Bible Text: Exodus 3:1-12 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: Exodus | “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Moses asks a very good question!  Moses is a murderer and a fugitive.  He has exiled himself to Midian, which is in present day Saudi Arabia, and made for himself a “normal” life, tending sheep and starting a family.  By now, he’s 80 years old!  I imagine he’s thinking about living out his golden years in peace.

But then he sees the burning bush.  Something that catches his attention, that he cannot ignore.  He might be afraid, but he is definitely curious!  When God saw that Moses had moved toward the strange sight, God spoke to him.  “My people are suffering as slaves, Moses.  I need you to go back to Egypt and get them out of there.”

I don’t think Moses saw that coming!  Last week we read about Moses killing the Egyptian.  God had seen Moses at his worst.  But, just a few verses later, God is calling Moses to use him for the best.  God does this kind of thing so often that in the church, we have a word for it.  Redemption.  Moses was a violent criminal.  He killed an Egyptian in cold blood and buried him in the hot sand.  Understandably, Pharaoh wanted Moses dead.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.  But God has no interest in punishing Moses.  Instead, God wants to USE Moses!  God needs him.  God wants to accomplish great things through Moses.

Redemption.  It isn’t just for hall of famers like Moses.  It’s for all of us!  No matter what we’ve done, God is still with us, still at work for us, and still wants to work through us! We are, today, right this very minute, standing on holy ground.  We are all wrapped up in God’s redeeming work.  We are all sinners, invited to the gospel feast.  God sees us at our worst, But God calls us to use us for the best.

Perhaps that is why the story of Moses and the burning bush has captured people’s imaginations for centuries. God uses all kinds of things to get our attention.  For me, it’s frequently been back pain.  When I get spasm in my shoulders and back, I know God is trying to get my attention.  That’s a burning bush, I sign unto me that I need to do something differently.  Burning bushes can also be positive things, like an idea for a new venture that keeps recurring.

Regardless of the forms they take, one thing the burning bushes seem to have in common is how they often illicit both curiosity and fear in us.  As we have said in recent weeks, “Change is good; you go first!”  As intrigued as Moses was about the burning bush, when he heard what it meant for him, he got scared.  He offered several excuses to God, as to why Moses was not the ideal candidate for the job of liberating the Hebrew people from bondage.  But God can be pretty convincing!  When Moses tried to excuse himself from speaking for God, saying, “Words do not come easily for me,” God responded very simply.  “Am I not the one who created mouths in the first place?”

Am I not the one who created mouths in the first place?  God created us.  God knows our limits.  God also knows our capacities.  After all, it was God who created our capabilities in the first place!  None of us is being singled out to lead a whole people out of bondage in Egypt.  But we are all called–collectively as the church around the world, locally as a congregations, and individually to do our part–to lead people out of all kinds of bondage.

This calling goes all the way back to our baptism.  Even though we mostly baptize infants who have not sinned at all, our baptismal vows are essentially us presenting ourselves so God can redeem us.  We ask at baptism for people to confess, in front of the whole church, “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?  Do you accept the freedom God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened up to people of all ages, nations, and race?”

These are heavy duty questions, but they are important because they remind us of who we are.  Every baptized Christian is incorporated into the liberated Body of Christ that, directed by the Spirit, is at work to liberate all of creation.  Moses’ call is but a foreshadowing of the Church’s call.  And it seems to me, burning bushes are everywhere.  God is trying to get our attention, to stoke the flames of our curiosity and commitment, so God’s kingdom can reign supreme.

This week, I was asked to reach out to a handful of church members and ask them, “If we had one million dollars to invest in ministry and mission, what would Lima UMC do with it?”  The idea was to allow ourselves to brainstorm and dream, and more importantly tap into God’s brainstorms and dreams for Lima, without having to worry about the limitation of money.  Money, or lack thereof, is often a factor that squelches our imaginations.  If we had a million dollars, what do you think God would want us to do with it?

The first thing that came to my mind was, “Let’s put a hot tub in at the parsonage to help my sore shoulders and aching back!”  But I don’t think that’s really what God has in mind.   It’s surprisingly difficult to answer this question, at least for me.  I’m still learning to spot the burning bushes!  But it’s worth us paying serious attention to.  What grabs your attention?  What are your curious about?  What are you afraid to do for God?  These may be the very places and assignments God is calling us to!

Many years ago I was at a retreat and we were asked, “When in the last seven days have you felt ‘all one’?  When did you feel like you were firing on all cylinders, when you were doing what you were meant to do?”  That’s a great question to reflect upon, and the answers may be something of a burning bush.  God may be calling you in the things that make you feel most alive, most in tune with God and your true self, most in the zone, and through them be saying, “Come closer!  Do this more often!  Do this on a bigger scale.  Follow my lead to what’s next, and I will be with you every step of the way.”

I think that’s what happened in 1930 when Rev. Dr. High Thompson Kerr first got the idea for World Communion Sunday.  He sensed a need in his community for churches to work together to proclaim Christ and alleviate suffering during the Great Depression.  It was a burning bush to him.  It took three years, but in 1933, Dr. Kerr and the stewardship committee of Shadyside Presbyterian Church hosted the first World Wide Communion Sunday.  By 1936 it became a special Sunday in the Presbyterian denomination.  During World War II, when churches were trying to keep the world together, the idea of World Communion Sunday grew.  It is now celebrated around the world in almost every Christian denomination.  It is not easy to celebrate communion during a pandemic.  But today reminds us that we are all one.  All Christians are baptized into the ONE body of Christ.  We have all been baptized into the redeemed and redeeming agent of Christ in the world.

And so, no matter where you are today, you are standing on holy ground.  God has placed a burning bush in each of our lives, a fire that will not be quenched.  It is God’s desire that all human beings have the chance to hear about, experience, and respond to God’s love.  God is still in the business of seeing people’s suffering, and calling others to help.  We can pretend there are no burning bushes in our midst.  We can cover our eyes and tell ourselves we are only human, what can God really expect from us?  We can let fear of failure stop us.  Or we can deepen our trust that, by calling us, God really does know what God is doing!

We are reading these ancient stories so we can learn about ourselves, and learn how to receive and live in the peace Christ offers.  We will not have peace as long as we resist the burning bushes in our lives.  And so I want to share this poem with you, by Marianne Williamson, that I think maybe Moses might have liked.  It’s called, “Our Deepest Fear”.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we’re liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

 

Moses was a unique person with a particular calling.  He is famous, he is considered a hero of our faith, he deserves notoriety and recognition.  But in the end, I think Moses was a very “normal” person.  Not because he made a life for himself in Midian, and got a job, got married, and settled down to have a family.  No, I think he was normal because he was a sinner, and he was aware of his limitations, and he had many fears, but despite all that, God used him for good.  We are baptized into that normal, too.  Neither our past sins, nor our present infirmities, can ever negate God’s willingness to use us to accomplish God’s purposes.

We hear Moses asking, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  And we might be asking that about ourselves, too!  But the better question might be, “Who is God, that we don’t trust him to call us, lead us, equip us, and preserve us?”  Keep a look out for those burning bushes, and don’t be afraid to move closer to them!  Amen.