St. Mary's Episcopal Church

Lent 3c (Exodus 3. 1-15)

Our lesson from Exodus is one of the reasons I like reading what some call the Old Testament….though that name makes it sound like those first 39 books of the Bible are out of date.
Some call the 39 books of the Bible, the First Testament, and the second 27, the Second Testament.
I like all those stories in the First Testament because they are about ordinary, sinning, flawed people, like us, struggling with their relationship with God.
Like us.
Our lesson from Exodus this morning is a great example of what a life looks like when a person has a personal relationship with God.
By reading and studying how God worked in Moses' life, not just for Moses' sake but for the people of God who cry for justice and peace, who lack life's necessities, I believe that we can be inspired to see how God is working in our lives right now today.
You remember Moses.
Please try to remove all those Charlton Heston images from your mind.
Moses was the little Hebrew baby boy who was adopted by Pharaoh's family and raised with the best of everything, which would have include the best education available at the time.
I wonder: Was God was making sure that Moses had the education he needed to lead God's people out of slavery?
As an adult, Moses discovered his Hebrew heritage, and when he saw the Hebrews enslaved by the Egyptians, and being mistreated, he murdered an Egyptian guard who was hurting one of the Hebrews.
He fled for his life from Egypt, across the Sinai Peninsula, into what is now western Saudi Arabia to the land of Midian.
The Midianites shared with the Hebrews Abraham as an ancestor (they were Abraham's great great greats by Abraham's wife after Sarah's death, Keturah).
While in Midian, Moses married the daughter of a priest, Jethro, and helped tend his father-in-law's flocks.
Perhaps Jethro the priest, being a descendant of Abraham, worshiped the same God as the Hebrews, and instructed Moses and helped him learn more about God.
I wonder: Was God providing Moses an opportunity to explore his faith and his relationship with God?
By tending Jethro's flocks, the palace-educated Moses would have gained much practical knowledge about surviving in the desert-how to find food and water;
how to find one's way in the desert by "reading" the terrain, the trails and oases.
I wonder: Was God giving Moses the practical education he would need to lead God's people across a hostile wilderness?
It was while he was tending Jethro's flocks that God gets Moses' attention.
Moses saw an angel of the Lord that looked like a bush of fire that never burned up.
I wonder: Had God tried to get Moses' attention in other ways before, but this was the first time that Moses had paid attention?
God speaks so that Moses hears this time:
What does he say to Moses?
"Take off your shoes, because the ground you are standing on is holy.
I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and Rachel.
Let's stop right here-before we talk about Moses response to God's words and the burning bush.
The part where God tells Moses to take off his shoes, because the ground is holy.
When I was in Ukraine, people always took their shoes off by the front door upon entering the house.
When I was in Turkey, we would take our shoes off before going into a mosque,
the holy place of worship of our Muslim brothers and sisters.
When the altar guild work around the altar, they take their shoes off as a sign of respect to the holy altar.
Part of this is a sanitation issue. Part of this is a respect issue.
But there is also a part about walking foot to earth that connects us and anchors us to a place. God's place.
Because here's the thing: anyplace God is is a holy place.
Where is God?
In our hearts, for sure.
But God is everywhere we are.
There is no place more holy than another.
This is a holy place.
Waiting for the bus is a holy place.
Working in the yard is a holy place.
Walking in the grocery store is a holy place.
Because where we are, God is, and where God is, it is holy.
So in a sense, I guess that means that we can walk barefoot or at least sock-foot through life.
To remind us that where we are is a holy place. Because God is here.
Back to Moses and his response to God.
The first of five objections he'll make about why God surely isn't calling Moses to do this huge thing:
Moses' first response is pure fear.
So he hides his face in his hands.
That doesn't stop God.
God keeps on speaking to Moses:
I've heard the prayers of my children in Egypt and now is the time that everything is perfect to bring them to safety. I want you to do this!"
"I will send you to Pharaoh to Egypt, to bring my sons and daughters of Israel (that is, Jacob) and Rachel out of Egypt."
In other words, God is sending Moses back to the place where he is wanted for murder.
So Moses' second response to God is that he isn't the one to go to Egypt and lead a group of slaves to freedom.
Not him-the one who has had one of the best educations-intellectual, theological, and practical that could be had in his day. So God tells Moses that this is all he needs:
I will be with you. Period.
And if you need a sign-here's one.
40 or so years from now, you'll come back to this mountain, and you'll have all the freed Hebrews with you, and you'll serve me here.
Now when we want a sign, we don't want a 40 year later sign.
But the truth is that's how God works more often than not.
So, looking ahead several chapters and even more years, Moses will come back to Mt. Horeb, also called Mt. Sinai, and he will serve God by receiving the Ten Commandments and delivering them to the Hebrews.
It's going to take 40 years for Moses to see how God worked God's purpose out through Moses, but God promises that that sign will come.
Moses still objects.
If Moses goes to Pharaoh and tells him that God has told him to tell Pharaoh to let God's people go, they won't believe him because Moses doesn't know the name of this Power that looks like a bush that never burns up and that speaks such words of authority.
So God says, here is my name:
A four letter word in Hebrew. Translates to five or seven words in English:
I am who I am. I will be who I will be.
So God says, here is my name.
I am not the god of a shrine or of idols or of things, but the God of a people.
I am the Lord who walked with your ancestors-Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Israel and Rachel.
Two or three more objections later, Moses finally, reluctantly, consents to do what God has asked him to do, and the rest is history.

Take away the facts and the details and this story of Moses, and it is just as assuredly our story.

In the way that God prepared Moses with his education in Egypt and his education in Midian, God has prepared and will prepare us for whatever God has in store for us.

Like Moses, we most likely will have a whole list of objections about why we are too scared or too unequipped or too unimportant to do whatever God calls us to do.

Like God did with Moses, God will have an answer for any objection we can think up.

Because God will never have us do something for God that isn't possible for us to do for God.

Like God did with Moses, God will tell us that we are to do what God asks us to do because simply enough, God is with us and God walks with us.

Like Moses, God will give us a sign, a confirmation that we are walking where God wants us to walk.

But like God did with Moses, that sign, that confirmation may not happen until after we've already begun or even completed what God has given us to do.

God may have not called any of us to deliver the Children of Israel from captivity in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land, but whatever God has called/is calling/will call us to do is just as important to God and God's Kingdom.
AMEN