Our Uneasy Relationship with God

A sermon preached at Old South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Hallowell, Maine, September 23, 2007.

Text: Exodus 3

The Rev. Susan M. Reisert, Minister

[Note: This sermon strays only slightly from the sermon by the same title by Robert McAfee Brown, a sermon that so deeply moved me that I felt that it must be shared with others. Brown’s sermon can be found at: www.csec.org. ]

Moses in a tough spot. Having grown up in Egypt, he has had to flee across the border to Midian, in order to escape from the long arm of “Cairo’s finest,” the police, galvanized in his speedy departure by well-founded rumors that he has murdered an Egyptian guard. An “All Points Alert” has been has been circulated by the Egyptian FBI, offering a handsome reward to whoever tips off the authorities as to Moses’ whereabouts. However, since there are no extradition laws between Midian and Egypt, Moses is gradually able to fade into the Midian woodwork, marry a Midian woman, and start to rebuild his life.

And then, just when things have wound down and he can begin to relax, the God whom Moses supposed he had left behind in Egypt, puts in a reappearance. The voice comes out of a bush in the desert that is burning, but not burning up. However, dealing with that phenomenon is child’s play compared to dealing with the words the voice utters from that desert inferno.

There are two parts to the divine message, but in the text they practically run together so that we often fail to distinguish them. Let’s see if we can:

God’s first word is a reassuring word, designed to give comfort to Moses, a king of “first the good news, then the bad new” approach. God says, “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.”

Moses is surely overjoyed to be cued in on God’s plans, with their assurance that all is going to be well. How reassuring: God has “heard the cry of the people”—a cry for justice in a situation of injustice—and has promised to “come down and deliver them.” And with whatever problems we moderns may have with some of the imagery of that promise—a deity on a kind of celestial escalator between heaven and earth, apparently reversible at the whim of the divine will—with whatever problems that imagery poses for us, the bedrock assurances of which the passage speaks far outstrip the imagery with which they are surrounded: God is a God who is not aloof from the plight of the people suffering injustice and oppression. God is a God who not only heard their cry, but as a consequence decided to intervene and turn things around. The good news is that the unjust situation will be redressed, the cry of the people will not have gone for naught, God’s righteousness will be vindicated, and the people’s plight will be overcome.

Quite an agenda—even for God. But an agenda because it is God’s. that Moses can believe in and applaud. He may even have gone on to think, “And when God gets all that done, maybe it will even be safe for me to go back to Egypt and settle in with the family once again.”

But God isn’t finished. There is more to the message. It sounds like a simple continuation of what Moses has heard so far, until the final line, which is the punch line, and in Moses’ case a one-two punch. God continues: “And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send to Pharoah that you may bring forth my people.”

What a rude shock! Just as Moses is about to sit back and watch God move into high gear and free the Israelites, there is a second word, not reassuring this time but dismaying instead: God is drafting Moses to go back to Egypt and do all the leg work for God, by taking on the Pharoah himself. How inconsiderate! God is not taking Moses’ personal plight seriously at all. Moses is supposed to go back to the very place from which he had fled with a price on his head, put everything on the line and help a powerless people escape from a very powerful Pharaoh. Moses is to be the short-range means by which the long-range plans of God are to be fulfilled: God says, “Come I will you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people.”

Is Moses pleased at the prospect of such a partnership with God? Not in the least. He wants no part of it. Taken aback by the suddenness and unattractiveness of the offer, he lamely replies with the excuse that he is no one to go eyeball-to-eyeball with Pharaoh, because he s-s-s-s-t-t-tutt-t-t-ers. The Midrashic comments on Exodus are very clear about this: Moses stuttered. No matter. God is not impressed by this attempted retreat, dripping with humility as well as fear. God will give Moses the words when they are needed. No excuse.

And so Moses, who would never have enligted in the campaign in the first place, finds that even so be has been drafted, and that he really doesn’t have much choice but to report for active duty. He has been able to flee from the long arm of the Egyptian law, but he knows he cannot flee from the even longer arm of God.

So it’s back to Egypt, into the chaos of court politics, from which finally (with some spectacular help, to be sure, from the Almighty) the Israelites escape from the long arm of Pharaoh, who discovers that his arm isn’t quite as long he had thought. An, old quaint story.

Why spend so long on this “old, quaint story” about someone who lived long ago, far removed from our time and place? Because, whether we like it or not, Moses’ story is also our story. When we learn about Moses, we are learning about ourselves. In what ways, then, are we like him? Three brief points of contact:

1) As with Moses, so with us: we like promises but we dislike demands. This

works on the more superficial as well as the more profound aspects of our lives. “You are going to be very successful

“You have talents to do a great deal for world peace.” (Great!) “If you are the least bit effective, they will call you a disloyal American.” (too bad)

“I call you to be my disciple.” (Great!) “You may end up where I ended up, on a cross.” (too bad)

So wants the extra demands? It’s hard enough just to live a decent, ordinary life without heroics. And so we, like Moses, start bargaining with God: “How about if I just do the disciple thing on Sundays?” or, “I’ll work for peace, but I don’t have to stick my neck out do I?” As with Moses, so with us: we like promises but we dislike demands.

2) Let’s press a little harder. There’s a second reason we are like Moses. As with Moses so with us: we particularly dislike demands that involve us in conflict.

After that conversation with God, Moses must have thought all of a sudden, how wonderful it would be just to stay out in the desert and feel God’s presence in the world of nature. And we would prefer to do the “God thing” in the reassuring atmosphere of our usual pew in our local church. Or, like Jesus’ disciples, and Peter especially, we love it on the Mount of Transfiguration, with Jesus appearing in a radiant glow, and Moses and Elijah coming back to be a part of a group-process—and no contact whatever with such rude realities at the bottom of the mountain as epileptic boys, or going on to Jerusalem and maybe getting crucified. Religion, we insist, is supposed to warm us, give us serenity, help us fulfill our human potential—and for all that we need lots of time alone, and an absolute minimum of conflict.

But, it doesn’t work that way. Conflict seems to be the name of the game as far as God is concerned. If anything was sure for Moses, it was that going back to Egypt would put him slam bang in the midst of conflict. The idea was for Moses to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go, and it could be taken for granted that Pharaoh would find the idea repugnant. Who would build the pyramids? Who would repair the potholes on Charioteer Way in downtown Cairo? No way, Moses. Irreconcilable conflict.

So Moses, by responding to the call of God, is immediately in the midst of political and economic intrigue about wages, days off, the right to organize, a three-day pass to hold religious services in the desert, the injustice of the slave trade, and so on—all those things about which we assume God is not concerned but those things which in the story seem clearly to concern God deeply.

3) As with Moses, so with us: when we go into the places of conflict we are not alone, but God is there too, and that makes the struggle worthwhile. Even hopeful.

Moses doesn’t leave God out in the burning bush and arrive in Egypt all alone. When he gets to Pharaoh’s court, god is already there. The story tells us that God is not just found in the nice, tidy, inspirational corners of life, but in the midst of the ugly, messy, and threatening centers of life.

For Jews, the Moses story makes the point very clearly. God doesn’t stay aloof, but comes down into the midst of the trouble. When God hears the people’s cry, the message from the divine throne is not, “What a pity things fell apart down there,” but “I’ll come down and work with my people in the midst of the trouble.” And for Christians one of the main messages of Jesus’ life, and particularly His death, is that he is right where things are toughest and least “pretty,” in the midst of an ugly execution ordered by the Pharaohs of his time, Herod and Pilate—an attempt (unsuccessful, as it turned out) to dispose of Jesus by killing him.

So whatever different imageries, Jews and Christians can affirm together the presence of God in the midst of everything that we have to go through. We are not alone. The power of God is not somewhere else, but here. We don’t “find God,” as the quaint saying goes, (assuming that God has gotten “lost”) by running away from trouble or hiding with a pious religious cloak. We discover, whenever we are trying to work for justice, that God has, once again, gotten there before we did. And has been waiting (sometimes not too patiently) for us to show up and get into the struggle too.

So the word to Moses and to us is not just promises, devoid of demands. But, equally it’s not just demands devoid of promises. It’s both. And that, when all is said and done, is very good news indeed.

Praise be to God.

Amen.