A little late posting these reflections.
We are doing a "big book" approach to Lent this year, which means the sermons will follow the weekly discussions in the book we are reading through Lent. the good news (I guess) -- I don't have to search to find a sermon topic or Scripture lesson each week, and most weeks I will have met with a class on Wednesday nights to discuss the sermon topic before I write the sermon. the not so good news -- I have to follow the theme, or at least try to follow, established by the author.
This week was a great story from Exodus. I love this passage. I have preached it several times through the years. I found earlier in the week the article that talked about shoes. The article was more focused on the idea preachers need to take off their shoes when they come before God and how preachers ought to prepare to meet God, but it led me to think about what shoes any of us might choose to wear to meet God. I had some fun with that part of the sermon. If I had not been following the theme of the devotional guide, I would have enjoyed building a full sermon around the theme of the shoes we might wear when meeting God.
Each week in worship we are doing a Lenten litany from the devotional guide. If you want to see it, you can go to saint-andrew.com to see a pdf of the week's bulletin.
“The Revealing God” SAPC, March 5, 2017; Exodus 3: 1-15
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”[a] He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord,[b] the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.
Introduction: Spending Lent focusing on a Lenten study entitled The God We Can Know (by Rob Fuquay).
Wednesday night class and two classes on Sunday mornings will be over the weekly topic. See a DVD; discuss the them of the week.
You can also pick up the study guides.
Sermons through Easter will follow the weekly theme.
We will reflect on the God we can know primarily through the “I am” statements that Jesus makes.
You know, when Jesus says, “I am,” and then uses an image to describe who he is.
This first Sunday in Lent, however, we find ourselves with Moses at a bush.
Not just any bush, but a burning bush. And not just a burning bush, but a burning bush that will not be consumed (it keeps burning!).
And not just a burning bush that keeps burning, but a burning bush from which Moses hears the voice of God.
Ridiculous story. In my house in OH, the backyard was encased in giant bushes to the back (so big I had to use a ladder and go into my neighbor’s yard to get the back half); other assorted flowering bushes along the other sides; I spent a lot of time in the bushes; never had one burn; never heard the voice of God.
Ridiculous story - unless, unless the God whose voice Moses hears from the burning bush is the God who desperately desires to be revealed to us.
Move 1: God wants to be known by us.
a. Irony that the Israelites make it difficult to see God.
1. The Israelites thought of God as so holy, so awesome, that they dared not look at God, or say God’s name, or wear their sandals in God’s presence.
3. we who come to God through a personal relationship with Christ sometimes miss that awesome, mysterious, fear-inspiring image of God that the Israelites had.
2. Israelites had protocols to protect them from God. I wonder if we also create ways to “protect,” or avoid, or make it difficult to see God in our midst.
3. never look for God.
4. limit God to the God of Sunday mornings.
5. Fill our lives so full with other things, we have no time or energy to discover God in our midst.
6. name for yourself how you make it difficult to see God.
7. Lent invites us to move beyond this things and look in news for how God is being revealed to us.
b. God announces to Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
1. A reminder that God has made God’s self known previously.
2. appearing in the burning bush may be a new method, but God has been showing up been again, and again, and again.
3. when we speak of God, we speak of the one who has a history with us.
4. We can point to times in our past when God has been present and at work among us.
b. God shifts the revelation to Christ.
1. A reflection of the God of Incarnation — God revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
2. The shift from God saying, “I am…” through the mystery of the burning bush to Jesus saying “I am” while living in our midst, in the flesh.
2. Jesus who says, “I am the light of the world”
3. “I am bread of life”
4. “I am way, the truth, the life”
5. “I am the resurrection and the life”
6. tantalizing tangle of concrete realities intertwined with a host of possibilities.
Move 2: As God is revealed, we discover a host of possibilities.
a. Exodus story.
1. Moses stares at the burning bush that will not be consumed, the burning bush from which he hears the voice of God.
2. Moses hears God call him to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.
3. We might want to note that the possibilities God has in mind might be more than we bargained for. Moses probably did not begin his day thinking, “Oh, today I become the leader of God’s people!”
4. as Moses considers that possibility, or perhaps it is more accurate to say as Moses considers how to avoid that possibility, he asks God a question: “if the people ask me what your name is, what should I tell them?”
b. God says tell them that my name is “I am who I am,” or in the Hebrew it could be “I will be who I will be.”
1. A cryptic answer.
2. but also a name that speaks to the endless possibilities of who God is.
3. a name that says “You cannot confine me to whatever box you have.”
4. A name that says, “you cannot define me, especially if you try to limit me to what you think it possible.”
5. “I will be who I will be”
5. a name that not only points to the God who is ever before us full of possibilities, but the God who calls us to live into that which we have never even imagined.
Move 3: What are we to do with the possibilities God reveals to us?
a. Pay attention!
1. wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her poem “Aurora Leigh” notes “Earth’s crammed with heaven,” and every common bush afire with God: but only he who sees, takes off his shoes, the rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.” Blog Don't Eat Alone, Milton Brashear-Cunningham, 8/28/2011, http://www.donteatalone.blogspot.com/; full quo
2. God is not just the God who wants to be revealed, but the God who is being revealed.
3. Are you looking?
b. I recently read an interesting article about Moses at the burning bush.
1. the author was exploring the part of the story where Moses took off his sandals and asked the question: what kind of shoes do we wear when we approach God (the actual question was focused on the preacher, as in “What shoes does the preacher wear? Anathea Portier-Young
Associate Professor of Old Testament, Duke Divinity School
2. Fascinating question — what kind of shoes do you want to have on when you meet God?
3. Worn sandals, sort of like what Moses might have been wearing when he heard the voice from the burning bush; sort of throwback approach.
4. Your Sunday best so you are looking good and feeling holy? I preached my first real sermon on New Year’s Day almost 30 years ago at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Corsicana, TX
I used money I had been given for Christmas to buy a new suit. My sister saw me try on my sew suit with my old dress shoes and immediately took me to the shoe store to buy some brand new black, wing-tip dress shoes. You’re not wearing old shoes to preach.
I still have those shoes, they’ve been resoled lots of times. I don’t wear them that often but they stare at me from the floor of my closet and ask the question — Richard, are you putting your best effort into worship.
4. High heels so you are tall and confident, ready to look God in the eye so to speak and figure out what God has in store for you?
5. Flip flops, because it does not matter what God reveals to you, you are headed to the pool for some relaxation and fun.
6. Work boots — ready to go
7. jogging shoes — laced up and ready to run…away from God and anything God wants from you?
conclusion: God desires to be known to you.
God has amazing possibilities for you.
Are you ready?
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