Tuesday, July 3, 2018

July 1 2018 Call of Moses Exodus 3-4


            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.

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