August 28, 2011 – Exodus 3:1-15
Exodus 3:1-15
Who, Me?
11th Sunday after Pentecost – Lectionary 22 – August 28, 2011
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Well: a lot has happened since we met baby Moses last week!
He’s been nursed by his mother, adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, grown up at court,
murdered an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew, run away to Midian,
married the priest’s daughter there, and now is tending that priest’s sheep.
Whew! And you thought you had a busy week!
A lot of things have happened to Moses, but really, his life is just about to begin.
It’s not that what he’s doing isn’t honourable:
being married and tending sheep are honourable things to do.
But God has something more in mind for Moses.
And so God directly addresses Moses from the burning bush and calls him to a difficult task:
Confront Pharaoh! Demand he let the Israelites go! Lead them to the Promised Land!
The only problem is, I think Moses kind of likes the place where he is.
He doesn’t really want to change his entire life to accommodate God’s call.
Moses can seem like such a larger than life character.
You know: the awesome leader, the inspiring guide, the magnificent wonder-worker,
the greatest of the Hebrew prophets . . . Charlton Heston!
But as soon as Moses opens his mouth, we discover . . . he’s just like us after all!
He has lots of excuses for not doing the thing God is calling him to do.
He has lots of excuses for not surrendering his whole life to God.
Moses trots out at least five excuses why he can’t do this, and I am familiar with all of them!
Two of the excuses are found in our text today.
First, there’s the “I think you’ve called the wrong number” excuse,
As in, “Who, me? Surely you’ve called the wrong person. I’m already kinda busy.”
You know, God calls us to stuff all the time and says to us things like these:
I’ve seen the confusion of your friends, I’ve seen the brokenness of your family,
I’ve seen the distress in the West End, I’ve seen the needs of your congregation,
and I need you now to be a Christ-centred servant-leader in these places.
And we say, “Who, me?” And God just says, like God says to Moses,
“Yeah, you. And you know what? I’ll be with you. It’ll be okay.”
So, second, Moses tries something else, something I’m really good at:
The “Let’s-stall-for-time-and-talk-about-it” excuse.
“Well,” says Moses, “suppose I go to the Israelites and I tell them all this, like how the
God of your fathers has sent me to you to lead you out of Egypt, and they say to me
Well what is this god’s name then what should I say because
let’s face it you haven’t told me your name yet. So what then, huh?”
Congregations are often good at this, although First Lutheran is not so great at it any more,
thank goodness, but personally I’m still pretty good at it.
I like to do research, think it over, make a spread sheet, do an analysis.
But God doesn’t really buy it. Ignorance is no excuse in God’s book. God just says,
You know what? I am who I am. And I will be who I will be.
Just tell them “I am” has sent you. Tell them existence has sent you. Tell them life has sent you.
Tell them the future has sent you. That’ll do it.
If you go on and read the rest of this splendid story at home this week – and you should –
Moses will trot out several more excuses.
The third one is the “why bother trying if you know it’s going to fail” excuse.
This is a favourite of mine: “It’s a great idea but it’ll never work.”
Suppose, says Moses, they don’t believe me or listen to what I have to say or simply say
“The Lord didn’t appear to you. Give us a break.” (Exodus 4:1)
But does our decision to do God’s will really depend on how we think
other people are going to respond? I don’t think so, and neither does God.
So, then, fourth comes the old “I am not worthy excuse.”
You know, “I don’t have the right skills.
I haven’t been trained for that. I don’t have the background for that.”
In this particular situation, Moses says, “I’m not really great at public speaking, God.
I talk kinda funny and slow-like. Nobody’s gonna take me seriously.”
But God isn’t planning on Moses doing this alone: his brother has the gifts he lacks.
Isn’t that just the way God wants community life to work: they’re gonna do this thing together.
Finally, his back against the wall, Moses pulls out all the stops and says simply,
“Uh, just send someone else, okay God?” (Exodus 4:13)
He just didn’t want to get involved. Maybe he liked like his quiet pastoral life in Midian.
Surely it’s his version of a quiet life of retirement.
There’s a lot of people in the world, right? It must be somebody else’s turn . . . right?
Wrong, says God. I got a lot of stuff that I need doing, and you’re just the person for it.
(for the outline of the 5 excuses I am grateful to Douglas Webster, “Living by the Word, Christian Century, Aug 23/11, p. 20)
Throughout this story today, God is clearly at the centre.
The verbs almost all belong to God: I have observed suffering, I have heard the cry,
I know their sufferings, I have come down, I will deliver, I will bring them out.
Therefore, says God, I will send you. Little old you. God wants to work with us and through us.
God knows that we need to participate with the divine in order to truly know the divine.
It’s what I’ve called before the “washing-dishes-together-at-the-kitchen-sink” model of how
we get to know God: Work with me, says God, and you will get to know me.
We yearn to know that our lives are significant, that they matter,
that we’ve been made for a purpose that is larger than ourselves, a purpose that is noble.
God knows that in order to experience that purpose we need to participate with God in God’s
great mission to bless, heal, restore and set free this whole world and every person in it.
God invites us to know him by working with him. So God calls us and sends us.
Or, as Jesus says in the Gospel reading today, “Whoever would be my follower,
whoever would know me, must take up their cross and follow me.”
Along with our culture, we often imagine we live in an empty universe in which
there is nothing or no one who summons us to some larger task. But there is.
We are known and summoned by name by the God incarnate in Jesus who
knows us, our sufferings, our difficulties, our addictions, our pre-occupations,
our reluctance – even Jesus said, “Can’t this cup pass from my lips?” – and, yes,
who knows our excuses, intimately and well and who says,
“Beloved, I forgive you. Come: follow me: I will be with you.”
There’s a lot of hope in that. But we’re in short supply of hope these days.
I was really impressed with the response to Jack Layton’s final letter to Canadians this week.
So many people said they found such hope in his words, and I wondered,
“Are we really so hungry for hope?” But I guess we are.
There is such hope in his parting words, My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world. ( http://www.ndp.ca/letter-to-canadians-from-jack-layton)
These words are true and there is real hopefulness in them.
Not only do they echo words that Desmond Tutu wrote in the midst of the struggle against
apartheid in South Africa, but they echo Paul’s words today as he
unpacks what responding to God’s call and following Jesus looks like:
Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good. (from Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, The Message)
These words are hopeful, but most of all they are hopeful not because of the words themselves.
These words are hopeful because God is the one backing the venture behind them.
There is a God, a God made fully human in Jesus, a God fully present with & in us in the Spirit,
a God who is passionately working for justice, healing, reconciliation, fairness,
love, mercy, friendship, and freedom: a God who calls us to these things.
Moses responds to this call because it is this God who is behind this venture to free the Israelites.
The good news is that God’s passionate conviction and loving presence overcome
human reluctance and excuse-making: that is good news.
God is calling us: God is always calling us. We’ll make our excuses: because that’s our nature.
But God will continue to call us, because that is God’s nature. That is very good news.
And when we say, “Yes, God. Okay: your will be done. Not mine”:
When we say that, God promises to be with us always. And that is the best news of all. Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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