When
I was just a preacher-ling, before I went to seminary, I preached at my old
church in Starkville, Mississippi, where the buffalo play and the bulldogs
roam, and nary a cross word is said to anyone.
And in the sermon, which probably wasn’t much of one, actually—and don’t ask me if anything’s changed,
please—and in the sermon I was saying something about how some weird things had
been happening to me lately, how folks had come up to me I barely know, and ask
when I was going to seminary, and stuff like that, and I saw my friend Roberta
grinning like a mad-woman in the back-center where she always sat with her
husband Ed, and I didn’t quite know why she was doing that, and when I asked
her she said. “When God is after you,
every bush is burning” Every bush is
burning . . . and what she meant by that is if you’re under the gun, if God is
trying to call you into the ministry, then everything in your life will point
to it.
Even
if it doesn’t. Because we all know we
can, well, read things into things, that’s why Paul said to test the spirits .
. . what he meant was that we should carefully practice discernment to see what
things come from God and what things come from us, or some other non-God source
like a Chevy commercial or a politician’s sound bite. I used to laugh at some of my acquaintances
back in the day who’d say—dramatically, of course—I prayed to the Lord that he give me a sign, I said
Lord? If you want me to buy that
Cadillac Seville, just give me a sign, and then . . . and then . . . the light
changed! And I knew it was a sign, praise Jesus . . . well, that’s
over-the-top, of course, but you can see the point: When every bush is burning, you gotta find
the one where you won’t get burnt.
Not
that it was a problem for ol’ Moses . . . there was only one burning bush out
there in the wilderness, where he’d fled after that little, ah, dust-up in Egypt that left a man
dead. He was a wanted man back in the
land of the Pharaoh, or at least he used to be, he’d been a long time in the
desert, and he’d married the daughter of a Midianite sheep-farmer, and maybe
they’d forgotten about him back home . . . and here he is, herding sheep,
walking up and down the mountainous wilderness without even the benefit of an SUV, or even a measly little trail bike,
and he comes up on this bush that’s literally burning, but it isn’t being consumed.
And
I’ll bet he looked around for the film crew, for Steven Spielberg maybe or
George Lucas, or something, because it had to not be too common even in those
days for bushes to burn but not be consumed . . . but there it was, burning
away, and Moses says “I must turn aside and see this great sight” literally seeing “and see why the bush is not
burned up!” And in just three verses,
the Hebrew verb for seeing—or one of it’s derivatives—is used seven times, and
now it’s God’s turn, God sees that Moses sees, and calls out to Moses from the
bush—and I thought it was an angel, but it turns out to be God—the voice says
“Moses, Moses!” God says, and Moses says: “Here I am.”
And
there’s a whole lot of seeing going on, around that mountain called Horeb: God
sees that Moses sees, that he is looking, and he speaks to him. Seeing is important to the enterprise of call
. . . and make no mistake, this is a
call story. Look at the wording. Does it remind you of something? When God called to Samuel in the night, he
said “Samuel!” and it took Samuel three times before he said “Here I am.” God came to Samuel in the night, he was
asleep; but it’s broad daylight for Moses, there on the mountainside, and with
a visual aid as well . . . and Moses looked and saw that it was burning . . .
and he turns aside—another important verb in this verse—he turns aside and looks
at the bush, and only when the Lord sees that Moses had seen, that he’d turned
aside, does he call out to him.
And look at what’s going on here . . . it’s
clear that this call thing is a transaction, an interaction between God and
Moses. It’s clear that it involves God
revealing God’s self to Moses—the angel of the Lord appears to Moses in a bush
that is burning, but it is not consumed.
But it’s equally clear that Moses has to see it, to observe it—that verb
is used seven times, after all—he has to be open to it. And that’s not easy to do, when you’re busy
herding your sheep, when you’re busy living life, it’s not easy to see God
wherever you are, but that’s a key to knowing God, to discerning God’s will:
first you have to see it.
The
Benedictines are past-masters at this sort of thing. They practice it in their daily lives, it’s
built into the structure of their days. And
the first thing they understand is that if you’re not quiet, you can’t hear
anything. And so not only do they have
the daily office—periods of corporate, chanted prayer four to seven times a
day—not only do they pray to God, but they schedule time when all they do is
listen. They have several hours a day
where they practice some form of contemplative prayer, usually lectio divina, divine
reading, in which they open their hearts to the whisperings of God, listening
to what God would have them do in and with their lives . . . it is a
deeply-held Benedictine belief that God is in all things, that God speaks to us
through all things, that there doesn’t have to be a burning bush, and they are
quite intentional in looking for God everywhere. This is culminated on a daily basis in their
nightly office, said in private, in which they chant the Song of Simeon, in
Latin the nunc dimitis: Now, Lord, dismiss your servant in peace, for my eyes
have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all the
peoples . . . and as they chant it, as they sing about their eyes having seen
salvation, they reflect back over the day just ended, consciously looking for just
where they have seen it . . .
And
as for us, who run like the proverbial chickens all day long, who are
over-programmed and near-to-being overwhelmed, I think it’s even more important
for us to be intentional about discerning our calls, about listening and
looking for God . . . it’s even more important for us today—who aren’t likely
to see a literal fire that does not
consume—it’s even more important that, like Moses, we turn aside from our sheep
herding to be open to God’s will.
And
when Moses did so, when he stopped and looked at that burning bush, that’s when
he heard the voice of God issuing forth from it, and it no less than changed
his life . . . that’s what encounters with God do, you know, change lives . . .
and that’s a frightening thing in and of itself, isn’t it? It sure was in Moses’ case: God speaks to him out of that burning bush,
and he says I have seen—there’s that verb again, translated as “observed”
here—I have seen the misery of my people, I have heard their cry, and I know
their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians. God has done what God does, seen and known,
and now God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do, and that is to save them. The Lord sees and knows and delivers, that’s
what the Lord does. “I have come down to
bring them up our of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with
milk and honey, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the
Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites”—and I’ve always wondered how the
Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the
Jebusites felt about it, but that’s another sermon—God sees and knows and comes
to deliver.
And
ol’ Moses must have been groovin’ along, thinking “Well, this is pretty cool, my people have needed delivering for quite
awhile now,” but then God says “So come! I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my
people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
And you can almost hear the screeeeech of the breaks, almost see the
look of panic come over Moses’ face . . . after all the seeing and turning
aside and knowing and coming and delivering, Moses has gotta do something! He’s gotta respond, and it panics him . . .
This is more than he bargained for, more than “Go ye therefore to church and
sing Amazing Grace and pray real hard” or “teach ye therefore Sunday school for
an hour a week.” Here he’s been a good
little boy, he’s turned aside and seen, and what does it get him? A whole new life.
And
he doesn’t really like it. He starts
sputtering like Woody Allen on a first date “Who am I,” he says, “that I should
go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” You can almost see him loosening his collar,
it’s getting a little hot around here, and besides: he’d fled Egypt all those
years ago, something about a dead Egyptian, remember? And now God wants him to go back?
Why couldn’t God just leave him with the wife and kids, and the
executive position he’d achieved in his
father-in-law’s sheep-herding organization?
Why all the change?
But
that’s what happens when we listen to God, when we turn aside and see . . . God
is likely to change our lives.
Discerning the will of God isn’t a safe little exercise, God doesn’t
say, or doesn’t always say, at least:
“That’s nice, now run along to church like a good little boys and girls.” Instead God says: “Come, I will send you. I will upend your lives, change the way you
do business, pull you out of your comfort zone.”
And
do you see? Presbyterians aren’t just
whistling Dixie about the doctrine of cooperation with God . . . we really are
God’s hands and feet on earth, and I hope you see something else as well: this
discerning of God’s will for our lives, this turning-aside and seeing, is risky
business, because it has a way of changing lives.
Of
course, churches are called just as are individuals, just as Moses was back in
the day. And we’re tempted to consign
this discernment, this seeing, to a
season, to a time, and say “first we look and see, and then we go out and do,”
but I don’t think it works that way . . . Look how it was for Moses: he didn’t just up and do
God’s will, liberating his people . . . I mean, he did and all, it throughout
the process he kept seeking guidance from the Lord. And I think churches today, like their
Benedictine sisters and brothers, must always be looking, always seeing what God wants them to do. We must be in a constant state of
discernment, a constant state of looking for the next burning bush.
But
you know what? God tells us the same
thing as Moses: when there is a
burning bush in front you, indeed when every bush is burning, I will be with
you. I will be with you. The God of Abraham and Isaac and Paul of
Tarsus . . . of Augustine and Calvin and Martin Luther King . . . of your grandfather
and mother and aunts and uncles . . . your God, the great I am, will be with
you. Amen.
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