Here I am.

yeah, i haven't blogged in a while.  mostly because i haven't preached in a while.  life has been crazy and hectic and also i was sick and today was the first preaching date that made sense in my calendar.

this sermon on Exodus 3 is based on one i preached for Encounter back in July 2011.  i like this version better.  i always felt fake shoehorning in down-to-earth, practical advice into my sermons.  and partly i had to do that to make the sermon at least 30 minutes, which was what they expected.  i much prefer preaching shorter, 1-point teaching sermons.  this one was about 15 minutes instead of the original 30-plus.  it also avoids the transcendent/immanent theophany bit that i tried to include in the original version and then gutted because someone who read it before i preached it didn't like it.

what i did also add to this one instead of a reference to John 8 is some of the language of this morning's gospel passage from Luke 13.

Here I am

Do you ever feel like Moses in this passage?. When he appears here in Exodus 3, he has murdered a man and run away from being an Egyptian prince, but you know, here he’s doing pretty well for himself. He has a wife, a kid, a job, even a rich father-in-law... maybe it’s not as exciting or luxurious as it used to be in Egypt’s royal court, but hey, no one’s trying to kill him.

He’s a shepherd for his father-in-law. And then... God shows up.

It’s funny, we usually think that when things are going pretty well, that’s evidence that God has shown up in our lives. But sometimes in the bible, it’s the opposite. Things are going well and then God shows up and your life takes a left turn.

When I first learned about seminary, I thought, “I’m a Classics major. I don’t need another useless degree!” But here I am. In the past month, my husband Chris got offered a job in Manhattan. Talk about life taking a left turn! We’re now getting ready to move again, in the middle of the semester as I finish out at Princeton and at All Saints’. The next few months are going to be crazy and busy and full of work, but faith says God is involved in this somehow.

And our story is not nearly as dramatic as Moses’. In this case, Moses is out with his sheep, and “the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, 'I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.'”

So, something out of the ordinary is happening. The bush was on fire, but it did not burn up. Bushes usually burn up. I remember once driving through California, the hillsides were black with the remains of bushes and trees that had been completely consumed by wildfire. So Moses, quite logically, goes over to check this out.

And then God calls to Moses: When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

I don’t know about you, but if a burning bush called my name, I’m not sure “Here I am” would be my response.

But Moses’ response - “Here I am” - is a very important one in the Bible. It’s used several times throughout the whole Bible. In Hebrew, it’s just one word. The rabbis traditionally interpret this word not just to mean, “Here I am,” but, “Here I am, ready to do whatever you command me.”

Abraham says it in Genesis 22, and God tells him to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Samuel answers with the word in 1 Samuel 3, when god is calling him to be his prophet.

Isaiah says it in Isaiah 6, when God asks, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

In Acts 9, God calls a Christian named Ananias in a vision and he answers with the Greek version of this same word. And then God tells him to go meet a young Pharisee who has been killing Christians, but who had a mystical experience on the road to Damascus and is struck blind. Ananias’ job will be to restore this man’s sight.

And I love Ananias’ response. Ananias’ response to God’s command is, well, he’s not so sure. He kind of says, “God, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” ‘“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name."“

In the gospel of Luke, Mary asks her questions to the angel first, but she gives the same answer as well. “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”

You see, this is kind of the pattern. Life is going along, and the -rrrt! God calls your name. Abraham finally has his promised son. Samuel has a pretty good thing going serving in the temple. So does Isaiah, he’s an honored priest. Ananias is living comfortably far away from the persecution going on in Jerusalem. Mary is all ready to get married. And God shows up in all these lives and says, I’m going to pull you out of your comfort zone.

Even Moses is afraid isn’t so sure God has the right person.

And very often the people who have just responded to God in faith take this opportunity to push back, to ask questions, to engage in real dialogue with God.

After telling Moses who he is, God gives him this divine plan. He says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and now I am going to keep my promises to them. Their descendants are already a nation; now I am going to give them the land I promised.” And then he says to Moses, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

And what does Moses say? Does he say, “Wow, I’m so honored”? No.

Does he say, “I’m ready to serve wherever you need me”? No.

First, he is afraid and he hides his face. When God finally tells Moses what he is to do, Moses says, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Ananias comes by his doubts of God honestly. Even Moses wasn’t sure God was getting it right. But, spoiler alert! All these people end up doing what God asked them to do. Moses and Ananias argue about it for a while, and it takes three times before Samuel’s teacher Eli finally figures out what’s going on, God wins.

And I take great comfort in God’s reply to Moses. When Moses asks, “who am I?” God doesn’t say, “You’re Moses! You got saved from the massacre of infant boys! You were raised as an Egyptian prince!” No, God says, “I will be with you.”

God will be with me. God will be with us. God did not leave Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, Mary, Ananias, or any other person he’s ever called. And, did you know, we’re all called?

We are call by a God who appears as a burning bush in the middle of the desert.

We are called by a God who will always be with us.

We are called by a God who became a human like us, who walked and taught, ate and died, like we do.

But Moses, Abraham, Ananias, Mary, you and me … we argue with him, we question him, and we’ve run away from him. God looks on the Israelites as they groan in slavery. He is concerned. He remembers his promise to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob. He wants to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey. He talks with Moses and promises to be with him.

His name is an entry point into knowing him. If God wanted to stay majestic and all-powerful and incomprehensible, he would not have given a name at all.

But this God wants to be known!

When God first introduces himself, even before God’s name is revealed, God is simply “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And Moses is afraid and hides his face. What is Moses afraid of?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of the United Kingdom says that his teacher told him what Moses was afraid of was seeing the suffering of the innocent from God’s perspective, and that Moses was rewarded for it. He writes, “If he could ‘look at the face of God,’ if he could understand history from the perspective of heaven, he would have to make his peace with the suffering of human beings… He would understand the ultimate justice of history. That is what Moses refused to do, because the price of such knowledge was simply too high… He preferred to fight injustice as he saw it, than to accept it by seeing its role in the script of eternity…” That refusal, which Rabbi Sacks describes as, “born not out of a lack of faith but precisely the opposite, the conviction that God wants us to be in active in the pursuit of justice” that drives everyone who answers God’s call with, “Here I am.”

When God shows up in our lives and calls us, God calls us to live in a new way for God’s creation. Moses is taken out of his comfortable life and sent back to his own people, his former home, to fight for freedom and liberation, to fight against the oppressor and for the oppressed.

It’s so easy to think that wealth and smooth sailing in life are signs of God’s divine favor and hard times are signs of God’s punishment. But Scripture is not sure that is true. Are those who suffer oppression and injustice, violence and death, worse sinners than everyone else?

God’s call to us contains a warning: we only have a little time. God enters a dialogue with us; we question and push back and bargain, but by our very human nature, we only have a little time. Lent may be when the days are getting longer, but it begins with Ash Wednesday, which reminds us that “you will all perish just as they did.”

When God calls us to fight injustice, to struggle with and for the oppressed, to carry his message of liberation to the world, we have a choice. We can answer, “Here I am,” or we can run away. “Here I am” does not mean unquestioning, silent, unthinking obedience. Abraham and Isaiah answered with that, but Moses, and Mary, and Ananias did not. And they stand for us as examples in the faith. Even Jesus, praying in the garden before his own death, struggles with God. Without Jesus’ death, there would be no resurrection, the resurrection that began to bring God’s new creation, that inspires and drives and fertilizes our lives to bear fruit for God.

God calls us to go out into the world, outside of our comfort zones, to leave behind the things we thought were signs of his blessing, and to change the world, to get rid of injustice, racism, sexism, violence, and all kinds of discrimination and oppression.

And God will be with us.

Amen.



Quote taken from: Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (New Milford, CT: Maggid Books, 2010), 38-40.