What To Do When You Don't Know What to do - When You Have to Listen Part 2 by Pastor Gabrielle Martone at Pearl River United Methodist Church on Sunday 26 April 2020
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Exodus 3:1-17 NRSV
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.” But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’“ God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.
Go and assemble the elders of Israel, and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying: I have given heed to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt. I declare that I will bring you up out of the misery of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.’
Another week, another week that's gotten by of not knowing, of not having any real answers, of continued struggle. Another week of watching the news and being aghast at the way people respond. Another week where I think a lot of us have kind of hit our wall being inside for almost five weeks. That's a lot. And it weighs heavy on our souls, it weighs heavy on mine and I'm sure it weighs heavy on yours. And every day I pray for an end, but a safe end. And end that keeps as people as healthy and as cared for as possible. An end that leads us in a way that says, all lives are important in a way that says that we will not gather together in person until it is safe to do so.
It is hard and heavy work, but it is important as we look to one another and to God to remember that our charge comes to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And so there will be many weeks ahead that are filled with disappointment and grieving, but we're not alone. And so I know that in these weeks it's easy for us to say, okay, so what do we do? Because I have no idea what to do. I don't really always know what I'm doing and I don't always really know what way to turn. And how do I exist in the unknown and the unknowable while also trusting in the God who knows and holds all things?
So our Scripture passage today is the story of Moses, and it's the story of Moses and the burning bush. And it's one of my favorite stories. And there's about a 100,000 different ways to talk about this story. And it may seem like a weird story to be using for a sermon series in the middle of a pandemic, but I invite you to remember where we are with Moses. So Moses is born to an Israelite family, and Pharaoh at the time sees that the Israelites are gaining in great number, and he is terrified that the Israelites will overthrow the Egyptian government in the Pharaoh. He's terrified that one day they will get so tired of being slaves and being abused and their sheer number of people will be able to overthrow the Pharaoh. So he has all of the boys of the Israelites murdered. So he gives instructions to the midwives that anytime a boy is born to an Israelite woman, they are to kill him.
And Moses' mother gives birth and God bless the midwives of Exodus who help save those babies. And Moses' mother puts him in a basket and sends him down the Nile River believing that whatever fates he might have there would be better than what awaited for him in the Israelite population and sent his sister to watch after him as he floated down the Nile. And he is blessed because as he is floating, the Pharaoh's daughter sees him and lifts him out of the water and declares then that she will care for this child.
So Miriam, Moses' sister, comes running up to the Pharaoh seeing a perfect opportunity and says, "Do you need a nurse to take care of this child for I know an Israelite woman who could care for him." So Moses gets to be home with his family, not knowing that they are his family for the early years of his life and then is sent to live with the Pharaoh and the Pharaoh's family and is raised as a member of the Egyptian royalty. Raised as though he belonged there from the very beginning. But Moses always feels inside of him that something is not quite right, that something is not adding up, that there's something off.
And Moses begins to pay attention to the way that the Israelites are being treated and begins to understand that he too is one of them. And one day while he's out being a very good project manager and overseeing a building project, he watches as an Egyptian guard beats an Israelite. And he is so overcome with rage that he kills the Egyptian guard. And then he flees because he's terrified. He's terrified about what might come and what the reactions might be. He's afraid to face the consequences of what it means to have killed an Egyptian guard for a slave. What it means for him as a member of the royal household to have murdered an Egyptian guard for an Israelite who was kept in captivity and to who the Egyptian royalty meant little to nothing more than workforce.
Moses was afraid of how his family would respond to the idea that Moses felt that a life was worth more than the economy. So Moses flees and runs away and hides and he wanders through the desert trying to make a new life and he finds a man and marries his daughter, Zipporah and he becomes a sheepherder and he helps his father-in-law run his business. But he is separate and he forgets about the life that he had in Egypt until one day he's wandering through the desert and this bush gets set on fire. And he's watching this bush that is not burning but is like nothing... the flames are not affecting the living bush but there are flames all around it. And then a voice comes to him from the burning bush and says, "Take off your shoes." And then proceeds to tell Moses that this is God speaking and Moses has to go back to the very place that he fled from and demand that his people be let free.
And I will tell you, Moses has every excuse in the book for why it will not and cannot be him. And every single time that Moses adds an excuse to this narrative, God gives him another way out. So one of the things that Moses says is that he cannot speak well. And many scholars now believe that Moses may have had a stutter. And so speaking in public was not going to be something he was going to do. So God says, well, Moses, don't worry, I will give you your brother Aaron, who's a priest of the Israelites. And Moses is left with no more excuses and nothing left to do except to follow God. For all of the excuses and the things that get in the way between what we want and what God wants God had removed and Moses had nothing left to do except listen to the voice of the burning bush.
This is the narrative in which we receive the name Yahweh. I Am, I Am. There is no qualifier. There is no added adjective to that. There is no added noun to that. Literally God's name is I Am. Later in the New Testament, that same phraseology will be used when Jesus declares the I Am statements and when Jesus declares who he is, he will say Ego Eimi, I Am that I Am. I Am the I Am. This beautiful and powerful name that causes all of us to lose our excuses and to stand up before a burning bush with nothing left to do except to listen to God's call on our lives. I cannot tell you how many countless times in my life I have tried to throw up roadblocks to what it is that God is calling me to do, only to be left with every excuse in the book, torn away by God and nothing left for me to do except to follow the voice that has called me.
When I was applying to college, I've told some of you these stories before. When I was first applying to college, I applied to one college and one college only, which when I do college admissions work now and I volunteer to help kids apply to college, I always tell them, please don't follow what I did and apply to multiple colleges. I only applied to one because I applied early decision and I said to God, "Well, if you don't want me to do this, then I won't. Right? If you really don't want me to go to Smith then I won't get into Smith and I will continue my life elsewhere." And then I got in and I was terrified because it always felt like Smith was a little further out of my reach than I cared to admit.
And then my senior year when I was applying to seminary, I had this whole great plan. God and I had this, well, I had this whole great plan worked out for God, right? Here was going to be the deal. God, I'm going to go to Emory in Atlanta. I am going to get my degree down there. I'm going to transfer my membership to the Kentucky Annual Conference and I am going to move to Kentucky and be a Wildcat fan forever and live and exist in the South. I thought briefly, if God didn't agree with that idea, then I could do some work outside of Marine bases and do military chaplaincy and work with folks whose families were on the front lines and that was all well and good for me. And so I told God that this is what we were going to do because I don't necessarily make excuses to God. I just give him other plans. I say, no, no, no, no. How about I do this?
So I applied to four seminaries and I got into Princeton and I got into Drew and I got into Emory and I got into Duke and all of a sudden I no longer had the plan that I had given to God because in that plan I didn't get into any of the other seminaries. And then I told God, "Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go to seminary and I'll like do three years and then we'll figure life out from there. But don't expect that I'm going to take any great risks in the midst of this. Please keep with my good and safe plan."
And then three weeks before I graduated from college, I got a phone call from my district superintendent telling me it was time to start a church and that they were going to let me solo pastor a congregation. And I looked at God the same way that I imagine Moses looked at the burning bush and I was like, yeah, no. Who am I? What am I? I don't know what I'm doing. I still don't know what I'm doing. There is no way that I'm going to be able to do that. There's absolutely no way on the whole of creation that they're ever going to let me be a pastor right now. I don't know anything. I'm 21, I have no concept about life. I didn't even have cats at that point. Like I got nothing And again and again and again God has reached into the places in which I have handed him another plan and left me with absolutely nothing but to listen.
When I found myself in the darkest places of my life, the places where I said there is no more hope, I have nothing left. God has removed the greatest obstacles and I was left with no choice except to listen to the voice of God, except to listen to the voice that says, I Am. I am all you need. I have it all figured out. I am with you. There is nothing that you will do where I will not be. There is no place that you can go where I am not already. There is no darkness that I cannot shine light into. There is no place where you are that I am not calling you to go.
Moses is left with nothing but to listen. Part of my own journey has been all of the ways that I have told God what we're going to do and when those plans fall apart, I have nothing left but to listen to the burning bush inside of my heart that says you can do this. Being a pastor is simultaneously the thing that I know that I am called to do and the thing that I love most and the thing I am afraid of the most. Simultaneously, it is the best and the worst experience of my whole life because I am scared all the time. What if I'm not good enough? What if I'm not smart enough or eloquent enough? What if I make more mistakes than I do things right? What if my own stuff gets in the way of me being able to be a leading voice for my congregation? What if my own insecurities and my own weaknesses and my own faults get in the way of me being able to do what it is that you called me to do, God? What if my humanness gets in the way of your sacredness
Just like Moses said to God but I stutter and I will never be accepted by Israelites and I am afraid to go home. Moses says to God, what if my humanness gets in the way of your sacredness? What do I have left? And God reaches into those very real fears, the very real things that keep us from following God and God removes them and God says, I Am. I am bigger than your humanness. I am bigger than your mess ups. I am bigger than the places in your life in which you are insecure and afraid. I am bigger than everything else in this world and I Am Who I Am because I Am. And so Moses, you can pick up this staff and you can listen and you can follow me because I Am.
In the same way that God reaches into the places in our lives in which we are so afraid that our humanness will outweigh God's sacredness and God says, I Am and there is nothing that you're going to be able to do that will outweigh my sacredness for I Am. I am now, I was before and I will be. I am past, I am present and I am future. I am in all things. I am before all things. I am ahead of all things. And all of a sudden we are left with nothing but having to listen.
I have found more and more in this time of social distancing and quarantine and isolation that I am left with none of the things I have used to ignore God's voice before. Right? There's no running. There's no running into coffee shops. There's no running out to dinner with my friends. There's no hiding from the things that I know God is calling me to do. My humanness cannot outweigh God's sacredness. What is life in quarantine stripped away that you've used as an excuse to keep yourself from listening to God? What do you do now that the only choice you have but is to listen?
You know what to do. Ultimately, we all know what to do, but we're really good at putting all of the boundaries up. We are really good at putting all of the excuses up. We're really good at putting up all of the reasons why we can't or we won't, or we shouldn't. We're really good at saying, God, I'm not going to tell you that I'm afraid, but actually I'm afraid. So I'm going to just tell you all of these other things when all God is saying is, listen, I Am, I Am and I was, and I will be. Listen, for I am calling you to a place of abundance and life and all of your fears I will suede and all of your worries I will ease, all of your needs I will provide for I Am, today and every day. Amen.
