Answer the Door, Please
a homily based on Exodus 3:1-15
by Rev. Thomas Hall (in the first part of the homily, I am indebted to Barbara Brown Taylor's work on this passage in her book entitled: Mixed Blessings; Atlanta: Susan Hunter Publishing, 1986, p. 8)

Let me begin with an admission.  I’m a hypocrite.  I’m the first to caution people to slow down and smell the roses, to practice Sabbath, to make room for the movement of God in their lives.  Yet, I rarely go thou and do likewise.  I dash around the office; do business by cell on the way to a meeting, rush here, scurry there.  Some days I make the revolving door spin so fast, air conditioning is unnecessary.   Life in the clergy lane is fast, furious, anything but s – l - o – w.   Someone introduced me recently with, “This is our pastor; he’s very busy.”   That’s me, Reverend Blaze.

            But just let busy people run into today’s lesson in Exodus 3 and our whole week may go up in smoke.  This story was for me, and I hope will be useful for all of us who are afflicted by busyness.  But be forewarned: this story could transform the tempo of our lives, for this is a story about one man who turned aside.  Someone who actually turned from his busyness to encounter the living God.

            Moses is a fugitive from justice.  He has murdered a man in cold blood and high-tailed it across the Sinai Peninsula leaving two hundred miles of sand between him and the gallows.  Now in exile, he tries to settle down; he marries a Midianite womyn and plans to make a new life of it.  Life isn’t so bad . . . he has a spouse, a child, a well to do father-in-law who also serves as the village priest.  And he has plenty of livestock and flocks of sheep and goats. 

            Maybe over the years his memory fades and those earlier years in Egypt are all but forgotten.  He least of all is expecting any knocks at the door.  But then one day while he’s out minding the flocks near Mt. Horeb, he happens upon a strange desert scene: a bush out in the middle of nowhere burns.  The flames dance and jump about it for what seems like an eternity.  He considers the possibilities: a bolt of lightening?  A volcanic eruption?  Spontaneous combustion?  Maybe one of the sheep’s hooves had struck a flint.  “I know,” he thinks, “I only think it’s burning; it’s just some weird reflection from the sun.”  But on the other hand, it could be a fake bush, rigged up with foil and red lights—some Midianite’s idea of a joke. 

            Yet that aromatic smell—the fire is real enough.   He watches the column of smoke and the crinkled vision of the bush.  Odd thing though, Moses muses, the fire never burns itself out.  This bush could even outlast the best AA batteries.  So he just stands there for half and hour.  The bush glows like red hot charcoal at a grill out, yet the bush is not consumed. 

            “Okay, okay,” he says, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”   Once God sees that Moses has turned aside to look at this strange sight, so that he forgets completely about the sheep wandering off shepherd-less—at that point the Lord speaks to him out of the bush, calling, “Moses, Moses, remove your shoes from off your feet.”

            “Here I am,” Moses mouths flabbergasted that a bush actually speaks in Hebrew.  Suspecting that he has unknowingly come upon the turf of a local god—maybe the god of sagebrush—Moses now seeks to learn the name of this deity to gain some leverage.  But the identity of this god unnerves him: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—I am the God of your family ad relatives.”

            The memories long buried and repressed now come flooding back.  Moses remembers the story his sister used to tell him how that a certain God had rescued him from being murdered when he was an infant.  He begins to recall the stories that his mother used to tell him about Abraham and the story about Joseph.   God’s name recalls a whole lot of memory that Moses had buried long ago. 

            But he learns something new too.  Moses discovers that this burning bush God has perceptive ears and eyes that hear the voices of suffering and pain.  Moses has opened the door to a God who sees underneath bridges where homeless people sleep, who sees people who are anxious for a handout, who sees little children shivering.   Moses has met a God who sees suffering as no human can.  And now wants to change that way of deliverance who cry out for help.  God is ready to act justly—and so the bush God comes knocking on Moses’ door.

            “I have seen the misery and oppression of my people in Egypt.  And guess who I want to help me?” God asks.  This sounds like a very bad idea to Moses.   First of all, he has a price on his head.  If he returns he might as well walk right into the 34th precinct and call his lawyer.  Not to mention his lack of leadership ability.  Have you ever heard this guy speak?  “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  He can barely lead sheep; what will he do with twelve tribes?  God is not very comforting—doesn’t offer him safe passage and refuses to provide a game plan.  God doesn’t even say, “Nothing bad will happen to you.”  What he does say, however, is “I am with you,” as if that were enough.  “Never mind who you are, Moses, what matters is who I am and that I have invited you to help me.”

            Still seeking leverage, Moses tries again to get the specific name of this bush-god.  If he can decipher the precise title of this deity he may have at least some power of the god who is asking so much of him.   It’s like God comes knocking at the front door, and Moses sneaks out the back door and runs around the house and up to the front door.  Quickly donning his Groucho Marx black rims, eyebrows, and huge nose, Moses asks God, “Hello, may I tell my friend who calls for him?”

            “Sure,” the visitor responds.  “Tell him that ‘I AM WHO I AM’ knocks at his front door.  Tell him that “I was who I was, I am who I am, I will be who I will be.” 

            “OOOOkaaaay, I’ll uh, tell him.”  Moses runs back around the house scratching his head in wonderment.  The answer puts Moses in his place and the old sheepherder decides to believe this burning bush god.  He accepts his call, and never sees more thaqn the backside of God again, but even this is catching. 

            After many backside, fireside chats with the God of the burning bush, Moses’ own face begins to shine.  It burns with such bright light that he frightens those around him and he takes to wearing a veil.  The end of the story, of course, is that he delivers Isrel to the promised land and becomes one of the great leaders of history. 

            Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end—burning bushes, angels of the Lord, pillars of fire, parted seas—those unmistakable signs of the presence of God.  What we wouldn’t give for just one clear, unmistakable direction from the Lord, one burning bush, one sharp knock at the door, one voice to call us by name and tell us what to do. 

            At least that’s what we think we would like to have.  But I wonder sometimes.  I wonder if maybe we stay so busy, so entangled in busy-ness, so focused on our daily planners that we no longer have the capacity to see burning bushes.   Maybe I wouldn’t notice that burning bush until it came up behind me and singed me.  Maybe we’re afraid like Moses; afraid of what the bush might know about us, afraid of what it might ask of us.  So if we stay busy with these busy little things in our busy little world, we’ll be able to reach retirement without incident.   As one writer says, we just hunch our shoulders, keep our head down, and mind our own business.  A burning bush?  I didn’t see it, we say, the fire extinguisher still in hand.  A burning bush?  I really haven’t the time.  A burning bush—no such thing.  A burning bush—someone else please see it instead of me.

            About forty years ago a rural preacher in western Pennsylvania was doing what he did every Sunday night—watching several hours of television.  One night a strange thing happened—he felt that God wanted him to shut the TV off and pray.  So he did.  Eventually he was drawn to pray for youth in the inner city.  Then one day he saw in the newspaper pictures of several youth who were standing trial for the murder of some gang members. 

            He jumped into his car headed for New York City—a place this rural preacher had never been before.  He burst into the courtroom and interrupted the sentencing.  He was quickly subdued and thrown out of the courtroom—but not without causing a reporter’s heyday.  His picture made the early editions and he soon became known among the gangs as Davey.  Soon David Wilkerson’s life changed—he moved to New York and began Teen Challenge.  His centers over the past thirty years have provided rehabilitation for heroin addicts, runaways, alcoholics, and the homeless people of our nation.   Teen Challenge claims over 80% drug rehabilitation success rate.  So effective is his treatment centers that they are now one of the agencies supported by the United Way. 

            Old Davey is back down on Times Square shepherding a speckled flock five thousand each Sunday—a mixed congregation of business professionals mixed among street people and a variety of ethnic groups. 

            So anyway, a kid gets a hold of a book about Dave Wilkerson, called The Cross and the Switchblade, and also begins to hear a knock at the door.  The bush burns and gets his attention and then God speaks and sends him to college and seminary and over to you here this morning.  Burning bushes can be contagious!

            Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote that “each common bush is aflame with God.   Yet only the one who sees takes off their shoes.  The rest set round and pluck blackberries.”  Or tend sheep.  Or dash around the office; do business by cell on the way to a meeting, rush here and scurry there. 

            This story tells us to stop!  Stop and take off your shoes, knowing that in God’s presence is holy ground.  Risk getting burned, looking foolish, being wrong.  Drop what you’re doing and turn aside to look for the God we sees, speaks, hears, acts, calls, and delivers in every burning bush, face, and event of your life—the big and the small, the good and the bad, the common and unusual.  Look for God’s presence and call.  But don’t stop there.

            Once you get to recognize the God of burning bushes, let God set you on fire.  Become a burning bush yourself.  You may frighten some people with your shining face.  You may even scare yourself!  But we will not be consumed.  And we will not be alone, for I AM WHO I AM is with us, and has been with us all along, and will be with us forever, world without end.  Amen.