Lent 3C Moses and the Burning Bush

Moses was not a man with a plan.

Estranged first from his family of origin,

then from his adopted family,

he accidentally found a new life 

sheep herding as part of his wife's family.

We see him today

(and I love this description)

"beyond the wilderness"

at Horeb, the mountain of God.

We tend to think of the wilderness as 

out there,

and here Moses is wandering around

beyond the wilderness.

He is way out there.

Now we tend to think of Moses as this great leader.

He was.

But before he was a great leader of the Israelites,

he was 

an adopted son who didn't speak so well,

who murdered a man,

and ran away from home.

Thus how he ended up way out there.

He was an outlaw in Egypt,

estranged from both his family of origin and his adopted family.

He was not a man with grand plans.

He was not anyone's hero.

He was herding sheep around, living day to day 

beyond the wilderness.

Yet, God comes to him,

out there in the back of beyond,

and gives him a job to do.

Go,

go back to Egypt.

I am going to set my people free. 

We have an example in Moses.

He didn't think it was possible

to go up against the Pharaoh

to free the Israelite slave population from Egypt.

Yet with God

it was possible.

It happened in a rather miraculous and stupendous way

And He is not the only example from the Bible.

Gideon, Samson, Deborah,

David, Solomon, Ezra, Nehemiah

The apostles, the disciples, the early Christians,

all of these people did the impossible

because of God in their lives.

Its so easy in our culture to give up on trying.

We make it easy to justify giving up.

Things are too hard and we are okay with not trying.

We don't think we can make things better or different,

And it can be very difficult,

so we justify our inertia.

However,

We are not responsible for the big picture.

World Peace is not in our job description.

However, what is in our purview,

what we can do

is do one thing.

And then another.

And then another.

Step by step we can help out.

We will never see the work completely done.

We will never run out of things to do.

We do not live in a perfect world.

Thankfully though, there is always one more thing we can do.

Prayer, service, fasting, giving.

We can always do one more thing.

God gives us so many gifts and we are called to share them.

Moses received a vision of a part of the big picture.

He wasn't told everything at the beginning.

He was given one direction.

Go back to Egypt, talk to the people.

I am going to free my people from Pharaoh.

He wasn't told about having to cross the Red Sea.

He isn't told about the forty years in the desert to come.

He isn't told about the Promise Land.

He isn't told about the Temple in Jerusalem

Or the Messiah to come.

Or even the plagues or the Passover.

Those are all part of the Big Picture

Moses doesn't learn about.

He is given one step at a time.

Go to Egypt.

We are going to set those people free.

Even in the process of setting the people free

it is one step at a time.

Go. Talk to the people. Talk to Pharaoh.

Now, take a staff,

now show Pharaoh God's power,

now we are going to have the plagues.

The steps were laid out in time.

We are only ever given a part of the big picture from God.

Perhaps we know this can be a healthier or larger community.

But we cannot see what is going to happen in Franklin for the next hundred years.

We get

One part. One step.

There are so many examples of people

who didn't have it all planned out.

Who didn't have a grand plan for the next ten years,

but did one thing.

In all of the interviews with Rosa Parks,

she never suggested she was trying to change the world

or had a grand plan of sit ins on buses.

She simply knew the system was wrong and was tired of giving into it.

It was one thing that she did.

and she inspired others to do one thing,

Until there was a national movement.

It may not seem like a lot,

one prayer, one person helped, one life changed.

One baptism, one can of soup given away,

ten minutes with your child,

yet over time, those things add up.

They are all building blocks in the kingdom of God,

they all change the course of the world

and show God's love and salvation to a world desperately in need of it.

Especially in this region of the country,

we have felt betrayed,

we have felt denied,

we have felt the hardships

in the change in economy,

in the change in political systems,

in the systematic oppression of the struggling.

You don't have to go very far to see the signs on the houses,

to see the signs in the faces around us,

Franklin is in a region where we are not impressed with our standards of living right now.

Initiatives to fix up what is broken have failed over and over again,

because there is no one easy fix.

There are too many issues,

education, poverty, hunger, drug and alcohol,

hoarding, underemployment, cost of living,

cost of reliable housing.

There is a never-ending cycle of depression in this region

and it seems way too big for any of us to be able to do something about it.

However, we can.

God has seen worse.

God has worked miracles,

even in this time and place.

Because of one action,

because of people working together,

lives have been changed.

People have been able to get better jobs,

have been able to kick hunger,

have been able to get better education.

All because we did one thing

and then another

and then another.

In offering free food to our neighbors through the Food Pantry,

we have helped children with the nutrition they need

in order to pay attention in class and to become educated

to be able to get jobs

we have offered community to those who otherwise have none

we have offered prayers for those who have felt helpless

and given them the comfort of not being alone.

None of it looks big or grand on the outside,

yet each small act 

has changed this community.

Continuing on in the faith that God is working through us

with a much bigger picture than we could ever see

and being grateful to be a small part of it,

Jesus reaches out through us

giving gifts we don't even see.

True trust in God, true faith in God's grace

leaves no room for cynicism,

leaves no room for "woe is me".

Giving in to those ways of being is giving in to the workings of evil.

We are God's children,

and we are called to faith and trust in our magnificent Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

Let us not give into the evil pressures of this world.

Every day, 

do one thing.

And then another.

And then another.

God will be with you in each and every single one.

Amen.