Off to the Sid
Exodus 3:1-15

September 1, 2002

A good Non-Conformist Christian never is conventional out of the belief that to be a Christian is a most unconventional state of being, and requires extra-ordinary decisions and acts.

Non-Conformity originated out of English church politics and it was applied to most of our spiritual descendants in the United Church of Canada - Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists. The Biblical story seldom bothers with conventional characters who do not want to cause waves. Mostly what we hear describes non-conformists: people and prophets who think differently, about God and about justice. Moses fits into the category.

Nevertheless, Moses never fit into any mainstream. He was always a stranger in someone else’s strange land. He is the person we need to watch.

We left Moses last week being pulled out of the Nile by a maidservant of Pharaoh’s daughter. Already the children of Israel had been slaves for generations. The parents of this chosen infant were smart, but unknown to us by name. 300 some years into slavery and oppression there is no history for slaves and seldom are there names.

This child was rescued cunningly from death not so much by Pharaoh’s daughter as by his mother and older sister Miriam. His name Moses is an Egyptian name, but has come to be the quintessential Hebrew name. Although he was Hebrew he was raised as an Egyptian prince, but we do not hear anything about that upbringing. Was he on the fast track to power? Could he have been the new Pharaoh eventually?

The author of Exodus skips that part and our Lectionary hops over the climactic episode in the young Moses’ life. There may be no details of Moses’ adolescence, but he reappears in a surprising place. One day, he went out to his people and saw their forced labour. For an Egyptian prince, this was probably not an appropriate place for him to wander, and perhaps not safe either. The narrative implies he knew these were his people, and perhaps he still spoke their language. If so, his upbringing was most unconventional and his adopted mother quite non-conformist.

Forced labour is never an attractive sight and Moses witnessed personally an Egyptian overlord beating a Hebrew. Something outraged him, and making sure no one was watching, he killed the Egyptian. Despite his indisputable position in the lore and legacy of the Judeo-Christian faith, there were more than a few who said that because of this impulsive act, Moses could never be a saint. Righteous anger remained his cross, so that he would not be allowed to cross the River Jordan into the Promised Land. Was he angry at that Egyptian slave lord because he was beating one of his own people, or simply and profoundly another human being? The Bible does not tell us all.

There were eyes who saw what had happened. The next day Moses heard the cynical reply from two Hebrews fighting one another and he knew he had to escape. Pharaoh found out quickly too and wanted Moses’ head. Moses ran. All the way to Midian on the other side of the Gulf of Aqabah opposite the Sinai peninsula.

Moses is a lost man by this time, neither Hebrew nor Egyptian. He still responds to the plight of the defenseless in yet one more story by the well. The priest of Midian’s daughters are bullied by some other shepherds from watering their flock, but Moses was sitting nearby. He defended the women and they ran home to tell their father. Hospitality rules and Moses was received into his home and given one of the daughters, Zipporah, as part of the bargain. He was still a stranger in a strange land, but for once he had been received home.

And that should have been the end of the story, or at least the part where Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, a most ordinary occupation on which to conclude a Labour Day. In such arid country shepherds did travel tremendous distances in search of grazing lands for their flocks. Through the Wilderness of Paran he led his flock down to Horeb, another name for Sinai, the so-called mountain of God, roughly 200 kilometers from home.

Then Moses saw an interesting bush off the trail a piece. He had to make a conscious decision to leave the beaten path, and probably leave behind for the moment his flock, his reason for existence at this time, in order to investigate.

I know that lurking in the pews at this moment are spouses who on a long drive somewhere have insisted upon leaving the road to investigate “something interesting.” After doing so, if the car does not break down, the conversation for hours follows, “Why did we stop there for that?”

One day I was running with athletes from Amherst College in Massachusetts, the home town of the poet Robert Frost. It was to be a short easy run that day, so somebody decided they wanted to run on the wooded trails behind the college. Then we came upon the legendary fork in the path, and somebody said, “Let’s go this way, we’ve never gone down it before and it looks interesting.” It was obvious the path was much less taken, and finally when our interest had waned it took us an exhausted 45 extra minutes to finally find our way home. As long as someone from that run was still at the school, that path was identified in warning tones as “the black hole of Calcutta.”

Moses did go off the road, and it made all the difference. The faith of the majority of the planet’s population today relies upon a lonely shepherd, starved for human contact, going off the conventional path to see a bush which even today we cannot describe in sensible terms. There is a bush in Israel known for its brilliant red blossoms and some have suggested that the hungry, dehydrated and exhausted Moses may have seen fire in one of those interesting bushes for which we have halted our own trips.

God is not conventional and prefers non-conformity to human expectations to do the most important things. The Lord did nothing until seeing that Moses had turned aside to investigate, until he had interrupted his routine and his normal cautions.

You may want to argue about how the unburning up bush operated, but the world cannot argue about what Moses heard. “Here I am!” he answered the voice calling his name. It was the Lord God who told this confused and failed human being about God’s own heartaches, hearing the cries of the oppressed Israelites in Egypt. God unveiled Godself in the context of a desire for justice. Yes, God would go on to give a name to Moses, I Am That I Am. God is the one who calls the worlds into existence, who is the ground of all being. But that’s academic stuff, as important as it may be. Who is this God who grasps Moses and tells him to liberate the people of Israel? The God who suffers with the suffering. Who does he send? A mixed-up semi-orphan exiled murderer who wanders irresponsibly where he probably shouldn’t have. And no Charlton Heston was Moses, so all those great defiant speeches to Pharaoh were stuttered in relay through his brother Aaron.

God seldom touches us in spectacular ways. We want to establish our methods and routines to success. Books are written, seminars are given on the way to success. God rarely consults these books and seminars and speakers. God rarely consults the preachers of the Word, for that matter. Wherever we have decided God will not be, that’s where God will appear: in our dreary routine, in sights that catch the corner of our eye.

I knew of two churches who looking for a new minister had the opportunity to interview two different people. Both of them had a speech impediment and stuttered at times badly. Neither church decided they could seriously consider these men called to the ministry. Both churches declined sharply in later years, having decided not to have looked at a burning bush.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan