I Will Be: Exodus 3:1-15 - Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
As I get older, some of my possessions have become antiques. Not valuable antiques, but antiques, nonetheless.
Case-in-point: this General Electric alarm clock / radio with woodgrain finish. I think I was in second grade when my parents bought this for me to teach me how to wake up to an alarm. It still sits on my dresser even though I wake up to the alarm on my phone.
I must hand it to whoever invented that awful screeching alarm clock sound. It’s like they took all the most annoying sounds in existence and mashed them together in a frantic beeping rhythm. Talk about starting off your day on a high note…
As unpleasant as that sound may be to people who hate mornings, it pales in comparison to the cries of human suffering. There is no sound more disturbing to God than this. When God’s children suffer, God acts.
That’s exactly what happens in the opening chapters of Exodus. The descendants of Abraham and Sarah have grown significantly in number, just as God promised. But a famine brought them to Egypt, where they lived for nearly 300 years.
During that time, they prospered. So much so, that Pharaoh, Egypt’s king, feared that they were going to take over his kingdom. So, he began a ruthless campaign of repression and enslavement. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. So, Pharaoh resorted to genocide. Every newborn Hebrew boy was to be thrown into the Nile. But the mother of one baby boy hid her son for three months. When she could no longer hide him, she laid him in a papyrus basket and set him off down the river. He was later rescued by none other than Pharaoh’s daughter, who named him Moses and raised him as her own son.
This put Moses in unique position: he was part of Pharaoh’s family, but he was a Hebrew, and he knew it. When he was young, he saw one of Pharaoh’s men beating a Hebrew slave. When no one was looking, Moses killed the man and buried him in the sand. When Pharaoh found out, Moses was running for his life.
It was during this time when God appears to Moses in the burning bush, telling him that he has heard his people’s cries and is prepared to act. God sends Moses to confront Pharaoh, demand the release of his people, and lead them out of slavery. But Moses is terrified, and understandably so. He has no confidence in his ability to do what God is sending him to do. How would this God, whom Moses knew very little about, break the yoke of their oppressors and set his people free?
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| The Burning Bush by earsaregood on flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 |
God doesn’t send Moses off Mount Horeb with an army of angels or weapons of war to fight the Pharaoh. Just words and a promise: “I will be who I will be.”
Who will God be? A God who hears the cries of the oppressed. A God who liberates the captives. A God who vindicates the righteous. This is who God will be throughout the Scriptures and even in Jesus Christ, who liberates God’s people from sin and death.
But salvation doesn’t simply fall from the sky. God takes the suffering of his people personally, which is why God personally involves ordinary people in his redeeming and transforming work.
One of the big questions we asked of our community leaders at Wednesday’s Town Hall meeting was: who in our community is hurting?
Every member of our panel identified mental health as the number one issue impacting our community, particularly school-age children. I expected substance abuse disorders to be another major problem; what I did not expect is that our neighbors over age 65 are at the highest risk of accidental overdose. Suicide is now the number-one preventable cause of death in Armstrong County.
While all this is happening, our institutions are in crisis due to a lack of funding and a shortage of local volunteers, at a time when demand for these services is at an all-time high. Most 911 calls come from elderly neighbors who’ve fallen and can’t get up, who don’t have neighbors or family nearby who can help.
By the end of the evening, it was crystal clear that something is needed more than government funding is needed (which is not likely to come). We need to learn how to be neighbors to one another. If we could learn to look after each other, the burden on our emergency responders would be reduced dramatically, and our quality of life would be increased significantly.
Our children need to be fought the importance of civic responsibility, and the joy and meaningfulness of volunteer service. If people of all ages gave even a fourth of their screen time to volunteering, the impact would be huge.
Our school superintendent emphasized the importance of local churches in supporting our community’s children. Since its inception in 2015, the Community PATH program has provided food for thousands of school children facing food insecurity. But the church must also mentor and teach children important life skills, like First United Methodist’s crockpot ministry. Once upon a time, this congregation offered after-school tutoring, and a teen center called the Spyder Webbe operated out of what is now our clothing closet. Wouldn’t it be great if those ministries came back to life?
It's daunting to think how much funding, how many resources, how many volunteers it would take to meet these enormous needs. But like Moses, Jesus sends the church into the crises of our world to free God’s people from their afflictions and lead them to new life. This is how Christ reveals himself to the world. Not in the form of big buildings open for one hour on Sunday, but through a Church that’s serving and building up the neighbor.
The world is in need. The people cry. God will act, and you will lead the way.
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations. (NRSVue)
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