Call Waiting
Pentecost 12a14 – Exodus 3:1-15 with Mt. 16:21-28 in the b.g. (August 31, 2014)
People often cry. There is the grandfather of a critically ill 8 year old girl at Children's Hospital. There are ALL THE MOTHERS of children who are being forcibly recruited for terrorism. There are so called middle class people in who are working 50 or 60 hours a week because they feel they have to. But as a result of their workload they are exhausted. They are increasingly less connected with their family and friends than they need to be for their own well being. There are also people who have skills and or degrees but yet are unable to find a job that pays a living wage. There are the kids in schools where they somehow just don't "fit in". There are so many people hurting, crying, inwardly, outwardly.
A homeless man recently found his way into a downtown church. When a few of the people in the church approached him to extend a hand of hospitality and ask his name, he said over and over again, "Get Out of Here". It was only later that the people of the church learned that this man struggling with mental health issues often thought his name was GET OUT OF HERE. He thought that because wherever he went people told him to 'GET OUT OF HERE!" Many people both near and far are crying out in some kind of pain.
These days creation is also crying. Fires rage, mud slides down hill and mountain, glaciers melt and the oceans rise. People, plants and animals: all are at risk. The crying rises in crescendo.
Such crying – as gut wrenching as it is, is not new. Once again we meet Moses. Last week we heard Moses' mother's cry. As her cry is heard her infant son is delivered from death. Moses then grows up. He begins to hear others' cries. His own Hebrew people are oppressed in Egypt. As Moses hears their cries he acts: firstly in a harsh way. He kills the man who is beating a slave. Now Moses must run for his own life. But God does not leave him alone. Moses is told that God (yes, God!) hears the cries of the oppressed people. God tells Moses that God will free those people. Great, thinks Moses. Someone must do something so that those oppressed people can become free. In that moment, But then, with words that may have caused Moses' heart to stop, God calls Moses to be THE AGENT through whom God will work to free the people. . .
Hearing cries is important! If no one hears or sees, another's pain, another's oppression, will anything change?
But there must be more than only hearing. Will the person who hears act – to help those who are crying out?
God acts even as God cares!
How can I say that?
Look and see. God, the Creator of the universe, willingly takes on our human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. We desperately need a God with skin on. Our pain is deeply in, with and under our skin. We need someone who identifies with us, who experiences what we experience. We need a God who does enter into our joy and pain, our celebration and predicament. In Jesus God does just that. God hears our cry. God responds to our pain, our joy, our predicament.
But (and this is very important) God rarely acts alone. Jesus, God in the flesh, reaches out to people, calling them individually and collectively to obey God. We also, are to hear other's cries. Then we are to respond as God enables.
God calls Moses that day even as Moses is out minding his "own business", tending his father-in-law's sheep. Here is mystery! Even though God takes on flesh, God is also still Spirit.
Let me elaborate. I was encountered by a woman, diagnosed with a terminal illness. How difficult it is for her to live with her illness. Experiencing the gamut of emotions – anger, fear, denial. Sometimes she wonders where God is. She asked God, "Why?" How could God allow this to happen to her? She cries out to God in many different ways.
After a number of weeks she said to me, "You know Pastor I had a visitation." I asked, "What do you mean, a 'visitation'?" She replied. "A woman came to visit me – not once but twice. I don't even know this woman's name, or where she came from. I haven't seen her since. But this woman said to me both times she appeared – with a strong but not demeaning tone, even as she looked me directly in the eye, 'You need to accept this'.
"And you know" the woman said, "I have been able to... I am going to live with whatever time God gives me".
"Who was the woman that came to you?", I asked. "I don't know", she said.
Somehow, some way, God hears the cries of people, of creation. Part of this mystery of God is to call people to reach out on God's behalf to help others. The people God calls are flawed like Moses. Moses was a murderer, a manipulator (seeking to know God's name to control God) while at the same time genuinely afraid. After all, who is he, Moses, to approach the great and mighty Pharaoh, to ask or even demand that Pharaoh let the people go?
Nevertheless God's call stands for Moses.
I wonder can we hear the cries of anyone right now? Where and who might they be? (P)
Might God be calling us both to hear and to identify with them? Might God be calling us to go beyond hearing and feeling, even to go on God's behalf to do something about their pain?
Hearing God's call upon our lives is sometimes frightening. We may feel inadequately prepared to obey. Like Moses, WHO ARE WE to do this? We may be painfully aware of our own limitations. But, could it be that God knows what God is doing? God acts as God hears to free those who are hurting, dying, being oppressed in any way.
God chooses people to be part of God's grand dream, this seemingly impossible scheme: to confront the powers that be, the seemingly immoveable forces that almost always appear to be winning: death, violence, hatred and fear. God chooses people to act on God's behalf, to care, to say offer our lives as a strong, "no" to such forces. God calls us to live in a different way.
Such living isn't easy. Such living often involves great risk, even significant loss. See Moses and other prophets. See Jesus. But in everything God is with us! This "freeing" is God's dream, God's hope, God's will. So God needs and calls all kinds of people including you and me.
Dear people: are we listening for the cries of others and creation? Are we open to being encountered by the very mystery of God?, Even in such seemingly ordinary things as burning bushes, bread and wine, water and words, God can call us by name!
How will we respond beyond our questions, our confusion, our fear?
Might we join Isaiah? Here I am, here we are – send us! Amen.