Exodus 14:19-31 "Waters of Faith"

 You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         And, for the fourth week now, this wonderful story of Moses continues.  We have come a long way this past month in our reflecting upon, not the literal truth but rather the deeper truth, of this pivotal story that Jews have told and retold down through the ages until it became part of who they were as a people – and, of course, who Jesus was as a devout Jew. 

         We began with a desperate Hebrew mother fearing for the life of her son, who put the baby afloat in a watertight basket on the Nile River.  Then we fast-forwarded 80 or so years to a senior citizen Moses who stood before a burning bush on the heights of Mt. Sinai where God/Yahweh/the Great I Am assigned him the overwhelming task of getting the enslaved Hebrew people out of Egypt.  We learned about the disasters that befell their Egyptian oppressors, the worst being the deaths of all the Egyptian firstborn sons, and about the celebration of the Festival of Passover that emerged from that terrifying night.

         We imagined how the Hebrew people must have cowered in their huts and houses.  Their doorframes had been painted with the blood of a yearling lamb as God had required.  Families and friends had shared its roasted meat among themselves along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 

         And through it all, the Israelites could not help but hear the keening of Egyptian mothers holding their dead and dying sons.  They shuddered as the sounds of agony and despair emanating from the Pharaoh’s palace came to them on the nighttime air as even “he who had been the most powerful” wept over the death of his little prince. 

         And over the crying and wailing, they heard voices filled with fear and anger.  “Go, get out of here.  What with all these plagues and disasters, you will kill us all!  Get out!”

         And then, there was nothing, no more voices, no more keening.  And the Israelites sat in that deep silence, listening.  And out of the silence came a whisper and the soft knock on doors.  The word was spreading – not the word of death, but the word of impending freedom.  “Come.  Now.  This is the time.  We are leaving.” 

         And they did.  They left their homes, their cooking pots, and the cracked mug that always held their morning coffee.  They left their clothes and that box of old photos and mementos. 

They left toy dump trucks, their pint-sized beds still filled with sand, and faded, much loved ragdolls.  They left their entire lives behind and followed this man, Moses, whom they scarcely knew.

         They could not travel overland toward Canaan as that would require passing through six Egyptian military outposts, and face it, a bunch of overworked and underfed Hebrew laborer slaves – not to mention all the women and children – were no match for the Egyptian military complex.  And so, as ludicrous as it seemed, they followed Moses instead toward the sea – with a thick cloud ahead of them by day and a pillar of fire to lead them at night. 

         They were not long into their escape, however, when the Pharaoh realized that he had made an enormous mistake.  Who would build his pyramids and glorious cities?  Who would make the bricks to fashion the architectural wonders and monuments to memorialize his reign? 

         “What have we done?  We have no slaves.  We have no work force. The economy will go to hell in a hand basket.”  And so the Pharaoh, feeling that he had no choice (“It’s the economy, stupid!”), gathered some 600 chariots and horses and military officers and relentlessly pursued the Hebrews.

         It did not take long before our slaves saw the approaching army, and they did then for the first time what they would do countless more times in the next 40 years before they reached their Promised Land.  They complained. 

         “Oh, come on, Moses.  Weren’t the cemeteries large enough in Egypt so that you had to take us out here in the wilderness to die? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt?...Didn’t we tell you, ‘Leave us alone here in Egypt—we’re better off as slaves in Egypt than as corpses in the wilderness.’  Here we are – caught between a rock and hard place.  The Egyptians are closing in behind us  - and there is only water – as far as we can see – ahead of us.  We’re trapped.  We’re goners.  And it’s all your fault.”  Not an impressive way to start leading!

         However, let’s give Moses credit at this point of despair and near rebellion.  Moses rose to the occasion and tried his best to be the kind of leader God had called him to be.  After all, he thought, they had come this far, and God/Yahweh/The Great I Am did seem to be taking an interest in their plight. 

         So Moses spoke to the people – though maybe his knees were knocking a bit even as he proclaimed: “Don’t be afraid. Stand your ground, and God will fight the battle for you.  And for now – just keep your mouths shut!”

         “There,” Moses said to himself, wiping his hands on his robe.  “That should keep them quiet.  And now, God/Yahweh/The Great I Am, the ball is in your court.”

         Moses, oh Moses!  You got it all wrong.  You see, God threw a curve ball then and said to him: “Why are you crying out to me? Speak to the Israelites, the Hebrews. Order them to get going, to move forward.  Hold your staff high and stretch your hand out over the sea: Split the sea, Moses, split the sea!”

         “What?” Moses mumbled.  “Split the sea? What are you talking about?  I got them out of Egypt.  I thought YOU were taking over from here?”

         Yahweh/God/The Great I Am chose not to dignify his remark with a reply.  Having no recourse then, Moses, shaking his head, feeling particularly old and very frustrated – and more than a wee bit silly – stepped into the water.  It sloshed about his ankles, and the hem of his robe got wet. 

         He took a deep breath, raised his staff high over his head, and held his other hand over the water, hoping no one would laugh at him.  Nothing much seemed to happen at first, but, with his back to the Israelites, he shouted in the most commanding voice he could muster, “Come on.  Follow me.”  And he began to walk – step by soggy step – into the waters.  And the people followed. 

         In a Jewish commentary on this story, the writer imagines that the water got deeper and deeper as Moses and the Israelites waded further and further from shore.  First the water covered their ankles and then climbed to their knees.  They tied their robes up to keep them from getting heavy and wet.  Children had to be picked up and carried. 

         When the water reached their waists, those who were not carrying children hoisted meager belongings onto shoulders and heads.  The water continued to rise, and still they continued to walk forward.  It was not until the water had reached their chins that, in a miraculous rush, it subsided, and the Israelites walked on dry land to the other side. 

       The Egyptians, of course, were not so blessed.  Their chariot wheels became mired in mud.  Horses floundered, and the sea swept back, leaving in its wake corpses – 600 human corpses.  As Baptist pastor Thomas McKibbens writes, “We find an image of waves lapping up on dead soldiers, dead horses, and broken chariots, symbolic of dead power and dead arrogance.

       And if we listen closely in reading the scripture, we hear the eerie sound of a woman’s voice on the sand dune overlooking the beach… And from her lips comes a song that has come down to us in a form of Hebrew so archaic that (some) scholars have concluded that it is the oldest hymn in the entire Bible, maybe even coming from that very time. She keens out the words of the song:

Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;

horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.

         The Israelites are safe.  They are free.  What a story!

         A boy was sitting on a park bench with one hand resting on an open Bible. He was loudly exclaiming his praise to God. "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great!" he yelled without worrying whether anyone heard him or not.

         Along came a man who had recently completed his studies at a local university. Feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy.

         "Hey" asked the boy in return with a bright laugh, "Don't you have any idea what God is able to do? I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle."

         The enlightened man laughed lightly, sat down next to the boy, and began to explain the "realities" of the miracles of the Bible. "That can all be very easily explained,” he lectured. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red Sea in that area was only 10-inches deep at that time. It was no problem for the Israelites to wade across."

         The boy was stumped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible laying open in his lap. The man, content that he had enlightened a poor, naive young person, turned to go.  Scarcely had he taken two steps when the boy began to rejoice and praise God louder than before. The man turned to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation.

         "Wow!" exclaimed the boy happily, "God is greater than I thought! Not only did God lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, God topped it off by drowning the whole Egyptian army in only 10 inches of water!"      

         This story, which we often call “The Parting of the Red Sea,” is one of those Biblical tales where we can so easily become hung up on what exactly are the literal facts of the narrative.  We argue about how deep the water really was.  We debate whether the Israelites crossed the Red Sea – or the Reed Sea – or a tributary of one or the other.  We try to cram the story into a logical, rational, historical box – convincing ourselves that its truth is found in whether there was 10 inches of water or 20 foot waves. 

         However, this story is not about history – as we understand history today.  This story is about God/Yahweh/The Great I Am.  This story is about faith, about faith in God’s love and protective caring.  This story is about how far we will go, how deep into the waters we will travel on what seems like only a wing and a prayer.  This story that is so central to the Jewish psyche and therefore so central to Jesus is about faith, faith in the power and abiding presence of God.

         And this story is about more than simply trusting.  It is about what you do when you have your back to the sea, when you have run out of options, when there seems to be no way.  “And then God opens a way that was not there. God opens a path that did not exist. Up to this point it has been about trusting God. Up to this point it has been about accepting that God will fulfill (God’s) promises. Now it is just about following the path.”  (Pastor Gavin)

         So it was for the Israelites, and so it is for us.  If we have not already, someday we will all face impossible situations, with nowhere to go.  Do you treat the cancer?  What do you do with the son whom you suspect is gay, or the daughter whose marriage is falling apart?  What do you do when your life – or the life of someone you love – turns on a dime – and there seems to be no way forward, no way out of the horror, the dislocation, and the pain? 

         As Baptist pastor Amy Butler writes, “In the hardest moments of your life and mine there are decisions that need to be made, decisions about whether or not we will lift our feet and take the next step, even though we have no idea what’s ahead, or we’re scared beyond belief or both.”

         This story about Moses leading the Hebrew people to freedom is about those moments when you have to decide whether or not you will step out into the waters of faith.  It is about those times when you have to come clean and decide just how powerful, how loving, how protective this God you worship here every Sunday really is. 

         But understand that the question is not, as Amy Butler points out, “will God bail us out?” It is rather “will we have the courage to step out in faith?”

         No one said that living faithfully is easy.  Even Moses realized that God was not going to do it all.  What did God say to Moses? “ Why are you crying out to me? … Split the sea, Moses, split the sea!”

          Moses had to raise that stick, had to stretch those 80 year old gnarled hands out over the waters that seemed to have no end, had to take that first step into the brine, had to screw up all his courage and beckon the Israelites to follow.  As seminary professor John Holbert noted, “God's biblical promise is not that God will forever save us from ourselves and our stupidity. The promise is rather that God will stand with us, urging us” on.

          And when we embrace that promise, when we make that statement of faith central to who we are, when we take that deep breath and step out into the waters of faith, not knowing where it will lead us, but trusting that in the end it will be to a good place, that is when the waters part, revealing a path, a plan, a way when there seemed to be no way.  That is when we know that we are not in this crazy life alone. That is when we can see dry land ahead of us when before it was only the roiling and chaotic sea. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C., Raymond, Maine

Exodus 12:1-14 "Remember"

 You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         And the story of Moses continues.  We first met this greatest of Israel’s leaders two weeks ago as an infant floating down the Nile River in Egypt.  Saved from certain death by the King (Pharaoh’s) princess daughter, the babe grew to be a man and was forced to flee his adopted homeland as a middle-aged adult.  He settled in a foreign country, and the years went comfortably by.  However, when he was long into his retirement, Moses was tapped on the shoulder by God/Yahweh/the Great I Am.  When Moses thought that only golf and the Golden Years lay ahead of him, the Almighty called him into service. 

         God told Moses that his job was to get the enslaved Hebrews out of Egypt.  His task was to lead them on a journey (which would turn out to be a long and frequently dispiriting 40 year trek) to the Promised Land, to the land bequeathed to their ancestor, Abraham, in the dim reaches of pre-history. 

         Moses was not particularly excited by the thought of such an immense responsibility.  He hemmed and hawed before that burning bush on the heights of Mt. Sinai as God made his demand. 

Moses agreed to it, but only very tentatively and with a glaring lack of self-confidence.  However, God had assured Moses that the Holy One would be there to guide and protect him in his dealings with the Pharaoh – and what more could he ask for?

         And so Moses returned to Egypt, this place that had once been his home – where, as a child, he had swum in the river, played hide-and-seek in the olive groves, and laughed with all his princeling buddies.  Egypt had not changed all that much over the years. 

         The architectural wonders built with human hands still glittered in the glare of the afternoon sun.  The Hebrew slaves whose human hands were doing that building still groaned under the hard labor set before them day in and day out.  The Egyptian taskmasters were still grim and often violent.  After all, to give the Israelites even so much as a taste of freedom was to potentially set the stage for mutiny and rebellion, and the Pharaoh would most definitely frown at that.

         Moses saw all this – and remembered.  Then, shaking his tired head, he made his way to Pharaoh’s palace, that place that had once been his home, where he knew all the secret passageways and staircases, where he had climbed into his grandfather Pharaoh’s lap at night and listened to stories of Ra, the powerful Egyptian sun god, and Isis his wife, and her consort, Osiris. 

         And it was there in the Pharaoh’s royal court that God/Yahweh/the Great I Am and Moses (accompanied by his brother Aaron) made their case.  “Let my people go.”

         But the Pharaoh was a stubborn man – and did not want to give up his enslaved labor force on a whim.  So there was a certain amount of boasting and trash talking before God got down to business. 

         Aaron threw down his walking stick, which turned into a snake.  “What do you think of THAT, Pharaoh?”  Then Pharaoh’s magicians turned their walking sticks into snakes as well.  “Take THAT, Moses!”  But Aaron’s snake ate the other snakes.  “Put THAT into your pipe and smoke it!”

         However, the Pharaoh was a stubborn man – and perhaps that was his downfall because God/Yahweh/the Great I Am had little patience for stubbornness and soon got serious about freedom for the Hebrews. A series of disasters befell Egypt, some of which the Pharaoh’s magicians could match, but many that were beyond their parlor tricks. 

         The Nile River turned to blood, and all the fish died, and the stench was unbearable.  Then frogs turned up everywhere, leaping from the river by the thousands to make their homes in beds and ovens and cooking pans.  Then a zillion gnats were formed from the dust and buzzed and bit unmercifully – followed by a plague of flies. 

         All the animals died, leaving the Egyptian people to starve, and then men, women, and children were beset with boils and open sores.  Infection was rampant, and the death statistics soared. 

         In spite of the toll being taken on his own people, still the Pharaoh did not relent.   Hail beat down on his subjects and their crops - precious harvests like flax and barley - were ruined.  The wheat harvest survived the hail, but it too was destroyed when locusts swarmed across the land and ate everything in their path.  Not a green leaf was left on any tree or plant.

         Pharaoh was worried as he watched his fellow Egyptians suffer, but he remained a stubborn ruler.  At times, he seemed to relent but always went back on his word. 

         Then God sent darkness, a thick blackness that covered both the land and a people who had been born into never-failing, brilliant sunshine.  Pharaoh tried to broker a deal with Moses then : Take your people but leave your animals.  Not a chance, and so negotiations broke down, and God/Yahweh/the Great I Am, through Moses, announced the worst punishment of all: Death to the firstborn males of all Egyptians and the firstborn of whatever might still remain of their animals.

         And it is at that dreadful moment that our Scripture reading picks up today – but perhaps not in a way we might have expected.  In the midst of the drama of boils and frogs, locusts and darkness, the author seems to take a step back and relates a series of detailed and extremely precise instructions about the formation of the Jewish calendar, the slaughter of unblemished lambs, and how and what to eat for this last meal before the Hebrew slaves flee. 

         Have your bags all packed, eat with your sandals on and with your walking stick in your hand, and, by the way, this last supper is to be a religious festival celebrated year in and year out until the end of time.  Do not forget.  Do this always in remembrance of me, Yahweh/God/the Great I Am who delivered you out of Egypt and into freedom. 

         Do this to remember me, to remember this experience because it is like no other you will ever have.  Do this to remember your exodus to freedom, to remember my power and my love for you.  Do this to remember me. 

         As Christian blogger, Rick Morley wrote, “This meal would begin to form them into a new kind of people, almost like a group process exercise on a high ropes course. And, the fact that God would ask them to have this meal over and over again into perpetuity would solidify their new identity.” 

         An oppressed, dispirited group of slaves are molded into God’s chosen people, people who would be a light to all the nations.  As Episcopal priest Charles Hoffacker notes, “Some three thousand years later, the Exodus experience and the Passover celebration remain at the heart of what it means to be Jewish.  The Jewish people recognize that their God acts in history, liberates (God’s) people from bondage, leads them into freedom.”

         “The Exodus experience and the Passover celebration remain at the heart of what it means to be Jewish.”  Fast-forward now a thousand years to Galilee and to an itinerant rabbi preaching to the peasant masses. The rabbi’s name is Jesus, and because he was devoutly Jewish, the memory of the Exodus experience was ingrained ever so deeply into his soul, and the Passover celebration was part of who he was.

         And it is precisely there that the relationship between who we are Christians and this ancient – much of it mythical but in the very best and truest sense of the word – where who we are as Christians and this ancient story of Moses intersect – in these 12 verses where the author of the Book of Exodus outlines the foundation of the Passover celebration.

          “On the tenth of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one lamb to a house. If the family is too small for a lamb, then share it with a close neighbor, depending on the number of persons involved. Be mindful of how much each person will eat. Your lamb must be a healthy male, one year old…Keep it penned until the fourteenth day of this month and then slaughter it…. You are to eat the meat, roasted in the fire…along with bread, made without yeast, and bitter herbs. Don’t eat any of it raw or boiled in water; make sure it’s roasted—the whole animal, head, legs, and innards.”

         Lamb bone, unleavened bread (we call it matzo), bitter herbs:  If you have been to our Seder meal on Maundy Thursday, then you know what Jesus and his disciples were doing that last night before he was executed a thousand years after the Exodus of the Hebrew slaves. 

         Jesus and his friends ate bread without yeast.  They drank wine, and they talked about the time of slavery in Egypt.  As Baptist pastor Timothy McGhee notes, “The Lord's Supper has ancient roots.  It is steeped in history and symbolism.  They grow deep in the fertile soil of the Old Testament and Judaism.  Indeed, we find the origin of the Lord’s Supper in the Jewish Passover.  The Lord’s Supper was initiated at the close of the Passover meal. “

         We may not all believe quite the same things about the meaning of this last supper.  Some may see it as a memorial meal where we re-enact what Jesus did on that final night of his life.  Others may see Jesus as the one sacrificed.  Still others may see him as symbolic of the unblemished perfect lamb that goes to the slaughter as part of God’s plan to save the Israelite people from death, that goes to the slaughter, to the cross, as part of God’s plan to save us from ourselves. 

         But though our theologies might differ – and many of us may not be quite sure what we believe when it comes to this sacrament (and that is OK) – still we are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that just as God acted in history and brought the Hebrew people to freedom thousands of years ago, so God continues to act in history, offering us freedom from all that enslaves us and binds us to who we are rather than who we might be as sons and daughters of the Holy One. 

         We are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that just as Moses brought to Israel the commandments of God, so Jesus brings to us a new commandment:  “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

         We are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that God was faithful to the Hebrews in spite of how unfaithful they could prove themselves to be to God, and so God is faithful to us even in our times of distraction and unfaithfulness. 

         We are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that God is with us today – and will be for all the tomorrows to come, no matter how dark or beset with plagues those tomorrows may be.  Where there is darkness, our God will bring light.

         We are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that this man, Jesus, devout Jew, presider over the ancient ritual of Passover on the night before he died, embodied everything that God is – powerful and empowering, faithful and calling us to faithfulness, loving and calling us to love.

         A loaf of bread.  A cup of wine.  Do this in remembrance of me.  Come, this is the Passover Meal, made over for us, to prepare us for our own exodus, to prepare us to leave the old behind and seek the new, to nourish us as we walk in the way of the One who first shared the bread and the cup with his family, his friends.  Do this to remember me.  Come, all of you, for the feast is ready.  

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C., Raymond, Maine

Exodus 3:1-15 "Holy Ground"

          You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

And the story of Moses continues.  Yes, we began to learn last week about this man who was the greatest leader Israel would ever know.  We were introduced to him as an infant, set afloat in a wicker basket on the Nile River, a Hebrew baby rescued and adopted by the princess daughter of the Egyptian king himself. We learned that this story of Moses is much more than an ancient tale meant only for Jews.  It is a significant part of our story as well.

         Today we pick up the tale again.  Many years have passed – more than you might realize.  Moses is a grown man now – middle aged – and has been wondering for some time about his real origins.  He has begun to leave the Ivory Tower of Pharaoh’s court to see what life in this country he has come to call home is really like. 

         He has seen the glorious cities and massive pyramids his adoptive grandfather – the Pharaoh - has built.  However, Moses has also witnessed the hard labor and cruelty deemed to be necessary to achieve those architectural wonders.  As a result, he has developed an abiding, and, given his circumstances as Pharaoh’s grandson, a peculiar connection to the Hebrew slaves who have made those wonders a reality, brick by mud and straw brick.

         One day, we are told in an earlier chapter of the Biblical Book of Exodus, Moses witnessed a particularly grim Egyptian taskmaster hard at his job of making the Hebrew slaves as miserable as possible.  At the sight of the impending violence, the bile rose in Moses’ throat, and a deep anger and resentment boiled over in his heart, and, when he thought that no one was watching, Moses slit the foreman’s throat and hastily buried the corpse in a shallow and sandy grave. 

         Perhaps Moses should have known better.  Perhaps he should have known that no misdeed remains secret forever: Because someone did see, and word did spread among the enslaved people.  And they were terrified of Moses and his odd association with them.  And word got to the Pharaoh too.  And now there was a price on his head to boot.  Rejected by the Hebrews, outlawed by the Egyptians, now a man without a country, Moses had no choice but to flee far into the wilderness.

         Many tiring and thirsty days later, he ended up in Midian, in the northwestern reaches of the Arabian Desert.  And there he sat by a local well one morning, even as his ancestor Jacob once did long before.  And it was there that Moses watched as the daughters of Jethro, the local priest, tried to wedge their way past a bunch of boisterous shepherds to get water for their goats and sheep.  Moses, being a good man at heart, came to their aid – and later went home with them for dinner.

         As luck would have it, Moses’ reputation had not preceded him.  So he settled comfortably in Midian, married Zipporah, one of the daughters, raised a family, and worked for his father-in-law tending the sheep and goats.  Tradition has it that he was in this voluntary exile for some 40 years. 

         From Pharaoh’s court with all its privileges to the degrading job of being someone else’s shepherd:  Moses’ career path was hardly one to be particularly proud of.  Not being the most successful man on the planet then, he began to draw his social security and became eligible for Medicare and thereby slid in a rather undistinguished way into retirement. 

         However, never let it be said that age alone exempts anyone from feeling that holy nudge and persistent sacred tapping on the shoulder. You see, Moses must have been pushing eighty when that awkward lamb danced away from the flock one day, out of sight around the bend, and up, up the cobbled trail toward the heights of Mt. Horeb – or Mt. Sinai as we sometimes call it. 

         Our shepherd chased after the lamb, tripped and fell, twisted his ankle, ripped the hem of his robe, got up, scrambled forward, and nearly fell into the brambly bush, the shrub that had caught fire.  His first thought was to make a firebreak, so the flames would not scorch the mountain itself.  His second thought was that this fire was quite unusual, for the bush burned but was not consumed by the flames. 

         Moses hesitated (after all, this was something new and therefore not to be trusted), but curiosity got the best of him, and so he ventured closer for a better look.  That was when he heard the voice – perhaps James Earl Jones like, or Morgan Freeman, or Charlton Heston, or Val Kilmer. Whoever it sounded like does not really matter: it was a god-like voice, no doubt about it.  What mattered were the words it spoke, which were “Moses, Moses.”

         Taken aback, Moses stood there doltishly and said what came first to his mind: “Hey.  Here I am – over here.”

         And the voice, perhaps not being sure that Moses had fully grasped the situation and for sure knew with whom he was conversing, commanded him:  “Moses, take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground.”

         “Yikes,” thought Moses as he presumably kicked his sandals off and then, according to the text, covered his face and waited for the Holy One to continue.  And sure enough, God (because that was who the voice belonged to) made a pronouncement.

         "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; and 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…”

         Surely Moses, facedown in the dirt by this time, whispered into his sleeve, “Awesome!  Great idea!  Those slaves will appreciate that.  You have been distant for quite some time now.  I am behind you all the way.  You go Sacred Voice in the burning bush!”

         But that was not all the voice said.  It continued: "So, come, I will send you to pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

         “Whoa!  Hold on there, buddy bush.  Now that is a horse – or a camel – of a different color.  These are my gold years.  I am past my prime.”  Having great difficulty in getting his words out right, Moses eventually spat out a couple of questions to the bush that continued to calmly burn.

         Question #1:  "Who am I that I should go to pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"  The fact that I have a price on my head in my adoptive country not withstanding, I have got a wife at home – and kids – and a steady job.  Not a great job, but a steady one, and in this economy, that’s not something to sneeze at.  Get real!  I am a nobody. “  Or, as Disciples of Christ pastor Kory Wilcoxson imagines, “Me? God, you couldn’t be suggesting that I go, could you? I mean, I’m a worker not a leader. I’m one of the behind-the-scenes people, not the frontline person.”

         God’s answer was simply this:  “I will be with you, and the ground we walk upon together will be holy ground.  What more do you need?”

         Question #2:  “OK, that is all well and good, but 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?  Who are you anyway?"

         God’s answer was again simple, but it described the essence of the Holy One.  It was an answer that is so fraught with mystery that it has swirled down through the ages so that even today – even here – we are still trying to figure out exactly what it means. 

         “Tell them that I am Yahweh:  ‘I am who I am,’ or ‘I will be what I will be’ or ‘I am what I will be.’   Or, as Christian writer and poet Thom Shuman writes, ““Well,” says the Mystery, “most days, I-am-who-I-am; but on alternate Tuesdays, I like “I-will-be-that-which-I-now-am; in months that have only 30 days, you might call me “I-am-who-causes-to-exist.’ But always, always, I-Am-who-gives-life.”  “Tell them ‘I am who I am.’”  Surely that will convince them.

         “Not bloody likely” Moses probably snorted into his sleeve as he spit the sand out of his mouth.  And our rather reluctant Israelite goes on in the next verses to ask for for a few visual aids and an assistant if he is going to even think about taking on this job.  Finally, however, Moses agrees to God’s demand. He answers God’s call affirmatively, though undoubtedly tentatively and surely without a whole lot of confidence.

         And as Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman so beautifully write, “Next to Moses, a lamb tumbled and bahhhhed, licked Moses' naked feet. The fire shook and vanished. The bush was gone. Ashes trembled in the wind, settled to mark a pathway down the mountain. The lamb danced downward upon the path of ashes. Moses, exhausted and exhilarated, limping after the lamb, began to imitate its skipping.

         ‘God only knows where this dance is going to take us,’ he muttered. He turned to look back at the summit of the mountain. ‘It's up to You,’ he shouted. ‘I have no idea where we're heading’…and turned to follow, stumbling on the pathway.”  And there it is:  Moses has gone from being the keeper of sheep to the deliverer of a nation.

         Well, I suppose that the good news is: “God isn’t calling most of us to rescue whole nations. But the sobering news is: God is calling us” (Magdalene’s Musing).  That being said, let’s glean a couple of pointers about that call from this story of Moses and the desert shrub that burned and burned.

         The first pointer is this.  You are never too old.  You are never too young.  God will never deem you too busy or too important or too unimportant.  God gives out no free passes or byes. And this pointer’s corollary is that certainly we are called as individuals – some to serve God through Maine Seacoast Mission, others to create a ministry in a Sunday School classroom, others to sing in the choir or be trained as liturgists. 

         But we are called as a church community as well.  And I would submit that, whatever else we may be collectively called to, we are called to find a vision for ourselves as the Raymond Village Community Church, United Church of Christ. We are called to imagine who we want to be ten, twenty, fifty years down the road.  Who we will is not who we are now.  The church will not look like it does now.  That much is certain. 

         What we will look like, who we will be in this town is something, guided by the spirit, we are called to define.  Fleshing out that vision and making it real in a vibrant and lasting way is what I believe God expects us as a church family to do. And I would suggest that no one is too old – or young – or busy – or important – or unimportant to answer this critical community call and to be part of the conversation. 

         In the Exodus story, God called out, “Moses, Moses.”  But God might just as well have said, “Bob, Bob, Polly, Polly, Andy, Andy, Cora, Cora.”  You get the picture. We are all in this call together.

        Here is the second pointer.  If we are tempted to respond like Moses did – Whoa!  Hold on!  I am not equipped to do this.  I am not the visioning sort.  If this involves change, count me out.  I want the organ.  I only want the old hymns.  I think it should be someone else’s job to step up and take on something new.  How do you expect me to do this?  I have never thought about this stuff before.

         If we are tempted to respond like that – and all of us do to a greater or lesser extent - then we would do well to remember God’s response to Moses’ hemming and hawing:  “I will be with you,” God replied.  “You will not be alone as you hammer out a vision and put it into action.  After all, you are on holy ground.”

         And finally, the third pointer is about that name business:  I am who I am.  Perhaps within those seemingly meaningless words lies what we need to trust as we move forward into the future together as a church community. 

         As Lutheran pastor Edward Markquart has eloquently written:  “What is the message of Yahweh’s name? God’s name is a verb. It is not a noun….God’s name is not I but AM, not a noun but a verb. God is action, movement…God is forever on the move…God is a BE verb… I will be father. I will be mother. I will be son. I will be daughter. I will be anything I want to be.

         I will be anything you need. If you are thirsty, I am water. If you are starving, I am food. If you are all alone, I am friend….If you are weak, I am strong….No matter what you need, I am all things for you. I am with you. I am in you. I am for you. I am everything you need… You cannot lock God into “I am father.” You cannot lock God into “I am mother.” You cannot lock God into anything because God is essentially mysterious, the ground of all that is.”  The ground on which you stand.  The Holy Ground – no burning bush for us perhaps, but holy nonetheless.

         Some of you may remember at my installation service here nearly nine years ago that U.C.C. pastor Paul Shupe stood where I am standing now and said to me sitting there in the second row, “Take off your shoes, Nancy, for you are standing on holy ground.”  And, you know, he was right!

         But you too are standing on that same holy ground. Yes, you! And so I offer you the same invitation:  Take off you shoes if you wish, but, at the very least, listen to the voice of God whispering, “I am with you.  What more do you need.” 

         Like Moses, we may not know where the path is leading us.  But also like Moses, we can trust that if we listen to the Holy One and walk with the Great I Am, we will make our way toward a new vision, so that this church can both survive and thrive.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.