So, finally he had the kind of life he was searching for. He was amazingly good with sheep and goats. The herds were thriving, he had a growing family, and his father-in-law was respected in the land so nobody questioned him on his past. Life was good. Very good.
Sometimes the best kind of life is the mundane kind of life. He had had enough of adventure from the get go. As a child, he was in danger along with all the other Hebrew boys in the Egypt. But his mother and his sister hid him in a basket, floated him down the river where he was found by an Egyptian princes and kept like a foundling puppy.
Raised right there in the Pharaoh's household, there had to be some tension. These weren't stupid people, they had to know he was Hebrew. What would happen if Pharaoh happened to turn his attention to this young child? Would he be deported? Would he just disappear? He had to be extra subservient, extra careful, more so than anyone else. He tried here and there to help alleviate the suffering of these people, his people. He was in a position where he could do that around the edges. But it was hard standing up against a whole nation, especially when the king was so blinded by his advisors, who used their proximity to power to their own advantage, to enslave and terrorize others. So, try as he might, things just kept getting worse for his people.
And their plight, their slavery, and their oppression kept nagging at him. And one night, he sees one Egyptian mistreating one Hebrew, and this was one time too many. And he stands up and takes action, strikes out against this injustice. And kills the Egyptian. It didn't really matter if it was an accident or not. A dead Egyptian is a crime, the ultimate crime, and he had to flee. Leave the land he knew. His home, the center of his universe.
He ran. He ran east, across a sea, watching his home disappear over the horizon. Into a desert that he knows is trying to kill him as just another stranger unlucky enough to encounter it. Coming at last to a fertile land, hoping that he'll never have to return again by the hard, dangerous way he came.
And life now is good for Moses. His past life is now in the past. He had done what he could. He had stood up where he dared. He had fought the fight, and now he was out of the contest. Resistance is a young person's game. Now, he's just content to do what he can to help his family.
But one day. . .
How must it have felt? Sitting among the herds and suddenly hearing, “Moses, Moses. . .” I wonder if his heart started racing? I wonder if he thought the Egyptians had finally caught up to him? I wonder if he wanted to run again, but somehow he couldn't because finally he had something to keep him from running: family, responsibility, a sense of honor?
And then, after some time, he sees it, that bush, burning but not consumed. God touching the mountain, eternity touching one single space, and the space can hardly contain it and bursts into flames.You can almost hear Moses saying in his heart, I don't need this. I've got a good life. I've got no problems.” But there was God, reaching out for him.
And I bet Moses knew then that he'd always known this was going to happen. That, somehow, running away never was going to be the answer. That his body was in Midian, but part of his heart remained in Egypt, and the day would come when he would need to reclaim it.
And God speaks. And Moses cringes. Go back to Egypt. Just you. Not an army...just you. And do the impossible. Free a people from captivity in the center of the mightiest empire on Earth. Just you.
Moses did what anyone with any sense would do when confronted with this: he did his best to avoid it, did his best to get God to turn his gaze to someone else. And he asks what we all would ask, “Why me?”
And here's where it gets weird. Even with all the previous adventuring of Moses, even with the miracle of the burning bush, this...this is the part that gets weird.
Moses asks, “Why me?” And God. . . God, the infinite being, knowing all, able to accomplish anything. . .God, our God, avoids the question.
Moses asks, “Why me?” and God says, “Tell them who sent you. Give them my name. This is my name: I AM THAT I AM” And that's the end of that.
Why doesn't God answer Moses' question? It's a legitimate one, after all. Of all the people in the world, why do I have to do this thing that I am in no way prepared to do? Surely there's someone faster, stronger, smarter? Surely I'm doing all I can to just keep the flocks and herds all moving in the same direction. Surely, you can't expect me . . . ?
Why me? Why does this happen to me?
Or in our Gospel reading, “Why does this happen to them?” What did they do to deserve that?
Important questions. Natural questions. Questions we ask because we want to know how to keep what happened to “them” from happening to us. What do we need to do, Jesus? What do we need to take on? How do I avoid THAT? I want to make sure that good things happen to this good person. I want to be safe.
And also Jesus avoids the question.
He falls back into weird parable mode:
A man planted a fig tree. The fig tree used up a lot of nutrients but didn’t produce any figs. “Why should I let this do-nothing fig tree use up good soil?” asked the man. “Cut it down.” But the gardener replies, “Let it be for one more year. I will do everything I can for it. If it bears fruit, great! If not, cut it down.”
And I think that maybe, maybe, when Jesus tells us this parable, we might, maybe, begin to see that Why me? Or Why them? Or why does he deserve that, when all I get is this? …...maybe all those why questions are the wrong questions when it comes to God.
That fig tree's job, it's purpose, is to let the gardener do HIS job. The tree can't increase it's tree-ness and success. But if it gives in, and lets the gardener care for it, nourish it, then, and only then, can the tree flourish.
Doing what the gardener wants, doing what is right. Not just the bare minimum of tree-ness...or human-ness. Not just surviving, but living. Being what, in our core, we are meant to be. It comes back to this again.
Only when Moses listens to God, when he stops putting up barriers, when he stops trying to make bargains with God, when he. . . stops surviving on the fringes of the world. . . only then does Moses learn something so much more important. He learns...God's...name. He learns who this is. And he learns what his relationship to this God is. And he learns that this relationship between God and God's people is not one of master and slave like in Egypt, but is one of love and purpose. Those other questions fade into the background because by standing up and going back, Moses learns the answer above all answers: God is. Period.
And this God loves the oppressed, nurtures the poor, grieves for the frightened, and becomes angry with people who abuse them. And God is bound to set things right. And Moses is just the man to do it.
This great I AM uses this one man, cowering and shoeless on a mountain. This great I AM brings him out of retirement and says, “This work is not over.” As long as people cry at night, terrified in the wilderness, this great I AM will move men and women who thought their work was done to work more. To stand again and enter the fray. To go back and help.
It's been this way since the beginning, when a certain divine gardener just couldn’t help it when he picked up some dirt. He just had to form it into a human and breathe life into it. He just had to make it into someone to love, someone who would be free to choose to love in return. Maybe, if we take time, we can hear this gardener at work in our own lives, saying, “It's time to go back. It's time to live out your purpose. It's time to love, it's time to struggle, it's time to stand. It's time to work.
How will we respond?
Amen.