“Wayward” - Sermon from Sunday, September 20, 2026

Last week, we began a new sermon series exploring moments in Scripture when God taps somebody on the shoulder and says, “I have a mission for you—a plan for you!” Our plan (as a congregation) is to spend this fall wrestling with Mary Oliver’s famous question: “What does God want me to do with my one wild and precious life?”

Today, we consider Mary Oliver’s question through the lens of one of the oddest and (I think) funniest stories in all of the Good Book. Let us listen together for God’s Word as it echoes to us from the book of Numbers, chapter twenty-two, beginning with the first verse:

Then the Israelites traveled to the plains of Moab and camped along the Jordan across from Jericho. Now Balak son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites, and Moab was terrified because there were so many people. Indeed, Moab was filled with dread because of the Israelites. The Moabites said to the elders of Midian, “This horde is going to lick up everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field.”

The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, “Go with the men, but speak only what I tell you.” So Balaam went with Balak’s officials.

This is the Word of God, for you the People of God. Thanks be to God.

And you thought the movie Shrek was the first appearance of a talking donkey.

The story of Balaam and his unfortunate burro reads like a Shakespearean comedy. All the elements for a raucous tale are here: We have a frightened king—a monarch searching for a way to vanquish potential enemies. This king dispatches henchmen (with a few bags of gold) to search for a wizard—a professional diviner known to be handy with a curse. But there is a problem. This soothsayer—Balaam—is now taking direction from a deity who likes the people who have swarmed out of neighboring Egypt.

In fact, after slipping off to confer with heaven, Balaam delivers bad news to the royal cronies. “Sorry, guys,” he says, “but God won’t let me go.”

Now, the king has been around the block a few times. He knows that when a prophet says, “I can’t come,” it usually means, “Try again, but next time bring more money.” To get a good psychic, you need to pay a little more. So His Royal Highness sends more numerous and more distinguished officials—better negotiators with deeper pockets. But even in front of these emissaries, Balaam stands firm. “Houses full of silver and gold,” he says, “are not the issue. God’s Word is!”

And with that, Balaam again checks signals with God; and a good thing, too, for this time the Lord declares that the prophet can go. With one caveat, Balaam must follow divine instructions. Jubilant, the officials of Moab depart to tell the king that his spiritual fixer is on the way. His Grace smiles on receiving the news. It looks like the price is now right, and the king will soon see his enemies cursed.

These negotiations set the stage for one of the zaniest scenes in the Hebrew Bible. Balaam, the prophet, while riding his donkey to the courts of Moab, runs smack into an angel of the Lord. And, irony of ironies, the soothsayer—a guy who gets paid to look for signs of the divine—cannot see this angel, while his beast of burden can. As the curtain drops on this scene, it is clear that the true visionary in this text is not a king or a prophet, but a donkey.

As the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27).

And maybe that’s all this story has to say. Maybe.

Still, I keep coming back to the fact that God gives Balaam permission to go to Moab, and then (the next day) God turns around and puts an angel in the prophet’s path. Why? Did God’s mind change? “On second thought, you better not go to Moab.” What is going on here? Why is God being so annoying? Why put an invisible angel in Balaam’s way?

When you think about it, today’s text reverses the pattern of your typical biblical call story. God taps Balaam on the shoulder, but God doesn’t say, “I need you to do this thing.” Instead, God cautions, “I need you not to do something. When the king asks you to curse the people, don’t accept. Don’t be tempted by those bags of gold to do something wrong, something awful.” God’s instructions sound like the Hippocratic Oath. “You can go to Moab, you can interact with this king, but remember this: Priority #1 is do no harm.”

Does God still tap people on the shoulder and say, “Whoa. Do not, for heaven’s sake, do not do that!”? Does God still plant angels in front of people who are about to do harm?

This morning, I want to tell you the story of Roberto Mosquera.  Roberto arrived in the United States in 1980—almost fifty years ago—as part of the Mariel boatlift. Do you remember the Mariel boatlift? In the face of grave economic conditions under Fidel Castro, private American citizens (many of them Cuban expatriates) brought more than 100,000 Cuban refugees to the United States. This exodus was not officially sanctioned by the federal government. It was family members chartering boats to rescue family members. One of the people who crossed to the USA at that time was Matilde del Peral. Matilde was a political prisoner in Cuba. She had been jailed for refusing to attend local communist party meetings. When the boat lift began, Matilde scooped up her son and daughter and got on a fishing boat bound for Miami.

Roberto was Matilde’s son. He grew up with her in Miami. Although, in his youth, Roberto made some bad decisions. He joined a gang and was later arrested for shooting a rival gang member in the leg. Roberto took a plea deal. Typically, someone like Roberto would have been deported for this crime, but we had no official diplomatic relations with Cuba. So, the young man served his time in an American jail. And this is where Roberto’s story charts a new course. While serving his sentence, Roberto became a born-again Christian. After being paroled, he chose a new path. He went to trade school. He became a specialty plumber. He married. He now has four daughters—all of whom are U.S. citizens.

A little over a year ago, Roberto Mosquera was on his way to a plumbing job when he was pulled over and arrested by ICE. Forty-six years after his mother brought him to this country to escape repression, Roberto was told that his time in the United States was over. ICE then placed Mosquera on a military transport plane and flew him to Eswatini—a small landlocked country in southern Africa. The United States has paid the king of Eswatini an undisclosed amount to take and imprison deportees. With no due process, Roberto is incarcerated in a country where he has no chance of parole and no access to legal counsel.

CBS News, The New York Times, and Amnesty International have all run pieces on Roberto Mosquera. This past Friday, two days ago, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s policy of deporting people to third countries is unlawful. In their decision, the court remarked that this practice violates due process by failing to give migrants sufficient notice and a chance to contest deportations to places where they have never been and have no contacts and no rights. I imagine the next stop for this case will be the Supreme Court.

As you can probably tell, Roberto’s story has gotten under my skin. Maybe it is because this plumber from Miami is the same age as me. Maybe it is because this born-again Christian (who was a productive part of our society) was whisked away without any court procedure. Maybe it is because the United States is now engaged in disappearing people—sending folk to gulags in countries where they have never before stepped foot.

Or maybe it is because of the story of Balaam.

Let’s look at the arc of the text from Numbers one more time. Does it sound familiar?

It starts with an anxious king—Balak. Balak sees the Hebrew immigrants as a threat. He offers bags of gold if someone will come and curse them. This is when God steps in and says, “Hold on.” God taps Balaam on the shoulder and says, “You shall not curse these people.”

So, Balaam declines the offer. When the king asks a second time, God says, “Okay, you can go and talk with the king, but you must do only what I tell you to do.” So, Balaam saddles his mighty steed. And that’s when he runs smack-dab into an angel.

Why does God set up this angelic roadblock? Is the Almighty messing with the prophet?

“Don’t go.” “Okay go.” “No, wait.”

Here’s how I read it.

I think God senses something in Balaam. Maybe Balaam is weighing those bags of gold in his heart. How bad can cursing one group of aliens be? Or maybe Balaam is not nearly as wise or perceptive as his resume claims. What sort of prophet cannot see an angel waving a flaming sword right in front of his nose? Or maybe Balaam is simply in a foul mood, a stomp-the-floor, blame-others-for-your-own-problems mood.

The passage supports all of these theories with a harsh piece of evidence. Needing to get to Moab in a hurry—hustling to be the mouthpiece of a god—the prophet Balaam takes out his staff and beats his faithful companion.

This leads to a remarkable exchange.

“What the heck!?” the donkey exclaims. “I have been faithful to you for years. Jeepers, man, I’m trying to save you.”

At this moment, the invisible angel with her sharp sword pops into view. The angel makes God’s beef clear: “Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me.”

Your path is a reckless one before me.

Those feel like important words right now.

They remind us that to be called is to start on a journey; it is not to arrive at a destination.  It is to begin being crafted by our Creator; it is not to receive God’s unconditional stamp of approval. The lesson at the heart of today’s text is that God cares about how we pursue our callings. 

This is true for us as individuals and it is true for us as a society.

From time to time, when talking with people at the church door after a service, someone will say, “What can I do, preacher, to make a difference?” I typically reply in a broad manner. I often quote my friend, the Reverend Tom Are and say, “Do the good that is yours to do.” I think Tom’s phrase honors the unique calling that God has for each of us. I’ll be saying more about this unique calling in future sermons.

Today, however, I want to make a specific request of you. About a month ago, I asked our Outreach Committee to review Roberto Mosquera’s story and to make recommendations on possible actions this congregation might take to address the practice of secretive deportations of immigrants and asylum seekers without due process.

After prayerful study, our dedicated Outreach Committee has developed a concrete plan. They have placed a desk (in the back of the Chapel) in the Narthex and upstairs at coffee hour to tell you how you might play a part in this effort. The committee has drafted nonpartisan letters that you can send to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and to the U.S. Ambassador to Eswatini. Those of you in our online campus who would like to participate can go to fapc.org/advocacy to learn more and obtain these templates.

My friends, I know you are busy people. I know you are juggling concerns of your own—some are personal and some are related to broader cultural issues. It is a challenging time to figure out what to care about in this wide and wild world. I do not make this ask of you lightly. Still, I must confess that today’s text has laid a question on my heart:

Will you stand in the middle of the path and say, “You shall not curse these people”?

Will you be an angel—or perhaps a donkey—in the way?