Exodus 3:1-22 (NAB)
1) Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
2) There an angel of the Lord appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed.
3) So Moses decided, “I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned.”
4) When the Lord saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.”
5) God said, “Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.
6) I am the God of your father,” he continued, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7) But the Lord said, “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering.
8) Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the country of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
9) So indeed the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have truly noted that the Egyptians are oppressing them.
10) Come, now! I will send you to Pharaoh to lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
11) But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt?”
12) He answered, “I will be with you; and this shall be your proof that it is I who have sent you: when you bring my people, you will worship God on this very mountain.”
13) “But,” said Moses to God, “when I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?”
14) God replied, “I am who am.” Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you.”
15) God spoke further to Moses, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites: The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever; this is my title for all generations.
16) Go and assemble the elders of the Israelites, and tell them: The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to me and said: I am concerned about you and about the way you are being treated in Egypt;
17) So I have decided to lead you up out of the misery of Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.
18) Thus they will heed your message. Then you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him: The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent us word. Permit us, then, to go a three days’ journey in the desert, that we may offer sacrifice to the LORD, our God.
19) Yet I know that the king of Egypt will not allow you to go unless he is forced.
20) I will stretch out my hand, therefore, and smite Egypt by doing all kinds of wondrous deeds there. After that he will send you away.
21) I will even make the Egyptians so well-disposed toward this people that, when you leave, you will not go empty-handed.
22) Every woman shall ask her neighbor and her house guest for silver and gold articles and for clothing to put on your sons and daughters. Thus you will despoil the Egyptians.”
THE WALL OF INSECURITY
Over the next few weeks, we are going to be participating in a sermon series. This series will not just be something that we are doing here at St. Paul’s and Grace, but Pastor Skip will be leading Otterbein through the same series and when he is here, he will continue in this series as well. In addition to this, Pastor Jon Bausman at Aldersgate will be working through this series as well. These four churches will be walking down this journey together and I hope that you come to be encouraged by the words which will be spoken over the next couple of weeks.
So to start off I have a question for you. Have you ever thought about the purpose of walls? Walls define space; they identify an area and most likely say something about how that area is designated to be used. In our homes there are walls that define where we cook, dine, sleep, relax, park the car, shower, study, etc… Walls say something about what’s supposed to happen in a certain area and what isn’t. We don’t sleep in the kitchen, nor do we cook in the bathroom! Have you even noticed how older homes often have more walls than many newer homes? Designated areas in an older home are much more defined and structured, where the kitchen, dining room and living room each have four walls like a box. Whereas, in many newer homes there may be no walls separating the kitchen, dining room, and living room, creating more of a free flowing and open environment where the cook and the family and guests can all intermingle as dinner is being prepared! There’s more disclosure and it provides a greater opportunity for personal exchange and relationship building.
Friends, there are walls that our society has built that are much more serious than the walls in our homes. These are walls that divide people, drawing a definite line between the rich and the poor, the privileged and the under privileged, the free and the oppressed, the educated and the less fortunate. These types of social walls create sides and define who’s in and who’s out!
On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan spoke to the people of West Berlin at the base of the Brandenburg Gate, near the Berlin Wall. Due to the amplification system being used, the President’s words could also be heard on the Eastern side of the wall, the communist-controlled side. The address Reagan delivered that day is considered by many to have affirmed the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the fall of communism. On Nov. 9-11, 1989, the people of a free Berlin tore down that wall. Of all his speeches, Ronald Reagan’s “tear down that wall,” address may well become the “Great Communicator’s” best remembered.
Sometimes we in the church have allowed the walls to divide us and them. The walls of the church building become this buffer between the reality of a hurting imperfect world and our dream of personal wholeness and safety. We bunker down within these walls in an effort to withdraw from the pain of the world, when Jesus calls us to follow him into the very center of human hurt, embracing the very cross on which Jesus died. Sometimes we’ve become so infatuated with our walls that we go as far as to call the building (these walls of bricks and mortar) “the church”! Sisters and brothers, the facility where we meet, as stunningly beautiful as it is, is not the church… it’s where the church meets, where disciples are made and inspired, so that we would go out into the community and BE the church. You and I are the church, we are the church together and if what we do inside these walls never impacts and transforms the community in which we live; then my friends, we are no longer the church! For the primary purpose of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Therefore, when we are actively being the church beyond the walls of where the church meets, then we are living Christ’s greater vision of making disciples of Jesus Christ. And, if we’re making disciples of Jesus Christ, then the church embodies what it means to be the hope of the world!
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be looking at the different walls that we build up in our lives and in our church. To tear down these walls, we need first to understand what they are and how they are built. We will be looking at the walls of prejudice, insecurity, fear, oppression, complacency, and others. During this time, we will be challenged to put our faith into action and begin to seriously consider how we can make a difference in our very own back yard…in the city of York.
Today, we start off with our first wall. I think, however, that in doing so, we also need to look at the larger significance of this day. September 11, 2011. I am willing to bet that if I asked you what you were doing at this exact moment, ten years ago, you each would be able to tell me in explicit detail what you were doing, how your day changed due to the events around you, and how these past ten years were changed because of that day that we remember today.
My story isn’t all that exciting. I was a senior in college. Tuesday mornings I would get up and get ready for class. I had a class at 9:30. A close friend lived in the room right next to me and he also had a class at that same time in the same building. So, we would walk together. I knocked on his door and went in and found him on his computer. He grew up in Queens, his parents own a business in Manhattan and he had got an email from his dad telling him about the first plane. Bucknell did not allow television in the dorm rooms, so we were unaware of everything that was going on. Planes had hit the towers before, so we thought that it was a small private plane, and as sad as it was, it wasn’t something that caught our attention that much. We got to class and everything was normal. Class ended at 11am, at which point we would meet up again and head down to the student center for lunch. When we got there, we were surprised by how many people were there, gathered, in front of the television. It was at that point, we realized what had happened.
We ran back to the dorm to get our other two friends, who like normal college guys, were just getting out of bed. My uncle at that time, worked at the Pentagon. So, my first concern was talking to my family to see if he was ok. I talked to my parents, but no one was able to contact him as of that time. It wasn’t until late in the evening that we finally had confirmation that he was ok.
I was lucky; I didn’t know any of the thousands of people who lost their lives that day. Yet, I remember sitting in one of my classes. We didn’t do classwork that day; rather, the professors used the opportunity to talk about what was going on. I will never forget my one professor, an economist, and his reaction. He had taught a number of individuals who went on to work at the World Trade Center. He kept in touch with many of them. As we were sitting in his class, he started crying a little, realizing that it was very possible that some of them were among those who died. It was a day, none of us will ever forget, of that I am sure.
There is something else I remember doing that day, though. There wasn’t a whole lot that we could do at Bucknell to help, except for one thing. We could give blood. A bloodmobile was set up, and the line to give blood was long. It seemed as if everyone came that day to do the one thing that could be done. I tried to give, but I couldn’t. My junior year was spent abroad and, while having been in Argentina and Chile would not have been a problem. However, my second semester I spent in Barbados, and during that time, I took a week and went to Venezuela. Because of that, the Red Cross could not accept my blood.
My story is nothing heroic, but it is probably very common. I am sure that anyone here could tell me with just as much detail, what they did that day. That day we were left affected, we were changed, and our lives were altered in literally hundreds if not thousands of ways. I also remember what happened over the following weeks and months. I have to say, if there was anything positive to come out of that horrific day it was the unification of people all across this great land, it was our ability to band together, despite our differences to respond. Sometimes that response was someone putting on camouflage, and grabbing a gun and enlisting. Sometimes that response was the thousands of first responders all across the country that left their homes and travelled to New York or Washington or Shanksville to help in any way they could. Sometimes that response was a line of college students waiting to give blood. Sometimes that response was walking outside and talking to those neighbors who moved in two months ago, the ones that play their music too loud and don’t cut their grass often enough. And sometimes, that response was sitting down in a quiet room, and praying, praying to God to help us understand, help us cope, help us heal.
However you responded that day, the beauty was that we were one people. After two hundred years of History, this great land became one. For that day, in most cases, it didn’t matter what your color of skin was, it didn’t matter what language you speak, and it didn’t matter your age, your hometown, your political persuasion. It didn’t matter; we were all one and the same. What a beautiful thing that was.
We each reacted and we each responded in important ways, some of those ways were easier than others, but in most cases, those responses would not have happened had those planes never have crashed. Good can come out of evil. God can make miracles out of total despair.
But, after a while, things went back to normal. We started to build our walls back up. We stopped talking to our neighbors. We started seeing our political persuasions as more important than the needs of those around us. We started blaming everyone for everything again. The walls went back up.
With the tumbling walls of the Trade Towers, we started to remember our insecurity and we started building up all kinds of walls to preserve our freedoms.
Moses has had the same journey. He fled to the desert for his life, and he has built a good life there. In doing so, he built walls between where he was and the good life he left behind. He built up walls of distance, anonymity, and time. And those walls served their purpose for forty years!!!!! But one day, Moses takes out his father-in-laws flock. And that day, those walls come crumbling down.
When God shows up in a burning bush to call Moses out of the safe place he has been living, he turns into a bundle of insecurity. The Lord is calling Moses back to the cause that got him in trouble in the first place. The Lord is calling Moses back to seek freedom for his people. But, Moses doesn’t want to move out of his life, and he hides behind the wall of insecurity.
So now we come to the part of the scripture where we see God give Moses his mission, his call. God doesn’t just tell Moses to go do this. He explains the need to Moses and gives Moses the chance to get behind it. He tells Moses about the suffering of the people of Israel and how he has heard this suffering and is going to act on their behalf. When God calls us he prepares us for this by making the need known to us. He gets excited about making a difference. He fills us with a passion for that which he sends us to. If he is calling us to mission work, he fills us with a passion for the lost. If he is calling us to ministries of compassion and justice, he fills us with a passion for the poor and the weak. If he is calling us to work with children, he fills us with a passion for the young.
A few years ago a movie came out called Amazing Grace. The movie is about William Wilberforce and his crusade in 18th century Britain to end the slave trade. William felt that God called him to this mission and he worked at it year after year of failure and frustration. He almost died because the mission he was on made him so sick. And many of those who he worked with including a black former slave minister, Equiano, died before the mission was realized. It makes me wonder, does God call you to something that he won’t equip you for? I don’t believe so. I believe that God does equip us with every good gift we need to fulfill the mission he has called us to. Sometimes we might not see the results of what he is working through us, but at the same time, God doesn’t send us out there on our own just to watch us fail. God gave Moses the things he needed to lead the people of Israel. He gave William Wilberforce what he needed to put an end to the slave trade in Britain. He will give you what you need to do what he asks of you.
But we, like Moses, can argue with him about this. We can make excuses. We’re too old, we’re too young, we don’t know what we’re doing, nobody will take us seriously, we’ve already got too much going on in our lives with work and family, we cannot commit to something else, anyway that’s the pastor’s job, isn’t it? The list of excuses can go on and on. But if God is really calling us to a ministry, the excuses will not last. I have had to deal with God’s calling in ways that I could not have imagined. I have talked to a lot of other ministers about their calling. One thing I hear is that they fought and fought and fought against that calling. They talk about how God eventually wore them down and here they were in ministry. Their stories were always told as “don’t let this happen to you” stories. There is no pride in their struggle with God. It is not something that they are happy they did. They all wish they had given in to God’s will sooner. They wish they hadn’t spent so much time arguing with God.
But, sometimes, God calls us to other opportunities that are not traditional pastoral ministry. We may be called to ministry within our church, within our community, within our families. This ministry looks different for each of us. What is God calling for you to do? Don’t believe for a second that God is done with you. He still has a use for each of us. And don’t believe that he only calls some of his children to ministry. We are all called to lives to lives of ministry in all we do. So what is God calling you to? How does he want you to serve him? How are you able to serve? Open yourself up to God’s call. Listen to see where he might send you. And when he calls, follow.
This is the hardest part. This is when that wall of insecurity is the hardest to scale over.
Moses realized that he had no option but to go where God led. He argued. He tried to keep that wall from falling down. He said, I can’t convince Israel that I was chosen. I can’t speak in public. I can’t convince the Pharaoh to let them go free. I am not the right person. Pick someone else. Pick anyone else. Pick anyone but me. Moses is insecure. He doesn’t believe he can do what God knows he can do.
But, Moses discovered that as God called him to ministry, God provided his resources for him in ministry. God will do the same for you.
The Lord moves Moses into the security of his presence by lavishing his grace on him, and filling his heart to overflowing, so Moses can take his eyes off himself and put them on the needs of others, in the same way that Paul calls the Philippians to find a secure place in Christ through a Christ graced attitude, authority, and activism.
Moses has a long way to go, but he goes. He goes because God has moved Moses out of having no one but himself into a life built on the Lord as his life and his salvation.
We all suffer from this wall of insecurity. We suffer from it and yet we continue to build it up. It is shameful to us to show our own insecurity, but in reality, it should not be at all. Think of one of the greatest gifts that God can give. A baby, a newborn baby. You hold a newborn in your arms and marvel at this little ball of beauty and perfection.
Think about this new baby though. This new baby relies on parents and siblings and others for every need and want that it has. Parents supply those needs, and we do it with an internal joy because that is our job. We are happy when we can supply our babies with that which they need to survive and thrive.
Our relationship with Christ is the same, my friends. When we depend on God and go to him with our insecurities, he relishes that and supplies our needs. The loving parent of us all.
Today, as we remember the horrific events of ten years ago, let us remember too that God calls us to respond to Him by working together, by BEING the church in the community where we live, by LOVING those around us, by HELPING everyone we can, and by RESPONDING to Him and each other. In this way, we come to know that with him, anything is possible. Anything is possible when we live WITH others around us, and THROUGH Him and his call to each of us.
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