The call of Moses
story is a perfect set up to talk about our own sense of call in life, or our
life’s purpose. The thing is, when you
really pay attention to the call of Moses story you realize it’s not a simple
thing.
It would be great if I could simply say
you need to discern what it is that you’re good at and what you’re not good
at. Also look at what you like to do and
what you don’t like to do. Look at what
the needs are around you, pray about it all, and then focus on using what
you’re good at to meet the needs around you.
It sounds good and it makes
sense. It’s basically the same thing as
career advice – with career advice adding that you have to be able to make a
living at it. But that’s not the way the
call of Moses goes, and it’s not the way our lives often go either.
All too often
people find themselves in jobs they don’t like simply because they have to do
something to survive. Many an office
worker spends all day in a cubicle. The
only way to notice time passing is to catch a glimpse of the sun if you look
over your cubicle, through your boss’s door and out his or her window. How many times do people rejoice at the
arrival of the end of the work day on Friday, and then feel a sinking dread
Sunday afternoon as the next work week looms large.
Factory workers
may not even get to glimpse the sun but are working in a brutally hot and noisy
manufacturing plant; or construction workers who are out in all sorts of
weather. Migrant workers toil in the hot
sun day after day for very little pay just so other people can get cheap fruits
and vegetables in the grocery store.
Some jobs are
sheer boredom – long distance truck drivers have to have among the most boring
jobs. They travel the same roads over
and over again, getting to know the truck stops very well as they travel from
terminal to terminal. I suppose train
engineers are even more bored. They
don’t even get to steer! Locomotives
have little timers and things built into their operation so the engineers don’t
fall asleep.
Let’s not leave
out people in sales, marketing and managers – even owners - who live in a great
deal of anxiety about product performance and quarterly results.
It pays the
bills, but is that what God calls our lives to be? Are we to live and toil sunrise to sunset every
day of our lives and then end up dead and nothing of significance to show for
it?
When I worked as
a bridge inspector I inspected the Buzzards Bay Vertical Lift Railroad Bridge
on Cape Cod. Another inspector and I
figured out a way to cut a week’s time off the anticipated five week inspection
schedule. Since it was a lump sum
contract that meant the company pocketed a very tidy profit. I’d ask myself, “What did I really do today
with my brains and my physical labor?” I
answered myself, “I made my boss a lot of money,” because there were no bonuses
for innovation.
Let’s remind
ourselves of Moses’ life so far. His
people, the Israelites migrated to Egypt in search of food. All was well for a while but then the
Egyptian leadership decided to enslave them.
They pushed farther, deciding to kill all the newborn male babies of the
Israelites. Moses’ mother hid him at
birth, eventually putting him in the river in a basket. He was picked up by an Egyptian princess and
raised among Egypt’s leaders.
One day as an
adult Moses visits his fellow Israelites and sees one of them being beaten by
an Egyptian. He kills the Egyptian and
then runs for it in fear of his life. He
flees to the Midianites, a nomadic people in the Sinai Peninsula. There he sits down by a well. When he sees seven women coming to the well
to water their flocks of sheep he also sees other shepherds driving these women
away. Moses comes to the women’s defense
and waters their flocks. As payment for
his act of chivalry he gets to marry one of the women, Zipporah. He settles down with her family. It looks like he will live out his days
tending sheep as an outcast from Egypt.
If you piece
together different Bible stories and do a little math you figure out that Moses
was forty years old when he fled to Midian and got married. He then whiles away 40 more years while
there, making him 80 years old when he sees the burning bush. Indeed Exodus 7:7 says that Moses was 80
years old when he first went to Pharaoh.
When does God
call Moses? Imagine someone sitting back
drawing a pension and social security.
His biggest thought is what the weather will be like tomorrow for his
round of golf. He’s searching the internet
looking for cheap cruises to the Bahamas!
He’s eighty years
old and God still hasn’t called him for purpose in life!
And then God
does.
Now Moses is not
a stupid man. What God calls him to do
is crazy. Moses is a known
murderer. There’s no statute of
limitations on murder so he can’t really walk back into Egypt expecting a warm
welcome. He also points out some really
important things to God. Why should the
people believe him? And certainly he
can’t just walk up to Pharaoh and ask to let the Israelites go free. That would be like deciding to walk into the
White House tomorrow, thinking you can realistically ask for an appointment
with the president, and then expect him to make a major policy change simply
because you asked. It’s not going to
happen! Not now, not then.
Moses raises
logical objection after logical objection to God. Notice carefully what God does. God does not say, “Moses, I’ll give you the
powers that you need.” No. God says that he will be present and he will
act. Moses will never possess within himself
the strength or the power to do what needs to be done. It will always be God’s work.
Moses is not at
all happy about this whole thing. He
knows the danger and the pains that are coming.
He will not while away his remaining years on a rocking chair watching
the sun set. Despite all God’s
assurances Moses says in 4:13, “O my Lord, please send someone else.”
But God becomes
angry with Moses. He says he will send
Moses’ brother Aaron along too, for Aaron is already coming to meet Moses.
As if there
weren’t enough loose ends to deal with, we have the next scene when Moses packs
up his family and sets out. By all logic
you think that once you’ve decided to obey God’s explicit call to you things
would get better. Or at least God would
be happy with you. But what happens when
Moses sets out for Egypt and to connect with Aaron? 4:24 says, “On the way, at a place where they
spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him.”
That is about the
most baffling verse in the Bible. Were I
to create a sermon on it I would have to say, ‘You need to follow God’s call,
but don’t be surprised if God tries to kill you on the way.’
This is one of
those Bible verses that have biblical scholars scratching their heads and
struggling to come up with theories.
Nothing fits, not even remotely close.
It is certainly an insertion of another story into the text, but there’s
still the fact that it was inserted, and why?
We’ll never get
to the bottom of it, but I think it does contribute to what we should be
getting as the overall theme of the call of Moses.
Do not try to
understand God. God does not follow
human logic. God does not do a talent
search to find the most qualified person before starting a new venture. God does not promise easy sailing or a safe
life. God is not tame, nor is God predictable. And God could completely care less about your
reasonable and logical conclusions about things. God will do what God will do; when God wills
to do it; in the way God wills to do it.
Is God an
out-of-control tyrant? No. But we make a mistake when we domesticate God
into a little deity whose purpose it is to help us through rough patches in
life and make us feel good about ourselves.
The forces of
evil, greed, destruction and thirst for power are real in the world. They aren’t entirely logical either.
God has serious
work to do, and God will do it. Much of
it is difficult and dangerous – not just simple sweet gestures that get us
smiles and thank you notes.
God does not call
us to quaintness and quietness and security.
God says God will be with us in the real work that needs to be
done. And God likes to work through us.
So, certainly
discern what God is calling you to do.
Don’t be surprised if answers don’t come swiftly and easily. It took 80 years for Moses. And don’t insist that God’s call fit into
society’s model of life. God could care
less about American ideas of success, or the good life, or having made it.
God may call you
to something glorious, or something mundane.
God may call you to something safe or something dangerous. And if you never feel God’s call, perhaps you
should be glad. You know what to do
anyway. God doesn’t need to tell us
more. We should embody the love of Jesus
who showed that self-emptying love is the most powerful way to live.
