Barefoot Moses

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

August 31, 2008

Text: Exodus 3: 1-15

Did you read the article about the fact that most cows, anywhere on the planet, tend to settle facing north? Researchers are not sure why they do. And I am not sure why the researchers care!

I am sometimes asked about my call to pastoral ministry. All I can say is that when I made that decision and set my feet on the path to pastoral ministry, I felt I was headed true north. It took me a while to feel this way. I had imagined myself doing other things.

We never know for sure God’s ways with us.

I have always loved words. (It must run in the genes: when I asked my Grandfather which subject he liked most in school, his answer was “spelling.”) For some reason, there were many novels about newspaper journalists, and this was my first remembered dream job. The closest I got was as a “devil’s apprentice” one summer, melting and pouring lead into an old linotype machine and proofing the articles.

Later, I longed to be the next Bob Cousy or Bob Petit---equivalents to Larry Bird or Michael Jordan in our day. Basketball was my obsession. While I was in junior high, our high school team made it to the regional finals, playing in the old North Texas State University Gym, and I was hooked. I wanted to shoot and dribble like Bobby Derryberry, the star of that team. I practiced on an outdoor dirt court, trying to shoot just like he did---- after school until dark; all summer long; even in the ice and snow of winter. My friends and I would find open doors into gyms when we could and play until they caught us and ran us out. My basketballs were routinely worn smooth in three months.

Basketball was also my ticket to acceptance in a school where the manly heroes were either cowboys or athletes.

In the background of my life was the Methodist church. I did not know life without church. I loved to be with my friends and I became fascinated early on with music and preaching.

I learned every hymn in the old Cokesbury Hymnal,  the most High Church songbook we had. When the pastor called for hymn selections at the evening service, I delighted in choosing the hymns that were least known by others, so I could hear something new. Most of the praying that I did in my childhood was in the act of singing hymns.

But the highlight of church was the sermon. Well, not always! I was drawn to the art of preaching, though I could not have identified this at the time. I saw that the preacher was an artist who, when he was on track, brought us into a whole other dimension, a strange new world which touched the hearts of people. (I would later learn that the discipline that fascinated me was rhetoric.)

I have friend who, upon first hearing an organ, was hooked for life!

On the other hand, I was painfully shy. I did not want anyone to single me out; I liked to blend into the crowd. Being noticed could make me run for cover.  Though I was drawn to the vocation of pastor, I could not envision myself speaking in front of others for love nor money.

I pursued basketball after high school, for one year of college ball. I entered college with a degree plan to be a coach. I was very reluctant to admit to anyone being drawn to pastoral ministry. I knew that people looked at preachers differently, as if they were not really human. I wanted no part of that. My faith had always been a struggle. I was not pious or “serious as a judge;” just timid. I could not imagine myself in the role of telling other people what they ought to believe or how to live. My interest in the Bible was for my sake, not others’ sakes. And, in my hometowns, preachers were not considered manly.

So, though I was feeling called to be a preacher, I did not believe I was equipped to be one.

There was no burning bush for me that tipped me over the edge into pastoral ministry----only an accumulation of conversations with pastors and teachers and a steady exposure to Christian teaching and worship and fellowship. I wanted to be able to tell others about God and Jesus. I did not know much else, but I knew that much.
Then one November day in 1960,  I rode with my dad who was on his way to buy a pack of cigarettes. We had just rounded the corner of NW Fifth Avenue, headed east on NW 9th Street when I told him that I thought I wanted to be a preacher. There was a silence long enough to get us to NW 4th Avenue. Then my dad said that being a preacher was a tough life and had I remembered uncle Bill had tried it and left it when he was sent to May, Texas and the church couldn’t pay him and he had to borrow money just to feed his kids?  I said I remembered, but I wanted to do it anyway. He said OK, if that was what I wanted to do, it was alright with him. It was my soft-spoken dad’s way of blessing me, I think.

I steeled myself for the responses of my relatives and friends. I was not ready for a pedestal. I was unable to pray eloquently in public---an instant test at family gatherings. At that time, and ever since, I have never felt at ease in the role of clergy as generally regarded. I did not want to be a “preacher:” I just wanted to be myself doing that which I found to be fun, and which I believed was in line with the way God had made me. I was no one special; my heroes in the faith have almost all been lay persons, then and now.

All I knew for sure was that when on January 2 of 1961 I headed my 1950 Ford west toward McMurry College and Abilene, I knew within myself that I was heading true north. For all of my fears and doubts, I knew my calling.
I would be a pastor. This was my calling.  God help me.

The story of Moses has always been one of my favortites, for reasons that may be obvious.

Moses stands there with his shepherd’s crook, minding his father in law’s sheep. (Didn’t even have his own sheep!) He is a long way from his home in Egypt. Who knows what kinds of gods there were in this desolate country.

A thorn bush. A persistent fire: Not very spectacular as divine miracles go, but enough to pique Moses’ curiosity. Then the call of his name, twice. Like the call of a mother to her child across the street playing. God knows Moses. No, “hey, fellow,” or “hey shepherd.”

And Moses answers. How would he have said “Here I am?”  It would not be a volunteering, “Here I am! Send me!” like Isaiah.  Not yet! But it would be more like an “OK, I am listening! Who are you and what do you want?”

Now in those days, who knows which “god” might be addressing one.  There were hundreds so-called gods and spirits in Egypt. Maybe a “jinny,” some kind of supernatural being conjured up by a magician?

But this God speaks with authority, not as the scribes. Sandals off the feet: a sign of humility, perhaps, or hospitality?

Old Jacob we remember, fleeing from his brother Esau, saw the ladder in his dream, awoke and said, “Surely God is in this place and I did not know it!” Holy ground is meeting place ground. And it can be anywhere. Doesn’t have to be in a church. God seems to be partial to deserts---maybe because there is so little out there to distract us. Deserts in Arizona: miles and miles of nobody else! But there is no place that God cannot be.

This is not any god. God self-identifies---sort of. And God says it four times to drive home: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” (And again says the same later.)

“God” is not an abstract idea for people of the Jewish or Christian faiths. When someone asks if we believe in God, we have to say to them, “Which god do you have in mind?  And we might as well say “I believe in the one God, the God of my father and mother, the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac, of Jacob and Leah and Rachel, and of Adam and Eve…… and of Mary and Joseph and the God of Jesus…..to name just a few! I believe in a God who has dealing with us humans, comes here, has done things, touched people, and laid out commandments, among other things!”

Then it says that Moses hides his face in fear!

Awe always comes first before intimacy with God. As in any relationship worth pursuing, the “other” is always known and mysterious. When we think we know them completely, watch out! And when we think we know God completely, duck! Hide your face in your hands. God cannot be for us unless God is wholly other than we are. Else why bother to listen?

So Moses is still and afraid, hands on his face and sandals to the side. Barefooted. The rocks beneath his feet remind him that he is human, mortal.

Then God gets to the heart of the matter. He is not just appearing to keep Moses company. God’s “heart” is heavy with grief and anger. “I have see, heard and know the afflictions, the cries and the sufferings of (who?) my people! I have come down here to deliver them and bring them up to a good and broad land.” I have not forgotten my promise to Abraham and Sarah.

There are those who say that we cannot bear to think of a God who suffers, that it is unseemly to have a God who feels pain. But you will have to take out lots of the Bible if you purge it of a feeling God.

Somehow, on the road from the Bible to us, philosophers took their god of omnipotence, omniscience and abstraction and superimposed that on the God of Abraham and his descendents.  But the God speaking to Moses is “deeply involved, deeply concerned with what happens in the world.” God descends, appears, like a daddy or mother whose kids are being bullied, to set things right for them. God is the Great Interrupter of status quo when people are being squashed, especially the people whose mission is for God’s will to be done in the whole earth.

And were there ever any more powerful words spoken to human beings than “Come!” (Come here, Moses!)  I had not heard the word before in the text until recently. God has poured out God’s soul (if we may speak this way!) and now invites Moses to “come to him.”

I learned much in college and seminary. I love books and especially books on God. But I know I can keep the ideas in the books at arm’s length. I thank God for the pleasure I have in reading words. Here, however, God is not just passing on information to Moses so he will know more. This is not a private seminar that God is conducting for Moses. “Come,” God says, “I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.”

Moses says “Who? Me?” As in, “If you are such a mighty God, then why not do it yourself, God?” Or, “Why bring me into it. Who am I?”

Anytime we preface our ID with a “I am just a…….whatever” we are selling ourselves short, especially if we are people of faith. Who knows who we are but God, truly; and who knows who we could be tomorrow, but God. God knows who Moses is, and has no illusions about his saintliness. But he also knows his gifts……just as God knows you and me, and us.

Now this story is not as much about Moses as it is about God. Moses is a mortal God has chosen. But the God who has chosen him is the delivering God. And all Moses needs to know, to believe, to trust to be so, is that God is with him. With him. Within him. By his side. Instructing him.

We are reminded of Jesus’ parting words to the disciples, “I will be with you until the close of the age.” In other words, as long as it takes. Who were these disciples except those who followed and then fled and then re-assembled to worship----and doubt. But if God is with them, they can handle what comes. “The grand intention of God has become a human responsibility.” ( Lec Com)

Moses does not say yes to this call, not at first. He has “come” to God---stayed in the conversation----but he is not sure about this mission.

“If,” Moses begins, (not when), “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them that the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask, ‘What is this god’s name,’ what shall I say?” (Whom do I say has sent me?)

Then God answers! Or not! Lots of ink has been split about what is meant. The Hebrew, I risk to say, is “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh,” variously translated as “I am who I am,” or “I will be who I will be.”

I like these explanations:

“God is being intentionally vague because it an aspect of God’s being to conceal his essence….God is known by the deeds God does. Or it is as if God said something like this:

“You ask to know my name and I will tell you: I am what I am, and I will be what I will be. And when you tell your people of this experience, tell them it is the same Yahweh they know about.”

Or, “I will be what tomorrow demands.” (Torah)

 Or this: “God is so completely unlike all other existing persons and things as to make comparisons meaningless. This is the God who generates, but who also stands outside, the spheres of generation and degradation.” (T for P)

On an old Smothers’ Brother show, they had a skit of Moses and God. When God says to Moses, “I am that I am,” to one of the brothers. He looks blank-faced and says, sheepishly, “Thanks for clearing that up.”

What Moses experiences, we, too have known. Elusive? God is; hidden, and yet close. And we live in this tension if we live by faith. (Unless we substitute for Yahweh a god of our own creation.)

The story for today ends before the conversation between God and Moses is over. (The old rabbis contend that the conversation went on for seven days!) Moses has many reasons why he is not the one for the job. And he never says he will take this assignment. Finally, he just goes. Maybe he knew that in a dialogue with God, you finally have to go or have no peace.

Frederick Buechner has written that “When God puts his hand on you, your troubles have just begun.” And we know what he means if we have ever just gone where we knew God was sending us.

But there will be satisfaction along with the troubles. Why? Because, if the calling fits, if we have been quiet enough to listen and to know ourselves and our gifts, and the needs to which we are sent, we will know that we are doing what God has put us on this earth for. It is self-fulfillment by being filled with God’s spirit.

Moses was never clergy. God calls every baptized person, for sure, and others in God’s freedom.

Moses’ call was to be God’s agent in liberating Israel from slavery. God knows, there are still people in all kinds of bondage today. And God does come down and says, “Come.” And then says “Go.” (It may be in a still small voice or any other way God chooses to get our attention.)

Sometimes we are called to go somewhere different or do something different than we have ever done. Sometimes God’s calling is to be a different kind of person in the places we live and work. God may call us to one vocation now and a different one later in life.

And though God will call us to give some things up, God does not call us to be miserable. We all have differing gifts and callings, the following of which should bring us deep joy even as we discipline ourselves to be prepared.

Gordon Cosby wrote, “God has not created a single person whose essence and uniqueness are not eternally needed. Longing for you and me, God will continue to reach out for us, as the shepherd searched for that one lost sheep, until we discover our charisma.”  If you need to write a poem, you’d better write it, even if you have to eat simply….If you need to write a book, you’d better write it. If you need to be with your child and just love her and let her know how important she is to you and God----even if it keeps you from your promotion---you had better do it. If you need to sing a song, sing. If you need to dance, dance. If you need to build an institution that will bring good jobs for others, or to foster a more just community, you’d better do it.  “Give yourself to whatever is your own creativity.”(“Calling Forth Gifts,” in By Grace Transformed, 1999. Adapted )

Again, Buechner: “What can we do that makes us gladdest, what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north and of peace……? Is it making something we hope like truth out of words? Or is it making people laugh or weep in a way that cleanses their spirits? I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we are made to answer with our lives…….And [God calls us also to] where we are most needed. In a world where there is so much drudgery, so much grief, so much emptiness and fear and pain, our gladness in our work is as much needed as we ourselves need to be glad.” (“The Calling of Voices”)

“If you love God, then your heart needs to be conformed and configured to God’ heart. You have to feel that way toward the world as well.” (Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., quoted in U.S. Catholic [uscatholic.org], January 2008, in “Context,” August, 2008, Part B.)

Jesus stood by the lakeshore and said to the fishermen, “Come, follow.” “I am going to do a great thing for my people. And guess who is going to help me.”

We are saved by grace, not as an end in itself, but for the greater glory of God. Keep your life open to God’s call. At least out of curiosity, stop and look and listen. You and God may have a lot to talk about.