“Moses and the Burning Bush”
A Sermon Preached by the
Rev. Jean Niven Lenk
Sunday, November 11, 2012
First Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of
Christ
Text: Exodus 3:1-21
When I say the
name “Moses,” what comes to your mind? The
baby in the bulrushes? The burning bush?
Charlton Heston?
How many of you
remember the movie “The Ten Commandments?” When Charlton – I mean Moses – comes down from
Mt. Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments, you know he has had quite an
experience up there on that mountain. His
face shines with a new-found radiance and his bearing is assured and confident.
But you know, Moses wasn’t always that
confident and self-assured, and his feelings of inadequacy are on display in
our Scripture lesson from Exodus.
After being
rescued from the bulrushes by Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses grew up in the palace
as Pharaoh’s adopted grandson. He was in
training to be a leader in Egypt, but one day he saw an Egyptian taskmaster
whip a Hebrew slave to death; enraged, Moses killed the taskmaster. And then he fled to Midian, where he spent the
next 40 years tending sheep.
In this
morning’s passage, he takes his sheep across the hot dry desert to a mountain
called Sinai where there is plenty of grass for them to eat and water to drink.
In doing so, Moses walks near a bush. He has probably passed by that bush a hundred
times. But this time, something is
different. This time the bush is on fire
and yet, it is not being consumed.
Moses says, “I
must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned
up.” Everything turns on Moses’
willingness to “turn aside” – to interrupt his daily routine to pay attention
to the presence of God. He could just as
easily looked the other way, walked right past, as many of us would. But what if he hadn’t turned aside, what if he
hadn’t taken the time out of his routine to pay attention to the presence of
God? If he had not turned aside, Moses’
life – indeed, the course of human history – would have been much different. Moses would have missed his calling, missed the
reason for his existence, missed being the liberator of Israel. And he would have missed knowing God.
But he doesn’t
miss it. He stops. He “turns aside.” He listens to God.
And God says to
him, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt… and I have come
down to deliver them from the Egyptians…” [Exodus 3:7-8].
Well, you can
almost hear Moses rejoicing; God is going to deliver the Hebrews out of bondage
and give them a land flowing with milk and honey!! But then God drops the other shoe…Guess who
God has chosen for the job. God says to
Moses, “So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites,
out of Egypt.” [Exodus 3:10].
Moses is
terrified at what God has asked him to do, and he expresses his humanity, his
hesitancy, and his feelings of inadequacy, with several creative excuses. Moses responds to God, “Who am I that I should
go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” [Exodus 3:11].
God’s timing
may seem a little off to Moses. Forty
years before, he had been somebody in Pharaoh’s court. Forty years before, he had been young, strong,
and the product of the greatest education the advanced civilization of Egypt
could produce. Forty years before, he
had powerful connections and high hopes. But now, he is a nobody, an anonymous shepherd
in a forgotten desert, rejected by his own people and a fugitive from the
Egyptians. And so, Moses asks God, “Who
am I?”
And listen to
how God answers Moses. God doesn’t say,
“Moses, you’re great, you’re wonderful, you can do it!!” God says: “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.” [Exodus 3:12].
What God is
saying to Moses, and to all of us, is: “I know all about your past, your
present, your future. All about your
inadequacies and guilt and doubt. But
they don’t matter, because they are not the ultimate truth about you. Yes, you are what you are now, but you are not
yet what you will be. And – I will be
with you every step of the way.”
Well, Moses
isn’t convinced yet. So he questions
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?” [Exodus 3:13]. In other words, if
Moses isn’t able to squirm out of God’s call by asking, “Who am I?’, then he’s
going to challenge God and ask “Who are you?”
And God says to
Moses, “I am who I am… the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob.” This same God who has already
been active in human history, transforming others who have been willing to turn
aside, says: I am a God you can believe in, a God who transforms. Have confidence! Trust in me! “I am who I am.”
Well, is Moses
convinced yet? No. Remember, he fled Egypt 40 years previously
because he murdered an Egyptian slave driver; the Israelites might be
skeptical, to say the least, at having a known murderer show up to lead them
out of bondage. So, as this conversation
continues into Chapter 4, Moses says to God, “But suppose they do not believe
me or listen to me, but say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’” [Exodus 4:1]
And turning his
staff into a snake and back, God tells Moses that “when I call you to a task,
I’ll equip you for it – I will give you the tools you need.”
Is Moses done
arguing with God yet? Nope. Moses goes on to say to God, “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]. When Moses says to God, I don’t talk well, we
don’t know exactly what he means – does he have speech impediment, or a fear of
public speaking, or is he just not very articulate? We don’t know, but whatever the problem, Moses
feels inadequate to the task that God has called him. Listen to how God responds: “I will be with
your mouth and teach you what you are to speak” [Exodus 4:11-12].
Well, Moses
tries one last trick to get out of this job that God has picked him for. He begs. “O my Lord, please send someone else” [Exodus
4:13]. In response, God tells Moses that
he will send his brother Aaron to work beside him.
Did you notice
that every time God responds to one of Moses’ excuses, God’s answers are not
about Moses, but about God; in each case that Moses feels inadequate, God says,
“I will be with you and show you how to do it.”
And what becomes
of Moses? He marches with courage ten
times into Pharaoh’s court; he leads the people out of Egypt, and across the
Red Sea, and through the wilderness up to the edge of the Promised Land. And when Moses dies, the Bible [Deuteronomy
34:10] tells us, “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses.”
Moses spends
the first 40 years of his life learning that he is somebody in the courts of
Pharaoh. He spends the next 40 years of
his life as a shepherd, a nobody. And he
spends the last 40 years of his life learning what God can do with somebody who
knows he is a nobody but gives his life over to God. As you probably know by now, 40 is the number
of transformation, and that’s exactly what happens to Moses!
And it can also
happen to us, because we are not so much different than Moses. We often lament our inadequacies and
shortcomings with disappointment.
Dis-appointment.
There’s two parts to the word. Appointment: a meeting set for a specific time
or place. Or, the act of designating or
placing in office. And “dis” – the
prefix means not, or apart, or away from.
Disappointment
– that’s what we feel when we miss the life that we have been appointed by God
to live, when we have missed our calling. That’s what God feels when we have removed God
from the central role God longs to play in our life – when we have failed to
turn aside, when we have missed meeting God, when we have appointed ourselves
in God’s place, when we settle for the way we are rather than the way we can
be.
But each of us
is called to be the person God had in mind when we were knit in the wombs of
our mothers. Each of us is called to
live out God’s purpose for our lives. Each
of us has an appointment with God. Moses
could have missed his appointment and walked past that burning bush. But he didn’t; he turned aside and he – and
the world – were transformed.
Each of us has
an appointment with God. Be careful not
to miss it, or to ignore it, or to skip it -- because God is waiting to meet
you with an assignment that will transform your life – and possibly the world. Amen.
