Exodus 3:1-15
In
today's Old Testament text, we encounter a very famous moment in the Exodus
story. We have been following
Moses, who has an esteemed career as a murderer outlaw at this point. You'll recall that he killed one
of Pharoah's foremen because he had seen him beating an Israelite. Then he fled to Midian to escape the
wrath of Pharoah, and picked up a wife, Tsipporah, and a pretty wise father-in-law,
Jethro, on the way.
Anyway,
Moses is out tending the sheep of his father-in-law when he sees the most
curious sight: a scrubby little
bush that's on fire, but won't burn up.
In translating the text, I found that some scholars tend to think it was
a blackberry bush – so if that helps your mental picture, there you go. Now, Biblical scholars disagree about
the exact location of where Moses is at this point. We don't know where Midian and Mount Horeb (also known as
Mount Sinai) are, but we can agree that this bush would not have been dewy or
wet – it would have burned like a brush fire in the hot, dry area. I think any one of us, like Moses,
would have been puzzled as to why the bush kept on burning.
So
Moses approached the bush to see what was going on, and then things got
weirder. The bush started talking
to him. We know, from reading the
Scripture, that God was speaking, but Moses would have had no way of
knowing. Plus, we are unsure if
Moses even has a relationship with God at this point – remember, he was raised
as an Egyptian and didn't have the benefit of being surrounded by people who
knew the God of Abraham and Isaac.
From knowing the story of the birth of Jesus, we also know that this
isn't the first time God chooses to divulge good news to a clueless shepherd
watching his flock.
Moses
listened to the speaking of the burning bush, and God revealed Godself to
Moses. Moses did what any single
one of us would probably do: he
hid his face in fear and awe. No
one was supposed to see this God, JHWH, and live. Moses probably thought he was approaching his final
hour!
God
told Moses that he had chosen Moses to be his envoy to Pharoah, to be his
advocate for his people, to free them from the harsh labor they had been
subjected to. The time had come to
save his people, and Moses was an operative part of that. And what did Moses say? Moses, probably feeling a mixture of
dread, lack of self-confidence, and confusion, said “Who me?”
That
“who me” has sounded down through thousands of years and hundreds of thousands
of readings of the text. That “who
me” is what I want to spend the next minutes talking about.
Some
of you will know that I went to college in New York City, at Columbia
University. Directly catty-corner
to Columbia's campus is the Jewish Theological Seminary in America, the main
training grounds for all the Conservative Jewish rabbis and clerics of America
– confusingly, they are actually the moderate sect of Judaism, although they
are called Conservative.
I
had many friends who attended the Jewish Theological Seminary, so I often had
occasion to walk by the building, or even to have lunch inside. They had the most beautiful marble
facade on the outside of the building, and chiseled into the marble was a
drawing of a flaming bush, and the motto for the Seminary, which comes from
this reading: “And the bush was
not consumed.” My eyes always
found this verse, every time I was walking by down on the sidewalk below.
Throughout
high school and college, I was very much like Moses in this verse, and I know
that all of us have these moments sometimes. God was continually calling to me, whispering and shouting
my name, saying, “Emily – I have plans for you. These plans involve full-time service in my church!” And I said, “Who, me!? But I'm going to be a lawyer, or a teacher,
or a pharmacist like my Granddad.
I can serve you just as well in one of those professions, can't I?”
But
the bush was not consumed – and God kept calling. And I kept saying, “Who, me?” I applied for Peace Corps service after I graduated from college,
and I said to God, “I'll serve you by serving others across the world.” And the bush was not consumed, and God
kept calling. And I was turned
down from the Peace Corps!
So
I applied to Vanderbilt Divinity, but still wasn't sure that I wanted to pursue
this calling from God. I said to
God, “But I might make a better professor than a pastor.” But the bush was not consumed, and God
kept calling to me from within it.
So finally, I stopped and listened to God's plan for me. I'm still struggling to see what that
plan looks like - I still have days when “Who, me!?” is a big stumbling
block.
God
doesn't call each of us to ordained ministry in the church, but God does call
each of us somewhere. And God
keeps calling. The bush is not
consumed. And maybe it isn't a
vocational call, a call to a profession.
Maybe God is calling you to feel a particular passion about a certain
issue – about the treatment of the homeless in this town, or the imprisonment
of immigrants. You can say “Who,
me?” just like Moses all day long, but God isn't human, and God has power and
endurance to withstand our protests and our foot-dragging.
And
God has heard all the excuses! If
you think that you or I have some good excuses, think about what Moses said to
God: “I'm a murderer and a
fugitive, I have a speech impediment, and besides, my brother is really more of
the mouthpiece in the family. Even
my sister is a better leader than I am.
I'd really much rather follow on this one, God.”
Finally,
Moses pulls out his last stop, and says, “I don't think anyone will believe me
if I go back and say that I heard God talking to me in a burning blackberry
bush. What will I do when they
ridicule me and say I'm making it up?
What will I tell them that your name is?” These are good excuses. If someone came to me and reported the same story that Moses
had, I would have recommended counseling.
So, Moses has some good points here.
In
asking for God's name, Moses is making an incredibly bold move. See, in our culture, we name our kids
with some impunity. We decide when
we get pregnant or when we adopt that, “if it's a girl, we'll name her Jessica,
and if it's a boy, Matthew.” But
in many cultures, even today, people will refuse to name their children until
they see them, because in naming there is power to help shape the future of
that child. The Bible is full of
names that actually mean something. Moses' own name means “drawn out of the water,” although
scholars debate whether it's a Hebrew or an Egyptian name. Isaac means “he laughed” because of
Sarah's laughter about her alleged pregnancy. And Jesus?
Yeshua in Hebrew means savior.
And so on. So Moses, in
asking for God's personal name, is asking for some control over God's
action. How will God respond to
this bold request?
God's
answer to Moses is sheer genius.
This is one of those pivotal moments in the Exodus story, and in the
greater Old Testament. In a
compact little Hebrew phrase that doesn't translate very well, God says: “I am who I am.” Another way of saying this, which is
equally correct, is, “I will be what I will be.” God basically says to Moses, “None of your business! I'm going to do what I'm going to do,
and your job is to listen and obey.
I will decide if the people will listen to you or not, so it's not your
concern to try to convince them.”
I
think this moment is so ground-breaking because of the underlying statement God
is making, and that God still makes today: don't try to limit me with words or ideas. In our human-ness, we want to know what
God looks like. We want to know
what God's name is. And God shows
us little bits and pieces of what God looks like, but we will never, ever know
the fullness of God. This is the
heart of the mystery of God.
At
the Vanderbilt Divinity School, where I study, the so-called “School of
Prophets,” one way that this idea is expressed is in the form of
gender-inclusiveness. We try to
never refer to God as either “he” or “she” because God, in God's fullness, transcends
human gender. And this is very
difficult at first! After a
lifetime of referring to God as 'he', to catch yourself and say “God” and
“Godself” every time takes a lot of practice! But that is what the community is for. See, we remind each other. We raise our hands during class and
say, “It seems as if we're losing sight of our commitment to
inclusiveness. Can we remember
that?” This is one of the vital
roles of community – we invoke different images of God, but remind each other
that each one is valid and none of them are complete.
There
is great danger in saying that the image we have of God is the only image. Not only do we risk excluding people
and turning them away from the church, we risk disrupting the very order of
creation. God created us in God's
image, but when we monopolize images of God, we create God in our image. This is a serious sin, and one that is
incredibly widespread.
Sometimes,
we want something for our lives so badly that we become convinced that God has
called us to it. This is a very
dangerous form of creating God in our own image. We might have wanted to be a teacher, or a police officer,
or a mother or father, and we wanted it so deeply that we believed that God has
given us a call to it. Only a life
that is steeped in prayer and Christian community will be able to discern a
call from God correctly, because a call must be verified from both within and
without.
In
some traditions, for a person to be recognized as being called to ministry, the
call must be felt by others in the church. In our own tradition, United Methodism, the candidate for
ministry must be recognized as having “gifts, graces, and fruits” that are fit
for that ministry. The candidate
must sit before various boards and committees charged with discerning the
movement of the Holy Spirit, and deciding whether this person does indeed have
that call.
And
when we say to God, like Moses, “Who me!?
I think I know what's best for myself, thank you very much,” we resist
what God is creating in us. We
resist the order of creation. And
we don't let God do God's job.
To
all of our “who me”s, God says “Yes you – and I'm with you. You have power that you don't know yet,
because it is from me.” This is
powerful stuff. It was powerful
for Moses back then, has gripped people in all the intervening years, and
continues to reach into our lives and grasp us. Moses thinks that his life is his own; that he is settled
somewhat comfortably into a life of tending his father-in-law's sheep, and God
comes to say otherwise.
How
often has this happened to each of us?
How often have we heard or uttered the phrase, “ . . . but God had other
plans for me”? Do we go along
willingly? Do we jump right in to
what God has in store for us?
In
certain places and at certain times, it is very easy for us to hear and feel
the pulling of God's divine will in our lives. At other times, the communication becomes cloudy. Many distractions stand in our way, and
there are more coming every minute.
Who would have thought, a hundred years ago, that we would have tiny
hand-held devices that allow someone to reach us by phone or email everywhere
that we go?! In a business
professional environment, we are expected to respond to everyone's emails and
demands within a twenty-four hour period!
This doesn't leave much time to carve out and listen for the calling of
God.
Occasionally
the distractions are so great that God will indeed come in a bizarre sight like
the burning bush, a tragic incident in our lives, or an insistent person – but
a lot of times God speaks softly and waits for us to hear. God is endlessly patient with us in
this way. A lot of times God
chooses to give us subtle signs and warnings about where God is calling us, and
expects us to tune in to God and tune out of some of our daily demands.
Part
of God being “I am who I am” or “I will be what I will be” is allowing God the
freedom and latitude to work broadly in our lives. If we allow God only a little corner of our hearts, or only
one day of our week, we are not letting God be who God is. God gave us all we are, and God demands
the freedom to invade every part of us.
Are we open to that? Do we
hear the call of God? If not – I
suggest a retreat. Even a
five-minutes-a-day retreat. At
first it will feel like a waste of time.
It's not. It's a gigantic investment
of time.
In
God's way of operating, which is different for each person, space for hearing
is vital. I know sometimes I will
go through an entire day without a second of silence. I have the radio on when I wake up, I make calls while I'm
driving from one place to another, I sit in class while a professor lectures,
and I chat with my friends over lunch.
I'm exhausted when I get home, and I fall into bed without a second
thought. Sometimes God takes the
only opportunity God can get – when I'm reading for class – and invades my
thoughts in that quietness. I'll
find my mind a million miles away from what I'm reading, because God saw that
as the only moment to get my attention.
This is a sad state of affairs in my life! This is when I know that I have to consciously schedule in
some time for God.
So
what do we “take home” with us from this Scriptural text from Exodus? What application does it have in our
everyday lives? To sum up, I think
the applications are threefold.
First, we must remember that God is calling, all the time. God calls us not just to careers or
family situations, but to everyday events. God calls us into people's lives. God calls us into places that demand justice and mercy, and
expects us to perform in the example of Jesus. God is calling each one of us right now to do something or
to go somewhere, and most of us aren't hearing it because our world makes it
very difficult.
The
second application from this text to our everyday lives is that we all make
excuses when God calls us to something difficult or unattractive to us. God has heard all these excuses before,
and a million more that were probably more valid than the ones we have. Regardless of our excuse-making, the
point is that God equips us with what we need moment by moment, and asks only
for our trust and belief. It is a
hard step to make, out into the unknown, but God accompanies us. To all the “who me!?” of our lives, God
responds, “Absolutely. You. I'm with you. We're going to do this together.”
And
the third, and most sweeping application of this text to our lives resides in
the revelation of the divine name.
When God responds to Moses brash inquiry as to God's name, “I am what I
am” becomes the way that we have thought about God ever since. Wrapped up in God's name, which
abbreviates to JHWH in Hebrew, is the idea that humanity cannot place a neat
frame around God. In fact, to
limit God is a great sin that reverses the divine order of creation. God created us, and it will never be
the other way around.
The
frames we try to place around God are endless: gender, appearance, political inclination, and the list goes
on. In our daily lives, we might
sometimes try to create God in our own image by deciding that the plans we have
for ourselves are also the plans that God has for us. The only remedy for this backwards way of thinking is a life
full of prayer and a discerning community.
So
when you feel a “who me!?” coming, remember the story of Moses and the burning
blackberry bush, and know that you aren't alone in this feeling. Followers of JHWH have felt it through
thousands of years, and God's response has been consistent: “Yes you.”
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