The Call of Moses

August 31, 2014            “The Call of Moses”      Rev. Heather Jepsen

Exodus 3:1-15

          This morning we continue our story of the journey of Moses and the people of Israel.  Last week we discussed the birth of Moses and the miracle of his survival.  As we examined his circumstances we found a kernel of hope for the suffering we experience, as well as the realization that even the littlest things we do can make a big difference.  Today we will continue to discover the ways that God works in our lives.

          Similar to the story of Jesus, the story of Moses leaves out all the good parts, those awkward teenage years.  Right after Moses is named by the princess, the story fast-forwards to the time when Moses has become a grown man.  Seeing a Hebrew slave being mistreated, Moses kills an Egyptian and then flees the country.  (We often forget that he was a murderer.)  Now Moses is on the run, in hiding with the tribe of Midian.  He is a desert dweller, with a wife and a family.

          This morning’s reading covers very familiar territory.  One day Moses is out herding sheep when he spies a strange sight, a bush that is on fire and yet does not seem to burn up.  Moses turns away from his task, turning toward the bush and suddenly is confronted with the voice of God.  Moses is in a holy place.  This God tells Moses that he has been chosen to lead the Israelites out from under the hand of Pharaoh, and understandably Moses balks at such a call.

          Like many stories within the Bible, even though we can tell it by heart, the story still has the power to surprise or touch us with elements we hadn’t noticed before.  That happened for me this week in three places.

          The first thing that struck me this week was that when Moses first meets God, God says to him, “I am the God of your father.”  I think we always gloss over that line, since that is a common thing for God to say, but I realized that this would have been particularly striking for Moses, because Moses didn’t know his father.  We talked about his origin story last week, and by the time Moses was weaned, he was brought to the home of the Pharaoh. 

So say, Moses was exposed to his parent’s religion until he was about 3 years old, and then he was Egyptian all the way.  Moses would not have known the God of this father.  I think sometimes we think of Moses as being a Hebrew his whole life but he wasn’t.  Moses would have physically been a Hebrew, but socially and spiritually he was an Egyptian.  He looked so Egyptian that when he first ran into the desert to hide, the people who found him referred to him as an Egyptian, not a Hebrew. 

To think that Moses has very little and perhaps no experience at all with this God, really puts a different spin on the story.  No wonder he asks what this God’s name is.  No wonder he is so reluctant to undertake such a task.  No wonder he needs his brother, a priest, to help him.  Although his story will become one of the greatest tales of God and man, when it begins, Moses has no idea at all about this God or this faith.

Another part that really struck me this week was how God tells Moses immediately to take his shoes off.  “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”  What does that mean?  Why would you do that?  Now I love bare feet as much as the next guy.  In fact, I almost always have bare feet at home and folks often catch me with bare feet in the office.  But how do bare feet connect with holiness?

I looked around this week but could not find a lot of scholarship studying bare feet and holy ground.  In fact, it appears that even when priests went into the temple they kept their shoes on.  And this is not quite the foot washing, bare feet moment we find in the New Testament.  This seems like a unique request of Moses, and I am curious what God was after.

My best guess is that God was looking for vulnerability.  In a lot of ways our shoes separate us from the world.  They can be good protection when walking outside or even inside when walking through that dreaded Lego pile, but they separate us from the earth and from ourselves.  Reflexologists will tell you that feet are powerful and important and that most of your body is connected to specific areas of your feet.  Perhaps God wanted to be more connected with Moses.  Or perhaps God wanted Moses to be more grounded.  Either way, this story gives a new twist on what it might mean to bare your sole to God.

Of course the third thing that caught my attention this week was God’s name.  I am always intrigued by the name that God offers for God’s self here in the scriptures.  Who are you?  “I am who I am” or “I am what I am” or “I will be what I will be” the translations are as numerous as the meanings we can find in this name.  Clearly our God’s identity is fluid and hard to pin down.  God is what God needs to be as the circumstance demands.

This week I was thinking about a God whose name is “being-ness”, a God whose name is “I am”.  So often in our modern culture we identify with “doing-ness”.  I am a pastor, I am a mother, I am a harpist, I am all the things that I do.  We are less comfortable with “being-ness”.  I am, period.  Even though our God is about to do an amazing thing, to liberate the people from Egypt, God identifies not as action but as self.  God doesn’t have to do anything to be defined, God just is.

As a busy person, I strive to have moments when I don’t have to do, but I can just be.  I often find that in those quiet spaces of just being I am closer to God.  I guess it should be no surprise that our God, “I am” connects best with me when I simply “am.”  It’s like that old joke on how we were created as human-beings and not human-doings.

We find Moses this week staring at a strange sight, a bush that burns without burning.  He is encountering a God he doesn’t know, standing on sand and rocks with his bare feet.  A God whose name is simply “being-ness”.  And moreover, this God is telling Moses that he is the one to lead the Israelites from Egypt, he is the one to face off with the Pharaoh, he is the one to speak the words of God.  Moses will respond like any of us would, “I think you have the wrong guy!”

But of course, God doesn’t ever have the wrong guy or gal.  The promise God makes to Moses in this situation is simple, “being-ness”.  “Being-ness” will be with Moses from here on out and that is enough.  That is all it takes.  That simple presence is enough to get Moses back into Egypt and out again with thousands of people at his heels.

It’s a humbling story isn’t it?  And yet I believe that many of us will experience moments like this as well.  God calls us to look away from the world, to turn aside and see.  We take our shoes off, get vulnerable, bare our soles, and God calls us to some strange and outlandish task.  And we stammer and struggle and say no.  And God says don’t worry, “being-ness” will be with you.  You already have all you need to do this. 

You know what’s cool . . . God believes in Moses.  Moses doesn’t even know God, may not be sure he even believes in God yet, but God believes in Moses.  God believes that Moses can do this thing.  And what’s extra cool about that; is that God believes in you.  Right now today.  God believes in you, even if you aren’t sure you believe in God.  God is confident that you can go out into the world and do the things God is calling you to do.

Today I invite you to turn aside and look.  To find God in a burning bush.  To take your shoes off and get un-comfortable.  To ask questions, hear answers, and just rest in “being-ness”.  God believed in Moses, and God believes in you.  That means anything is possible!  Amen.