Exodus 3:1-15                                                    Ordinary Time

 There are four major events in the Old Testament which can be remembered with
this acronym CCEE – Creation, Covenant, Exodus, and Exile. Today we focus on
the Exodus, the story of Moses being called to lead the people out of slavery in
Egypt to freedom in the promised land. Of course, it was no quick fix. The story
begins with Moses’ birth, then his call from God in the burning bush, followed by
the negotiations with Pharaoh, the Passover night of departure, the crossing of the
Red Sea, and then forty years in the wilderness.

 There are many sermons in this scripture. We could consider the call of Moses, the God who liberates people, the holiness of God. My focus today is on the holiness of God and how that challenges us to live as God’s people, liberated from that which enslaves us today. If we really get the message about the holiness of God, then we are ready to drop everything and go to a new place to be free. We see the holiness of God in God’s voice coming out of a burning bush, calling Moses to take off his shoes because he is on holy ground. And we see the otherness of God in God’s unwillingness to be given a name, a handle. God resists being too familiar with Moses. Moses says, “Whom shall I say sent me?”  God says, “Tell them “I Am who I Am.”

 Hear now the beginning of the story of the Exodus, the going out, the departure.

 Read Exodus 3:1-15

Take off your shoes. The Godly Play kids take off their shoes every week at 11:00 to remind themselves that they stand on holy ground when they are in the presence of God. All of us, young and old alike, need to remember when we enter this sanctuary that this is holy ground. Yeah, I know you think it’s an auditorium, a classroom. It is, but on Sunday mornings it is a sanctuary because Peace gathers to worship here. It matters that we have prayed to the Spirit, heard God’s Word, gathered at Christ’s table, and have sung God’s praise for one hundred and thirtyeight hours here. Doing those things changes the space as well as a the people in the space – like praying in your home does there but even more so when two or three are gathered for Word and Sacrament. That’s why we use our loud and boisterous voices out there, and when we come in here we soften our voices except to praise the Lord because we are on holy ground when we gather in God’s presence. That’s why holding grudges, clinging to bitterness is not acceptable in the sanctuary of our Lord. When you walk through that door, everything is different. That’s why sharing the Peace in deep not shallow ways is so important and embracing one another in love as we come to the table is so rich because something sacred is happening when we do.

 The God who speaks to us out of ordinary bushes that are not consumed by fire as expected, who comes to us in ordinary bread that nourishes us in extraordinary ways, who calls us from ordinary experiences to see the extraordinary things is not just one of us. This God is holy other, and wholly other, yet is nearer than our hands and feet. Wow!

 Near enough to see that we are suffering and in need of comfort. Near enough to see that we are trapped and need to be rescued. Near enough to see that we need to be delivered from our slavery to sin and death, our slavery to consumerism and greed, our slavery to sex and alcohol, our slavery to television and entertainment, our slavery to never-ending drive to satisfy self. The song from our musical said it, “More, more, more” That’s what we want. So much of the music last week and advertising of our day drives home the message that happiness is found in meeting one’s own selfish needs for pleasure and comfort.

 I believe we are called to be like Moses leading the people out of this bondage, fighting against the powers that would keep us trapped in this slavery. We’re not physically trapped as slaves, though some undocumented immigrants are trapped in slavery. We are, nearly all of us in this congregation, existing in a land of plenty, but are trapped in a vicious cycle of excess – excessive use of the world’s resources, excessive energy given to activities which have no lasting value but in fact distract us from what does matter. It feels impossible that God could deliver us from this slavery.

 Can you imagine what it was like for a bunch of slaves to think of running away. The 19^th century slaves in our country wrote this song, this spiritual, to give themselves courage to run away and hope to when they could not run. (Singing)
“When Israel was in Egypt’s land, let my people go. Oppressed so hard, they could not stand. Let my people go. Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land. Tell old Pharaoh, let my people go”  And what I want to sing today, to today’s American suburban upper middle class culture is this: “When the USA was trapped in greed, let my people go. So self-absorbed they could not see, let my people go. Go tell people that they have more to give. Tell them, Jesus died that we might live.”

 You see, Jesus came to liberate us, to call us to leave our lifestyles and follow. We need to be delivered from our slavery to sin and death. That’s the exodus of the New Testament. The concept, the story takes on a life of its own, as it is passed through the generations. The message for today is that God, the Holy One, uniquely other than us, is calling us to leave the comfort of living just as we please, giving God the occasional nod, to entering the land of committed faith, putting God first, really first in life. God is the business of liberating folks from whatever traps them in places they cannot freely serve, freely love, freely give.

 Most of you grew up in the high-brow, traditional church of the middle 20th Century.
I did too. Formal, ceremonial, too stiff. Some of you had Mass in Latin because to have it in English was too familiar. Some of you read from the KJV with its elegant old English “Thee”s and “Thou” because to use the vernacular English was not respectful enough. But worship was losing its connection to the people and over several generations, a slow transition began to a more contemporary, more casual, more free church. Theology began to focus on the closeness of God (immanence) rather than the otherness of God (transcendance).

 Interestingly enough this shift in theology and worship has been right in line with the shift in the model of parenting and teaching. Those who grew up fearing the wrath of their parents and teachers said, “My child will not be afraid of me. I will be my child’s friend.” And now we’re beginning to experience the negative consequences of giving our children too much authority to choose, too much liberty to question.

 Friendship parenting has gone alongside friendship with God, and friendly, seeker worship services. There are some good aspects to both, but they cannot be taken too far. We domesticate God when we treat God like one of us, when we anthropomorphize God. Rather than focusing on the miracles of God, we want explanations, proof. If it didn’t seem humanly logical, we cast it out. We would cling to the Jesus we could understand, not the Christ who is beyond all human understanding. Maybe the pendulum has swung far enough in the last 25-50 years toward the God whom we can understand and feel companionship with and perhaps we need to remember the Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise, the kind of God we will confess in our 1570 creed today. With current emerging worship trends, we see a new attention to the holy mysteries of God and to ancient liturgies. At Peace we have wanted to reform but not to reject the ancient traditions of worship, to embrace the new but not cast out the old, to recognize that God’s holiness spans generations.

 Annie Dillard is right, when she says in this often quoted paragraph, “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” -Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

 I think that God wants to liberate the contemporary church from a too casual, too familiar, too buddy-buddy, my-Jesus-and-me attitude. We are worshiping the Holy One, the God of the Universe, not our buddy. This God says, “I Am Who I Am” “I Will Be Who I Will Be.” God says to us, “Just because I’m coming to deliver you from your bondage, don’t think you’ve got me figured out. Don’t call me your homeboy. I’m bigger than that. I’m larger than your American culture” – that’s why we remove the flags from this space and would like to take that one off the wall when we worship. God is not preferential toward Americans or Presbyterians. God cannot be contained in a single name or creed or church or country or culture. God is the God of our past, the God of our future, and the God of our present. And the God of theirs too, whomever they are.

 “So stand back, church, don’t get burned. Don’t think you can figure me out.” God says to us. “Get real with me, but not too close. Because I am so beautiful, so glorious, that if you really see me with your naked eye, it might burn. So close your eyes, bow your head and your heart, and humbly pray that I will be merciful and will redeem you, despite your sin. Trust in my love, but don’t take it for granted and abuse my good gifts. Believe in my grace, but don’t cheapen it by living as you please, despite all I have done for you. If you utter my name, do it with fear and trembling and reverent adoration. I am who I am. I will be who I will.” Go, liberate my people from their bondage. Call them to follow you into my promised land of peace.