Why Me?

Why Me? 

• Exodus 3: 1 - 15; Matthew 16: 21 - 28

If you are anything like me, you try to set up a collection of simple routines, define a set of “normal activities’” and those routines help us to avoid the kinds of self-induced problems that can make our days difficult and lead to embarrassment. 

Martha laughs when before I go out the door I go through my routine, do I have my keys, my wallet, my phone, and my bifocals not just reading glasses. It just makes it easier if everything is in its place before I start. 

When the torrential rains fell on coastal Texas, no one was permitted the luxury of routines or “normal activities.” Reality broke through the routine and demanded a new response, and different way of being. 

I was teaching reactor operators at a nuclear power plant still under construction when the when the accident at Three Mile Island occurred. While the event was not very damaging in costs and radioactive release to the environment, we learned a great deal. We learned that operators can make a host of assumptions, and not see the reality. We can respond to the situation, we do what should help, and we expect it to work, and may be slow to recognize it is not working.

Several years after TMI, the terrible event happened at Chernobyl in Russia. As bad as that event was, it did not teach us so much because there were so many management and administrative failures that created the conditions for that event that it seems impossible for that to happen in our better constructed and managed plants. I am now too far removed to appreciate the impact of the Fukushima accident on power plant operations. My limited experience sees Fukushima as an event that challenges design assumptions in new ways. 

The Three Mile Island event, required sweeping changes to our Emergency Procedures, dramatic changes in operator training, and required an entirely different management style in off-normal operations than what the culture permitted and even expected before that. 

In today’s scriptures, Moses has one of those God experiences that change what he knows of God, and what he expects of himself, because of how God interacts with him. And Jesus tries to prepare his disciples for a new way of living with a new way of relating to him. 

The passage from Exodus is a defining moment in understanding the relationship between God and humanity. God reveals the divine identity and orientation of God towards the rest of us.  

In the bush that burns and is not consumed, no ashes to ashes for the eternal creator, we get a glimpse of the power and majesty that is God. God creates an invitation to get the attention of Moses. Moses, like anyone with a task that involves long hours alone, welcomes the diversion. 

God immediately raises the ante on this exchange. Moses is called by name. He is instructed to remove his sandals, God is not going to be dismissed as a casual tourist attraction. This is the first step of entering into a relationship, a relationship that has costs as well as benefits. 

Just as an aside, as a welcoming church, we would like folks to feel free to take a part in our worship and fellowship. But we also need to make clear to ourselves that to be in an enduring relationship with God and each other, there will be costs as well as benefits. And we can expect that it will get a little personal, and that, is why it matters. We do need to avoid pressing new people into responsibilities, until we first show them the joy we have in serving others. But I digress.  

Moses is no saint, mind you, when God calls out to him. Moses is a murderer in hiding. He killed an abusive Egyptian guard, and then escaped far away from the reaches of civilization into the wilderness of the Arabian peninsula. Here he was welcomed and married into the family of a pagan Holy Man, whose flock he was tending. Lest we get too concerned with ethnic and racial purity, note that Holy Moses, a criminal in hiding, was in a mixed marriage. 

God then declares his relationship through the ages with people of faith. God declares that the voices of the suffering people have moved the heart of the Creator. Now committed to action, God selects human beings - namely the man Moses in this story - to act in the world for justice. God does care and God does act, but through people of faith, not in impersonal magic acts. 

For his part, Moses resists. “Why me? Who am I to confront Pharaoh? To which God responds, “I will be with you.” 

Bless his heart, Moses persists. “But if I go to the Israelites and say God has sent me, and they say, ‘Who is this God that sent you’ - what can I even tell them? 

Here God gives the divine name to Moses. The Jewish people avoid pronouncing the name “Yahweh” as a sign of respect. This is the root of songs and poems about “the Holy name.” They teach that in the act of breathing, the movement of air in and out of the body, breathes the sacred name of God. 

So then the name of God, often translated as “I Am,” or “I Am Who I Am,” or sometimes - “I Will Be What Is Needed;” is rightly identified with the totality of Being, of Existence, of Life itself. In fact the Hebrew name of God (audible breath) is the first and last word uttered from our lips. 

The call of Moses captures the beauty of the relationship between the all-knowing and empowering divine; and humanity, in our limitations and insecurity. It declares that for the divine to interact in matters of justice for the oppressed or hurting; flawed, impure, imperfect humans must act as accompanied by the divine presence. 

For all of his resistance, Moses understood his call. He was supported by the wisdom of his father-in-law Jethro, a man of God in his own right. Moses grew as a person - as his relationship with God became more involved and more trusting. 

12 to 15 hundred years later, the person Jesus of Nazareth, acted as teacher and guide confronting the institution that grew up out of this initial relationship. The Temple priests now served God, and also negotiated a peace with the local authorities including the occupying Roman Army. 

Jesus warns his closest disciples that this confrontation was about to get very violent. Peter, who could never figure out what he thought until it came out of his mouth, tries to refute what Jesus is telling him. Jesus shuts him down. 

Then Jesus tells Peter, and us, that the love of God is not free. Love by its very nature - makes us vulnerable. Love by its very nature, is personal. Love, by its very nature - draws us nearer to God. 

Does Jesus mean we are all going to be crucified? Not all of us will be martyred, at least not today. But he does mean that we should stay true to our principles and resist the temptation to negotiate away our beliefs simply to keep the peace, or share in the power of the establishment. 

I believe our identity in God is built on the “image of God” imprinted on us as a Creature. It does not depend on our good looks, witty conversation, or even our persuasive charm. While our mothers may love us down to our very souls, God’s love for us is latched to the soul. Our social presence is valuable only as an expression of our soul’s relationship with the divine. 

This spiritual sense, invites us to leave our ego needs aside when we take our sandals off and approach the fire of God. We are first a child of God. We recognize the eternal nature of God, which hints at the eternal portion of our relationship with God. 

We have been chosen, by name, by this eternal God, into a relationship that is never ending. You were chosen, because God loves you. You cannot earn that love. You do not deserve that love. I don’t think you can even refuse that love - only choose to pretend like it does not exist. 

Like Moses, we may be lead to confront injustice - and feel like it is too big, it is beyond what we can change. That only means we are so accustomed to doing it “on our own” we fail to anticipate the presence of God, who will empower us to confront and move beyond the next hurdle. 

Talk like this from - near the pulpit - does not sound the same as we used to think about God. Like Moses, and the disciples of Jesus, and even the power plant operators, we are being invited to claim a new understanding and responsibility in our relationship with God and with reality. 

Community UCC, do not be afraid. Trust the personal encounter you have with God. God is with us. We are called to represent the radical hospitality that is the love of God. It is more than we can do by ourselves, and it is only what we do together. It is beyond the understanding of many good folks around us. Once God reveals how generous God’s love is, we can no longer pretend that we are the same as we used to be. 

As we gather around the communion table this morning, let us deeply appreciate the presence of God in our lives, whispering our names - just as we breath the name of God. Let us sense in the sacrament of Jesus - how God is embodied within us - to carryout God’s love and justice mission in the world.