“God’s Call–Again”

(Lectionary for September 3, 2017)If Moses at the burning bush is not the most famous portrait in the Bible, it surely is in the top five. For those of us of a certain age, the scene in DeMille’s grand epic, “The Ten Commandments,” where the terrified Charlton Heston is confronted by the talking bush (the voice of John Huston, if I remember correctly) is etched in our brains, albeit the sad lack of CGI capability rendered the bush more glowing than burning. Still, here is the quintessential call of God tale, where the shepherd Moses becomes, under the tutelage and presence of God, the liberator of God’s people. In the film, Heston remonstrates a bit with his God, but soon is on his way to confront Yul Brenner with the demand to release the Hebrew slaves. The moral appears to be: if you get called by the Almighty, you will go and do the work you are called to do.

For many of us who have spent our days in some form of God’s work: pastor, teacher, counselor, among many other options, the way toward fulfilling that call never did run smooth. Though most of us were not blessed (or cursed?) with an overt sign like the famous bush, we tried our best to hear and respond when God tapped us for service, but the path of that service was genuinely rocky, filled with bends and twists, an awful lack of guard rails at crucial moments, edged with sheer drops into deep and seemingly bottomless gorges. But, if we read the whole story of Moses’ call, refusing to stop at Ex.3:15, we will discover that the great lawgiver’s call was very like our own. In the process we may learn that Charlton Heston was a very poor and seriously misleading choice to play the man Moses. It turns out that Moses is a good deal like you and me and not the broad chested, wavy-haired, he-man that DeMille presented him to be.

When confronted with the fiery tree (soneh in Hebrew, close to the famous name Sinai), Moses responds with five increasingly lame excuses why he should be the last person in the desert to be chosen to work for YHWH. These five claims, and the order in which they are presented, are illustrative of the difficulties and fears that any call of God presents to us, and can provide for us some comfort as we wrestle again and again with our own calls from God.

After Moses sees the bush and “turns aside” to go toward it, he hears the voice call his name and command him to take off his shows at the place that has now become holy ground. And then the bush begins the call to service by announcing the presence of God in the bush, “the God of your father, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Ex.3:6). Then comes the call itself, and it is lengthy and specific (Ex.3:7-9). YHWH has heard the cries of anguish from the Hebrew slaves and has determined to come to them, to bring them out of Egypt, and to lead them to a new land, famously flowing with milk and honey, a land already occupied by many other peoples. These three verses consist of no fewer than six first-person pronouns; God will be the actor here, and I can imagine Moses, at this point in the call, saying something like, “Good idea, God! You do all that; I am behind you—way behind you!” But in vs.10 the first person pronoun cascade ends abruptly, when God suddenly shouts, “So, I will send you to pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” Well, that is a horse of a different color! I have long been fond of seeing misery among many peoples of the world, and I have felt great sorrow for their sufferings, but when I was asked—now fifty years ago—to do something about all that myself, I sounded very like Moses. “Who am I that I should go to pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt” (Ex.3:11)? Note two things about Moses’s first cry: he uses two first-person pronouns of his own in a kind of mockery of God’s promised actions, and also he quotes the call of God quite accurately and quite literally. He knows all too well what God wants of him, but his self-questioning suggests that he has no intention of doing what he has been asked to do. I am not the right choice, God, and locked into Moses’s first rejection of the call is his final rejection: choose somebody else!

At the early stage of the dialogue between caller and callee, God is not so concerned by Moses’ reluctance, and adds rather blithely that Moses should not worry about going to pharaoh since “I will be with you” (Ex.3:12). Moreover, after Moses brings the people out (piece of cake!), the sign that Moses has acted on behalf of God will be their worship of God on this very mountain.

Clearly, the central problem for Moses is not what he will do after he has gotten them out of Egypt, but rather how he is going to get them out! That practical fear leads to his second rejection of his call. Who are you? Why, if I come to the people, claiming that I have been sent by some desert God, they will ask after that God’s identity. Do you have a name? The bush draws itself up to its full leafy height and bellows in its most powerful voice, “I am who I am. Tell them that “I am” has sent you” (Ex.3:14). Much has been made of this supposed revelation of God—libraries are full of learned commentary—but I fear Moses makes little of it at all.

When called of God, I immediately questioned my own fitness for the task—whatever it was—and followed that issue with the second of what sort of God it was who was calling me. A God of justice and peace, you say? A God who demanded righteousness and wholeness for all of God’s creation, huh? And just how was I to do anything about all that? My feeble and limited self quailed in the face of such a demand. And so did Moses.

He then turned to the tools he obviously did not have to fulfill God’s demands of him, and asked God for some magic tricks to wow the crowds, to give himself power to win the day against the awesome pharaoh. YHWH quickly offers him rods into snakes, healthy hands into leprous ones and back again, and water into blood, as conjuring gambits to prove his greatness (Ex.4:2-9). Such magic should win the day! I, too, wished for more gifts than I had, a better voice, a richer imagination, a clearer sense of purpose to do what I was asked to do. But some magic would not be amiss. Surely those grand tricks would be enough!

Alas, no! God has asked him to speak, and Moses claims he cannot do that (Ex.4:10). Hilariously, over the centuries commentators have speculated that Moses must have had some sort of speech impediment, such as a stutter, that forced him to remonstrate with God about his ability. The text says nothing of that. It merely suggests that Moses is lying through his teeth with his ridiculous claims of poor speaking ability; he wants not to respond to God’s call, and will seek any excuse to avoid it. Me, too! The task is too great, and I am too small.

And finally, after God’s anger begins to boil against this too reluctant servant (Ex.4:11-12), Moses is left with only one more excuse, one more attempt to weasel out of the call. He sobs, literally, “O, my lord, send now with the power of your sending” (Ex.4:13)! This may indeed mean the NRSV’s “Please send someone else,” but I rather like the indirection of the statement. “Go on, God, get with your sending; I will stand over here and watch whoever you finally decide to send. And good luck to him, too!” Just as at the beginning of Moses’ reluctance to respond, he wants to hang back, to fade into the background, to watch while others do the work of God. And that is I all over! I would far rather watch others work, while I talk about working, while I meditate about responding, while I reflect about doing something for God.

It should be clear by now that Moses is not Charlton Heston; he is Woody Allen, creating excuse after excuse, never quite committing, never quite entering in to the call and work of his God. This glorious scene beautifully summarizes my life under the call of my God. I have at times answered, as well as I could, but more often that not I have been half-hearted, unwilling to risk what God has asked from me. “Choose anyone else, “ has been my mantra, far more than “Here I am, Lord.” How is it with you? Where are you in the pursuit of your divine call?