Exodus 3:1-15

Psalm 103:1-11

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

LUKE 13:1-9

Sermon – March 11, 2007

I am going to break precedence today and preach on the Old Testament scripture. This is the last sermon I will be sharing with you and the story of Moses and the burning bush was too compelling to ignore. This story was ingrained in me as a young child. And as I considered what to say today, I began to wonder why so many Old Testament stories are so memorable to me. Part of it is probably nostalgia. This story was told and repeated to me as I was growing up. I can remember trying to draw with crayons a living green bush with fire coming out of it. So the story makes me think of simpler, easier times. But I think this story sticks out to me still for the very same reason that it was told to me as a child. It captures the imagination.

Here is Moses, a Hebrew who miraculously lived through infanticide – the systematic killing of male babies born to the Israelites living in Egypt. Here is Moses, an Israelite who grew up in the palace of Pharaoh – believing the man who ordered his death to be his grandfather – ignorant of the plight of his own people. Here is Moses, a murderer, who after he learned of his real origin, killed an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite slave. Here is Moses, a fugitive who fled for his life into the wilderness, married the daughter of the Priest of Midian, and became a shepherd. This is the man who saw the burning bush on the mountain and “turned aside to look at the great sight and to see why the bush was not burned up.”

As Moses approached the bush he heard the voice of God telling him to “come no closer” and to “remove his sandals” for he was “standing on holy ground.” When I think about this scene, I cannot help but to think of the movie the Three Amigos, staring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short. If you have seen this film, then you might remember the scene where all three amigos approach a singing bush. The comic genius behind this scene is, among other things, that despite the fact that a bush is singing, the three men approach it as if it was perfectly normal to see shrubbery belting out “She’ll be comin’ ‘round the Mountain when she comes.” I think of this scene because I wonder what Moses must have been thinking at this point. Unlike modern novels in which character development is achieved through glimpses into the motives and thoughts of the players, the Old Testament is frustratingly lacking in psychoanalysis. Did Moses think it was perfectly normal to see a living bush, burning and yet not being consumed, that was able to emit the voice of God? Probably not. We do know that his curiosity was peaked by the burning bush, and we also know that, when he understood that it was God who was talking to him, he was afraid and hid his face.

I believe the answer to what Moses might have been thinking as he witnessed this unnatural event can be found in who Moses thought himself to be. Or, to put it another way, Moses’ reaction to what he saw was greatly influenced by how he identified himself. Identity is crucial in this passage. The two chapters leading up to this story have two main purposes. The first is to identify the Israelite people as slaves and the Egyptians as their oppressors. The second is to identify Moses as marginal to both groups, and yet belonging to both groups as well. Similarly, this story has a twofold purpose. The first is to identify God and who God is to the Israelites. The second is to re-identify Moses. Both are equally important to the history of Judaism. Jews still point to this story as the moment God first identified the divine name “I am who I am.” Jews also still celebrate this story as the commissioning of Moses, the liberator of the Jewish people and the one who mediated the giving of the law.

But as the text presents it, the story is not at all that simple. Because of his past, Moses doubts the calling God has placed on him. He argues with God and makes excuses as to why he cannot be the one to rescue the Israelites. Surely all these thoughts of inadequacy were not based so much on Moses’ inability to trust God, but more on his inability to see himself as anything other than a man with a sordid past, who ran away and hid himself to avoid punishment. Is this really the man God wants to rescue the Israelites? What kind of a God would call a person with such a rap sheet to be a representative? The answer to this is found in how God identified Moses. God rejected the interpretation Moses put on his own life and offered Moses a different interpretation. In effect God said, “Moses, you are the liberator I have chosen.” And because God said it, it was. And God was with him. Now this did not immediately convince Moses. If you read further in the story you will find, as I said previously, that Moses wrestles with God but, in the end, when God had proven to Moses that he was not alone, Moses finally believed.

So what does this story say about our identity today? Who are we in relation to a God who appears in a burning bush and claims to be called “I am who I am?” Like Moses we may look at our lives and identify ourselves by our flaws, by our own sordid pasts. We, like Moses, are asked to encounter God on an equally miraculous and oxymoronic plane. We are called to re-identify ourselves in light of a person who died on a cross – died mind you – and yet is alive. How similar that image is to a bush that is on fire and yet is not consumed. Still, though, the resounding message that God wanted Moses to hear is that God was with him. God is with us too. The message hasn’t changed. And we are asked, like Moses, to re-identify ourselves by who God is to us, rather than who we are to ourselves. We are given the same choice that Moses was given. Moses could have rejected God’s call. He could have walked away and lived out his life as the murderer refugee shepherd. But he didn’t reject God’s call, and God used him.

The reason we know this is that his story is told. Ultimately we know Moses not as a murderer or a refugee or a shepherd, but rather as a liberator. So in the end Moses is still identified by what he did, but the miracle is that God changed who he thought he was and enabled him to be something different. And yet this miracle was contingent on Moses’ response. Our lives in God are subject to that same contingency. We are in a way what our past actions call us. In defiance of that reality, God’s call reaches out to us, asking us to re-identify who we are by who God is. And we are left with a choice. We can be who we were or we can be who God says we are.

So who does God say that we are? This question is never an easy one to answer. I am still wrestling with this question myself. In a large part the question of who God says that I am is why I am at Seminary. Yet this wrestling is part of our heritage as Christians. After Moses had liberated the Israelites and given them the Law they wandered around a desert for 40 years grappling with this question and with the answer God had given them. You are my people. As Christians, we have been grafted into the vine of the people of God. So in order to answer this question for yourselves, I encourage you to embrace the struggle. This third Sunday of Lent represents the middle of our forty-day journey into a spiritual desert. While we are in the wilderness let the image of the burning bush remind you that you have a choice. You can either remain in the past and cling to how your mistakes identify you, or you can embrace the re-identification of God’s call and be transformed.

I encourage you to take advantage of this time of wandering to labor through finding an answer to the question. Who does God say that you are?

Evan Schneider
Seminarian

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, NJ