Shoeless
Exodus 3:1-15
August 28, 2011
There’s no escaping it this Sunday - we have to talk about God. Many books and sections of the Bible do not talk about or mention God hardly at all. The Book of Esther does not mention God once. Long sections of the Genesis saga mention the deity about as frequently as we do in our everyday conversations. But today all the obstacles are out of the way, all the politically correct notions are discarded, and we turn the corner and there is God and we have to say hello. A funny thing happened on the way to the sheep’s pasture.
It is rare, in fact, to walk directly into God in the Bible. Yes, there’s Genesis 1 in which God creates the world, and every once in a while God is caught speaking to some worthy person, and a few times there are visions recording an image of God, but seldom do we meet God face to face, human being to divine being. Here is one such occasion and some may dismiss the encounter as a curiosity and nothing more, but if you do meet God where you least expect it, you won’t be able to live in the same way afterwards.
Moses stumbled into God, but then none of us really make appointments. Nothing was obvious about this meeting, especially not the human being involved, though many think with hindsight that it had to be a Moses who would see the burning bush. He was destined.
Moses instead was a disgraced murderer, living in far away exile in Midian, making the best of a second life as a shepherd, more than a few steps down from being a prince of Egypt. He was Joseph in reverse.
Somebody always seems to be reminding us that shepherds were at the bottom of the scale in ancient society. They were not romantic, they were uncouth, courageous some of them, others just as cowardly as the rest of us facing a wild beast in the wilderness. Moreover, shepherds were lonely characters, bored out of their minds, literally some would say. Moses had wandered a ‘fer piece’ and ended up at Horeb, the alternative name for Sinai, the so-called mountain of God. This is the first time this wilderness mountain is so identified; it was considered a holy place, but by people and religions that figured holiness differently than the God of Israel. Moses had not taken his flock there on a de facto pilgrimage.
As he was going along, an angel of the Lord appears to him out of the flame of fire in the midst of a bush. He looked closer and never mentions or recognizes the angel - are angels that hard to miss? - just that upon closer examination the bush is not burning up. “I will turn off this road to check this unbelievable thing out, because I can’t figure out why this bush is not being burned up.” Moses is taking a detour to look at a natural phenomenon that is beyond belief. It wasn’t his eyes that were assaulted next.
There is that small verb in the narrative that makes a big difference. The burning bush wasn’t smack dab in the middle of Moses’ path, it was off to the side. In order to examine it, he had to make the effort to turn off the main road or path. And once God saw that he had taken this extra ordinary step off the road, God spoke, God called his name, Moses, Moses. Moses heard and responded in defense the simple words a lot of people have said in the same situation, “Here I am.” That’s all I can say, “Here I am!”
“Take off your shoes for this is holy ground” is the first real command, and while it underlines that this is God meeting a human being, it is a little odd. Bare feet show that there is nothing contrived to separate one from God’s earth and creation, but it’s not the feet that are holy.
The voice out of the unburning bush identifies itself: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” Given the press time given to Joseph in the Book of Genesis, I always find it interesting that they don’t talk about the God of Joseph. What else could Moses do, he hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. To see God face to face perhaps was the root of the expression, “to meet your maker.” Human beings cannot withstand the difference between our nature and that of God’s, so the difference kills us. However, it did not kill Moses.
Yet what the voice had told him was astonishing and revelatory. Moses had been brought up as an Egyptian, though he always seemed to know he was Hebrew. Did he even know who Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were? Did Moses know Joseph? In that time, there were so many gods and each was confined to its own territory and its own people. Moses is out of bounds for the God of the Hebrews, yet this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob has cornered him in a foreign land. Does this God have any limits? Is this God everywhere?
We don’t know if Moses was really contemplating these questions in his mind during the microseconds between responses, but before he could think further, God has an agenda and Moses is part of it. “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.” This God sees it all, in fact, this God just doesn’t look at the form and organization of things from the outside, this God sees the inward workings of relationships and knows where there is justice and injustice. This God speaks first because there is injustice in this world, and “I have come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians - you can substitute an endless list of oppressors here - and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” The Promised Land is not some heaven on earth; it is a land where God’s idea of justice will be established. You may want to dismiss this as many have as a political ideology, but that’s when you find out how Egyptian you are.
You and I have heard people describe their beatific encounters with God, how beautiful and peaceful it was, how everything seemed to all fit together at that moment. Moses wasn’t allowed a nice aesthetic happening, God had plans for Moses. “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.” Moses replies honestly, if not hysterically, who am I to do this? What skills and authority do I have to challenge Pharaoh himself? Moses probably knew how Pharaohs operate better than anyone else. Just imagine some average, yet extraordinary Canadian being commissioned to somehow get an audience with Momar Ghadaffi and convince him to resign his rule in Libya. What would you say? God reassured Moses in the simplest of language, “But, I will be with you.” It did not turn out that simply, but it turned out.
Moses knows his first opponents will be his own people. What is the name of your God, he knows they will ask him. People want a name they can grasp and remember, and perhaps even control. The ancient view was that if you knew another’s name you could dominate him or her. God answers with a name each new translation has to figure out - “I Am Who I Am,” or “I Will Be What I Will Be.” It’s not catchy, but God’s name has to do with the essence of being of all existence. And make no mistake, God is the one who alone decides who God is and will be. Lots of Christians are insistent that they have God all figured out, they know exactly what God wants, and even better than God they know who and what God has to be and how God has to act now. I will be what I will be, and that may surprise you, is God’s name.
So is this what it is like to meet God head on? You are living where you don’t belong, a stranger in a strange land, you have failed miserably in some important part of your life, and reduced to a minimum wage job. You sort of bump into God who does not want to be recognized easily, but it’s partly your decision to bump into God. There is nowhere you can escape this God because this is the Creator of heaven and earth. That means, incidentally, though not really incidentally at all, there is no part of human existence that is immune from the heat of the burning bush. Not politics and government or sex or education or real estate or food or the Roughriders - just want to see if you are still paying attention.
You won’t be evaporated upon meeting God, but God will talk to you and call out your name. Talking with God begins with justice, for you and for the oppressed and for all people. As for a name, God doesn’t want a normal name that somebody might abuse and denigrate and diminish, but the name I Am tells us that we haven’t begun to think enough about God. No one should say that God cannot be a She, because God has been a baby and a Jew and a condemned and executed criminal, all of them terribly human. You cannot take God to court and tell God that She has broken her rules. God will be what God will be, thank heavens, but that also means God has an assignment for you, a mission impossible. But, God will be with you if you can listen.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan