Show Notes
Exodus 3:1-15 | Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c | Romans 12:9-21 | Matthew 16:21-28
Chapters
- (00:00:01) - The Story of Moses
- (00:13:54) - The Message of Being Carried by God
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Fear not, little flock. It is not only the kids who are going to talk about being out beyond the wilderness and encountering a burning bush.
[00:00:13] If I were one to entitle my sermons, and I'm not, but if I were, I would entitle this sermon from the basket to a bush.
[00:00:29] In order to engage the trajectory that I hope to carry us along, I need to go backwards a little bit and find us where we found ourselves in the story last Sunday.
[00:00:43] And then I'll catch us up to this Sunday and hopefully I'll catch us up to this morning right at the center of our own hearts.
[00:00:54] If you were around last week, you heard this line, this watershed line, this threshold line that comes at the very beginning of Exodus, where Israel is riding high through the experience and leadership that Joseph brings to Egypt. To this fracture in Israel's relationship with Egypt, the King James Version translation reads, along came a king which knew not Joseph.
[00:01:31] It is this experience of Israel being on the top and then all of a sudden finding themselves at the very bottom.
[00:01:44] For Israel, the first line of Exodus leads to their levy breaking and they are flooded with trauma and horror and despair.
[00:02:01] And we heard those first few lines of the story of Moses life and they sound sort of quaint in our, in our memory, but when we read the details of the story itself, they're quite horrific.
[00:02:19] Pharaoh, worried about Israel's rise to power, enslaves them, thinking that enslavement will put them down. Israel continues to procreate. They procreate so vociferously and energetically that Pharaoh is like, we can't have all these Israeli babies wandering around Egypt. So he empowers the midwives, the Hebrew or the midwives of Israel. He empowers those midwives to toss the newborn babies into the Nile. And then we begin to hear the narration of the life of Moses that he was born to, to a Hebrew mother, that he was kept in hiding for the first three months of his life.
[00:03:13] We have this notion that probably somewhere around that three month mark, he. He became so squeaky that his mother could not hide him anymore.
[00:03:26] And so in an act of enormous and deep desperation, his mother finds a basket. She coats that basket with pitch with tar so that it might float. And she puts her beloved child, her three month old baby, in this basket somewhere around the Snake River Ranch, floating that baby down the river, a river filled with the corpses of infants, down to the Wilson boat ramp, hoping that someone would see and hear this baby and rescue it and raise it. And love is a story that we remember with some nostalgia, absent the horrible horror and trauma of the facts of the story.
[00:04:31] But nevertheless, we have some sense that there is a thread, a thread that moves from Abraham to Jacob, from Jacob to Joseph, and somehow from Joseph to Moses. We're following this thread through the lives of these leaders, of the narrative that we have from the Hebrew scriptures.
[00:04:59] And amidst the horror, there remains this measure of hope.
[00:05:06] And so last week, we end with Moses being rescued in a basket, being somewhat beautifully and ironically rescued by Pharaoh's daughter, where he is taken into the palace and raised as an Egyptian, but also knowing that he is of Hebrew blood.
[00:05:30] That's where we ended the story last week. And this week we pick up this story where Moses is displaced from Egypt and he is tending. He's married now, and he is tending his father's flocks. And somewhere beyond the wilderness is what the story reads. So I'm just going to catch us up to get us from the basket to this place beyond the wilderness. There's not a lot of story that exists, but there is some story that's important.
[00:06:05] Moses is raised in Pharaoh's palace. He's raised in an Egyptian with a sense that he is also, like, biologically or genetically, a part of the people of Israel, a Hebrew.
[00:06:19] And we meet him somewhere, probably in late adolescence in this episode where he witnesses an Egyptian overseer violently beating a Hebrew slave.
[00:06:34] In this moment, his heart is so overcome with violence that he engages in vigilante murder of the Egyptian overseer.
[00:06:49] He then removes the body from the scene of the crime and buries it in the sand.
[00:06:56] And then the story says the very next day, he encounters two Hebrew slaves in a fight.
[00:07:06] They are beating one another and Moses intervenes and separates them and says, like, no, this violence is not permitted between the two of you.
[00:07:19] They then reveal the fact that they know that Moses is a vigilante murderer. They tell him, like, oh, pot calling the kettle black here. We saw what you did yesterday to the Egyptian. Moses becomes terrified and. And he flees Egypt.
[00:07:38] He flees Egypt to the land of Midian.
[00:07:42] Now, if you're following a map, that would be Moses comes around those two fingers of the Red Sea, down to the east coast of the Red Sea, to the land of Midian, which we now call Saudi Arabia.
[00:07:59] And there he finds himself either at an oasis or. Or at a well.
[00:08:07] And as he is sitting at this oasis or at this well, these women come in. They come in to water their father's flocks.
[00:08:17] But there's some mean guys there who don't want their afternoon Siesta interrupted with the drama of a herd coming in and drinking from this well. And the mean guys prevent these women from watering their flocks. Moses stands up to the mean guys and welcomes these women to water their father's flocks.
[00:08:46] So what we have here is this emerging character trait in this person, Moses. That Moses is one of those people who feels called.
[00:09:02] Called enough to act, to stand up for those who are vulnerable or powerless.
[00:09:11] The story tells us that the owner of this herd encourages his daughters to welcome Moses to the household where he can be fed with, where he can rest, where he can receive a warm welcome because he is a resident alien. And Moses becomes so close to this family that he is invited to marry one of the daughters of the owner of the flock.
[00:09:44] Now then, there's this little interesting break that we have from chapter two to chapter three. If you are paying attention to Robert Read, you heard Robert say that Moses was somewhere beyond the wilderness tending his father in law, Jethro's flock.
[00:10:07] In chapter two, Moses, father in law has a different name.
[00:10:15] So we scratch our heads a little bit and we wonder what's going on with the story. Why would they call this father in law by two name names? Let me tell you why. As we sit in this age of literalism and fundamentalism, the story exists in the way that it does, so that we listeners today have a sense that this story is far bigger, far more powerful than facts in a narrative.
[00:10:52] We are invited along on this journey.
[00:10:58] We are invited to follow the thread for ourselves, and we follow it to a beautiful place in the story.
[00:11:10] The story opens with Moses tending his father in law's sheep somewhere beyond the wilderness.
[00:11:21] Wait, do you mean to say that Moses is in the backcountry of the backcountry?
[00:11:31] He is somewhere special here, and we don't yet know exactly how special it is.
[00:11:39] And then we get this other hint, and if you've been around this church, you, you've heard me say before that like, whenever we get like the name of a geographical place in the context of the scriptures and the Hebrew scriptures or the Christian scriptures, that's a little like yellow flag to, like, pay attention.
[00:12:01] Something's going down here. Moses, who is in the back country of the back country, finds himself at the base of Mount Horeb.
[00:12:13] It is the first time that Moses has found himself at the base of this sacred mountain. This sacred mountain. Like Moses, father in law also has two names.
[00:12:29] Some call it Horeb, some call it Sinai.
[00:12:35] Moses in the future will be back at the foot of this sacred mountain.
[00:12:45] His journey when he returns is a corporate one.
[00:12:51] But for now, Moses journey to the back country of the back country, to the foot of this sacred mountain is an individual one.
[00:13:04] And then the story really lights up, right?
[00:13:09] The story says that Moses sees an angel.
[00:13:15] Like we hear that Moses sees a burning bush. But the story reads, moses sees an angel in the form of. Of a bush that is burning, but it is not being burned up.
[00:13:33] Something suspicious is happening here.
[00:13:37] This is another threshold moment, but not a moment where Moses Levy is breaking, but a beautiful moment where Moses is being lifted up and. And taught something.
[00:13:54] Now, here comes my favorite line in all of the story of one of my favorite stories, which makes this line one of my favorite lines in all of the biblical narrative. It is so good. And we just read right over it. Then the story reads, when God saw that Moses saw the bush, then God began to speak to Moses Church.
[00:14:31] God will not kick down your door and drag you by the neck.
[00:14:40] Burning bushes all around.
[00:14:45] But do we have the eyes and the heart to see them?
[00:14:53] When God sees that Moses sees this bush, God begins to. God begins to speak.
[00:15:05] It is a beautiful turn in the story.
[00:15:11] Of course, when God begins to speak to Moses, what Moses hears is his present future.
[00:15:20] That this person who not so long ago, 20 years, 21 years ago, 22 years ago, was vulnerable and powerless, placed in a basket carried by God on top of the water, filled with the corpses of his relatives, carried by God into the house of Pharaoh. Not 20, 21, 22 years ago.
[00:15:53] Now that vulnerable and powerless Moses, God says, is now being called, being directed to lead Israel out of the oppression and trauma and horrors of slavery.
[00:16:15] It is another watershed moment, but one of a different kind. And then we get this wonderful detail where Moses is like, okay, I'm open enough to see a burning bush, and I'm open enough to listen to what it tells me.
[00:16:39] But if all of this is true, and I go back to Pharaoh and I go back to my people, who am I supposed to say, told me that this is the trajectory of my life?
[00:16:59] And the voice of God responds to Moses in one of the most beautiful ways. God gives Moses God's name. And probably the best English translation that I've ever heard of this particular name. Does it come from the story itself, but comes from the theologian Paul Tillich. Paul Tillich calls God being itself.
[00:17:26] That God says, I'm being itself. I'm the very essence of being.
[00:17:33] That's who you can tell those people has sent you. God identifies God's self, not separately, but only in relationship to another living being.
[00:17:49] Tell them I am who I am. Tell them I will be who I will be.
[00:17:56] Sent you Tell them. It is being itself, it is being alive that has given me this call where I come to defy power and to embrace the powerless.
[00:18:18] This is one of the most beautiful stories in all of scriptures, and it's not over yet.
[00:18:30] But we're not here just to listen to the narrative as it flows from childhood through early adulthood. We're here to follow a thread, a thread that begins in the beginning of Genesis with Adam and Eve, A thread that continues to Abraham, that wanders to the life of Jacob, then to Joseph, then to Moses, then to Jesus, then to the saints, then to little old you and little old me.
[00:19:11] What does this mean? What is this story trying to open our eyes to and open our hearts to? I'll say there are two realities, two realities that we experience as living human beings.
[00:19:30] And we are introduced in these first three chapters to the full spectrum, or at least to the extremes of the full spectrum. From the left side all the way over to the far right side.
[00:19:47] In the beginning of this story, what do we hear?
[00:19:52] We hear that when we are vulnerable, that when we are powerless, that God carries us, that we can be carried by God in our most vulnerable, most powerless, most desperate seasons of our lives.
[00:20:22] I don't know about you, but I do know about me.
[00:20:27] And boy, boy, have I been carried by God, by you, and by the glory of creation that surrounds us.
[00:20:46] You know, in this somewhat dark chapter of my own life over the course of the last year, you have maybe probably heard me say, and this comes from the context of living here in Jackson, that sometimes the forest must burn.
[00:21:10] Sometimes we find ourselves in places in our lives where everything is lost and everything burns down.
[00:21:20] And those of us who live in this environment know what happens.
[00:21:25] Almost right after that, we find ourselves carried.
[00:21:31] Here comes the fireweed, here comes the bees, and before too long, here comes the new lodgepole pine growing in the very place where its ancestors were burned only a few years ago.
[00:21:53] We have this sense as human beings that sometimes the forest must burn, that sometimes we must be carried through vulnerable, powerless, traumatizing seasons of our lives.
[00:22:09] But that's not where we find Moses in the story today, right?
[00:22:14] Like, here's a guy that, yes, of course he has been displaced, but he's standing on two feet.
[00:22:21] He's newly ish married.
[00:22:25] He has a child, a child whose name is Gershon Gar in the Hebrew, means like resident. Alien or immigrant, it's like Moses names his child someone who like sort of fits in and sort of doesn't.
[00:22:43] So he's acknowledging this threshold moment for himself and for his family. He has a new job. He's no longer a prince of Egypt. Rather he's a ranch hand.
[00:22:56] He's a ranch hand tending to the the flocks and the resource of his father in law, who seems to be pretty empowered, pretty financially empowered. And then he finds himself in the back country of the back country.
[00:23:13] Like anxious, scared people. Don't go there.
[00:23:17] Moses finds himself grounded, standing tall, courageous enough to be adventurous about where he feeds and tends to his flock.
[00:23:30] In the back country of the back country, he notices that he stands at the foot of a sacred mountain. Moses is in a good place. He's in a place where he's grounded. He's experiencing a good measure of well being. You might even argue that he's flourishing.
[00:23:52] But here's the deal.
[00:23:57] Even when he's flourishing, he's open enough.
[00:24:01] He's open enough to see this burning bush and to hear the very voice of God.
[00:24:11] And so I ask myself, and I ask you, like when you're at the top of your game, when everything is going just right for you, when are you willing to be led?
[00:24:28] Are you open to living a life?
[00:24:33] When you are experiencing the good life, are you willing and open to be led to a life that is so much more than the good life, that is fueled by fire, that is divine?
[00:24:53] There is this reality that we all experience when we're at the bottom of sometimes the forest must burn. But those of us who live here, who live in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, we must know that everything, everything is always burning.
[00:25:22] We live on top of a caldera, a caldera that fuels this divine energy that comes up through the ground and can fuel our life.
[00:25:40] When we are open and grounded, when we are at our best, this story is asking us, are we willing to be led?
[00:25:55] We know that we're all willing to be carried.
[00:26:00] Because when we're at the bottom, we make our prayer. As Anne Lamott so articulately says, we make our one word prayer right.
[00:26:13] Help.
[00:26:15] Help.
[00:26:17] Help me.
[00:26:19] Help us.
[00:26:22] But when we're at the top, when we're grounded and everything is going right, are we open to things going so much more right than we ever imagined?
[00:26:44] Church God comes to us in the life of a story.
[00:26:54] God comes to us in a rainbow, in a promise, in a smile, in a nurturing hug, in a forest fire, or in a bush that is always burning.
[00:27:12] But not consumed.
[00:27:17] Are you open enough to see it and hear it?
[00:27:25] Church burning, bushes all around.
[00:27:32] Everything is always burning.
[00:27:38] Amen.
