SCRIPTURE: Exodus 3:1-15
TEXT: 1b …he led his flock beyond the wilderness, THEME: When God gets our attention, things begin to change. INTRODUCTION When we think about all of the amazing things that Moses was able to accomplish: negotiate release for Israelites from out of Pharaoh’s hand, out run an Egyptian Army with a million people, traverse the Red Sea on foot, Wander around in the desert for 40 years always finding water, healing snake bites, and eating chicken Manapua everyday (my personal favorite). He coined the phrase “Holy Cow” and transform former slaves, complaining, whining, pagans in to the People of God. What was his motivation? The Burning Bush story was a turning point event in Moses’ life. According to Steven Spielberg, Moses grew up as a Prince of Egypt. But when he discovered a taskmaster’s abusing a Hebrew countryman, he killed him. Witnesses came forward so he left the County. On the lam he meets a girl and marries her. They had a child and his life is normalized as he takes his father in law’s sheep out to pasture. Thinking that he has escaped his past in Egypt, he leads the sheep beyond the wilderness. SCRIPTURE This passage has many of rabbit holes to chase down theological minutia. Like why does he have to take his shoes off to stand on Holy Ground? (It’s because God is Japanese, of course). The burning bush is an attention getting device that calls Moses out of the routine of his life to hear God’s call to participate, in a God initiative; the work of rescue, liberation, and the restoration of the people of God. God has seen their misery, God has heard their cries, God knows their suffering, God initiates a plan to extraction them from slavery in Egypt and to deliver them to a land flowing with milk and Honey. What has God used as our burning bush, to get our attention so God could speak to us? Illness, drowning, sheltered in, being overwhelmed, loneliness, fear, injustice. What has God said to us, in the quiet of the pandemic? What is the still speaking God saying to us? My mind has been corrupted by Monty Python, when Moses shields his face to avert his eye, less he sees the face of God and die. I can’t help but think of that scene in the Search for the Holy Grail, where God says, God: What are you doing now? King Arthur: I’m averting my eyes, oh Lord. God: Well, don’t. It’s just like those miserable psalms, they’re so depressing. Now knock it off! There is no one like Moses, saved by Pharaoh’s daughter, raised in the palace with the Royals, Egyptian on the outside Hebrew on the inside. With a Heart after God, just as there is no one like you, with the combination of skills, relationships, experiences, personality, that makes all of us unique in the service of God’s initiative. God simply says to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt”. Easy Peasy. Simple in concept, but difficult to do. We need God’s help. Despite our objections, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish when God is by our side. APPLICATION This is a turning point in Moses’ life and in the life of God’s people. What has been the turning point event in our lives, where God has gotten our attention and called us to participate in an initiative? How has God’s call changed the direction of our lives? When my mother read the ordination paper I was presenting at my Ecclesiastical Council, she asked me why I had said that I was ‘called’ to the ministry. This is terminology we use in religious circles but most people don’t talk like that. Faith frames the events of our lives on a timeline of Godly events. I remember in Sunday School, when my teacher said, “God has a plan for you” “you have to discover that plan and do it.” I wondered what plan God had for me. There were different events in my life where God had gotten my attention and I was sensing that there were things that God wanted me to do; to help others, to use who I was to explain the Bible, to alleviate doubt in believing, to believe with faith, and to have faith that leads us to doing. Could it be that I was called to the Ordained Ministry? This question has plagued me all of my life. Maybe when I get to retire, I will figure out if I was ever called or not. There are points where God intersects our lives with healing, help, forgiveness, comfort, and provision. There are points where God intersects our lives Overcoming guilt, shame, inadequacies and fears. There are points where God intersects our lives with joy, peace, humility, and contentment. The call is simple, to live with a mindfulness of God. When I am on a Zoom Conference with my Colleagues. I feel like I am the least Spiritual of them, I am not religious, but I am thankful for what I have. Brother Steindl-Rast says that when we say grace, we need to go deeper, from thankfulness for the food, to the grocery store, to the truck driver deliverer, to the farmer, and the plants, nurtured by the sun, water by the rain and nourished by the earth. It all goes back to the earth. We eat earth. “Innumerable beings brought us this food.” Nurtured by the creation of God. When the God of the Bible, becomes real in our lives, in what we believe, in our faith, in our hearts, this relationship with God calls us, as Real people, with real faith, trusting in living God’s ways with their lives. This is a call that takes us on many faith adventures, vocations, relationships, journeys, and stories. CONCLUSION Moses leads his sheep beyond the wilderness and God gets his attention and calls him to participate in God’s plan of liberation, freeing the Israelites from the tyranny of Egypt. As he leads these people through the wilderness for 40 years, they leave their slave mentality behind and live into a faith relationship with God, becoming the real People of God. The burning Bush was a turning point event in Moses’ life where his direction changes to participate in the mission of God. What have been the turning point events in our lives where God intersects our life and calls us to mission? Moses might have known the ancient stories of Abraham and Sarah, he might have known the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph and how his people ended up in Egypt. Now that their lives in Egypt have changed to suffering, misery, slavery and pain, the People who live as a sign of the reality of God, have become the canvas of power over a king, escape from slavery, and survival because of their dependence upon God. Faith that wrestles with fear, trust that moves them forward, provision that miraculously appear, God’s sheltering, and life that is a journey in relationship with God. Moses will lead them, like his sheep, beyond the wilderness and into a place where God can get their attention.
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