August 28, 2011

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Myers Park Presbyterian Church
August 28, 2011
Dr. Steven P. Eason
"The Burning Bush"
Exodus 3:1-15

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Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ²There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” ⁴When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

⁷Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

¹¹But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” ¹²He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” ¹³But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” ¹⁴God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’“ ¹⁵God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.

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Quite a story!  Burning bushes.  God talking out loud.  I’m envious of the clarity of this conversation that Moses has with God.  No one else was out there, so he had to come back and tell his version of what happened to him.  And isn’t that always the case?  We tell our stories from our experience.  It’s how I see it.  All of our experiences are so different, as they were in the stories of Scripture.  It seems that God doesn’t encounter any two people in the same fashion. 

There is a Chapel of the Burning Bush at St. Catherine’s Monastery on what is presumed to be the precise location of this experience.  They say the chapel sits atop the roots of the very same bush that burned and yet was not consumed.  But wouldn’t it be a mistake for us to journey back to the Chapel of the Burning Bush with any expectation that we could have this same experience?  In fact, it is written in Deuteronomy,

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.  (Deut. 4:10)

So, there’s no question that this bizarre story is unique.  It happened once with no promise that it would ever happen again to anybody else.  And yet, God has seemingly continued to interrupt people’s lives and call them to participate in the work of the kingdom.  It happens, even if it doesn’t happen to us in the way that it happens to others.

 Look at Moses’ story. 

•  Go centuries back to Abraham and Sarah.  God makes a promise to them to build a nation and through that nation, give them a land and use them as an instrument of God’s work in the world.  It’s the covenant.
•  Abraham and Sarah do eventually have a son, Isaac, who later has a son, Jacob, whom God renames Israel.   
• Jacob or Israel, has twelve sons and so the nation of Israel was born...as promised to Abraham and Sarah.
• Years and years later, the sons of Israel and their families end up in Egypt in order to save their lives from a famine.  
• They are slaves.   
• The nice Pharaoh dies and a bad Pharaoh comes on the scene and makes life hard.  (He tells the midwives to kill all the male children of Hebrew women at birth.  But, the midwives couldn’t do it.  So, Pharaoh had every male born to a Hebrew woman thrown into the Nile River.  He let the girls live.)  
• Moses’ mother hid him for three months and then put him in a basket, water-sealed it and placed him among the reeds along the river. 
• The daughter of Pharaoh comes to take a bath, finds the baby and took pity on him.  She raised the child and named him Moses.  So, now a Hebrew slave is adopted into Egyptian royalty.  
• Everything went fine until Moses grew to be a man and one day saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew.  Something in him clicked.  He killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.  You would think the Hebrews would honor him but they actually rejected him as being a troublemaker.  Even though he was his adopted grandson, Pharaoh came after him and Moses fled to Midian.   
• He meets Zippora and marries her and they have a son, Gershom (Guhr-sham).  And Moses settles down into a new life tending the sheep of his father-in-law, Jethro.  (We’re not finished!) 
• Moses is a murderer, a criminal in hiding, when God comes to him out there beyond the wilderness.   

Now, I don’t know where Cecil B. DeMille’s version of Moses came from, in his 1950’s film with Charleston Heston, but a lot of it did not come from the Bible.  Moses was no saint.  He was a very confused man.  He wasn’t an Egyptian, but he wasn’t accepted as a Hebrew, and now he’s living with the Midianites and doesn’t belong to them either.  Here’s a man who was once in the Royal Palace and now he’s sitting out there watching sheep?  Not only that, but he’s a murderer and God chooses to use him?  (This is all in the Bible!  You can’t make this stuff up!)

Even though this particular story doesn’t happen to us, is there anything in Moses’ story that is relevant to you and me?  The details may change but is the story not the same?

God doesn’t always use the pure and the perfect, but more often than not, God will use the broken and the sinful.  That’s apparently still true.  And, why is that?  My take on it is that God uses the broken and the sinful because when the final product arrives there will be no question as to who actually delivered it!  It couldn’t have been me!  In our weakness we see God’s strength.  I can’t think of a biblical leader who was not flawed in some way.

Moses was not qualified for this job.  He was not looking for it, not asking for it, not praying for it or believing it.  He had nothing to do with it.  I wouldn’t have picked him.  He never even went to seminary!  He didn’t take Greek or Hebrew.  (Well, I guess he knew the Hebrew!)  He didn’t pass any ordination exams!  He never took Clinical Pastoral Education.  He’s not qualified!  (Not to mention he’s a murderer.  That doesn’t look good on your resume!)

He even says so himself;

‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ (3:11)

Good question.  And he doesn’t stop there.  If you keep reading, he eventually says,

‘O, my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’  (Exodus 4:10)

To which the Lord responds,

‘Who gives speech to mortals?’  (Exodus 4:11a)

In other words, “That’s not a problem for me.  I’m not worried about what you can’t do.”

And so Moses finally says,

‘O, my Lord, please send someone else.’  (Exodus 4:13)

Good idea!  Just send somebody else!  Please don’t make me do this.

Is it not true that God continues to use weak, fallible, broken and sinful people for divine purposes?  God will take you as you are but has no intention of leaving you there.

He’s not qualified and there is nothing special about the place of this encounter.  It happened in a common, ordinary field.  Moses is not in church!  He’s not in a synagogue or a mosque.  He’s at work!  Could God possibly be with us at work?  (All of our teachers who are starting school right now sure hope so!) 

This is a story that Jews, Christians and Muslims can read together.  This is a story we share in all our sacred texts.  When we were in Istanbul this summer, we went to the Blue Mosque and we were required to take off our shoes before we entered, as is the Muslim tradition.  Taking off your shoes comes from this Moses story, an act of reverence when entering a holy place.  That’s admirable, and I do understand and appreciate the gesture, but is there any place that is not a holy, any place that is not a sacred place?  Is not all ground, “holy ground?” 

On one of our trips to Scotland, we went over to the Isle of Butte.  There is a monastery there that dates back to the 300’s A.D.  The wall that surrounded the monastery is still there and on the wall there is a plaque that reads;

(This is) the bank defining the boundary between the area of the Dark Age monastery and the secular world beyond.

But is there such a place?  Is there a “secular world” that is beyond God’s presence?  Apparently not.

God seems to have a habit of interrupting people’s lives in ordinary places, like at work or home.  These conversations don’t often happen in grand cathedrals.  They happen out there on the street, out in the wilderness.  God comes to a murderer, a refugee, a guy staring at dumb sheep in the middle of nowhere.  I think that’s still true, even though it happens in a variety of ways.  The details change – the principles are still there.

And, this “call,” this divine interruption, this encounter with God, did not make Moses’ life any easier.  That’s definitely still true!  In fact, it made it harder, much harder.  He had to go back to Egypt, the place where his Wanted Posters were nailed up all around town.  He had to go to Pharaoh and make the ridiculous request to release all the Hebrew slaves.  That’s preposterous!  And after all the plagues and Pharaoh finally gives in, Moses gets to go out in the wilderness for forty years and live with the Hebrews, with their complaining, wishing they were back in Egypt!  Welcome to ministry!

God’s activity in our lives doesn’t always fix everything does it?  Sometimes it complicates it, ask Jesus.  This is a life of sacrifice, of commitment to a higher calling.  But had Moses said “No” to all of this, and stayed out there in the wilderness watching Jethro’s sheep, who in the world would be talking about him today in the year 2011?  Nobody.  Moses who?

My father said something to me when I went into the ministry that I will never forget.  He said, “God will not call you to do something that he will not give you the power to do.”  There are days we all want to quit.  Changing the world is hard work, you know!  But we don’t bring in the kingdom of God.  It comes in and sweeps us up with it.  It’s something God is doing in the world and we are invited to participate in it.  Yes, it changes our lives and it may even make them harder at times, but does it not make them all the more rich and more meaningful in their purpose?

This story may not happen to us, but it happens to us all the time.  Every baptized Christian is called into ministry with Christ.  The details around the callings, around the nudging of God, are always different.  But aren’t the principles still the same?  We’re not looking for it and most of the time we don’t want it.  We’re not qualified for it.  It comes in the most bizarre times and places in our lives.  It’s on God’s calendar, not on ours. 

And let’s also say this; it never comes with the full picture of what’s ahead.  If it did, we would all tuck our tails and run.  There are some things you don’t need to know!   We don’t get the full picture.  We’re not brought in on The Divine Strategic Planning Team.  We take it one step at a time, sometimes not even knowing what the next step is.  What we are guaranteed in the process is empowerment.  In our deficiencies God’s strength will sustain us.  That’s what God said to Moses.  That’s what God has been saying to everybody else along the way.  It’s still true. 

And finally there is the sending.  This experience was not just for Moses.  This isn’t about you getting some kind of “special blessing” that separates you from everybody else.  The whole purpose of this encounter, this calling, this “God-nudging” in your life is for a grander purpose beyond yourself.  You’ve got to go!  You can’t stay here at St. Catherine’s Monastery sitting on the historic roots of a bush.  You got to go!  God has a purpose to which we are called.  It’s bigger than us.  We’re on God’s clock – God’s not on ours.  This is still true – A life in service to God is fluid – it is not static – it moves.  It’s out there in the future with all the risks, hardships, promises and blessings.

Joanna Adams , preached a sermon on this text and concluded by saying,

…the life you’re living now – it’s the only one you’ve got.  Don’t spend it being scared, not being ready, not being what you should be.  The bush is burning.  It burns for you.  (Day 1.com, February 12, 2006, Joanna Adams “Clarity About Your Calling.”)

I’d add to that; take off your shoes, wherever and whenever this is happening in your life.  Ask all your questions, as did Moses.  Put up all your resistance, and then pull up the courage to obey the Voice that is within you, the Voice of God that calls you to a life of meaning and purpose.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Congregation:  Amen

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