September 3, 2023
Pentecost 14
Lectionary 22
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Exodus 3:1-15
A few weeks ago we were camped at St. Malo Provincial Park, and I went to find the place where they sell the firewood. There was a friendly cheery rural Manitoba slow-drawl-talker working there, and as he wrapped up my bundle of firewood the conversation somehow turned to mosquitoes. He started out by complaining about mosquitoes, because that’s what we do in Manitoba, right? But then we both looked around, and I said, and he agreed, that we’d gotten off easy the last few years, because around here at least there have hardly been any. Then we talked for another minute about droughts and dry and heat, and he looked pensively down the road, scratched his belly, and then said, “Yep. Somebody’s trying to tell us something, my friend. And we’re not listening.”
Just hang on to that for a minute: Somebody’s trying to tell us something, and we’re not listening.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been building up to this story we hear today about Moses, and a burning bush, and the voice of God and Moses’ reluctance in the whole matter. Remember a few weeks ago when we heard the wrap up of the Joseph story? Joseph had risen from slavery and was now in the royal court, and he welcomed his estranged brothers and his whole extended family to Egypt, because there was a famine in their own land, and in Egypt they would have all the food they need.
Then last week we heard that Joseph had died, and a new king came along who didn’t know Joseph, and that king decided that he could get free labour from all those Hebrew people, and the king made them all slaves. After the people have been slaves for four hundred or so brutal years one of the Hebrew women has a son, and then two women named Shiphrah and Puah, along with the King’sdaughter, who is a feisty young woman who doesn’t follow her dad’s orders, these three and the child’s mom conspire to make sure that he survives and thrives. He’s given the name Moses.
The people have been slaves for all that time, and they are horribly oppressed, and the last thing that we hear before we come to this burning bush story is that the people cried out and cried out, and God heard them when they cried. And God remembered – “You know, I promised them that they would have a land of their own and they would thrive. And here they are, living as slaves. But I remember that promise I made.” And then God looked. And God saw what was happening.
Somebody’s trying to tell God something. And God hears. And God sees the oppression of the people and God takes note. And God remembers.
God is revealed to us today as one who sees, and notices, and hears, and remembers, just like anyone might suddenly see what they didn’t see, and hear what had been lost in all the commotion before, and they remember what they might have forgotten as the years rolled by.
Today we find that that little child named Moses is all grown up. He’s a refugee, because years ago he had to flee for his life from Egypt to a far away country - something to do with murdering an Egyptian soldier. So today we hear that one day Moses was out going about his work as a shepherd in his new land. He’s out beyond the wilderness at Horeb, and while he’s out doing shepherding things an angel appears from a fire in a shrub. It’s actually a bush on fire, but it’s not burning up, so Moses looks and says “That’s weird; I have to go see what’s going on.” And Moses sees the bush on fire. And when God sees that Moses sees, God says, “Hey Moses. Caught you looking! And now that I’ve got your attention and you see, here’s what’s happening: I’ve seen my peoples’ misery; I’ve heard them crying out; and now I know they're suffering. I’m going to set them free: Go and bring my people out of their slavery.”
When God sees that Moses sees, God calls Moses. Neither God nor Moses can just pretend that they never saw or heard. God can’t unsee the slavery of a people, and God will make sure that Moses sees. God can’t unsee the oppression of a nation and neither can Moses. We can’t unhear once we hear the voices of those who were not heard. And we can’t unhear God calling us to care and toremember and to do something.
It’s a story about a God who listens when someone tries to tell God something. It’s a story about Moses who hears a call and finally answers it. It’s a story about a nation of slaves who are about to be set free. And all of this is spoken out of a bush on fire.
Maybe, as we enter into a month called the season of creation, God calls to us from a burning bush too. And we’re like Moses. We’re called to hear that voice and to listen to it; to act, to pay attention, to care, to do something, even when we’re not sure how.
This much is sure: we can’t ignore a burning bush and the voice that speaks from it any more than we can ignore the sight of forests on fire and people forced to flee. Something’s calling us to pay attention, “someone’s trying to tell us something, my friend”, said the one selling firewood at the park. We can’t unsee a burning bush and forests on fire any more than we can unsee floodwaters and unhear the word about hurricane seasons, or about drought and famine that hurt the poor of the world more than they affect those of us who might have wealth, and, and, and, and we know the stories we’ve seen and heard and that we live with right here. About a creation on fire.
They say there’s a climate disaster unfolding; creation is crying out, and God calls to us from a bush on fire and says, “I have seen and heard what is happening right now. And I want you to hear, to see, to remember, to go, to act.”
And what’s really great about this Moses story is that the very next thing that happens – the reading today just stopped short of this – is that God sends Moses to the elders of the people, and Moses and the elders and the people will do this work together. God doesn’t send Moses alone. God doesn’t call Moses to work alone and to set the people free by himself. In the same way God calls and sends us together.
So we listen to the voice from the bush and we say, “OK, so what now?” And God goes with us as we try to answer this question during the Season of Creation and during all the seasons of our life together.
But it’s not all about disaster.
This last Thursday morning this is what Val and I woke up to at Birds Hill (it’s
great to have camping half an hour away. Go to work. Go camping. Go back to work in the morning. Go camping after work. Repeat. On Thursday morning we sat with our morning coffee and we saw clouds aflame with sunrise over forest that surrounded our campsite. It was its own kind of burning bush, and the bush was not burnt up.
You see, it’s not just that we can’t unsee disaster. We can’t unsee beauty either. I’ll never forget that sunrise in those clouds. God’s
voice calls from beauty too. God’s voice speaks from a different kind of burning bush and says, “I have seen, I have heard, I remember, I will make it all new. I promise!” And then what happens? We remember that God sees and that God cares. We remember that God too loves all this beauty, that sunrise, that river, these people. And we remember that even God could not be stopped from loving all that God has made, even if that will come to mean taking up a cross and dying....God will stop at nothing so that the beauty and the love and the life will be restored.
God speaks to us from a burning bush and we see beauty all around us that reminds us of God’s good will. We hear the sounds of creation, the lovely and
weird and the still and the booming, and we hear of God’s love for all that is. A river roars by or a river meanders by in its Red River kind of way, and we hear of our own baptism, or we hear of the goodness of God that washes over and refreshes all that is. God speaks from a burning bush and we go into the beauty and the disaster and the world that God sees and hears and remembers. And we act as we are called, trusting in this God who hears and takes note, who sees and pays attention, who remembers and will act. AMEN.