God in the Ordinary

Click here to read Exodus 3

I am a child of the Eighties.  I grew up pumping quarters into the Pac-Man machine at the arcade, wanting to own a black trans-am sometime in my life, and thinking it was so cool to push your sleeves up to your elbows.  All this to say that the good old days were perhaps not always so good.   And then there is this.  I don’t know what kind of sinister, James Bond-like villain, Darth Vader breathing evil genius came up with the idea that trying to get all the same colored stickers on the same side would be fun.  This tells me the truth that you can use your powers for good or for bad.  Most of the time I love puzzles and mysteries and brain teasers.  But when the puzzle pieces won’t fit, when the last chapter of the mystery novel is missing, when the brain teaser starts tormenting refusing to reveal a solution, then, then like this Rubik's cube, it stops being fun.  And let’s face it most of life is filled with paradoxes that will not submit to simplified, straight forward solutions.

And one of the most vexing paradoxes in life is that there are moments of incredible joy and times of tremendous sorrow.  There are times when laughter comes easy and times when pain won’t budge in your heart.  Happiness and tears are woven into our lives.  And somewhere, at some point, we got the crazy idea that faith was suppose to solve this paradox, make the puzzle pieces of life fit neatly together, and solve the mysteries.  Preachers for far too long have sold people on faith being a commodity you consume to cure what ails you.  Faith does not lead us toward fame and fortunate, faith challenges us to live our life not as our own, but as belonging to God.  Nowhere is that more evident than in the life of Moses.  The name Moses means drew out, deliver, save.  Moses was born at a time when the Pharaoh’s fear ordered that all baby boys be killed.  But Moses’ mother put him in a basket of reeds, set him sailing down the river where the Pharaoh’s daughter undermines her father’s public policy and drew Moses out of the water, raised him as her own in the palace right under the Pharaoh’s nose.  As Moses grew, he one day saw a guard beating a Hebrew person, and took the law into his own hands, killed the guard, but realizing what he had done he ran away.  At that moment the only thing Moses was saving was his own neck, the person he was delivering was himself and he left Egypt faster than a piece of chocolate is devoured at our house, can I get an Amen?

Moses married, settled into life, took over his father-in-laws shepherding company.  It was an ordinary life, Egypt was so distant in the rearview mirror it could no longer be seen, it was not even a small speck on the distant landscape.  Until that one day Moses was out with the flock and stumbled across a burning bush that was not consumed.  The setting the story matters.  Moses was on Mount Horeb AKA Mount Sinai AKA that mountain where Charleston Heston receives the 10 commandments.  The burning bush is important because it is a visual reminder of God’s presence.  And also we are told that someone inside or around the bush was the angel of God, a messenger of God, but this angel is mute, but the point is not really the burning bush at all.  That was just to get Moses’ attention, because in the midst of our ordinary lives we often miss the traces of God’s grace.  We often miss the smile of a co-worker because we are too caught up in deadlines or miss the child laughing hysterically because we behind on our to-do list.  Moses might have missed that bush had it not been a blaze and the warmth baptized his skin.

And when he realizes that the sacred and ordinary have converged in that moment, he says, I must turn aside, turn away.  How often do we do that?  How often do we think that we can explain away, rationalized, force logic upon the mysteries and holy moments we encounter day in and day out?  I can’t explain why a hug from someone can fill me with such joy, so I will just talk about nerve ends connected to my brain as though all I am is some science experience in life.  When we encounter the sacred in the midst of running errands, do we pause long enough to witness and even hear as Moses does God calling our name?  And do we respond by saying, here I am?  One of the most central promises of the Christian faith is not that God will solve all of our problems and paradoxes and puzzles with a little pixie dust and suddenly everything is rainbows and roses.  The central promise of the Christian faith is God’s presence here with us and then and there this week.  And that promise is holy.  We want to remove our shoes, which in Moses’ day was a sign of submission and vulnerability and is so too today.  And lest you think it is not vulnerable, take off your shoes!  Right now!  How many of you just felt your heart skip a beat and pray to God that I was not serious, but I am.  God identifies God’s self not through parlor tricks of burning bushes, God reveals God’s self in the everyday, ordinary, mundane moments when we least expect it and we are invited to notice and name the ground as holy.  The ground at work, at home, at play, at prayer, and at church as holy because God is here.

Yet, God, like this Rubik's cube is not so easily understood or solved.  Moses tries every evasive maneuver he can think of.  Moses ducks and weaves in this passage to avoid his mission to go back to the land and the Pharaoh he fled because it seems impossible.   Moses first says he stutters, which the Hebrew means that he had heaviness of tongue.  I love that, because I have heaviness of tongue sometimes when I have to confront someone I love or question someone who I know is going to be defensive.  So, I practice right.  Moses grew up around Rameses the Pharaoh and knew him to be a hard-hearted man.  I, too, would have a heavy tongue or such a dry mouth that my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.  But God compromises.  So, Moses asks for God’s name.  God says, I will be what I will be.  Or better yet, God says, I will be there.  In this narrative God is not a noun or just a name, God is a verb, a promise, a presence, but still a puzzle that will leave us scratching our heads.

Moses’ narrative reminds us this morning of two truths.  First, there is no distinction between our spiritual life and our everyday life.  You are just as likely to encounter a burning bush here in church as you are at your work, if…IF…you are willing to notice.  Second, the point of life is not to resolve all the tension or put an end to the paradox, the point of life and faith is to lean into the tension, the risk, and the mystery of faith in our everyday life.  Mary Oliver has a great quote, she writes “Instructions for living a life.  Pay attention.  Be astonished.  Tell about it.”