This sermon was preached at Whittier UMC on Sunday. January 19, 2020, based on Exodus 3:1-15. You can listen to it by clicking below.
Would you pray with me?
God who is, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. Be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
I don’t know about all the rest of you, but I keep thinking about the thunderstorms that we had last weekend, probably because a branch fell on my house and I’ve been having to deal with that ever since. But the thunderstorms got me thinking about how we treated thunderstorms when I was a nanny. I was a nanny for a kid named Charles from the time that he was two months old until he was two years old. And his parents decided that they didn’t want Charles to be afraid of
thunderstorms. I think that’s a wise decision—who wants a panicked toddler during every thunderstorm?—and so it was my job as a nanny to, every time it seemed like it was about to storm, to take Charles and to get all bundled up and to get really excited when the lightning flashed and to count when we heard the
thunder so we could see how far away the storm was. It was always a joyful time whenever there was a thunderstorm and honestly, I don’t want to go back to the
days before I heard a toddler giggle in delight whenever he saw lightning and say, “That’s a big one!” after every peal of thunder. My heart is full whenever I
think about those times.
I think that, in our lives, thunderstorms are either things that we’re scared of or things that we delight in. Thunderstorms are something that evoke awe in us. We’ve all seen astounding pictures of lightning streaking across the sky. It amazes us. It evokes words like awesome and amazing and astounding in us. Thunderstorms evoke awe. And the people who research human emotions and awe and wonder, they say that there are two ways we can react to something that evokes awe in us. We can accommodate it positively or we can accommodate it negatively. We can open up a space to wonder at it or we can shut down and protect ourselves in the face of it.
Now, both of those things make sense for us to do. When you think about a beautiful and wonderful waterfall, you also know that if you got too close, falling down that waterfall wouldn’t end well for you. You can have a spirit of openness about all sorts of beautiful and wonderful things, but there are still awesome
things that you could be afraid of. A mushroom cloud is an awesome thing but the proper response to that is probably fear. It seeks to do us damage.
And I imagine that if I had been hit by lightning, I might not be so delighted at thunderstorms.
So we have both of these responses available to us when we see something awesome. We can wonder at it, or we can be in terror. I think this distinction is important when we look at the Bible and how people react to God. How often does an angel of the Lord appear and say, “Do not fear”? Angels of the Lord are awesome things, but they’re also terrifying according to biblical descriptions with wings and eyes everywhere. Anytime the Lord appears to us, it’s with might and power.
And so, we can have either of these two reactions. We can be afraid of what this power might do to us or we can be drawn to it. It’s not very often that you find
people drawn to God. It’s more often that you hear, “Do not fear.”
That might be because God is so powerful and so mighty and so beyond our experience that it overwhelms us, and our reaction to being overwhelmed is fear. But I think also that if we listen to the testimony in 1 John that God is love, perfect love, then we can see why we might also be terrified. Because all of us
have only ever been loved imperfectly, because we’ve been loved by other humans who are only capable of imperfect love. We are all incapable of perfect love. But God is. And how scary that love is. To be fully seen, fully known, and loved completely is a horrifying prospect because we don’t know how such a powerful
love will change us. We don’t know if we can trust the effects of a love like that. It’s difficult to be open to something that might completely transform
us. Perfect love is terrifying to us.
Maybe that’s why God chose the burning bush approach with Moses. It’s a little more low-key. It was common for bushes in the desert where Moses was grazing the flock of his father-in-law to catch on fire. It’s dry, it’s arid, and all it takes is for the right intensity of light or a quick strike of heat lightning
and up the bush goes in flames, much like the wildfires out in California. Moses would have known this after his years in Midian and would typically just have
steered the flock away from the fire.
Moses, however, noticed that this particular bush was burning and not consumed.
Let’s rewind, before Moses turns aside, and think about where he’s come from. There’s probably a good reason that God didn’t lead off with terror when it comes to Moses—Moses had already been terrified enough in his young life. When he was a baby, Pharaoh had killed all of the Hebrew boys his age, but he survived by being put in a basket and sent away from his mother. He is raised by the daughter of Pharaoh, but as an adult realizes the horror of the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt. He commits a murder and has to flee from the only home he’s known. These are terrifying experiences.
Now, though, he’s found a home, married to the daughter of the high priest of Midian, and he has found security. He’s comfortable tending the flocks of his
father-in-law Jethro, and it’s out of this comfort with his world that he’s able to turn aside, able to be open and curious about why this particular bush does
not burn. What he says is, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”
I think we should all take a leaf out of Moses’ book in this moment. We should prepare ourselves to turn aside when something gets our attention and be fascinated by it.
And then Moses does something that’s remarkable. He walks closer to this bush on fire, to investigate, and when God sees that Moses has turned aside, God calls to him. “Moses! Moses!” And Moses, amazingly, says, “הִנֵּֽנִי׃” which means, “Here I am!” Hin-ne-ni is a profoundly open and honest expression. It’s what young Samuel says when he is woken up by God. It’s what Isaac says to Abraham. And it’s what Moses in response to the voice of God calling out from the bush.
What do you imagine that voice sounded like?
Something deep and booming? Something earth-shattering? A still, small voice? Whatever it is, it was something unexpected, something that I imagine most of us would respond to with fear of some kind, maybe terror. But Moses is able to accommodate this awesome experience positively, with openness, and responds, הִנֵּֽנִי׃!” Here I am, in my entirety, open and vulnerable.
When Moses responds like this, with openness instead of with fear, continuing to be interested instead of fleeing with his sheep, God says to him, “Come no closer! Take off your sandals for this place you are standing is holy ground.” For Moses, this moment of deep vulnerability becomes even more so. He has stood before the divine and said, “Here I am!” and the Divine says, “Oh no, I need you to be grounded.” There is no pretense when you are before the Holy One. Moses takes off his shoes, connecting him to ground, grounding him, reminding him that he, like all of us, came from the dirt and to the dirt he will return. Before God, we have no titles, no treasure, no power. Before God, we are all dust brought to life.
Moses obeys. He takes off his shoes and stands before the holiness in front of him.
And out of the burning bush, Moses hears a word of liberation. God has heard the cry of God’s people in Egypt. This is a key point in the Bible, a turning point when God reaches down into the world and says, “I hear you. I see you. I am not going to let you continue to suffer.”
Moses has begun to fear at this point. Moses is completely vulnerable in the face of holiness and now Moses is being told that he is going to have to go and free the Hebrews from Egypt? How does someone even fight a Pharaoh? Moses has gone from that place of openness to a place of fear, which we can all understand.
We have to remember, though, that this incident at the burning bush is when God begins a divine friendship with Moses. At the end of his life, even though he doesn’t get to enter the Promised Land with the people he freed from Egypt, Moses is called a friend of God, someone who God had raised up to God’s self and shared friendship with. It is an extraordinary title, and even though this friendship between Moses and God will go through some rough patches, it is a friendship that endures and changes the future of the Hebrew people. Moses, the one who is open to God in the beginning, is the one who frees the people, goes up on the mountain to receive the law, and come down with a face shining from having been with God.
But if you’re going to begin a friendship, you need to know each other’s names. In an effort to get support for his mission to the Hebrews, Moses asks for God’s name. And God says, “I am who I am.” The Hebrew word actually contains the sense of all the tenses: I am who I have been, I am who I am, I am who I will be. In the most fundamental sense, God is. And when we combine this revelation with the testimony in 1 John, we realize that love is. Before this world began and during its whole existence and after all that we know comes to an ending, love will remain. Love is what wins. All the strife of this world exists for a time but in the end, love is. God is perfect love and God is.
Moses takes that. Moses will ask for someone to help him in his mission and God will send Aaron, but Moses will go and set the people free in Egypt. All of this happens because Moses saw something holy, was open to it, and allowed that holy thing to transform him.
So often, we react with terror to wonderful things, and with good reason. God is terrifying to us, perfect love is terrifying to us. But what the research shows
us is that terror and wonder are two sides of the same coin. It’s up to us how we react.
During this season of epiphany, I want us to practice reacting with wonder and curiosity whenever we see something awesome. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be hearing stories of people who encountered Jesus and had all sorts of reactions. Listen to them. Place yourself in them. Practice responding with wonder during this season of epiphany.
Because I believe that what we say and do in worship impacts what we say and do out in the world. If we practice wonder here, we’ll be able to practice it out there. We’ll be able to encounter whatever God is doing in the world and welcome it with wonder and joy, instead of fear. We’ll be grounded in God’s perfect love and be able to spread it everywhere we go.
So friends, this week, be like Moses. Turn aside with wonder when you see something intriguing in this world. Take off your shoes (metaphorically) and
open yourselves up to whatever God has to tell you in that moment. You might just hear a word that sets you and others free.
Amen.
All text and pictures unless otherwise indicated © Jo Schonewolf, 2020. To view a full archive of our sermons, click here.