Walking into the Fire

Photo by Frankie Lopez on Unsplash

The First United Presbyterian Church

“Walking into the Fire”

Rev. Amy Morgan

August 30, 2020

Exodus 3:1-15

1 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." 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, 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.

This is a sensitive time to be talking about burning bushes. As wild fires rage across the Western United States, as we smell the smoke and see the helicopters shuttling slush to fight the blazes, as people in our community, our family and friends, are evacuated and losing their homes – this is no time to be preaching on a text about a fire in the wilderness. 

I preached on this text just a few months ago, back in our Lenten series on landscapes of faith. Back then, I chose this text because of how it speaks to our mountain theology. But this week, I was confronted by this text in the lectionary, and I didn’t feel like I could pass it up. 

Because wild fires are not the only destructive force we are grappling with right now. A friend of mine texted a few weeks ago, telling me her life was a dumpster fire. She was trying to grapple with how she and her husband were both going to work full time jobs and homeschool three elementary-age children. People in the Gulf are dealing with the destruction wrought by massive hurricanes. All our familiar structures and rituals, relationships and activities have been altered or obliterated in the last six months. Political candidates ratchet up fear about what will happen if the other party wins in November. We’ve been confronted, once again, with the injustice and desperate anger resulting from systemic racism. Nothing and no one feels safe or secure. It feels like the whole world is on fire. 

So we should have no trouble vividly visualizing the scene from our text today. Orange tongues of fire licking the air around the bush. The smell of smoke. The burning feeling in our throat and eyes. The crackling sounds. The fear in the pit of your stomach. The rising panic, tightening in your chest. 

But when Moses encounters this sight, he doesn’t panic. He notices right away that there is something very different about this fire. It is not like anything he’s ever seen before. The fire blazes, emanating heat and light. But it does not consume or destroy. Like any fire, it has the power consume the bush, and any other flammable tinder around it. But this fire is not destructive. The bush is preserved. The fire is contained and constrained.

The world around Moses, however, is being consumed. Life is a dumpster fire for God’s people, who are enslaved and subjected, day in and day out, to oppressive labor and sub-human living conditions. When Moses tried to do something about it, to put out the fire of the deathly kilns, he ended up killing a man. Now he’s a fugitive, running from the fires that are consuming his kin. 

Moses runs from the fire of destruction, but God grabs his attention with this life-giving fire. When he turns aside to see, God calls to him out of that fire, and at first Moses answers God as Abraham and Jacob did before him: “Here I am,” he says. But when God tells Moses he is called to go back to Egypt and fight the fires that are destroying his people there, Moses demurs. He resists, saying, “Who me? Nah, you’ve got the wrong guy. I don’t even know your name!”

Moses has been happily ignoring the fires in Egypt and the destruction and misery they were causing. He was happy feeling helpless and removed. He was happy tending his father-in-law’s flock, wandering around the wilderness, far from the fires of slavery and oppression, from the heat of the brick-making kilns. Maybe he smelled the smoke from time to time. Maybe he heard a cry now and then, when he got too close to the city. Maybe that is why he finds himself at the edge of the wilderness, as far away from the fire as possible.

And so Moses resists the call of God. But God is persistent. 

While Moses has been trying to ignore the fires raging in Egypt, God has been paying close attention. The text tells us God sees the Israelites’ misery, hears their cries, and knows their oppression. And God is about to take action. God will go down to bring the Israelites up. 

This whole text is packed with embodied language. Words for sight are used ten times. God speaks and hears. Moses is called to come and go. 

If we are ever tempted to imagine that God is some distant, disembodied, ephemeral spirit, this text, as well as many others in scripture, should disavow us of that notion. Not only is there all this embodied language in this text, the name of God that is revealed to Moses is being itself. 

The name that God reveals to Moses can be translated several ways. Most commonly, we hear it rendered “I Am What I Am.” But it could also be translated “I will be what (or who) I will be,” “I will cause to be what I will cause to be,” “I will be who I am and I am who I will be” and numerous other possibilities related to being and causing things to be. “I Am What I Am” is clearly the easiest to say and to remember. But these other translations emphasize that God’s identity is characterized by the essence of being and creating. 

And that’s critical at this point in the Exodus story. Up till now, we haven’t seen or heard from God. While the fires of infanticide and slavery, oppression and injustice raged in Egypt, God seems to have been absent from the narrative. 

But the name of God assures us that God has been there all along. God was and is and will be. Because God is being itself. God is everywhere, at all times, and in all places. As we talked about last week, God has been in the story – on the birthing stools and in the Nile river; in the brick kilns and work camps. 

God has been in the fire, but God has not been the destructive force. God has been preserving life. One particular life, it turns out, in preparation for this encounter. The one who has not been consumed by Pharaoh’s deadly fire is the one who will participate in God’s work to quench those fires. Moses will become a burning bush, alight with the purpose and presence of God, alive with God’s power, leading God’s people to holy ground. 

When we look around at our lives or at the world today, we may not see or hear God. We see the dumpster fires, the smoke and flames and destruction. We see all the loss and grief, anger and uncertainty. 

But God is here, because God IS. God’s fire burns, giving light and warmth to the world, preserving life instead of bringing destruction. God sees our misery and the misery of those who are suffering and oppressed. God hears our cries and the cries of all who have lost so much. God knows exactly what is going on, and God is not sitting around waiting for it to pass. God is in the fire, bringing life out of it instead of death. 

Because that’s who God has always been. God limits God’s self, God’s being and power, to come down to us, to give and preserve life. That’s who God was for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That’s who God was for Moses and the Israelites. And that’s who God was and is and will be in Jesus Christ. The God who is being itself, the God who gives being to everything that exists, will keep being what God is: the God with all the power in the universe who self-limits to save life. As it says in the great hymn of Philippians 2: In Jesus, God emptied God’s self, “taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross.” God knows what it is to be in a world on fire, have no doubt. 

And God will put out the fires that rage, the fires that threaten to devastate our lives, our community, and our world. But God isn’t going to do it alone. That’s not how God chooses to work. God doesn’t force the world to bend to the divine will. God calls, empowers, and equips people to collaborate in God’s creative and redemptive purposes. 

So while we are trying to put as much distance as possible between us and the fires raging in our world today – the real and metaphorical ones - God might be trying to get our attention. Not with wildfires and social unrest. God is trying to get us to turn aside and see where power is life-giving instead of destructive. 

The power of firefighters from all over the country working together, pooling resources, supporting one another to fight the wildfires. The power of community groups, churches, neighbors, and grandparents – and of course school districts and teachers- coming together to support children and families with online schooling. The power of technology that keeps us connected to those we love. The power of each and every vote. The power of peaceful protests. The power of our vulnerability that leads us to see and hear and know the suffering of God’s people and to participate in God’s liberating activity.

God is calling us to be firefighters, to use the life God has given us to preserve and give life to others. Will we answer the call? Will we walk into the fire with God? 

To whom be all glory forever and ever. Amen.