Today I want to talk about calling and the way we get a call from God.
Our faith is a faith full of questions. There are always questions. The question which often seems to be uppermost in the minds of those who do not have a religious faith (and for some who do) is “Does God exist?” I assume that most of us, by our very presence here, have already positively answered this question to our own satisfaction. In the reading from Exodus there is another question–one that I’m sure we all have (indeed, probably continue to have as we make our faith journey). The question in Exodus is not “Does God exist?” but “What kind of God is Yahweh?” It is one that applies equally well to Jesus. We ask “What kind of God is Jesus?” and the living out of our faith is our answer to this question.
When I first read the scripture passages for today I wondered if these three readings could be said to be symbolic of the Christian journey. In Exodus Moses is “hooked” by God through the strange phenomenon of the burning bush. In the encounter with God on the mountain he is called into God’s service. The words of Paul are “words of encouragement” which help us when we get into a rough time. And then there comes a point, as in the Gospel, where Jesus needs to sit us down (so to speak) and reveal the that the true implications of our choice to follow God are more than we thought at first. But what about that moment where it all begins–the event, experience, whatever it was that first “hooked” us into faith.
For Moses this was the strange thing he went up the mountain to see. “We know too little about the historical Moses to be able to say whether he actually experienced a burning bush at his call. He would have lived at least four hundred years before these traditions began to receive written form and it is most likely that he has become an ideal, or representative figure after the manner of a prophet. That, however, does not in any way diminish the importance of the narratives in which he appears. The stories about him have absorbed the accumulated experience of many generations.” So whether we can answer questions about Moses’ existence or if he really did encounter a burning bush are not the important ones. In this story God’s name is revealed to Moses.
What’s in a name? A name tells you something vital–it identifies the one being named. And in Exodus we hear God’s name. Do you know that this name for the divine, Yahweh, occurs nearly seven thousand times in the Old Testament. There have been recent attempts to discover the origin of this name. Research has cantered upon Egyptian references to “Yhw in shasu land”. The shasu were tribal peoples living in areas including that between the Egyptian delta and Gaza.
Whatever the origin of the name Yahweh, it is derived from the Hebrew verb “to be.” In Exodus this gets translated variously as “I am who I am”, or “I am what I am” or “I will be what I will be”. What is unique about this name is that it describes Yahweh differently from the other Gods of the region. Gods of the surrounding nations were personifications of natural phenomena–Baal was the god of the storm clouds and Shamash the sun God. But Yahweh is above nature and is the source of all that exists. So this name and the actions which Yahweh, through Moses and Aaron and others acts, reveals a God who sets his people free. He is a God who sets his people free by calling them to be his instruments in one way or another.
This call from God that Moses responds to has a very specific form termed a “call narrative”. I won’t go into the details except to say that in the structure of this form there are messages about who God is and how we go about deciphering the call of God in our lives. It is an essential message to hear because, as I’m sure you know, God’s call to us is continuous. It isn’t something that happens once. There is an initial call, but then as we grow and develop and move on our Christian journey God calls us to new things, new places and new roles to play. So to be able to recognize and understand these callings from God is vital. There are times when we need words of encouragement to keep us going and times when we need to be shown the full implication of what we are doing. But there is always a need to be able to see and respond to the new calls from God which we receive during the course of our lives.
There are several things which looking at the form of Moses’ call can reveal about how we go about looking for the call of God. The first thing is we are confronted in some way by God. And this confrontation encourages us to look for God’s call in the ordinary experience of our everyday routines. Moses was tending sheep when the call came, not out looking for a miraculous mountaintop experience. Frequently the call of God to biblical characters is unexpected. It is something which arises out of our routine life.
Another aspect of this is that God establishes a relationship with the person that gives a new perspective on life. Also, the call tends to be very specific and task oriented. Biblical characters are not called to adopt a particular state of mind or attitude toward the world. They are calls that arise out of specific situations and for a purpose.
Something which the Moses narrative makes clear (and is very comforting) is that objection to the divine call is accepted–it is an orthodox part of the process. Indeed, if one does not feel a sense of objection at some point to the call, perhaps it is not the call of God at all. Or perhaps our human ambitions have crowded God out.
However, the reassuring thing about this is that objection always prompts divine reassurance. God responds to Moses’ objection by reassuring him that both God and Moses will be sharing the risk of the call. So following a call from God means that we will never be alone, even though we may fail. Indeed, Moses is only partially successful in his call: he leads the people out of Egypt but does not bring them to the land of Canaan. The final point is that there is some sort of sign which follows the call.
I wonder if one of the reasons most people find change so difficult is because in change itself is a call from God. If change is a constant in life, then does that fact say to us that God is calling all of us to continue to live while we live? And how do we do that? Perhaps one way is by standing against a culture of success. If we accept that the only goal is to do well all of the time and to just keep getting better and better and better then where is God’s call if we fail? Indeed, in this thinking “failure is not an option” as the saying goes and so an opportunity to hear God’s calling in failure is lost. Often, that which seems a failure is a place where God can effect the most creative transformation of our lives. That isn’t to say that every failure is engineered by God to be a rosy moment of rescue. Sometimes failures are just that. But they are always opportunities when we face some core questions of existence, such as what is it we value most?
There is a story of Nasruddin, the Holy Fool, attending a conference of management consultants. The other management consultants were all staying at the most expensive hotels and going out each evening to the best restaurants in town. Nasurddin spent his time sitting in the conference hall eating his plain bread and cheese supper. One of his colleagues, on the way to enjoy a lavish meal at an expensive restaurant, passed Nasruddin and said, “If only you would learn to tell the companies what they want to hear and were less confrontational, then you would earn better fees and would not have to be left here each evening eating plain bread and cheese.” Nasruddin replied, “If you, my friend, would learn to live on bread and cheese then you would not have to spend your time telling companies what you think they want to hear.”
God’s calls are never easy. But if answered affirmatively and followed through then the rewards are great indeed (as clichéd as that sounds). They may not be material rewards or wealth rewards, but they will be a reward far greater than any of these: furthering the reach of God’s love and compassion in this broken, hurting world. Amen.
Terrance Bell