Snakes and Complaints: Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent B

Have you ever been around someone who complained all the time? I have. It’s maddening. And the thing is, often grumblers have no sense of perspective. EVERYTHING is a grievance worthy of World War III to the kvetcher. I have known people who love to complain so much that they will complain to the empty air when those around them have stalked off and sworn to listen no more. They grumble just loud enough for their loved ones to still hear the griping, but not so loud that they can’t try to deny it if caught.

They grumble because everything is about THEM, and they have no perspective to see others who are suffering more. Nope, it all about meeeeeee. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Grumble, grumble, grumble. I mean, you don’t have to Pollyanna. But not everything is worthy of complaint. And it’s been one solid year since we were able to be together to worship together and have Eucharist around this altar. So God knows there have been plenty of opportunities to be not just sad, to be not just anxious, but also to grumble. But a little of that is to be expected.

Let’s face it, though, during the Exodus, those Israelites have been acting like petulant, faithless toddlers all through their time in wilderness, and that is an insult to toddlers everywhere. They have complained, and they have complained some more, and they’ve been impatient, and they have been faithless. They’ve made promises and broken them repeatedly.

And the thing is, when all you look for is what is wrong, all that you see is wrong. And the first few times they did it, God patiently tried to assuage them. Hungry? Here, eat the same bread the angels ate, and meanwhile, I’ll just have a few thousand quail drop down in front of you—all you gotta do is pluck ‘em, clean ‘em, and roast ‘em. Thirsty? Moses and Aaron will strike yon rock over there, and fresh water will come a gushing out.

Complaining and the lack of gratitude and perspective that come with it are a deadly poison to the soul. So no wonder then that poisonous snakes rise up among the people. It’s a symbol of the poison they have been loosing into the world rather than marveling at all the good things they do have: Family. Freedom. A return to their homeland. A God who cares for them again and again. In Moses, a leader willing to give up his own comfort for their sakes. And even though they claim that God has sent those snakes among them because God has finally had enough of the constant kvetching, I suspect that they knew that those snakes had sprung up from every disagreeable complaint that had fallen from their lips and gone splat like a lead balloon on the hard, rocky ground at their feet.

And it is often the case that in order to get well, you have to be able to name what made you sick, and evaluate what role you yourself might have played in your illness in the first place. So since their poisonous complaint set loose poisonous snakes among them, the solution is to fasten a visual representation of what is attacking them. In other words, God orders that the Israelites have to look on the image of their own guilt and ingratitude. They have to look upon that poisonous snake, and realize that the real problem was their own poisoned hearts and souls. Admitting that they had set the snakes loose among themselves was the crucial first step to healing and health.

In our gospel, Jesus compares himself to that shiny snake lifted up on a pole, and that sounds just as bewildering a comparison. Jesus is hardly a poisonous reptile. But that bronze or fiery snake was placed on that pole that the people might look upon the symbol of their transgressions, accept their sinful, hateful tendencies, and lift their eyes from their fear, their pettiness, their self-absorption, and their unpleasantness. They looked up at that snake and knew the snakes were actually themselves. And then determine to turn away from death toward life.

Likewise, Jesus is lifted up on a cross—a symbol or torture, a symbol of shame—and we too are called to look upon him , remembering that what put him there was the very worst evil fearful humans could devise, so that we might see him, believe, and live.

But believe what? To believe in the love that Jesus calls us to embrace that we might have eternal life. To remember that Jesus himself is Love Incarnate. And to remember that our own love of evil rather than love of good has put Jesus there. It was said those who lived by a sword would die by a sword—yet, except for overturning some tables and braiding a whip made out of his own frustration, Jesus has actually spent most of his life denying the power of violence and the power of the sword. And yet there he will be-- placed there by all the forces that rule through fear, and violence, and oppression, and exploitation. The living example of love in human flesh that Jesus is absolutely is anathema to the forces of evil and death to which we cling so desperately, because it is all we have known.

We know how to insist on our own way. We insist on our own way out of fear, out of jealousy, out of spite, out of a misguided calculus that says that one is only winning if one has more than all of those people over there. We know how to be vengeful. We know how to scorn others, to put others down based on their ethnicity, their race, their culture, the threat they pose in competition with us for things we have taught to covet because we believe they are scarce. We know how to complain when everything doesn’t suit us, and to let that poison run wild through our relationships with both each other, and worse, with God.

We are human, but that is not an excuse. It’s not that flesh is bad and spirit is good, as many people have twisted Paul’s words we heard this morning. If the material world were fallen and evil, Jesus would have never come to live among us as one of us, and we wouldn’t be eagerly looking forward in a few minutes to taking common things of the earth-- grain and grape, bread, wine, and water-- and together joining in invoking the Holy Spirit to make of these things of earth the Bread of Heaven and Cup of Life, a living memorial of just how much Christ loves us and gives himself for us, and calls us to give ourselves for each other. No, when Paul speaks of the “flesh,” it has to do with about our tendency to be self-centered, even “self-obsessed.” It’s that same self-obsession that caused the Israelites to spout their venom at God, blaming God for their discomfort. As we all are prone to do.

Too often we concentrate on how we are separate from others, and fearfully seek to protect ourselves against the perceived threats that others may pose to us through competition in seeking to fulfill their OWN desires. The problem is, extreme individualism doesn’t make us feel safe, but actually vulnerable and exposed to attack, since everyone else is a potential competitor for what we’ve been told are scarce goods and resources. This, to me, seems to be the ultimate crisis in our modern western society. For every passage like this, Paul also usually provides another passage reminding us that we are part of the Body of Christ and thus part of each other (such as 1 Corinthians 12-13). When we look at THOSE passages, we are reminded that the gospel of Christ is one of abundance: abundant mercy, abundant grace, abundant kindness, abundant healing. And that abundance is found within community, not against it.

All our fear comes naturally. But we have to be taught how to love. And so Jesus is given to us.

Jesus makes it clear in our gospel today that Jesus is God’s gift to us, given to us out of love, so that we might know how to live as fully human, fully beloved humans made in the very image of God. It’s right there in John 3:16-17:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Likewise, Paul affirms “God is rich in mercy,” bearing us “great love” as we benefit from the “riches of God’s grace,” --even when we have stubbornly, fearfully, or selfishly rejected calls to repentance and atonement with God. God claims common cause with us out of love, and calls us to align ourselves with that love that we might have abundant eternal life. That is what “atonement” really means—say it slowly, and you hear it “at-ONE-ment.” Being at one with the love that creates and sustains the world. This requires dedication, determination, and discipline upon our parts—and a willingness to own up to our shortcomings and sins when presented with them. Atonement must never be seen as painful or denigrating, but of lifting up our eyes from our self-centeredness to a life of hope and healing.

So we must affirm that God sends Jesus NOT for judgment, but for love. For mercy. Because justice is such an important concept, central to the very identity of God and God's commandments, it has both an opposite, which comes from ignorance and even hatred, and a companion, which comes from love. The opposite of justice is injustice, and it is a sin, whether a sin of commission, or a sin where we benefit from unjust systems and shrug our shoulders at our alleged powerlessness. The companion of justice is mercy—in which we receive grace and forgiveness where we deserve wrath and punishment. God calls us to not just receive justice and mercy, but to enact it for those around us.

Jesus calls us to repentance not for punishment, but for healing, wholeness, and for joy. For eternal life. Right now. For us all as a community. God so loved the WORLD, we are reminded. And that includes everyone—even those at odds with us, even those we resist calling our neighbor because we like the word “enemy” so much better.

John’s gospel does not speak much about “the kingdom of God/heaven” that we hear of repeatedly in the synoptic gospels. Instead, the term which John most emphasizes is “life.” And in 18 of those instances, the adjective “eternal” comes before that—and he first time we see that pairing is right here in today’s gospel. So eternal life is NOT about what happens to us after we die. Eternal life is about what happens right now. It is a new way of living that brings ultimate peace, ultimate contentment, ultimate joy. We attain those blessings through walking in the way of Jesus, through joyfully taking up our cross of love for Jesus, through being brave enough to lift up love God calls us too rather than the sins to which we cling -- to look upon that love lifted up, and live.

We all take our turns in the wilderness. Do we look only to our own needs, or do we look, and act, for the welfare of those around us? This past year has put us to the test on that. It is only a life lived for others that can bring about the security and hope that we all long for. Anything else sets us at opposition to one another and makes us miserly in our response to God’s great gifts. And that is no life at all.

But love—love that redeems us and claims us as beloved, love that is lifted up to unite us with all creation—that is eternal life right now.

Amen.

Preached at the in-person and online 10:30 am Holy Eucharist, the first on Sunday in exactly a year, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

• Numbers 21:4-9
• Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
• Ephesians 2:1-10
• John 3:14-21

Images: Michaelangelo Buonarroti, detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; Moses strikes the rock at Massah; Georges Roualt, Crucifixion, 1936; Complaint department button from Etsy.

Prayer 2815- The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Most Merciful God,

You call us into your feast:
may we enter into your kingdom rejoicing.

May the food we share and the cup you offer,
O Blessed Savior,
nourish us in love and compassion.

May we take delight in each other,
led by the Holy Spirit,
and seek to embody your message of love and healing.

May we never make idols
for ourselves,
or of ourselves,
and instead remember that love--
love for You O God,
and love for each other--
is the sustenance for life in your kingdom,
the living water that satisfies the soul.

Your table of fellowship is broad:
even in the presence of enemies we know you care for us,
and call all to reconciliation.

Lord, let us be your healing hands in the world today,
as we ask your blessing upon those we now name.

Amen.

Therefore, The Grace of God: Speaking to the Soul for September 24, 2020

Exodus 17:1-7

As I was pondering this Sunday’s reading from Exodus, I was enjoying a rare afternoon to sit in my backyard garden. It’s the first day off I’ve had in a long while. I decided while I was sitting there to water all the different plants in the hillside garden around the seating area where I like to work. I made sure to fill up the birdbaths while I was at it. Then I just turned on the hose and let it start running down the hill to water all the hostas, ferns, and other plants that dwell under the canopy of trees in our backyard.

After about 10 minutes, suddenly there was great rejoicing in the Land of Birds, and dozens of sparrows, finches, chickadees, and wrens began to wing their way over to wash themselves in the birdbath and in the puddles of water on the ground. One of them even had the temerity to land on the empty birdfeeder, give me the stink eye, rap the base of the empty feeder sharply with its beak a couple times, and then flutter off in a huff, as if to say, “Get up off your duff, and get me some food, woman.”

Never mind that I had generously turned on the hose, which is what had drawn these birds here in the first place. Never mind that I had graciously filled the bird bath and emptied of all the leaves and other junk that accumulated in it. This bird was not satisfied, and he was letting me know it. Meanwhile, a gang of sparrows promptly and joyously splashed out all the water I had placed in the birdbath, and one of them flew to a branch over my head and started to shrilly berate me to refill it.

Are these birds never satisfied?

And the answer is: yes, and no. Once I started providing them with birdseed and water, they expect me to keep doing it. The nerve! That’s also the way it is when you help people, sometimes, too. There are some people in the world who, when you get into a relationship with them, it ends up being all about them. No matter how much you give them, they always want more. No matter how much you give them, they’re never grateful. They never seem to stop and think, “Okay, that’s enough.”

The Israelites are the same way. Over and over again, they claim to long for their days of slavery in Egypt over freedom in the wilderness. The more the going gets tough out in the Sinai peninsula, the more rosy their memories of their time in Egypt becomes.

Forgotten is the groaning that they raised up to God—groaning so loud that God could not ignore it. Nope, just like infants, the minute their tummies grumble or their mouths get dry, they turn and bite the hand that feeds them. Last week we saw God provide them with meat and bread, manna and quail that fell from the sky, and all the Israelites had to do was go and pick it up. Today, it’s water—or, specifically, the perceived lack of it. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Complain, complain, complain. I think that’s one of the reasons why, although it did them very little credit, the ancient Israelites liked to tell this story on themselves-- one of the side purposes was probably to explain just why they complained so much, as all of us do.

Sometimes, we focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do. Here are the Israelites, freed from slavery in Egypt, moaning about how their every need isn’t being taken care of while they are traveling back to their homeland. We are an unhappy, discontented, grumbling people at times. Our reading from Exodus today is one of an Old Testament genre called “murmuring stories.” These are stories in which the people “murmur”—in our text, it is rendered as “quarreled,” but it seems that misses the flavor. “Murmuring against” someone is so much more suggestive of that tendency we all have to mutter just audibly enough to be heard, that passive-aggressive tactic that allows one to later deny that she has said anything at all. Murmuring of this type is filled with negativity, ingratitude, a simmering resentment. Freedom includes responsibility to look at our situation with clear eyes. And the first step is to be glad that we are free.

And it is here that we perhaps can consider our own similarity with those Israelites in the wilderness. We are more than six months in to this pandemic, and we are just as much lost and disoriented in a wilderness at were the Israelites in this story. It’s so bad that we are looking back longingly at the time before this pandemic—even those of us for whom the situation wasn’t all that great. At least it was familiar.

The uncertainty we have been thrust into is very real. The anxiety that hangs over us is very real. The shifting sand beneath our feet, the changing situation from day to day with no obvious end in sight. And the more the clamor in our heart and head increases in volume, the harder it can be to hear the still small voice of God murmuring in our ears.

But it’s also true that with those birds, that with those Israelites, and even with us, the complainers can seize the attention and seem to be a bigger presence than they are. And once we realize that, we realize that the narrative doesn’t have to be surrendered to the murmuring crowd. That there is a thread that can be pulled loose and be used to anchor a counter-narrative. A narrative of resilience, of community, and of faith. From the hard rock of our hearts, the water of gratitude can flow.

It’s at this time that we have to interrupt the downward spiral that seeks to grip us; to still the cacophony in our heads and hearts. To reset. And it starts with something as basic and necessary as the breath, and remember its connection to the spirit. To look beyond the narrative of hopelessness and look back to see a record of endurance and resilience. To see how far we have come at this point, and look for lilting notes of grace that run as a counterpoint to the basso profundo of despair. To see the flickering light of those small gifts that we have overlooked along the way, even something as simple as signs of community when people of good will take care of each other, when we’ve seen people recognize strangers as neighbors and companions along the way. Sharing each others’ burdens.

We’ve gotten this far by the grace of God and those of good will who reflect it and magnify that same compassion outward. It is then that we can acknowledge our uncertainty, but still see the glimmer of hope that can be used to light our way forward. To go from, “There, for the grace of God… “ to “Therefore, the grace of God.”

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on September 24, 2020.

Wholly Beloved, Holy Calling: Sermon for 3 Lent C

One of my favorite cartoons is one that’s been around for years—you’ve probably seen a version of it. It’s an extension of the idea in that inspirational poem, “Footprints.” It shows God talking with a person with tear-stained cheeks, looking back on the person’s life as if their journey through life has left behind a series of impressions in the sand.

God looks back at an early part of the person’s life journey and points: “My beloved child—I am always with you. See those two sets of footprints? That’s where you and I walked side-by-side.” 

“Yes, God,” says the human, “but what about over there, where there’s only one set of footprints?” 

God answers, “My child, there’s only one set of footprints there, because that’s where I carried you.” 

And the human in the cartoon visibly brightens. Nice, right? But some of you may not have seen the third panel of the cartoon. In the third panel, God continues, “And that deep pair of grooves over there? THAT’s where I dragged you, my child, kicking and screaming.”

Today’s reading from our Hebrew scriptures jumps us from Genesis last week to Exodus—and specifically, to God’s call to Moses from the burning bush. We are hearing this reading today because Lent is often the part of the year where we are encouraged to examine the “kicking and screaming” part of our lives with God, where we are reminded that sometimes we’ve fallen, and we can’t get up, like in those Life Alert commercials. However, in our Christian Lenten understanding, we don’t depend on Life Alert but—thank be to God—on God’s grace, on God never ever giving up on us.

Just like in that cartoon, Moses doesn’t respond with cooperation when God calls to him. There’s more than a little of the “kicking and screaming” resistance, but Moses is no dummy. Rather than outright refusal to heed God’s call, Moses engages in a debate with God, first requiring God to establish God’s bona fides. That’s when God gives Moses God’s actual name—which is a sign of relationship. As we hear repeatedly in scripture, to be called by name is to be known.

This bears repeating, because it seems so obvious: being able to know and use someone’s name implies a relationship. This same situation will later be cited in Isaiah 52:6: “Therefore my people will know my name;
 therefore in that day they will know
 that it is I who foretold it.
 Yes, it is I.” Psalm 91, which we read a few weeks ago also states: “Those who love me, I will deliver;
 I will protect those who know my name.” Naming implies intimacy and the ability to call on someone for help.

Although there have been several names used for God, up to this point in the Torah, the answer Moses receives is “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” which is translated as “I am who I am” as well as “I will be who I will be”—in other words, God exists outside the realm of time and human experience, and past, present, and future are all the same to God. And yet God is hearing the groans of the Israelites and is responding to them. That can be comforting—God has remained faithful to God’s people, even as they have forgotten all about God, lowering their sights from heaven to the brutal task of survival. God has been, and will be, with God’s people always.

God also refers to Godself as “YHVH” which was translated as “The LORD” in the Torah, since the name of God was so holy that it was not to be uttered, in case it was misused. That’s why sometimes, when you see God written about by Jews to this day, you sometimes see it written “G-d” which omits the vowels (as Hebrew does). In Hebrew, God’s name is so holy that the term Hashem is often used in its place. Hashem means, simply, “The Name.” Names are considered to be that powerful. Thus the LORD is the name of God to be used forever.

Notice that God calls Moses by name from the very first. Then, once God establishes a relationship with Moses by giving Moses God’s very name, the story we hear today ends. I think that’s unfortunate, because what we don’t hear is Moses’s resistance to God’s call shifting from asking God's name to stating that he is not cut out for the job—that he lacks the appropriate gifts. But I want to invite you into that part of the story, too.

In the 4th chapter of Exodus, Moses has tried to evade God’s call with a number of objections, and very reasonable ones, too, centering around the idea of “Nobody is going to believe that God has talked to me,” which I think we can all relate to, as well. God then shows Moses a series of miraculous signs that will come in useful later when Moses is talking with Pharaoh. But then Moses pulls out his trump card: “Hey God,” he says, “you know I am not an eloquent speaker and this gig you are outlining requires a LOT of talking. So please send someone else.” And at this point, God gets exasperated at Moses’s shilly-shallying and ducking and weaving, and overcomes that objection too, by promises that Moses’s brother Aaron will help out with the talking thing.

Responding to God’s call is one of the hardest things for us to do, and yet one thing we know is that God has pursued relationship with creation from the very beginning, and it has been done through God calling over and over again. The great Biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman organized his commentary on Genesis around the idea of four vital calls: God calls creation into being, and creation responds in a variety of ways. Next, God calls Abram, as we heard last week, and Abram and Sarai embrace the call of God and enters into covenant, faithful to God’s promises that Abram's descendants will become a great family. God calls Jacob, but that call causes conflict in Jacob’s family, as the younger son is privileged over the elder. Then in the story of Joseph, we are reminded that the purposes of God’s call are often hidden and elusive at first.(1) Now in Exodus, the descendants of Jacob have grown from being a family to being a community—a nation.(2) Yet they are a nation under oppression, and it can only be that in freedom that Israel can answer God’s call affirmatively and freely, rather than under duress. That’s the part that Moses will play. 

God calls Moses to be God’s prophet and spokesman, God’s human agent in the work of liberation. Moses goes from being shepherd for his father-in-law to being called to be the shepherd for his people in their flight from bondage and oppression. And now we hear the story of God’s call to Moses, and I want to be completely honest with you. It is Moses’s last response that I find the most relatable in this story. Burning bushes I have never seen. But feelings of doubt and unworthiness when being called by God? Oh yes—that one I know, six different ways from Sunday. 

During the years when I resisted the full surrender to God’s call in my life, the biggest reason why was my own feelings of unworthiness to fulfill that call. Even after finally giving in and making the leap to retire from teaching and attend seminary, I was buffeted often by feelings of being in over my head, and strong case of “imposter syndrome.”

Then, as I was preparing to go before the several committees who had to approve my ordination, I was specifically, and frustratingly, warned AWAY from using call language, which then makes it awfully hard to answer the question of why anyone would actually want to take on the ordained life. And the reason why I was told that I should NOT insist that I was called by God to be a priest was that the committee members might feel like their opinion then didn’t matter.

But the call of Moses makes exactly that point in a way, doesn’t it? God calls who God calls, and in a way, what we think about it is NOT the point. Just like Moses, many of us have had a hard time recognizing the voice in our life calling us to discipleship as being God’s voice. And then, once we do, we have a hard time believing that we are up to the task, or that the task is even achievable. If we’re honest, many of us are have also struggled to recognize God’s voice and respond to God’s call. 

But just like in that cartoon,
Sometimes we let God walk beside us.
Sometimes God has to carry us.
Sometimes God drags us back kicking and screaming from sin and foolishness into discipleship.

But one thing we should never doubt is that we are worthy of God’s love and regard, and that we are worthy to try to be not just fans of God but children of God, disciples of God. God doesn’t call the perfect, the saying goes—God helps perfect the called.

What’s the big picture? God will call whomever God pleases, even if that choice seems to make no sense. God’s great prophet Moses had no qualifications to speak for God, and didn’t really want to give himself over to God—a very understandable reaction! God can be so… disruptive!

-- and yet, God has chosen, and won’t be talked out of it.

Moses has never been at home anywhere, so who better to argue for a dispossessed people? He has been an adopted son of a princess, and now he’s a scruffy shepherd. It is exactly those experiences that make him the perfect intermediary in this case. God has also revealed the name of God, which shows that God is committed to the people, and continuously opens the door for us to not just approach God but to depend upon God to care for us.

The story of Moses we hear today is the story of a call, and as faithful people we are called too- called to own our heritage of being made in the image of God—of being children of God. Children of God-- and I say that without my fingers crossed behind my back-- called to embody God’s essential goodness in the world-- to embody the love of God as has been and is being revealed in Christ Jesus. And when we fall short, we are called to own our sins, to repent, to turn and try again.

As our gospel today reminds us, Jesus makes it clear that, when we fail to live up to our call as children of God, we can receive God’s mercy and grace rather than God’s judgment, so that we can respond to the call to repent—to make an adjustment, maybe a big one or maybe just a small one—but often, just a small change is enough.

That’s why Lent is such a beautiful thing. It should never be seen as a time to beat ourselves up, or dwell on our own unworthiness, which then can become a convenient excuse for not trying in the first place. Rather, Lent calls us to acknowledge our sins and resistances to living out our calling, to own them and examine them, and then to turn anew, to hear the call of God for us to turn aside, to remember that the ground on which we stand is holy ground.

Our lives are the holy ground in which we meet God. And if we stop our scurrying around and our constant need for distraction, we just might hear God calling us, as God’s beloveds, to help make God’s presence in the world just a little more visible in what we say and what we do.

Listen! The beauty of Lent is that it reminds us of grace and calls us to slow down and listen. To hear that God is calling. Because make no mistake. God IS calling each and every one of us, and all of us as a community of faith, to embody the same grace that upholds us out into the darkness of the world. Let’s turn, and see that light flaring where we don’t expect it.

Let’s turn aside, listen, and say yes. Yes, because we ARE worthy. Yes, because we are upheld by grace. Yes, because we are empowered by that grace to act in the world in the name of liberation and salvation. Walking side by side with our Savior and Redeemer.

Amen.

Readings:
Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9


Links/References:
1) Walter Brueggemann, Genesis:Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, pp. 1-5
2) Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Covenant and Conversation 2), pp. 1-6

Life Alert- Sermon for 3 Lent C

I am not one of those people who can ignore the doorbell or a ringing telephone. Somewhere along the line, I have been socialized that, even if I am knee-deep in homework, the sound of those chimes will most likely send me scrambling to answer.

I have been working on this, because there are times when I just don’t have time to listen to strange calls coming out of nowhere. Lately, it’s been the representatives of AARP (which my husband signed me up for against my will) calling to get me to buy a Life Alert system. These calls make me nuts. 

For one thing, I’m not really retired. Nor will I probably ever need Life Alert, since I carry my phone around with me constantly. If I’ve fallen onto the floor, the only reason why I will not get up or call for help is either that 

1)I am flat-out unconscious, OR that 

2) I’ve decided that maybe I can steal a nap in peace, since no one would look for me on the floor under the dining room table.

But some calls shouldn’t be ignored.

In today’s reading from Exodus, we hear the story of God’s call to Moses.  And, listen, when God calls, that’s one you should probably take and respond to. Might be important.

The outline of the story is familiar: Moses wanders up on a holy mountain, experiences a “theophany” or appearance of God in the burning bush, and gets told that God has heard the cry of Israel, and has chosen Moses to be the instrument to free them. Moses is scared enough to hide his face, but not scared enough to not start peppering God with questions --and subtle resistance.

Moses, also known as Charlton Heston, in the scene
with the burning bush in the Ten Commandments.
Because I can't help myself.

Specifically, Moses asks two questions after God speaks to him: “Who am I?” and, just as important, “Who are YOU?” These two questions are intimately related. God has already told Moses that he is the God of Moses’s ancestors. Yet, Moses’s first question shows that it is only when Moses understands who he is and why God has chosen him that God’s declaration will make any sense to him.

So who is Moses? An Israelite brought up as an Egyptian, living in exile. Moses is just a shepherd, a person who’s been lost

and found

and lost

and now found again, apparently.

He’s just trying to make a living, too busy surviving to think much about the deep questions of life. Perhaps that’s why he unknowingly wanders onto the holy mountain of God. It’s no wonder, then, that when God first speaks to Moses, the claim of being “the God of your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” doesn’t really clarify much for Moses. So Moses responds, “Who, exactly, are you again?”

Those two questions—“Who am I?” and “Who are you?” are vital for any communication to take place between any two parties—and they are also the two questions that scripture repeatedly wrestles with. Scripture is about who God is and what God does. But it’s also the story of who WE are, and what we are called to do as God’s people. When Moses asks, “Who am I?” he betrays an uncertainty that many of us share.

It’s a question we may need to ask ourselves, particularly as we try to live lives of discipleship—lives open to the call of God in our own lives. Like Moses, we spend much of our lives engaged in the everyday pursuits of what we call survival—so that sometimes when we DO try to open our hearts to the call of God, we don’t know how to understand or respond.

Like all Biblical stories, this story about Moses is not so much about what God said 5000 years ago, but more about what God says to us today, because the Bible is not only the story of what WAS, but what is, and what can be.  That proof of that is embedded in the answer God gives to Moses when Moses asks God, “Who are you, again?”

God’s answer to Moses’s question is quite interesting. Hebrew scholars suggest a slightly different translation than we just heard—they suggest that God’s name is not just “I am what I am,” but also “I will be what I will be.”

“I will be what I will be.”

No wonder we, including Moses, are still left confused.

God will be? God will be… what, exactly? 

But that’s the point- no matter how much we think we know, God is more. God will be—because God is not finished with us, or creation, yet. We don’t get to decide that we understand once and for all what God will or won’t do, or that he will forgive this person but not that person. God will be.

Throughout scripture, God will be many things: Shepherd. Healer. Even Savior.

God will also be worshiped. Praised, yes. Also betrayed and rebelled against, again and again.

We are given freedom to answer God’s call to each of us, or not. When God calls Moses, Moses isn’t forced to go along with God’s plans. However, God also doesn’t just give up and let Moses go back to those sheep. God ups the ante, so to speak. God increases the pressure to make sure he gets Moses’s attention. God doesn’t give up.

Although some might disagree, the genius of the stories of holy scripture is that they make clear that God did not make us only to order us around, or to chastise and punish us, but to draw us into relationship with God and each other.

God always works harder at this than we do ourselves.

When we get off track, God doesn’t respond with smiting, but with another call—a call for repentance, so that we can be restored to right relationship with God and each other. God’s love for us includes a huge heaping helping of patience, mercy, and grace. God asks us to listen, and God listens back. And God is going to be with Moses and the people of Israel all along the way.

That journey is not always smooth. 

One of my favorite cartoons is one that’s been around for years—you’ve probably seen a version of it. It shows God talking with a person with tear-stained cheeks, looking back on the person’s life as if their journey through life has left behind a series of impressions in the sand.

God looks back at an early part of the person’s life journey and points: “My beloved child—I am always with you. See those two sets of footprints? That’s where you and I walked side-by-side.”

“Yes, God,” says the human, “but what about over there, where there’s only one set of footprints?”

God answers, “My child, there’s only one set of footprints there, because that’s where I carried you.” And the human in the cartoon visibly brightens. Nice, right? But some of you may not have seen the third panel of the cartoon.

In the third panel, God continues, “And that deep pair of grooves over there? THAT’s where I dragged you, my child, kicking and screaming.” 

We are hearing this reading today because Lent is often the part of the year where we are encouraged to examine the “kicking and screaming” part of our lives with God, where we are reminded that sometimes we’ve fallen, and we can’t get up.

If we’re honest, many of us are have also struggled to recognize God’s voice and respond to God’s call.

Sometimes we let God walk beside us.

Sometimes God has to carry us.

Sometimes God drags us back from sin and foolishness.

The story of Moses we hear today is the story of a call, and as Christians we are called too- called to own our heritage of being made in the image of God—of being children of God.

Yes- children of God, all of us, even when we do wrong.

Children of God-- and I say that without my fingers crossed behind my back-- called to embody God’s essential goodness in the world-- to embody the love of God

as has been

and is being

revealed in Christ Jesus.

And when we fall short, we are called to own our sins, to repent, to turn and try again.

In our gospel today, Jesus makes it clear that, when we fail to live up to our call as children of God, we can receive God’s mercy and grace rather than God’s judgment, so that we can respond to the call to repent—to make an adjustment, maybe a big one or maybe just a small one—but often, just a small change is enough. Anyone who has ever tried to sink a long putt in golf will know what I mean. Sometimes avoiding one bent blade of grass that we could have stepped on, or the repair of one divot that we’ve inflicted, can make all the difference. And it’s the same way in our own lives.

In our own wanderings through the wilderness, we need deliverance from outside forces, but also forgiveness for our sins—known and unknown, things done by us and done on our behalf.

In his commentary on the Book of Exodus, Biblical scholar Terence Fretheim notes that exiled Israel faced two issues: of being “first, captive to outside forces and second, suffering under just judgment because of its disloyalty to God.” Fretheim sums up the specific lesson of the Book of Exodus that also applies to our own situation today: “The community of faith stands in need of both deliverance and forgiveness.”  

Once again, the Biblical story illuminates a truth in our own lives, and provides another part of the answer to that question of “Who am I?” We too are people in need of both deliverance and forgiveness—that’s why both of those words are part of the Lord’s Prayer. We are called to ask for both deliverance, but also for forgiveness.

Who among us hasn’t felt as if we too are captive to outside forces beyond our control? 

Who here hasn’t felt or wondered if we aren’t being punished by God for something that we have done? 

But Jesus’s response in our gospel corrects this idea. It’s not the case that any time troubles or even tragedies befall us, it is a punishment from God. Again and again, the Bible witnesses to God NOT giving to people the judgment they so richly deserve—and that’s Jesus’s point, too. Just like the Israelites, just like the people Jesus encountered in his earthly ministry, we can be stung by feelings of powerlessness and dread of punishment that in turn then creates a climate of fear. We’re called to something better- to labor alongside God in the work of redemption.

God is calling us. God is calling us to anchor our lives in Christ. God is calling us to repentance and newness of life.

That’s a call we shouldn’t ignore.

(Preached on February 28, 2016 at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Town and Country, MO.)