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Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest
of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb,
the mountain of God. There 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." When
the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of
the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." He said
further, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was
afraid to look at God.
Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who
are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters.
Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them
from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and
broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the
Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and
the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also
seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh
to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." But Moses said
to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites
out of Egypt?" He said, "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."
Our Old Testament reading takes us to the beginning of the salvation
story for the people of Israel.
That massive story begins with one man, in exile from his people, herding
sheep on a lonely mountain. Moses has retreated from an impossible situation,
started up a new life in a remote village, married, got a job as a farm
labourer, had a son. He's happy and content, probably putting on a little
weight. Everything seems settled and calm, safe and permanent.
Preachers often focus on Moses making a heap of excuses to God why he
can't do this thing, can't go to Pharaoh and demand that he set the slaves
free. When you look at what he's got, and what he's being asked to give
up, you can see his point. Gorgeous young wife, doting father in law and
family all around him, little boy toddling around, quiet peaceful secure
agrarian life in a fertile valley: Why would you leave it? Who would want
to?
Later on in this saga, when the Israelites are out in the desert and Moses
is leading them, or trying to… they weren't the easiest to lead, and they
start complaining and longing to be back in Egypt where they were fed
by the Egyptians, you can imagine Moses thinking "for goodness sake.
I left my peaceful, serene rural life with family and security, to risk
my life with Pharaoh's lot and with you, to set you lot free. Don't talk
to me about the niceness of Egypt and the security of slavery."
I expect Jesus felt the same way when he told his disciples it was time
to head for Jerusalem.
I expect Peter felt that way when he said to Jesus, "No way Lord.
Not that."
Jesus rebuke to Peter would have been tinged with a lot of compassion
and understanding.
I think God's response to Moses would have had the same undertones. "I
will be with you, and this will be the sign. When you've done it, you'll
worship me on this very mountain."
It is not an easy thing, to hear the call of God, especially when it takes
you out of your comfort zone, takes you away from the familiar, the safe,
the tried and tested. It is a lot easier to trust what we can see and
hear and are familiar with, than it is to trust the God who is always
so elusive, so hard to clearly understand.
We face this type of inner conflict as soon as we think about doing something
new in the church. We face it when we think God is calling us to do something
that is out of our comfort zone. We face it in opposition from others
who want to say "Don't do it. Stay with the safe and tested. Stay
in Horeb. Stay in Egypt. Stay in the familiar." For Jesus, it was
his mother and his siblings. "Jesus, come back home to your family.
Look after the shop. You've gone off the planet."(Gospel of Matthew
Ch 12.) Jesus response "Who are my mother, my brother, my sisters?
Whoever does the will of my Father is my brother, my sister and mother."
It is very hard to know the difference between someone to whom God has
really spoken, and someone who puts the imprimatur of God on their own
ideas. It's too easy to say "God told me! So you agree with me or
you are resisting God." Sometimes people use it when their argument
is weak. Sometimes people use it when something has gone badly wrong with
their own thinking. And sometimes, God lays a conviction on a person,
like Amos, like Jeremiah, like Cromwell, like Wesley. But it is also possible
that God can lay a conviction on someone who is herding sheep, or washing
the dishes, or preparing a report for a company meeting.
A couple of things marked Moses call, by which he became the towering
figure of Hebrew history.
He was doing something unremarkable and God called him out of the unremarkable
to something difficult, scary, inexplicable, but great. But to do it,
he had to leave the safe behind. None of the great moments of our faith
story occurred through people playing it safe. They all required courage
and willingness to step outside of the conventions.
Sometimes it feels as though we believe God can only work through the
safe and conventional.
Moses was out there by himself in the silence, when God spoke to him.
If we are going to hear the voice of God to us, we need the space and
the silence to do it. Busyness is great, but we also must have the silence
in which God can speak, or we will not give ourselves the opportunity
to hear what God is saying. Jesus kept on heading off, by himself, for
quiet, to be alone with God. It is essential.
Moses already had an idea of what was right. He'd had to flee Egypt because
he'd killed an Egyptian for beating up a Hebrew slave. He wasn't a wimp.
But he'd gone about it his own way, the wrong way, trying to defeat an
evil by being like it.
God's call to Moses made clear that Moses had the right idea, but good
intention does not ensure the same action as God's call to act. God took
Moses intention, and gave it a very new path, one Moses never would have
imagined, by himself, because God's ways usually don't look anything like
what we are used to, or what we see modelled around us.
God seems to be exceedingly nonconformist.
It is in the space, the silence, the desert, that God most often seems
to speak most clearly. May we all find space for that silence,
faith to hear what is spoken into the silence
and courage to do it, and be it.
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