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Hebrew Scripture Reading– Exodus 3: 9-17
I want to begin with a brief visualization exercise. Clear your mind of whatever your thinking about, close your eyes if you want, and focus on any image or images that come to mind when you hear the name Moses. Now I am talking about Moses from the Bible, not Moses Malone, the Hall of Fame basketball player. As you focus on this image of Moses, take note of where he is and what he is doing. What details do you notice about the scene? Okay, has everyone had an image come to mind? You can open your eyes. Let’s have a show of hands. How many of you pictured Moses holding the ten commandments?
How many of you thought of Moses parting the red sea? Thanks to the picture of Moses by Marilynn Jones on the information packets it is kind of hard not to think of that one. How many of you thought of Moses in the river as an infant among the bulrushes? Okay, there might be some other common images that come to mind: Moses and the burning bush, Moses and the staff the becomes a snake, Moses and the manna from heaven, Moses shepherding his people through the wilderness. There are lots of images of Moses that one might easily imagine.
Perhaps, a similarity between how churchgoers think of Moses from the Bible and how basketball fans remember Moses Malone is that we tend to remember those things that make the highlight reel. We remember the slam dunks against Pharaoh, the come from behind miracles, the mountaintop playoff highs. Or, to use a non-sports metaphor, we remember the greatest hits, the songs that topped the charts, the tunes we sing the shower years later.
Now, if you are a true sports fan or true music fan, at some point you might begin to learn more about such stars than just what their highlights or hits reveal. You might read about their personal life history, how they became who they became, what their parents were like, what schools they attended, what formative influences shaped them, how they dealt with early hardships and set backs. In essence, you learn all these details and facts that help you to appreciate that person and their successes even more.
Our scripture reading for this morning comes at the definitive turning point in the life of Moses. Beginning with this moment, the highlight reel begins. After this point, come the dazzling moves and platinum hits, but in order to fully appreciate all of this, it helps to first explore some of the details that often get overlooked in the early life of Moses. I want to take a look at some snap shots that typically don’t make the highlight reel. I want to especially look at those snap shots that I think will help us to understand the personal significance for Moses of what God says to him at this definitive turning point.
The first snap shot I want to look at is when Pharaoh’s daughter hires a slave to nurse baby Moses. Unbeknownst to Pharaoh’s daughter this slave happens to be Moses’s biological mother. Much has been written about the psychological issues of identity that adopted children face as they negotiate their biological identity and their adopted identity. Just think of the kinds of issues Moses would have faced! At what point would his biological mother have first broken the news to Moses that he wasn’t really an Egyptian, that she, the slave who watched over him, was really his mother, that his adopted father who he adores wanted to initially kill him along with the rest of the Israelite baby boys? At what point, would he have learned this? Would it have been after it had become engrained in him to look down upon the slaves who serve him?
One might further imagine what Moses would have done once he became aware of his true ethnic identity? Would Moses have been like the rebellious millionaire’s son who reads Mao’s little red book aloud at the breakfast table? And yet, when that millionaire’s son leaves the safe confines of the mansion, he is completely unable to interact with the “masses” outside the gates? Despite his bloodline and his mother’s care, Moses would have been ill-equipped for the real world of oppression and violence faced by his people outside the palace walls. The Hebrew people captured in his mother’s stories would have no longer filled him with romantic longing upon discovering that he does not fit in among them either. Moses would have had a severe identity crises to say the least, so it is easy to imagine how a deep anger at the world and his place within it would have developed inside him as he grew into young adulthood.
The next snap shot from Moses’s life pictures him striking a blow against an Egyptian overseer. Two verses from Exodus capture the moment. They read: “One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and saw their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsfolk. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” In that one single act of rage, Moses irrevocably cuts himself off from his adopted father and his Egyptian upbringing forever. At first, Moses thinks he can get away with it. He goes out the next day as if nothing happened, but then one of his own people calls him out and names his crime. Moses is condemned by one of the very people he so desperately wants to have accept him as one of their own. His accuser rubs Moses’s royal identity in his face saying, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” The royalty that Moses has undoubtedly come to despise himself has become the curse, the indelible stain on his own identity that haunts him among his own people.
A third snap shot to consider comes when Moses marries Zipporah. After fleeing from the threat of his father to kill him for committing murder, Moses lives among the Midianites. He has left behind the Egyptians and Israelites to become a foreigner among a strange and nomadic people. Moses ingratiates himself to the Midianites when his sense of justice leads him to stand up for the seven women at the well who are driven away by shepherds. Moses is then officially accepted into the Midianite fold through marriage. His identity crisis, however, remains unresolved in the fourth and final snap shot to consider. In this snap shot, Moses is holding his first son in his arms. He names him Gershom. Moses explains that the name signifies the he is an alien in a foreign land. Despite his marriage and his child, Moses still does not quite feel at home. His whole life he has never really fit in. He has always been a misfit.
And, then comes the turning point. Moses sees the burning bush and God calls him to be the leader of his people. Not surprisingly, Moses’s first conversation with God revolves around two questions of identity raised by Moses: “Who am I?” and “Who are you?” After having considered the previous snap shots of Moses’s early life, one can better understand what led Moses to say, “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah, and bring the Israelites, out of Egypt?” In other words, why select me to be the leader of a people among whom I have never really lived and been accepted? Aren’t I the last person you would want to choose? I have to admit, it does seem like an awful draft pick. Moses really does not have the resume of someone you would want rebuilding your franchise. Brandon Roy, maybe, but Moses? Come on?
In addition to simply not meeting the criteria of a potential leader for the Israelites, one can imagine that behind Moses’s words was also an unhealthy lack of confidence in both himself and others. After all those years of struggling to fit in, how could he ever imagine himself to be a leader? Who am I to have anyone listen to me? Who am I to be anyone other than that kid nobody wants as their own? I suspect there are some UCC members out there who at a certain level can identify with not fitting in. I am thinking of those who come to the UCC from other denominations and churches that are less progressive and less open. In church after church, they are the ones who don’t quiet fit in. They are the ones who are a little too independent minded and a little too questioning. They might also be the ones who are simply rejected because of their sexual orientation or gender expression.
I myself did not become a member of a UCC church until the end of my seminary education. Until I found the UCC, I had experienced at least six young adult years of not quiet fitting in. It was enough to keep me from entertaining the idea of being a pastor. It was enough to make me noxious as a counselor at a Christian camp in Southern Indiana. Where to begin with that experience? Maybe the devotional material for kids that portrayed these strange, foreign people of color as savage cannibals in need of conversion? Maybe the guilt wrenching come-to-the-altar moments during worship? Maybe the homophobia of some of the staff?
Well, what does God have to say to those who have never quite fit in? In our scripture today, God simply says, I will be with you. In other words, you fit in with me. Not only do I affirm you for who you are, but I want you to be my vessel in the world. I want you to be my agent for change. I want you to be my bearer of possibilities. God then in essence tells Moses, You will know what I say is true when you are back at this mountain surrounded by a free people. This sounds a little too good to be true, so Moses switches from “who am I?” to “who are you?” Our scripture has God responding, “I Will Be What I Will Be.” In Hebrew, this was a play on words that doesn’t translate into English, but it also had a meaning that my Jewish Study Bible explains this way. What God is saying is: “My nature will become evident from My actions.” Again, the proof will be in the living. When your people are free, you will know who I am.
Well, First Congregational UCC, who are we? And, who is our God? My hope is that both will be readily apparent in the Moses Project. Let’s be that church of spiritual misfits. Let’s be that unlikely vessel of God. Let’s be that agent of divine change. Let’s be that bearer of possibilities. Let’s show Vancouver that we are a place where proof of a justice-loving God is made evident in our living. Years from now we will hopefully be able to look back at this coming year and see a highlight reel of spiritual slam dunks and amazing shots. Amen.
