Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith Order of Service
September 7 , 2008, Heart Burns Exodus 3:1-15
He’d been out here so many times before that he couldn’t count them. Although sometimes he did count, just to keep his mind occupied, whether he was counting the number of hills, or the number of stars in a certain section of the sky, or the sheep and goats to make sure none of them had strayed. He’d had to learn how to keep his mind alert in a day filled with boredom and fatigue. The monotony was as stifling as the burning heat that baked the land by daytime’s searing sunlight. And so he filled his days and nights by remembering.
He remembered the former life he’d left behind, literally forced to flee for his life after killing an Egyptian foreman who had been mercilessly beating one of his countryman. The memory still rankled him, but the murderous force of his rage had subsided over the years into a dull ache. He remembered the stark contrast between the lifestyle of the royal family and that of his fellow Israelites. The royal family feasted, well, royally, while his compatriots depended on the largesse of the Egyptians for their subsistence level meals. The homes of the kings and princes were palatial, while his relatives were crammed into cramped quarters that reeked of stale sweat and decaying hopes.
He remembered the knot in his stomach that had twisted itself around the competing loyalties in his life: should he remain loyal to those who had raised him from birth amid the luxuries of Pharaoh’s courts, or should he align himself with these poor and peculiar people who still spoke of their one God, when he had been taught that there were many gods who populated the heavens? That issue had been decided when his temper told him where his true loyalties lay. As he wandered from pasture to pasture with these simple but stubborn creatures, he also kept his mind active by pondering the bigger questions of life.
The one that troubled Moses the most had to do with his people, those whose lives were made more burdensome by the heavy hand of Pharaoh’s authority. If their God was as powerful as they claimed, then where was this God when they needed God? Had their God simply stayed behind in the land of their ancestors when they originally came to Egypt to avoid starvation in one of the great famines? The stories he had learned as a child instructed him as to the role the different gods of Egypt played in the grand scheme of life, but this God of the Israelites seemed to him to be weak and impotent.
But no matter how many things he counted; no matter how many better days he recounted; no matter how often he savored the memory of delectable feasts served up in the courts of the great Egyptian Pharaoh; still he was haunted by the sounds and images of his people crying out for mercy. Sometimes he heard their voices in the desert winds stirring the endless sand. At other times, he felt their tears in the occasional rains that swept across the wilderness. Always, the oppressive heat was a reminder of the oppression that they lived with, day in and day out.
These thoughts both troubled him and tired him. They troubled him because his anger over their unfair treatment burned deeper and hotter than the scorching sun. They tired him because he could see no solution in sight. They troubled him because his anger had gotten him into trouble before, and he could ill afford another brush with danger. They tired him because they often disturbed his dreams, and he woke up feeling unsettled and weary. The weariness had become a constant companion, because he wanted something else to think about, but his thoughts came as relentlessly as a goat goes to water when it is thirsty.
So here he was again, struggling against his troubling thoughts, counting trees and shrubs to help relieve the monotony, when his brain registered something that could prove to be more troublesome and dangerous than his thoughts. One of the bushes was on fire. He had seen this kind of thing before: someone traveling through the region would douse the night’s fire, but a stray coal or ember would keep smoldering until it could find another source of fuel, then burst into flames. The wildfires would terrify the flocks, and rightly so, for the wind-driven fires could sweep through an area faster than any animal or person could run.
He kept a wary eye on the bush as he moved to gather the flock, in case they needed to run for their lives. But as he watched it, he noticed that this fire was different: it didn’t move, where the others he had seen would quickly spread in one direction or another, depending on which way the breezes were moving that day. He edged a little closer, because he needed to know how much of a threat it was to him and his flocks. At first, he was convinced that his eyes were playing tricks on him, like they had done in the past when the heat addled his brain. It looked like the fire was burning, but the bush wasn’t being consumed by the flames.
So he turned away for a moment to shade his eyes and drink something. But when he looked at the bush again, it was still burning, still not moving, and still not destroying the plant. Moses, still wary of the danger this fire posed, yet more than a little relieved for a break in the monotony of his day, went off to see this strange sight. Moses, still weary from his disturbing dreams and troubling thoughts, went off to investigate something that would change his life forever. Moses, born to a desperate slave woman who wanted something better for her son, yet raised improbably in the lap of luxury by the very daughter of Pharaoh, was about to have his life turned upside down yet again by the God he had spent so many years questioning.
“Moses,” called a voice from the heart of this strange and disturbing sight. When he answered, he was certain that the heat had addled his brain to the point of hearing things. His perception and interpretation of the event began to change, however, when the curious voice instructed him that this was holy ground, and revealed that the voice belonged to the God who had occupied so much of his thoughts over the years. Much to his astonishment, the voice answered his concerns one by one. For years, Moses had wondered, “Doesn’t God see what is happening?” To which God declared, “Yes, I have seen their suffering.” Moses had heard their cries for mercy; was God deaf to their pleas for help? To which God responded, “Yes, I have heard each and every one of them.” Then, to drive the point home, Moses had kept God on the hook for years with his sharpest criticism of all: “If you see it and hear it, don’t you care?”
But now, God turned the argument around and put Moses on the hook that Moses had honed and crafted through the years. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do care. I care so much that I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to send you to Pharaoh to demand that he let my people go.” It would seem that God had been at work in the fire burning inside Moses for decades. It would seem that God had been fanning those flames and using them to forge the personality that God needed in order to get the job done. It would seem that God was now speaking from the heart of the flame that had only ever given Moses heartaches and heartburn up until now.
I need to warn you that if you want to personalize this story, it may very well turn your life upside down. It has mine. If you linger with it for very long, it may change the way you perceive and interpret everything that happens to you in life. It has mine. So you may prefer to deal with the endless sands of my droning, monotonous words by going back to counting things in the sanctuary. Because if you’ve ever tried to keep God on the hook with some pointed criticism, God will find a way to turn your hook around and ask you the very same thing. If you have ever asked God, “Don’t you see what is happening? Can’t you hear the cry of these people for mercy? And if you see it and hear it, don’t you care enough to do something about it?”
Inevitably, God will speak from the burning fires inside each one of us to echo the same questions we put to God. “Yes,” declares God to the heart burning with passion over injustice and oppression. “I see it and hear it, and more than that, I care so much that I am going to do something about it. I’m going to ask you the very same question that you have put to me through all these years. If you see it and hear it, don’t you care enough to do something about it?” Most of us, when put to the test like this, will respond the same way Moses did: “Who am I to be doing this? You need to find someone else to lead the way.”
Most of us, when God turns the tables on us, will suddenly come up with all kinds of perfectly plausible reasons why we’re not the one to do what God seems to be asking. Most of us, when God puts us on the hook, will try to persuade God that others are more suitable for the task. Most of us find it easier to live with the discomfort of our present circumstances than to forge a different approach to our troubles or to the troubles of the world around us. We want the kindling flame of God’s Spirit to uplift us and inspire us, not to change us. If anything in this world needs changing, we argue, it’s the people and circumstances around us. This, of course, had been Moses’ compelling argument for avoiding Egypt and living a safe distance away from that troubling place.
Moses had all kinds of reasons for not doing what the voice in the bush was asking him to do. Many of them were sound and rational reasons, not least among them the mere fact that Moses had killed an Egyptian official. As you may know, people have long memories for those kinds of offenses. And as you also may know, the people of the Middle East have a time-honored tradition of retaliating against people who hurt them in any way. And as you also may know from personal experience, as I do, it is ultimately futile to argue with the call of God in your life.
While none of us may ever come across a burning bush that doesn’t move, doesn’t ignite anything else around it, and doesn’t consume the bush itself, the reality is that we linger long and hard with the burning questions that give us heartaches and even heartburn. We wrestle with issues that both trouble us and tire us. We live with the dull ache of wrongs committed against us or against those we love. We sometimes ponder the big questions of life with a certain sense of futility in ever hearing a whisper of a response from God. We struggle with the monotony of our days and the restlessness of our nights. And in it all, we wonder where God is in the midst of it all.
So keep a careful watch on the landscape of your life. It may well be that the flaring hotspots are God’s call to pay attention to what God is asking you to do. Keep your ears open for the murmuring whispers of the Spirit compelling you to listen for the cries of the wounded in your circle of family, friends, and acquaintances. And if you have kept God successfully hooked on one of your seemingly unanswerable questions for any length of time, watch out. The next burning bush you come across may very well be the one where God turns the tables and compels you to do something about it.
Order of Service September 7, 2008 Back to Sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
Call To Worship
Leader: We come to worship you, God of all creation,
People: singing and making melody to the One who restores our souls.
Leader: We come to celebrate Jesus, the Risen Christ,
People: seeking to understand the will of the Savior who enlivens our minds.
Leader: We come to be filled with the Holy Spirit,
People: desiring that power and hope that burns in our hearts like a living flame.
Leader: Blessed Redeemer, as we gather in this holy place today, may we experience your power and love surrounding us.
ALL: Let us enter into worship to rejoice in hope, and take up the cross of Christ in our hearts.
Hymn NC #8 Praise To The Living God
Responsive Prayer
Leader: Holy God, we come before you, asking you to help us remember the strength and power of your love that meets us here in this time and place.
People: Merciful God, we are wholly dependent on your grace and your nurturing faith.
Leader: We try, then fail; seek, then forget; hope, then lose sight of your love for us.
People: Forgive our hesitation, skepticism, and despair. Help us remove the stumbling blocks we encounter on our paths.
Leader: Strengthen us for the journey toward faith, hope, and love, that we may act for goodness in all we do and say.
People: We are your loving children, Lord, and we humbly beseech you to consider these our prayers, and to set us on the path towards righteousness.
Leader: We are your people, O God, the people of your awesome love. We are here to love others as we have been loved, to forgive others as we have been forgiven.
People: May we fulfill the law of love by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, and loving you, O God, above all.
Leader: Help us to put aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, that our love may be a beacon of your love.
People: As we worship, may the Holy Spirit calm our hearts, that God may speak to our minds and center us in faith as we journey together.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn NC #558 O How Glorious
Psalm 149, Exodus 3:1-15, Romans 12:9-21
Sermon Heart Burns
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #573 Lead On Eternal Sovereign
Benediction
Leader: Sing praises to the Lord, and tell of God’s wonderful works.
People: Help us, dear Lord, to live in harmony with one another. May our love be genuine, as we pattern it after the example of Christ.
Leader: Go in the assurance that I AM WHO I AM will be with you now and forever.
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