and will naturally want to know what happened at the end of the 35 days. So, I close the loop on Murphy’s story but I pivot to the wider story by saying: such heartwarming miracles can happen in a bird sanctuary but out in the world it is different… From there, my hope is that I can paint enough of a bleak picture of the human condition that the tension is preserved even though Murphy has been set aside.
The silver window is a classic parable. The way I’ve always heard it, though, is as a story about an individual who lives in a house on a hill. And each morning he prays for the people below. This is the way I used to tell it. But a few years ago, I adapted it to be a story about a church for a sermon I was preaching on Amos 5. The sermon was about how the people in Amos’ day were worried about what was going up from the holy hill (music, smoke, incense) but God was more concerned with what was going down from the holy hill (justice like an overflowing stream). The image of the church on the hill and the man on the hill sort of melded together in my mind and this remix of the parable was born. Good wisdom stories are very malleable in this way. We can adapt them to fit the needs of the sermon we are telling. Sometimes it’s a matter of changing a detail or two and a story that ‘kind of’ fits can become a story that fits like a glove!
Several months later, I was in a Church meeting and we were actually discussing the replacing of a window that had fallen into disrepair. As we talked about the cost of fixing it, we started talking about fixing the other windows as well. For this small Church, the cost of the rapidly expanding project would be a sizable portion of our budget. A lady in our group who had been silent most of the meeting spoke up. She said that her mind kept going back to the story I had told of the Church with the silver window. She then held us to accountable for making sure we could repair the window without changing any of our plans for ministry.
The stories we tell matter.
I’m a sucker for a little alliteration in storytelling. One of the things I tried to do with this parable is suggest what the next level engagement looks like. The Church on the hill was doing good as individuals to feed the hungry, visit the lonely, and tend to the sick. But what do these things look like at a more systemic level? They look like kitchens, communities, and clinics. In Wesleyan parlance, this is going from individual acts of mercy to corporate acts of justice.
This is a story about idolatry. But it makes the point that most churches (or individuals) don’t willingly set on the path of idolatry. They slowly become idolaters one compromise at a time.
Notice the parallels in language to the first paragraph. This is not just me being artsy. The parallel language serves to remind the hearer how the story began. This similar set up and rhythm makes the dramatic reversal at the end all the more devastating. Instead of going out to serve, they are worshipping themselves.