"CALLING ALL CONGOS"

Rev. Jim Petersen

First Congregational UCC-Great Falls, MT

9-07-08

Text: Exodus 3:1-17a

You've just heard our Old Testament lectionary reading from last Sunday.  I wasn't here.  Kama was and she preached it. However, her focus was in the "naming" of Moses. I am going to give it another shot, with the focus on the "claiming" or "call" of Moses, which I think is well suited for our "rally" Sunday.  Let's see.

Moses is minding his own business.  Not unlike ourselves. It is just another day in the wilderness.  He could be out    harvesting, but in Moses case he is tending sheep and goats.    He is a rancher, not a farmer, working for his father-in- law, Jethro, in the distant land of Midian.

Oh, it was not always so. You may remember Moses' birth in Egypt? In a time when the Pharaoh "knew not Joseph," as the story goes, meaning it was many generations past since Joseph and his Hebrew kin were in a position of prestige and power in Egypt.

Long forgotten are Joseph's amazing dream interpretations and his following heroics which saved the Egyptians from famine four hundred years before. Now the children of Israel are just another "foreign" inhabitant in Egypt, a foreign people who has prospered plentifully and propagated profusely, to the irritation of the natives, and to the ire of the Pharaoh who "knew not Joseph."  To dampen the Hebrew proliferation the Pharaoh orders all newborn Hebrew males to be drowned in the Nile.

This is the inauspicious time of Moses' birth. It gives rise to the tender birth story you may recall from your Sunday School days.  I do.  I can still remember the classroom picture on the wall, baby Moses floating down the Nile River in a basket, with the beautiful Egyptian princess bathing at the shoreline, noticing the basket and pulling the infant from the waters. This is what the name Moses means, "to draw out."   As a young Sunday School lad, I hoped for such romantic rescue.

Thus began Moses royal upbringing, raised in privilege by the princess in the Pharaoh's court.   As the Pharaoh's adopted grandson, Moses attended the finest schools and military academies, with a brilliant career guaranteed ahead of him.  No, it had not always been sheep herding in the desert for Moses.

One fateful day Moses blows it.  He is taking his royal walk-about, and observes the Hebrew people hard at slave labor.

It gets worse.  An Egyptian guard whips and beats one of the slaves to death.  His Hebrew blood is brought to a boil, and instinctively Moses breaks the guard's neck and buries him in the sand.

Oops, there are some witnesses.  Moses' Hebrew heritage is hanging out.  So he wisely decides to exit Egypt, fleeing the anticipated fury of the Pharaoh. Through the desert, across to Midian he moves, where he meets the seven daughters of Jethro.

Another cool scene in the Bible, further fanning my adolescent fantasies.  More of our youth ought to be reading the Bible!

The seven daughters of Jethro, who is the priest of Midian, are out tending dad's sheep.  A sign Jethro has no sons, for this is really work the sons should be doing.   They are watering the sheep at the community well. They get there first, so should have first draw of the well.  Except the young hoodlum shepherds who arrive second shove the fair damsels aside.

Moses is observing this scene nearby, along with taking delight in the daughters.  With nary a Hollywood playwright to prompt him, Moses, the same Rambo who had put the Egyptian guard in the ground, walks down to the well and hammers the hoods.  The lovely ladies may go first after all.

And now it is the daughters who notice Moses. They invite him to their father's house for dinner, and the rest is history.  Moses marries Zipporah, one of the magnificent seven.  It is a happy ending.  Moses gets the ranch, Jethro gets an heir, and Zippie gets the baddest shepherd dude in the valley.

And here we come to this morning's lesson, "the call of Moses." As I began, Moses is minding his own business, grazing livestock at his summer pasture, upon a mountain called Sinai. It is going well.  Moses is secure and obscure.  He is looking for no reminders of his past. He has forgotten his people.

God, however, has not forgotten Moses. Nor has God forgotten God's people, who are crying out in Egypt.  So God appears to Moses in the burning bush bit atop Mt. Sinai.  A standard Old Testament epiphany for expressing God's presence.  Fire and mountain tops were both symbolic of God.  Moses is being double teamed here, ganged up by God.

God, from the burning bush, ablaze but not consumed, calls to Moses by name, "Moses, Moses."  Actually "Moshe, Moshe," if God is speaking Hebrew.   Moshe, who is no doubt operating under an alias in Midian, is startled and surprised at the call of his Hebrew name.  Nevertheless he responds, "Uh, yes, here I am."  The God who is still speaking proceeds to tell Moses two things.  In reverse order: 1) God says, "I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."  In other words, God knows who Moses is, and God reminds Moses who he is.  Moses is a child of God, an heir to the chosen children of Israel.

Moses may want to hide away in the wilderness, and fake it as a Midianite, but God blows away his cover and reconnects him to the covenant.  Moses covers his face in shame.

2) God says, in one of the great lines of the Bible, "Do not come any closer, Moses!  Take off your sandals.  You are standing on my holy ground."

In other words, "Who do you think are you, Moses?  What are you doing wearing shepherd sandals in Sinai?  Do you think this is my purpose for your life?  That you are to wander in the wilderness, denying your name and your heritage, goading goats for a Midianite priest.

"Moses," God is saying, "wake up and walk right!  Great footsteps of faith and hope have gone before you.  Fearless footsteps of love and life have traveled this land and made it holy. Footsteps of joy and celebration, as well as footsteps of sorrow and sadness, have hallowed this soil."

 "Don't you know my imprint is in all this?  Do you think you can shuffle along in nameless obscurity in the shifting sands of a nowhere land.  All my earth is sacred, Moses.  And you are standing on my holy ground!"

So it is Moses is instructed to go tell old Pharaoh to let God's people go.

Moses' response is both incredible and common. In the face of the name-giver of life, in the face of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses' ancestry, Moses says, "I can't do that.  I am nobody."    In other words, thanks, God, but no thanks.

It reminds me of John Denver, in the old, but classic movie, "Oh, God," played by George Burns.  Burns appears, as a modern epiphany, to Denver, who epitomizes mister anybody as a grocery clerk in a supermarket.   The message: Denver is to publicly pronounce the "good news" that "God is."

 Denver's response to his unique request: "Why me, God?"  

God to Denver: "Because I like you.  You can do the job."

Denver still protesting: "But I don't even belong to a   church." 

God to earth: "Neither do I."

Moses: "I am nobody." 

God:  "That's just fine.  I will be with you."

Moses, with no more faith than John Denver, continues to complain.  "Who is going to believe me?"  Good question.  What credentials does Moses have?  He is just a grocery clerk, or, in this case, a shepherd.

So Moses asks God, "Who shall I say sent me?"

God answers, an answer the theologians have made much of over the years, God answers by defining who God is in the only place in the Bible.

God says, "Tell them, ?I am who I am.'  Tell them, ?The one who is called I AM has sent me to you.'"  Which probably helped Moses out about as much as it helps us out.  Because the great "I AM" is beyond our pea-brained understanding.

God is saying, "Moses, long before you ever were, I AM. Long before the earth was, I AM. Long after it has perished, I AM. Moses, I AM the power of creation which exists in all my created order.

Therefore, I can blow into your humdrum life as a burning bush at any time, convenient or inconvenient, in any place, mountain top or valley low, in any person, elderly woman or infant child, in any experience, joyful or tragic. I can be there!"

"I am who I am."  This is all you need to know, Moses, that "I Am."

Ah, don't worry.  This is not good enough for Moses either. He continues to mutter and sputter, expressing the self-doubt of every generation, whining about his lack of ability and God's lack of wisdom in calling him.

Moses is like you and me.  He wants more assurances.   More guarantees.  More payoff for his time spent. Which makes this a good story for us on this "rally" Sunday.

God calls us, like Moses, to set the captives free.  We are to forget our fears, let loose our litany of excuses, and be empowered by the great "I AM."

We are to recognize whose holy soil we are standing on, upon whose earth we are sucking up air and taking up space, and quit seeking to save it for ourselves.   We are to step forth with our plenty and our plenty of ability and go with God.

Like Moses, we live in covenant with God. That is, we live in relationship to "I AM." Therefore, we are not to be captive in this world, but we are commit ourselves to answering God's call with our lifetime.  For to say "I am" is to say "yes" to life.

Moses got the big picture.  He answered the call. Can you just imagine the final scene? Moses, walking stick in hand, trekking across the desert, donkey by his side, with wife and two small sons astride the humble beast, with the great pyramids and palaces of the Egyptian empire looming on the horizon.   Title this picture:  "The invasion of Egypt." Absolutely ridiculous!

The Hebrew storytellers want us to get this picture. If anything comes of this "call of Moses" it will be by God.  The captives will be delivered by God's authority.

God calls us to do no less, with no less. We are to break the bondage of anything which demeans and dehumanizes God's gift of life.  We are to deliver the message, "Let my people go." 

We do so by the power and by the grace of God, reconnected for us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Oh, how God must love us and believe in us.  Be bold.  Be jubilant.  Get ready to rally! 

AMEN.