Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
August 31, 2008
Exodus 3:1-12
Disciples of Christ minister, Dawn Weaks, tells this story: "Not long ago, I was passing through the hallway at church when one of our teenagers, Jon, pulled me aside and said, 'Pastor Dawn, I need to be re-baptized.' 'Let's talk a little about this,' I said. We talked, I dug a little deeper and found what was troubling Jon. He was regularly fighting with a kid at school and thought that if he was re-baptized, God would forgive him for his mean thoughts about this kid. We talked about forgiveness. Then I reminded him of the words of Paul. 'If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good.' I then asked, 'So what do you think God wants you to do, Jon?'"
"He answered,' I suppose, pray for this guy. Forgive him even though he drives me crazy.' Then he paused and asked, 'But wouldn't it be easier for me just to be re-baptized?'" In his heart, Jon knew God was calling him to a different story, a different way of relating and being. And he wasn't sure he was ready. And us? Are we ready for God's call?
Another story told by a pastor: "I know a church that feeds over a hundred homeless people every morning. One day I stopped in to have breakfast with them. I stuck my head in the church's kitchen and recognized a man whom I knew. I was surprised to see him working at this inner city church since I knew he was a member of a large, affluent church in the suburbs. But there he was, cooking and washing dishes for homeless people. I said to him, 'Glad to see you here. Have you always enjoyed working with the homeless?'"
"'Who told you I enjoy working with homeless people?' he said. 'Have you met any of these people? Most of them are crazy, that's why they're homeless.'"
"Well, I was a little taken aback by his reply, but I persisted, 'Then how did you get here, washing dishes at seven o'clock in the morning?'"
"He looked up from his dishwater and said, 'I got put here by Jesus, that's how! And how did you get where you are?'" Are we ready for God's call?
Words from a song sung by Jewel come to mind:
Don't stand too close
Don't breathe so soft
Don't talk to me, don't sing.
Please,
Don't let me fall in love with you again.
I wonder, how often do we sing to God, 'Don't stand too close; don't breathe so soft; don't talk to me, don't sing; and please, don't give me the call to follow you again." There you are, tending the sheep, doing the same thing, following the same routine as any other day, and before you know it you are on your way to Egypt. God always seems to know just where we are and we never know what God might have in store for us. Says Dawn Weaks, "Don't get me wrong - hearing and heeding God's call is the highest purpose and deepest joy of my life. But it's also the scariest possibility in my life." "Please, don't give me the call to follow you again."
And so I'd like to take some time this morning to think this God who calls us, using the wonderful story of the call of Moses as our guide. I guess the first thing to be said is that this call of God can come to anyone at anytime, often in the most ordinary of circumstances, usually when we least expect it. You know Moses' story. A baby born to Hebrew slaves in Egypt. How he was rescued from a slaughter of all the Hebrew baby boys and ended up in the house of Pharaoh of all places, really a Prince of Egypt. He was forced to flee after he killed an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a helpless Hebrew slave. We are told he goes west, beyond the wilderness, to Midian – way out there where he made a new life for himself. So when we meet Moses, in today's text, the days in Egypt are a distant memory. His fiery passion for justice barely a smoldering ember, if that. No one in Egypt knew where he was. He was safe, unknown, innocuous, and settled there among the hills and the herds where he lived with his family. This would be his life, and it wasn't a bad life. He was settled. And then, a bush bursts into flame, a voice speaks, and for Moses, everything changes.
Speaking of the call of Moses, Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, says, "Moses was doing an ordinary thing, living an ordinary life, herding ordinary sheep. Then there exploded in the midst of his life the extraordinary, the miraculous. It moved in against him, addressed him, summoned him, and his life was changed irreversibly. What happened is that God came to confront Moses and gave him a larger purpose for his life, a purpose that refused everything conventional."
Moses discovered that the forces of God's promise and resolve are still at work in the world and that they could touch and transform his life, even in a place like Midian. So I guess we had best pay attention to what seem to be just ordinary people, places and things. For, in the words of one author, "Who, what, might be that lowly bush for us, that bush that bursts into flame, that becomes the very voice of God calling you by name?"
Another point about this call: It would seem that while God takes the initiative, God doesn't work alone. Says William Willimon, "Moses must take off his shoes. The ground on which he is standing is holy. It is holy because it is the place where God almighty reached down and grabbed one ordinary human life for extraordinary purposes. Moses' story is caught up, commandeered and becomes part of God's story."
Now did you notice the change in the text? God begins the address to Moses with a number of first-person pronouns. "I have seen, I know, I have seen the oppression, I have come down to deliver..." Clearly God is deeply and personally involved with the suffering of God's people and intends to do something about it. God will take action. Not hard to imagine Moses saying, "All right, you go get 'em God. Let me know how it works out for you." But then, the surprising turn; after all the "I" statements, God then says to Moses, "So, come, I will send you to Pharaoh and you will bring my people out of Egypt." "Uh, come again? I didn't quite catch that. You are going to send me to Egypt, into the court of Pharaoh, to do what? No offense God, but have you lost your mind?" All along, God has said, "I will, I will..." And now it becomes, "Moses you, you will go." Says Brueggemann, "The trick is that all these glorious things God has resolved to do are now abruptly assigned to Moses as human work, dangerous human work. You be the liberator! You go to Pharaoh! You go to the big house and confront the entrenched, oppressive powers. You care enough to make the case for this people. That's how it is in the Bible. God does God's work, to be sure, but God doesn't work as a single. The story of the Bible is the story of enlisting and recruiting human agents to do the things that God has promised."
I am reminded of a brief story told by Verless Copeland, a UCC minister. She writes, "Many years ago I traveled to a monastery in a small Midwestern town for a spiritual formation retreat. After two days of silent prayer, we were given a one-hour audience with our spiritual director. I came in, sat down, and immediately said, 'I have been running from God.' The wise monk, sat there, looked around the room where we sat there in the monastery, then turned to me and asked, 'And have you been successful?'"
Moses wants to run – I love the honesty of this story. And maybe that's the final point. God's call can be resisted. Here is Moses, standing in front of a burning bush that is not consumed by the fire, hearing the voice of the Creator of heaven and earth telling him that God has work for him to do, and if you read on in our text, (there's your homework assignment: chapters 4, 5 & 6) all Moses can do is recite a list of reasons why he is not the right man for the job. He isn't qualified, how can he trust that it is really God who is sending him, no one will believe him or listen to him, he's a crummy public speaker and he'd really rather not do this. Life in Midian isn't all that bad; who's going to watch the sheep, I have to usher in church, the kids have got this soccer tournament, there's this fishing trip I've been planning for months..."Please, God, send someone else...anyone but me! Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"
Who am I, indeed? I am not Moses, I am not Martin Luther King, Jr., I am not Mother Teresa, I am not Albert Schweitzer, I am not Gandhi, I will never interview Barack Obama and John McCain back to back here in the church sanctuary on national television...who am I to think that God could ever use the likes of me? And maybe, like Moses, I'm not even sure I want God to use me? Who am I...Who are you? But perhaps a better question is: who are we to think that God can't or won't use us? Because again, the lesson of this story is not that we are out there, looking for God, but rather that God is always looking for us, and knows where to find us, maybe in a burning bush moment, or perhaps more likely, in the ordinary experiences and routines and encounters of our day to day lives
The story is told of a person who visited the celebrated artist, Matisse, at his home on the shores of the Mediterranean. He asked Matisse, "What is your inspiration?" The artist replied simply, "I grow artichokes. Every morning I go into the garden, I watch these plants. I see the play of light and shade on the leaves and I discover some wonderful new pattern of color. Then I return to my studio and paint. That is what I do for inspiration. I grow artichokes."
We may not be a Matisse, or a Moses, but know this...God is near at hand. Indeed, on this Labor Day weekend, let us affirm once again, that God is near at hand in our daily tasks and responsibilities. And I am telling you this because I truly believe that the Moses' story is our story. Ordinary life, ordinary work, ordinary sheep to tend, ordinary artichokes to grow. Then the reality of God explodes in our midst and we get pushed out beyond our conventional horizons, our ordinariness broken, our lives saturated with the reality of God. People like us, called to God's own work of promise and liberation, yes, even in a place like Sebastopol. What's that you say? You say Moses' story can in no way be your story? Can in no way relate to your story? Just wait. It will, it truly will.