Recognizing the Burning Bush Exodus 3: 1 15 Austin Carty

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1 1 Recognizing the Burning Bush Exodus 3: 1 15 Austin Carty First Presbyterian Church Greensboro, North Carolina July 27, 2014 A man goes for a walk with his father in law s goats and low and behold he stumbles upon a talking, burning bush. So goes perhaps the most recognizable story in the entire Bible. Many of us, I d imagine, retain from our childhood vivid mental images of this story: images of a cartoonish, bearded Moses, staff in hand, eyes wide with wonder as he beholds a blazing bush. It is an iconic story, and it captures a hugely significant moment in the history of the Israelite people. But here s what I want us to ponder this morning: We recognize the story; but do we recognize the burning bush? And to really approach this question, I think it is vital that we ground the story in its proper context. Here, in this iconic moment, as Moses encounters the burning bush, we are at a juncture in the Israelite history where much, much important back story has already taken place. First, of course, there is Adam and Eve, who are created by God and they are called to a very specific purpose: They are called to love God, to love one another, and to take care of creation. Well Adam and Eve make a slight mess of things, and so too does their son Cain, and so too do the subsequent generations that follow them until, after a worldwide flood, a lone survivor named Noah and his immediate family are commissioned by God to do the very same thing that Adam and Eve were originally called to do: They are called to love God, love one another, and to take care of creation. Very quickly, though, as the story goes, everything goes downhill again, until one day some hundreds of years later God calls a man named Abraham: calls him to leave his homeland leave behind his security and his identity and everything he s ever known in order to go to an undisclosed place that God will show him. And through him, so God promises, all nations of the earth will be blessed on his account. So Abraham goes, and, late in life Abraham is blessed with a son named Isaac. Isaac, in turn, fathers a son named Jacob. And Jacob, who is given the name Israel by God ultimately becomes the father of thirteen sons, the youngest of whom is named Joseph. As Neil showed us last week in a wonderful sermon, Joseph s twelve brothers, envious of their father s preferential love for Joseph, conspire to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt, where Joseph ultimately becomes a high ranking figure in Pharaoh s court, being given charge over the whole nation.

2 2 Many years after selling Joseph, due to a famine in Israel, the brothers come to Egypt hoping for mercy and help, whereupon Joseph, recognizing his brothers, forgives them. Soon, all of the brothers, along with their father Jacob, move down to Egypt with Joseph, where Joseph continues to hold considerable influence. And the book of Genesis concludes with Joseph, aged 110, passing away in Egypt. Then, Exodus, the book that immediately following Genesis, picks up the story some 400 years later, and quite a bit has changed in those ensuing 400 years. We are told in the first verses of Exodus that, eventually, a new king had come to power in Egypt, a king who knew nothing about Joseph. And due to that king s fear of the Israelites rising population and power, that king enslaved all of the descendants of Jacob, of Israel. Thus, as the book of Exodus begins, the Israelite people have been oppressed as slaves for 400 years, subject to horrific working conditions and inhumane treatment. Enter a character named Moses: a young boy born at a time when Pharaoh has decreed that all newborn Hebrew males must be immediately put to death. But, Moses mother, not wanting her son to be killed, puts him in a basket and sends him down the Nile River, where he is ultimately found and brought home by Pharaoh s daughter, thus being raised in Pharaoh s palace, treated like a son, and being party to all the attendant privileges that such a station provides. One day, though, Moses, now a grown man, sees one of the Egyptian slave masters inhumanely mistreating one of the Hebrew slaves, and Moses, suddenly having his eyes opened, suddenly recognizing the suffering of those around him, suddenly recognizing that, in truth, he was a Hebrew himself, just like these people. He in this moment impulsively strikes down the offending Egyptian and kills him. Terrified, he then immediately buries the body and hopes no one will find out. However, a few days later, Moses sees two Hebrews arguing with one another and, inserting himself into their altercation, one of the quarreling Hebrews hisses at him: What do you care? Or are you going to kill us the way you killed that Egyptian? At this moment Moses decides to flee Egypt, fearful that if the Hebrews know what he s done then certainly word will get back to Pharaoh. Now, wandering alone in the desert outside of Egypt, feeling aimless and directionless and unmoored, knowing himself to be without home or security, suddenly having to reconceive his sense of personal identity, here Moses meets a Midianite woman and marries her. And one day, while he is tending his new wife s father s flock of goats in the desert, he suddenly sees God in a burning bush. And thus completes the fastest, most incomplete timeline ever recounted of the Hebrew timeline. But I take us through all of this important backstory and context for a purpose, in order to say this: Moses, though he doesn t realize it at this juncture in our story, is part of a call that began on day one with Adam, a call that can be traced through to Noah and to Abraham and to Moses and to the prophets and to Jesus and right through to us today at First Presbyterian Greensboro.

3 3 In other words, this is not a call Moses received. This is the call. And as we ll soon see, this same call Adam received and Noah received and Abraham received and Moses received is precisely the same call we, each of us, receive today. But I am getting way ahead of myself. So, what do you say we look closely at the text, itself: Moses is out pursuing his day to day activity, nothing special happening, not pondering God or deeper things, when all of a sudden he sees a burning bush. Turning aside to observe this spectacle, he suddenly sees God appear in the burning bush and say, I am God, the God of your ancestors, of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. Now, Moses, we might infer, is dumbstruck. But the text doesn t tell us this, though. In fact, we aren t given any narration regarding Moses reaction; instead, all we see is God continue to speak. And what God says is hugely significant. God says: I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, to a land flowing with milk and honey. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. Then, directly after this, after God tells Moses that he, Moses, will be responsible for leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, out of bondage, Moses asks, Who am I that they will listen to me? And furthermore, by the way, who am I to say you are? They will surely ask me your name. To which God responds: I am who I am. This is my name forever, and this is my title for all generations. There s our passage. There s the story of Moses and the burning bush. A colorful story? Certainly. A vital piece in the Biblical timeline? Absolutely. But oh what we d missed to leave it at this, because there is so much more going on just below the surface of this highly recognizable story. So much is revealed to us in this story about God s character and God s purposes and God s call to us today. Here we have Moses, having suddenly recognized the suffering of those around him, having then experienced subsequent suffering himself, suddenly then, while minding his own business, experiencing God appear to him in a burning bush. Then, upon recognizing God in the bush, Moses hears God call him to do something very specific: To lead God s people which are Moses s own people out of slavery and into freedom. A freedom that is symbolized by land: by land that is said to be flowing with milk and honey. It is important to note, this vision of land teeming with milk and honey this in an intentional metaphor for abundant life. Moses is being called to deliver them from bondage to freedom, from deadness to life. So, upon receiving this hugely important assignment, Moses asks what I consider to be a logical question: Who am I that I can affect such change? Who am I that I can spearhead a movement that will deliver people from bondage to freedom, deliver people from deadness to life?

4 4 To which God replies: I will be with you. In other words: It s not you who will do it; it is I who will do it in and through and with you. You are not responsible for the change that will be affected; you just have to be willing be an instrument. To which Moses nods, shuffles his feet back and forth I made this part up, by the way and then says, Alright, well, surely they are going to ask me who you are. If it s not going to be up to me, they are surely going to want to know who it is up to. They are going to want to know who you are. So who am I supposed to say you are? To which God responds, in perhaps my favorite line of the entire Bible: I am who I am. I am who I am. Let s really consider that name, the language used. Here, in the statement I am who I am, God claims to be both subject and object. Meanwhile, the present perfect tense of the verb to be demonstrates a state of always being in the present. The eternal Present. The eternal Now. In other words, with this name, God here claims to be all there is. And all there ever was. And all there ever will be: I am who I am. It s a great turn of phrase, isn t it? But what does it mean? In perhaps the most famous of Shakespeare s lines, Hamlet ponders aloud to himself, to be or not to be, that is the question. And to what is he referring? Living. He is referring to life. Should I live or should I die. Should I be or should I not be. Thus, to be is to be alive. Being is life. And God here is saying to Moses, you want to know who I am? I ll tell you who I am: I am Being. I am Life. In other words, the reason I am able to call your people out of bondage and deliver them to life is because I am life. Or put differently: God is the ground and source of Being. There is no life outside of God. Moses and by extension the Hebrews, and by extension the Egyptians, and by extension we, ourselves cannot create nor sustain life. We can receive life, we can end life, we can reject life, and we can communicate life. But we cannot create nor sustain life. So to tie it all together, this is Exodus 3 in a nutshell: God appears to Moses amid his everyday experience, and calls him to go communicate life to his suffering brothers and sisters. Calls him to go set free all of those who are in bondage.

5 5 So, I set all of this up so as to ponder a very specific question this morning: does God not ask the very same thing of each one of us? Or, asked differently: Do we not experience our own burning bushes? Sure, I ve never been visited by a burning bush. I ve never had a single moment where God s audible voice spoke to me much less spoke to me from inside a flaming plant. It just has not happened to me. But this doesn t mean I haven t had the exact same experience Moses had. Experiences like Moses s experiences where God appears in everyday, ordinary things this is called hierophany, a big fancy two dollar word that simply means The experience of God in the ordinary. It refers to when we re going about our everyday lives, minding our own business, our minds not set on God at least not set in any focused, specific way when, bam, something happens to where our minds, for whatever reason, suddenly sense God s presence palpable in the moment. Case in point: About a month ago I was sitting on the front porch with my 10 month old daughter, Ada, and I was reading to her from The Very Hungry Caterpillar a book which I have memorized, by the way when Ada, as Ada is prone to do, lost interest in the book and started looking off across our front yard. So, I stopped the story, and I held her while she looked around. And I too stared across our yard, and as I did, I noticed a blue jay perched in my neighbor s oak tree across the street. And no sooner had I taken note of the bird, when it swooped off its perch and, after a few flaps of its wings, it proceeded to just glide across my own yard, ultimately perching in a tree not fifty feet from where I was sitting. And suddenly, I sensed God s presence in the moment. Here s what I mean by that. I was just holding my daughter Ada and reading to her. I hadn t been thinking about God at all in the previous moment. Sure, I suppose I m a pretty spiritual guy, but I assure you I don t chalk every beautiful thing I see up to God s presence. No, there was just something about the effortlessness of this bird s flight, something about the pure gracefulness with which it flew those couple hundred feet, that made me feel somewhere deep down that God was present in the moment. Now, here me. I don t doubt for a second that God is always present. My whole approach to life is built on a theological foundation that tells me that God is always present. But I don t always sense it. Better yet: I don t always recognize it. But my point is that it happens. It s not always a burning bush as I said, for me it s never been a burning bush. It s never been scales falling off my eyes life Paul on the way to Damascus but there are most certainly moments in my life many moments when something happens, and, whereas I wasn t thinking about God the moment before, suddenly now I am. And this is hierophany, and it s no different than God appearing to Moses inside a burning bush.

6 6 But here s the greater point: When God appears to us in these hierophanies, when God nudges us and whispers, this is me, here I am, I am with you. In these moments God is calling us to something very specific: calling us to the same thing that began with Adam and that was formalized and covenanted with Abraham and that was seen through by Moses and that was perfected by Jesus: God is calling us to go and communicate hope to those who are suffering, to communicate freedom to the those who are in bondage, to communicate life to those who are mired in deadness. You see, we never know how our presence, our joy, our love, our kindness, our compassion, our shared vulnerability we never know how these things might be life to those around us. We never know how a kind word, a listening ear, a willingness to sit with someone in their pain, a willingness to not always have to be right, to not always have to have the answer, a willingness to smile and say hi and recognize and validate someone we never know how that might communicate life to them. And in most cases, we never know the extent to which those around us are in bondage never know the extent to which those around us are suffering. We never know how enslaved other people are to insecurity, to fear of failure, of rejection, of not being in control, of not measuring up, of being insignificant. We often make the mistake of thinking that because someone is successful, because someone dresses nicely, because someone is attractive, because someone has nice things, because someone has connections, because someone seems confident and polished and put together, because someone smiles a lot we often make the mistake of thinking this means they are not suffering. Or thinking that this means they are not in bondage. But it doesn t mean that. No, these are fears and insecurities that eat away at all of us. We are all naturally in bondage to these things some of us more than others, some of us suffering from certain of them more than others of these, but still we are all, to some degree, enslaved by these things. And here s why: because they are hallmarks of deadness. Each of these things I just named is antithetical to life. Rather than being life, they steal life. These things oppress life, and they enslave life and they stamp out life. And these things exist because, apart from God, there is no life. I am who I am, God says. In other words, anywhere we look for meaning, for joy, for fullness, apart from God will fail. Not because God doesn t want us to find life anywhere else, but because God is all the Life there is. I am who I am. Or as the writer George MacDonald puts it: God says to humankind: you must be strong with my strength and blessed with my blessedness, for I have no other to give you. And here s the beautiful thing about the Christian story: though we cannot create nor sustain our own lives, God through Christ and by the Holy Spirit has given us the awesome power, and opportunity, and responsibility to communicate it.

7 7 Just as Moses is asked to deliver the people from bondage, so too are we asked to deliver one another from bondage. And just as Moses is promised that God will be working in and through him, so too are we promised this very thing: assured, just like Moses, that it isn t incumbent on us to be good enough, smart enough, happy enough, funny enough, articulate enough, likable enough to affect the change. That, instead, it will be God in us and with us and through us who will affect the change. It begins, just as it did with Moses, with our recognizing the suffering, recognizing the full humanity of those around us. Then, just as it did with Moses, it requires our stepping outside of our comfort zones, requires our willingness to re examine our own identity and re conceive who we are and what we may be capable of. And then, anytime we are going about our day to day activities, such as sitting with our daughters on our porch or tending our father in law s goats in the desert, and suddenly we see something a bird s flight or a burning bush something that grabs our attention and turns our thoughts to God. In that moment we can be certain that we are being called to do this very thing that Moses was being called to do: That we are being called to be instruments whose joy, and peace, and happiness, and kindness, and compassion, and hospitality make those who are around us have days that are just a little brighter that we make their loads just a little easier to bear. Recognize that we are being called to see a vulnerability and brokenness that we share with our brothers and sisters and help move them from deadness to life. In other words: These seemingly mundane experiences these are hierophanies. These are burning bushes. These are calls to go and communicate God s love to those around us calls to communicate life to those who are suffering calls to set one another free. These hierophanies are everywhere. All day, every day, bushes are aflame all around us. We recognize the story. Would that we recognize the burning bush.