Pentecost XII
Exodus 3:1-15 & Romans 12:9-21
August 31, 2014
If the Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer, then, by most accounts, this summer is concluding on a somber note. In particular, August has felt like an intense, heavy month. It is one that we will remember for Ferguson, Ebola, Ukraine, Gaza, and Robin Williams. The bright spot might be the Orioles’ run towards the postseason. Each day’s headlines serve as a reminder that the world is too often violently at odds with itself. Amidst such painful chaos, the world is always asking something of us.
Baby Moses was born into a world in crisis. Pharaoh’s edict to kill every male infant should have ended his life. Instead, the ingenuity, bravery, and hospitality of others saved him. Still, he grew up in a stranger’s home, become a Hebrew man with an Egyptian name, and an alien who witnessed the enslavement of his people and experienced a rage at the injustice. Not knowing what to do amid his political crisis, he runs away, ending up married with a family and tending sheep in the wilderness.
So then comes the day when God intervenes. Moses, Moses calls the voice from a burning bush, a bush in which flames rise up but do not consume. The strange fire makes him turn aside to look. The voice makes him answer, Here I am. Who would not be curious about a voice calling your name? Who would not be compelled to respond on the day you realize the God knows your name is addressing you directly?
The voice in the bush provides an introduction. I am the God of your father, the God of your forebearers. I am the God you have heard about in stories of old couples bearing children, of a younger brother swindling the eldest from his birthright and wrestling God until daybreak, of another youngest son with a multi-colored coat, who travels from a prison floor to Pharaoh’s seat and saves his family from famine. I am the God contained in stories of promise, provisions and protection. Now I have heard the groanings of my enslaved people. I have seen their misery. I know their suffering. So come, Moses, I am sending you to bring them out.
Until the last sentence God had been speaking for God. Biblical commentators note the speech contains a series of I’s. I have seen. I have heard, I know. Then, in one quick shift, the I switches to you. I am sending you. Divine intention becomes human work. I, I, I. Now you go. In one quick, stunning shift, what was God’s promise becomes Moses’ vocation. As Walter Brueggemann says, God’s grand plan for freedom wouldn’t have amounted to much without the risky courage of Moses.[1]
At the beginning of this encounter, when God called his name, Moses replied “Here am I.” Now having heard the plan, Moses says, “Who am I to be the one to go?” He will continue resisting the call throughout this initial conversation, reminding God that he doesn’t know God’s name, that the people may not believe him, and that he is slow of speech. Finally, in desperation, he asks God to send to someone else. We know that the risky courage of Moses will make good on God’s liberating promises. But in the beginning, he displays fear, stalling, and evasiveness. For all his words about not being qualified for the job, what Moses really means is that the job is a more costly one than he ever wanted.
It strikes me that the gulf between Moses’ first response – Here I am – and his second – Who am I do to do this – is a wide space of non-commitment in which many of us find ourselves. We long to be addressed by God. We look for God’s speech, hoping God knows our name, and invites us into God’s holy space. Then, when God does speak - when God’s purpose becomes our work – it comes as more of a job than we wanted. Perhaps it feels threatening to speak boldly in Pharaoh’s court, or too risky to reorder our lives, or too demanding to speak up against the established order. We stammer our excuses – not because we really think God’s intentions will be thwarted by our timidity, lack of leadership or poor public speaking – but because we weren’t quite ready for this life-altering work. Really, God, go ask someone else.
You and I also claim Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses as our forefathers. The God who sees enslavement, who hears cries for mercy and who says I am coming down to unshackle the chains is also our God. We are heirs of this liberation story, no matter how frantic, isolated or enslaved our lives might feel. When I read the headlines – of shootings, war games, inept government, and environmental doom – I am conscious of my helplessness. Who am I, God, to do anything about any of this? Yet this story of God liberating through the risky courage of Moses says otherwise. You go.
This morning I want to offer two responses to the gulf between calling and sending, two ways to close the chasm between Here am I and Who am I. The first comes from the image of a burning bush. You and I know the burning bush. It is a story from childhood. Picture the bush alit with flames but not consumed. Here is a fire that does not destroy, and in fact, makes others take notice. Have you ever felt that type of fire inside of you? A flame that leaps up and makes you more alive? A fire you cannot quench or turn away from? What makes you burn in that way: the hunger pains of poverty? The injustice of racism? The world’s need for hospitality – where everyone has a place at the table? Is it education, the environment, refugees or saving the world’s oceans? Have you noticed that the fire burns even if you don’t always tend it? How can it not be God calling out your name?
The second idea is precisely about God calling you and me by name. There in the wilderness, Moses was given his vocation, a holy purpose that ordered his life from that moment forward. It started with God calling his name. When we hear the word vocation you might it is a personal choice towards a certain work, or God’s arbitrary assignment of roles. But, says Rowan Williams, vocation isn’t arbitrary. It is bound up in God giving us our names. Throughout scripture God calls things into existence by giving them a name. If God creates us by giving us our names then the calling to exist is also the call to be ourselves. “God’s desire,’ says Williams, “is for you to be and for you to be you.”[2] So to take up our vocation is to take up the journey of being ourselves, fully responding to God’s calling of our names.[3]
Moses’ name meant being drawn out of the water. He is one who survived an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Raised in a powerful home, he shared a kinship with the slaves propping up his way of life. The fire of injustice had already enflamed him. Given all of the things that made Moses Moses, how could he not hear the powerful truth contained in God’s statement of his life’s work. Surely he realized, even in his fear and dread, this is of and for me. Then he started his return to Egypt, steeling himself to walk into Pharaoh’s court.
So your vocation is intimately bound to who you are – your context, your make up and history. You don’t need to discover your vocation. You need to let it well up inside of you as you answer honestly God’s calling out to you by name. What is true on a personal level is also true for the congregation. We as a congregation are answering back to God who has called us Grace.
Amid all this talk of names it is important to remember that Moses asks for God’s name. I can’t go unless I can tell people who sent me. God’s response – I am who I am – is an evasive reply, which really tells Moses nothing. Another translation of I am is I will be who I will be, which hints that we learn something of God when we bring ourselves into God’s story. We learn who God is as we go about the work, discovering that the God is with us along the way.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, “I Will Do It…But You Go” in The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain, Power and Weakness, ed. Charles L. Campbell (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 22.
[2] Rowan Williams, “Vocation” in A Ray of Darkness: Sermons and Reflections (Cambridge: Cowley, 1995), 149.
[3] Ibid, 150.