Have you ever been minding your own business when something happens so dramatically it changes your whole life? I suspect it doesn’t happen to most of us on any regular basis, if at all. But when it does happen, it’s not something we’re ever likely to forget. It has a way of shaping how we look at the purpose and the value of our own lives.
That certainly was Moses’ experience described in the first lesson for this morning from the Book of Exodus (3:1–15). It’s a classic text among the most familiar in the Bible, and I thank our readers for their service this morning in articulating this dramatic moment in Israel’s history.
I referred earlier to “minding your own business.” That’s exactly what Moses was doing, because his business was tending his father-in-law’s sheep in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula. I don’t imagine there was much to distinguish one day from another in his line of work, and perhaps that was just fine with Moses. Most of us aren’t looking for trouble from day to day, much less anything life-changing while flipping hamburgers at MacDonald’s or changing diapers or doing homework or reviewing balance sheets or teaching a class or seeing a patient or whatever it is we do day after day. Maybe we welcome some relief from the boredom we might have with those daily routines, those “minding our own businesses” but in this economy a steady job should be just that, thank you very much!
In this particular instance, Moses was to hear God calling him for a completely different task than anything he had been trained for or might expect. In fact, God has to call him twice to get Moses’ attention. I imagine it must have sounded something like this: “Ned?...NED!” It’s funny how throughout the Bible God always has to call someone’s name twice to get their attention. Does that sound familiar? In this story, Moses finally says, “Here I am,” somewhat confused, somewhat “Why me-ish?”
The gist of it is that God wanted Moses to free the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. That’s all. That’s ALL? We have no record of any gifts for leadership that Moses might have exhibited in the Pee Wee Hockey League or in his aptitude tests or in the Sheepherding Partners review process. We do know his upbringing was privileged when Pharaoh’s daughter famously found him as a baby in the bulrushes and raised him as her own. Later on Moses became a fugitive when he murdered one of Pharaoh’s soldiers for mistreating a fellow Hebrew. That’s when he fled to the Sinai and found a “safe house” with his eventual father-in-law.
In fact, Moses is so distraught about this conversation with God that he offers any number of excuses why he shouldn’t comply. But God is no ordinary career counselor. This isn’t a suggestion. It’s a commandment. To be sure, Moses had a choice, but however reluctant he was, in the end he had to acknowledge that God would bless him and the people Moses had been called to save and to serve.
I must confess that my call from God to ministry was not especially dramatic nor was I in the least bit reluctant. I was walking to my next class as a junior at Trinity College in Hartford when I thought, “I’d like to go to Seminary.” This hadn’t been a new thought to me but was the one instance that I can point to as responding to something I now believe, and believed then, was God calling me. For any number of years in my ministry I have served on what are called Commissions on Ordained Ministry. This is the Church’s Board, as it were, to review and guide those who believe they have a call from God to serve as a priest or deacon. For a while many aspirants’ stories included experiences of surprise and reluctance and years of anguish before finally succumbing to God’s insistence that they be the next best thing since sliced bread for the Church. Somehow the message got out that if you were too eager to be a priest it might be construed as just your will as opposed to God’s will. I always thought that if I was happy to do something and God was equally happy, that’s a lot better. In any event, I did not have to be brought dragged and screaming to what I do day to day. I love it. And I hope that God loves me loving it. But I digress a bit.
Now none of this suggests I haven’t had dramatic experiences of God’s intervention into my life because I surely have. And I would have to characterize those events as life-changing just as surely as Moses became a changed person in his encounter with God at the Burning Bush. And I believe all of us are endowed with the capacity to hear God’s voice whether we want to or not, to understand that God can call us by name to attend to something God wants us to do or even simply to be.
Perhaps it won’t be especially dramatic. Perhaps it will be a “still, small voice” that God used in his calling to Elijah. Perhaps we’ll just be minding our own business like Moses was, or we’re “all ears” because we’ve gotten a hot tip that something good is just around the corner. No matter. The one constant in all of it is God’s voice calling you.
Do you hear God’s voice from time to time? Does God need a two-by-four or is it obvious? Do you hear that voice in church or when you’re brushing your teeth? Do you think, “I’ve heard that voice somewhere,” or is it different from anything you’ve heard before?
Pay attention and rest assured that God will stay in touch.
