Fourth Sunday in a Season of Creation: River
​September 27, 2020
 
First Reading:                  Genesis 8:20–22; 9:12–17
After the flood, God promised that Earth and all of life on Earth will be preserved by God, in spite of the sins of human beings.
 
Psalmody                          Psalm 104:27–33
The psalmist celebrates how God sustains all life on Earth through the Spirit and calls on God to rejoice in God’s own creation.

Second Reading               Revelation 22:1–5
When creation is restored, a river will flow directly from God with trees of life growing on either side to bring healing to all nations on Earth.
 
Gospel                               Matthew 28:1–10
The resurrection of Christ was also celebrated by creation. An earthquake accompanies the advent of the angel and the rolling of the stone.

River of Life, sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
The river of the water of life, that flows through the heart of the mid-west, was formed, as we know it, at the end of the Ice Age, about 5,000 B.C.  The Ojibwe native Americans named it the Misi-ziibi, and lived mostly as hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies, alongside its beautiful banks with its life-giving trees, until the first French and Spanish explorers arrived less than 500 years ago; and everything changed. 
 
The Mississippi River, as the European colonists came to pronounce it, flowing 2,320 miles from Minnesota to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico, is the second-longest river in North America, and the country’s largest drainage system.  With its many tributaries – the rivers flowing east from the Rockies and west from the Appalachian Mountains – the Mississippi collects the waters of all, or parts of 32, of the lower 48 states.  
 
About 200 years ago, in the time of Mark Twain, the Mississippi’s waters’ began to serve the Economy of the expanding young nation, tying north to south, and east to west.  But not without an ominous warning.  At the launching of the maiden voyage of the New Orleans, the Fulton steam-boat built in Pittsburg, in 1811, the largest earthquake east of the Rockies, the New Madrid, struck near St. Louis, causing massive flooding, and a sudden relocation of the Mississippi River’s main channel sections, which put the passage of the New Orleans in doubt. 
 
But despite this portent, the progress of American commerce pushed on, and a couple of decades later, thousands of steamers flooded the Mississippi.  Its flourishing was so prolific that it became cheaper to ship cargo from Ohio to ports on the east coast, via the Mississippi thru the Gulf, and all the way around the tip of Florida in the sea, than over the Appalachian Mts, even though the route was 10 times longer! 
 
But bigger changes were in store for the Mighty Mississippi than that.  By the late 20th century, post WWII, as family farming was increasingly pushed out to make way for agri-business, and technology created chemical fertilizers, nitrates and other pollutants, were flowing down it’s once, bright as crystal waterways, all the way to the Gulf stream waters. 
 
Today, the toxic bloom off the coast of New Orleans, which warms and starves the water of oxygen, is killing off fish, shellfish, and other life, at alarming rates.  A number of false starts to clean it up, have all fallen short.  If, and when, it finally begins, it would take a minimum of 3 decades to restore. 
 
Meanwhile, life in the Mississippi River and the Gulf continue to suffer.  And the portents of the New Madrid earthquake, echo in our ears.  Like the earthquake that shook the door open to Jesus’ rock hewn tomb, the quake in the heart of the Midwest 200 years ago, seems to be telling us something – or should I say, yelling to us. 
 
How can we have called the Ojibwa, not to mention the Cheyenne, Sioux, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Chickasaw, uneducated savages, when for thousands of years they lived in relative harmony with the Mississippi, and we have endangered its life, in only a couple hundred.
 
In our First Reading today, when Noah came through the Flood – the only family to survive – the first thing Noah did when he was back on dry land was build an altar, and give an offering to the Lord.  And, in the anthropomorphic portrayal of God in Genesis, the LORD smelled the fragrant odor of Noah’s burnt offering – and it was very pleasing!  But unlike the beliefs of Israel’s contemporary pantheon of gods in the influential Mesopotamian Flood story, the monotheistic Hebrew God is not dependent on people’s offerings, for food.  The LORD does not eat Noah’s burnt offering at all, while the neighboring gods of their primordial text, are said to need the food that is offered, for their survival, and are drawn to it, “like flies,” fallible and dependent. (cf. Robert Alter notes) 
 
Yahweh freely enjoys the offering of Noah, but does not need it.  Rather- the LORD said in the LORD’s heart, telling us, the reader, what God would do: ‘It’s really not worth damning the earth like that again,’ muses God, because, ‘the devisings of the human heart are evil from youth.’  And to Noah, God says aloud, ‘I will set this rainbow in the sky as a sign of my covenant with me and you, and every living creature, for everlasting generations.’ 
 
Like a parent coming to realize that the teenager must become an adult and make their own decisions – to live and learn from them – God must not be so overbearing, to intervene, micro-manage with reward and punishment, in teaching humans.
 
Which means that, we’ve been given a responsibility – just like in the creation story, we are to be the care-takers, for the forests, the land, the wilderness and the rivers. 
 
The river of the water of life, in Revelation, is a vision that was shown to John by an angel.  This visionary hope of the eschaton, which reaches back into our world already, a promise for the redemption of the world, is the age when God will redeem, not just us, the crown of God’s creation, but all of this very good earth. 
 
In chapters 8 and 16 of Revelation, leading up to this vision, the world as they knew it, is full of poisoned rivers, desecrated by Roman rulers who prioritized profits over people and planet.  John urged his 7 churches to resist the Empire’s idolatry all around them, even in the face of arrest, or worse, and God would bring them to the new heaven and new earth of the vision of crystal-clear waters flowing from God. 
 
They should resist the desecration of their local congregations, which John compared to the plagues God sent to Pharaoh in Egypt: “The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch,” says 8:10, “and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water… A third of the waters became wormwood – that is, blood – and many died from the water, because it was made [poisonous],” John says.
 
Over 97% of all the water on Earth is salty. More than 2% is frozen in the polar ice-caps. The rivers, lakes, and water tables underground then, hold less than 1% of all earth’s water, the fresh water we need for drinking, cooking, washing, and industry.  Those who are polluting and destroying this precious resource are endangering, all of us, and this beautiful ecosystem God has created. 
 
We have the scientific evidence.  What we need now is a spiritual renewal, a passionate, prophet call, to conversion.  Jesus spoke up directly to the political leaders of his day, pointing out their idolatry and warning them to turn around and change – to follow the Son of Man, God’s anointed, or all they held precious would be torn down. 
 
This is the same message John of Patmos preached in his letter, we call, Revelation.  If we are faithful, God will restore our world again: the city of God will dwell on earth – and “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, [will flow] from the throne of God, and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, [a ripe fruit each month. The leaves of the Tree are for healing the nations.  Never again will anything be cursed*],” John proclaimed.   (*The Message translation, Rev. 22:1-3)
 
As we say in the ELCA, “God’s Work, Our Hands!”  God will restore all things, including the mighty Mississippi.  And we will be the conduit, the many hands, through which God works.  
 
How do we live, so that the rivers of the water of life, may flourish and be restored?  How do we become the hands of our God, that we may be a pleasing offering to our LORD? 
 
Let us pray with the Psalmist: Send forth your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth – that we may sing to the Lord as long as we live; and praise our God while we have our being. 

Readings for the 2nd Sunday of Creation, September 13, 2020
This Sunday gives us the opportunity to worship with the land, soil, and land creatures. Scripture proclaims Christ as the second Adam who came to overcome the sin and death caused by Adam, including the curse imposed on Earth.

First Reading            Genesis 3:14–19; 4:8–16
Because of the sin of our primal parents, God pronounced some curses. The ground of Earth bears the curse for humans, and from the ground Abel’s blood cries to God. At their death, Earth welcomes humans home again.

Psalmody             Psalm 149
Psalm 149 is a song of thanksgiving. God turns the tables: the humble will be victorious, kings are now bound in fetters; God is now Maker and Monarch.

Second Reading     Romans 5:12–17
Christ is the second Adam who came to overcome the sin and death caused by Adam, including the curse imposed on Earth.

Gospel               Matthew 12:38–40
In death, Jesus too is connected with the ground. He was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

"The Earth Swallows," sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
Sometime since the pandemic started, Kim and I binge-watched, “Six Feet Under,” because when it came out in 2001, we didn’t have access to HBO up in rural Michigan.  Six Feet Under is the story of the Fisher family, who lives in the residence of their family business, an old-time Funeral Home in the L.A. area.  David, is the faithful son, who stays home to work with his dad, in the business, and Nate is the prodigal, wandering son, who comes back, and though, never intending to, ends up joining his brother in the business, after the father suddenly dies in a car accident.
 
One of the more emotional episodes, is the burial of Lisa, Nate’s wife, who dies much too young, under mysterious circumstances.  When it comes time to make arrangements, Nate ends up arguing with Lisa’s parents about the burial.  Her parents want a traditional service in the Funeral Home, and final resting place for her ashes, in the family columbarium back home.  But Nate insists she be buried naturally, no embalming, no casket, simply put in the ground.  Earth to earth; ashes to ashes.  Nate had had a conversation with her about it just recently.  She was clear about her wishes, and Nate feels obligated, as her grieving husband to fulfill this promise to Lisa.  But the parents just can’t accept a green burial. 
 
After the Fisher funeral for Lisa, we watch, as Nate hands a box of cremains to Lisa’s parents who are getting into their car to go home.  Is the quarrel over??  Did Nate really give in to the parents?  They all look pleased as they say their good-byes, though for different reasons.  Only then that we learn how Nate has given them, a random box of ashes, taken from a shelf in the Funeral Home, we had seen the brothers talk about earlier in the season, where many boxed remains were never claimed, by next of kin.
 
Then, in the final scene of the episode, Nate drives to a remote location, one he and Lisa had enjoyed going to together, and he digs a hole in the ground, and puts Lisa’s body in, breaking down in exhaustion and a mournful wailing lament.  He is still sitting there when the sun rises, revealing the beauty of the location, his mind more at ease, now that he has fulfilled his promise to her. 
 
But like Cain and Abel, nature itself rises up to reveal Nate’s sin.  It’s not the soil that cries out to spoil his secret.  Murder is not Nate’s wrong-doing.  But when the parents take the cremains to be put in the family columbarium, the undertaker feels a moral obligation to inform them.  These cremains are certainly not Lisa’s, he says.  These cremains are from a past cremation practice, many years ago.  The dust of the dead can tell their own story, just like the blood Cain spilled in the soil of his field, from his brother Abel, cried out.
 
From Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, in these first four chapters of Genesis, we learn the history of our own jealousy, envy, covetous desires, blindness towards God’s grace, and lack of responsibility for our freedom to choose good over evil. 
 
The story of Adam and Eve and their first children is not so much a story of original sin, as it is about our common human condition; the situation we’re in, in our own lives, living in the world every day.  We inherit brokenness.  Not just the brokenness from Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, but from all people in whom we are in relationship with; from our next-door neighbors, to our fellow citizens, in city, state, country, and world.  But that’s not all.  In this Four Week Lectionary in September, we’re also rediscovering, and recovering our relationship with, and to, the earth, land, desert, and rivers. 
 
And we see this clearly in Genesis, chapters 3 and 4.  There is enmity between people and animals.  And, the soil shall sprout thorn and thistle, making it hard work for us to eat from the plants of the field: in verse 19, “by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread, till you return to the soil.” 
 
And most disturbing, and yet at the same time, so revealing, is the relationship of the soil to Cain’s brazen murder of his brother: ““What have you done? [God] question’s Cain, Listen! your brother’s blood cries out to me from the soil! 11And so, cursed shall you be by the soil that gaped with its mouth to take your brother’s blood from your hand. 12If you till the soil, it will no longer give you its strength. A restless wanderer shall you be on the earth.”  Cast out of the Garden, there is brokenness between humans and the land.
 
Robert Alter says of this soil that, “The image is strongly physical: a gaping mouth taking in blood from the murderer’s hand.” 
 
So here, the earth, the very soil, is witness to the brazen awfulness of the murder, this blood-letting, that the ground must absorb; the sacrifice of the soil.  The soil chooses, to no longer give of its strength to Adam and Eve.  And God is intimately aware of it.  God feels the pain and the travesty of Cain’s misdeed.  It cries out to God! God empathizes with the work that the soil must do to absorb, and swallow, Cain’s breaking of the 5th Commandment.
 
Today, the soil, the land around the globe, is crying out to us: the erosion of the soil throughout the midwestern breadbasket; decades of soil depletion.  The soil of newly rootless forests, ravaged by fire, along the west coast, and resultant mudslides.  The EPA super-sites, soil choking from dumped chemicals and nuclear waste, waiting to be cleaned up.  The frozen tundra’s and glaciers melting at alarming rates.  We have not respected mother earth as if our lives depended on it; as if we are aware of our intimate relationship with the land and soil, that God loves and listens to, and has given to us to care for. 
 
When Jesus was asked to give a sign to the leaders in Jerusalem, in our Gospel Reading, he didn’t pull any punches: “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, [Jesus says] but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” 
 
Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, and devastating giving up to his stone-cold tomb, is the best sign of his coming to our world as the Son of God, the anointed One.  Just as Jonah was swallowed up for 3 days in the belly of the big fish, so Jesus will be buried in the heart of the earth 3 days, he says.  Jesus, who was born in the straw of the manger, the innkeepers goat-feeder, close to the earth and the animals, this Jesus, lays down to be buried in earth’s safe keeping, until on the 3rd day, when God shows the world how he is the first-born of the dead, the Second Adam, as St. Paul says, in our Second Reading today, and our redemption. 
 
And so, even Jesus’ greatest sign is not accomplished without our dependent relationship, between earth and humanity. 
 
Today, we are still outcasts from the Garden of Eden, living with Cain in the land of Nod, east of Eden.  One day, in a great reveal, God will restore, rescue, and redeem creation, and, in our relationships with God, neighbor, and land, we’ll be saved and made right again. 
 
It is time we treat the land, as an equal partner on our faith journey, as we come from God, and continue on our way, back to God.  It’s time we treat the land with the same respect God gives to it, for without it, we will die.
 
For now, we are dust, and to dust shall we return, as God told the human, a’dam.  But as we wait, and take on our responsibilities for Land and soil, we also rest in the knowledge of the Psalmist, who today sings: “If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.” (Psalm 139:8)
 
God promises to be with us – on the way, all the way, and no matter where.  So let us trust in the Promise of our baptisms, and our death into Christ, who lay “in the heart of earth” 3 days.  That we may also rise up with Christ, and return to God, our creator and redeemer, and be made whole and right again. 

Readings for the First Sunday in a Season of Creation: Forest
Genesis 2:4b–22 “Born of Earth and the Spirit”
Psalm 139:13–16 “Born from the womb of Earth”
Acts 17:22–28 ‘Born to search for God”
John 3:1–16 “Born of water and the Spirit” 

Because We Depend On It, sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
Only recently, during our lifetimes I’d say, have we as Christians been recovering God’s understanding of this awesome world we live in.  As Western Christianity became a servant to politics under Constantine, and until the Renaissance, our biblical literacy became more and more divorced from its Hebrew roots.  There is one focus, especially relevant to our message this morning, that has been twisted out of all proportion to God intentions, that I think we should be aware of. 
 
Namely, that in this era of scientific discovery and technological mastery, the interpretation of the creation story from Genesis, in our 1st Reading, has been used to further the narrative that humans were made to dominate the earth, treat it as a commodity – instead of, care for God’s good creation, as if our lives depended on it – because they do! 
 
First of all, I just love this translation by Robert Alter.  Most biblical scholars agree, that even in our relatively new translation, the New Revised Standard Version, or NRSV, that we use in our Lutheran worship, there are, maybe not a lot, but some crucial, inaccurate, word choices in this passage. 
 
In our reading today, this second account of creation, written in a very different style than the first account – which we know for its very orderly and poetic story of everything God made in 6 days, and a 7th Sabbath day of rest – Robert Alter comments, that: “In this [2nd] more vividly anthropomorphic account, God,… does not summon things into being from a lofty distance through the mere agency of divine speech, but works as a craftsman, fashioning [instead of creating], blowing life-breath into nostrils, building a woman from a rib…” transitioning from “a harmonious cosmic overview of creation [in the 1st] and then plunging] into the technological nitty-gritty and moral ambiguities of human origins [in the 2nd].” 
 
And so, in our reading today, God is like an experienced farmer, carpenter, or shepherd; a logger, a gardener, or a botanist.  God, who has already gotten Her hands dirty and figured out how things grow and live, from the life-giving rivers to all the forests in between, is speaking from nitty-gritty experience. 
 
God was there from the beginning, when in this 2nd account, there was only, ‘wetness that would well up from the earth to water all the surface of the soil.’  And it was then, that God fashioned out that swampiness, the ‘shrubs of the field,’ and ‘the plants to sprout up,’ to give root and dimension to the soil of the ground; and then also, the rains to water them.  God was local and invested. 
 
For God already had the intention that people were needed to work with, and take care of, all this stuff that was sprouting and growing up.  So, God gets down on hands and knees, and digs his hands in the ‘humus,’ the fertile soil, and fashions the human; God molds the first earth-creature from earth, and then blows into a’dam’s nostrils,’ like a paramedic reviving the unconscious, ‘and blows in the breath of life.  And [then! says Genesis] the human became a living creature.’  That’s what this fashioning, craftsperson, does!
 
And God wanted to do more, as Genesis 2:8 says:  “And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, and He placed there the human He had fashioned.”  Now God is really getting excited!  And from the same soil, or humus God fashioned the human from, God causes “to sprout from the soil, every tree lovely to look at and good for food, and the tree of life…” 
 
St. Paul calls this God, our potter, who fashioned us from clay, or mud.  God’s hands are dirty, but delighted, in God’s digging in the beautiful earth, God is fashioning. 
 
And so we are made of the stuff of the earth.  This land is our land.  And in every way, we are co-dependent on each other.  God creates everything, with a value of “good.”  But we are also given the knowledge of what is good and evil, and so have the responsibility to care for it, as if our lives depended on it – because they do. 
 
In our 2nd Reading, where Paul has traveled to the heart of pagan religion, to the Areopagus in Athens, he finds “an altar to and unknown god.”  And Paul uses that to describe YHWH, the One God.  “The God who made the world and everything in it…” the God who “gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. …For in him we live and move and have our being… for we too are [God’s] offspring.” 
 
When our Book Discussion read The Overstory, an American saga of trees, the cast of nine main characters found their lives interconnected, by their discovery of, the interconnectedness of the trees and their ecosystems they thrived in.  Two young 20 somethings, Olivia and Nickolas, not having anything else in common, connected up in their mission to save the last mighty redwoods in California that were being clear-cut by multi-national corporate interests.  They felt so connected to the Forest, they lived in a tall redwood tree for months, so it wouldn’t be cut-down, killed, and hauled away. 
 
Another, famed botanist, Patricia was lauded by the Redwood activists for her book, The Secret Forest, in which she argued scientifically, for what she had felt deep in her humus-fashioned self, since she was a little girl.  That trees communicated with each other, and were helpers – ‘sustainers alongside,’ as Robert Alter says – alongside each other, in their Forest villages. 
 
This theses is no longer just a fiction of a novel writer, but verified by science: That under the soil, the root systems of trees connect to each other, like our brain’s neurons, and share their nutrients with those trees who need it, aided by the soils’ fungi, God’s humus. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSGPNm3bFmQ)  As St. Paul says, ‘When one member hurts, every other member is involved in the hurt, and in the healing.’ (1 Cor. 12; The Message translation)  
 
The Garden that God fashions for the first humans, is not the garden we usually think of, a mid-western garden, with rows of seedlings – of lettuce, beans and corn.  “The Lord God [in Genesis 2:9] caused to sprout from the soil every tree lovely to look at and good for food…”  This was a Forest, a garden of trees, sprouting from the humus, for the humans.  And it was aesthetically pleasing, full of fruit trees, from olives to avocado’s, mangoes to figs.  The people, plants, and trees, are intertwined and dependent on each other for their life.  The Garden of Eden was an ecosystem, thriving, because of God’s fashioning of all living things, in this harmonious and awesome way.
 
And so, clear-cutting whole Forests, instead of selective cutting, not only leads to mudslides, but reveals our sinfulness, a separation from God, in the eyes of the Creator, the fashioner of our humus-soil.  We have not acted as if our lives depended on the earth, the soil from which we are fashioned.  For example, we have extracted far too much oil from beneath the earth, and consumed it far too fast, for the air of our ecosystem to in-turn, continue to care for us, much longer, as carbon build-up in the atmosphere, changes our climate, breaking down the systems that naturally work together.  Trees, we know, which helpfully consume CO2, are working overtime, doing their best to help, even as we cut them down. 
 
And so, I believe our sacred scriptures, this chapter 2 of Genesis, has much to teach us about our lives today.  In it, we find the desire and will of our Gardener-God, still speaking to us: We are made to connect with the trees, and are made to live as fellow travelers with the redwoods, and the maples, and apple orchards.  Live with them, as if our lives depended on it – because they do. 
 
And, without them, we have a more difficult time connecting up with our God, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being.’  Let us dig-in to our task; let us humans, dig into God’s humus, our life-blood, the stuff of who we are, fashioned by our God.  

Readings for August 30, 2020

• Exodus 3:1-15 and Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45b 
• Romans 12:9-21 
• Matthew 16:21-28​

Exodus Fire, sermon by Rev Fred Kinsey
In this Year A of the semi-continuous readings from the Old Testament, we’ve had opportunity to read our way through Genesis, hearing the story of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and, well – there were three women, who were the three mothers of the 12 sons of Jacob -- Leah/Rachel/Zilpah.  Most notable was the youngest son, and favorite of Jacob, Joseph, who wore the flashy robe his father gave him, which drove his 11 brothers wild, and made them almost kill him, but instead, only sell him off, to slave traders, who took him to Egypt.  There, Joseph went from the bowels of prison, to the Pharaoh’s right-hand-man, saved his family and many Israelites from famine, and then reconciled the family, before his father Jacob’s passing.
 
After Joseph died, and a new king arose, the story of Joseph, in Egypt, died too. But there arose another Israelite who was born to save his people.  Moses, whose story makes up the book of Exodus.
 
The new king of Egypt was alarmed that these foreigners among them had swelled into a people more numerous than they!  And Moses is born under an edict of infanticide.  Baby Moses is hidden, and then plucked out of the Nile River and saved by women, obedient to God, not the Pharaoh.  Moses is adopted by the Pharaoh’s wife, who hires Moses’ mother, to nurse him.  Moses grows into a kind of superhero protector, fiercely and innately, defending justice, as when he protects his Hebrew brothers against the Egyptian Police using excessive force, striking the officer down.  He also intervenes between his own brawling Hebrew brothers, to keep the peace.  But the one in the wrong, out of his guilt, taunted Moses, “Do you mean to kill me like you did the Egyptian?”
 
So Moses, knowing the cat’s out of the bag, and anticipating the wrath of Pharaoh, runs away to dwell in neighboring Midian.  Resting by the town watering hole, he again finds himself in his protecting role, this time when seven Midianite sisters are bullied by some shepherds, who also come to water their flocks.  Moses drives them off, and courtly draws water for the sisters’ animals.  So, not unlike, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, who long ago fell in love with each other at the town well, Moses finds his mate, and marries the sister, Zipporah.  Together they have a son, who Moses calls, Gershom, which means, “A sojourner have I been in a foreign land.”  Thus Moses, the insider/outsider, royalty/slave, protector/outcast, was born, raised, and found a home.
 
Working for his father-in-law, Jethro, he takes up the life of a shepherd, in Midian.  A wonderful, pastoral, kind of life.  Living the middle-class dream.  Until one day, everything changes.  God finds Moses, wandering in the wilderness, and calls him.  Calls Moses out of a burning bush!  Not a California wildfire in the forest, just a single bush in the desert. 
 
Moses had been shepherding his flock, deep into the wilderness.  And at Mt. Horeb, also called Mt. Sinai, the theophany occurs.  He could have turned away.  It wasn’t like there was a danger of the fire spreading.  In fact, in this case, because it was God calling, the bush wasn’t even consumed!  No fossil fuels were used in the making of this fire!  Perhaps that’s what caught his eye.  Perhaps, he had been alone too long, was tired, and seeing an apparition.  But he had to check it out. 
 
And it’s almost as if God would have let Moses go, if God had not caught the eye of Moses.  For only then does God call out to him from the midst of the bush, “Moses, Moses!”  And Moses said, “Here I am,” that quintessential response, of the prophet.  “’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 upon God.”  And because, there are expectations for the follower, who has been addressed and called by God.
 
Everything, was about to change for Moses.  His wandering life.  His pastoral life.  His running away from his people.  All that will be like a dream, after God’s call, from the burning bush. 
 
“7Then 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, 8and 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’…”  The LORD has come down from Israel, to bring God’s people back up, again.  But how will this rescue take place?  What kind of miracle will God perform, after the burning bush, to unburden the people, suffering under the iron grip of Pharaoh? 
 
“9The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10So come,” God says to Moses, “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
 
That’s God’s plan!  Send the outcast, Moses, to the great Pharaoh.  Moses, the lost shepherd, will go and perform this unimaginable task! 
 
If we put ourselves in the Moses’ sandals, how would we feel?  Are we up to the task?  Are we ready for that adventure?  Later, Moses asks for some protection, some equipment that will give him a fighting chance against Pharaoh.  And God says, you’ve got your shepherd’s staff.  That should do it!  Really?  Against all the chariots and firepower, of mighty Egypt?! 
 
When God calls us, are we ready?  Probably not.  At least, it doesn’t seem like a fair fight when God sends us out into the world.  A world that is increasingly more out of control and chaotic than it was yesterday, or a month ago – or four years, or four decades ago. 
 
Our world has Pharaohs’ and Egypt’s in it, too.  Our people are being oppressed too.  We are morally challenged.  Our leaders have twisted the faith.  Our country seems to be turning, to use its power in oppressing its own people, to consolidate control for a few rich rulers. 
 
But if we learn nothing else about the fidelity of God, here in Genesis and Exodus, certainly we have learned that God has created the world for all to enjoy, equally, and God will stand with the poor and the oppressed, when things go bad.  God hears our cries, God sees our misery, God knows the suffering of God’s people, as Exodus reiterates.  And God promises to lead us out of Egypt’s bondage, “into a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” 
 
But first God calls to us, like a burning fire, of love and concern.  I am sending you to the king, says the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses – to the seat of power.  I know you don’t want to go.  I know your faith has not been tested in this way, and you don’t think you can.  But the only way to the Promised Land, is to wade through the Red Sea, with the chariots of Pharaoh, nipping at your heels.  The only way from here, to there, is to go straight through the powers that oppress, standing up to the false gods, who do not have my permission, says God, to rule here, any longer.  Therefore, I call on you! 
 
Of course, when you encounter them, they will not be reasonable, or morally grounded.  Here in our country, which is still structured in unequal ways, delineated simply by the color of our skin, the examples of inequality seem, to me, so clear.  A man who is stopped by the police can end up dead or paralyzed, if he is black – [where if he was white, he would be sent away with a warning].  A white man who is under-aged, carrying an automatic rifle into an already tense BLM demonstration, who kills two people, can walk home freely and wait for the authorities to come and politely arrest him, and then give him a month to mount a defense. 
 
There is nothing you can do about this, they tell us.  At best, they calmly explain, you are being unreasonable, please don’t get involved, we’ll handle it.  At worst, you are told, you deserved to be paralyzed, and our streets, obviously, need more law and order, that is, more over-policing, especially of majority-black neighborhoods. 
 
But BLM, and more and more supporters of all colors, (like Moses) are not backing down.  This little dance, for far too long, has become a broken record, and we are tired, exhausted.  So, protestors continue to hold the streets peaceably, in the face of authorities using teargas, guns and tanks. 
 
You and I are called to respond, too.  Not necessarily, take to the streets.  But we can’t be neutral either.  Being neutral is really just like being a supporter of the status quo.  Walking away from the bullies at the Midian town well, was not an option for Moses.  Neither can we remain silent about racism in our world.  Ibrahim Kendi says, the choice is not between being a racist, or not a racist.  We all must be anti-racist – as in being actively engaged in working against the tidal wave of oppression, that is the status quo in America, based on race.  All of us deserve to be free, to escape the slavery of Egypt, in our lives. 
 
The faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – and Moses – was not just a belief.  It was faith-active-in-love.  Abraham gave up his cushy life in Haran to move to Canaan and start all over in his old age.  Rebecca craftily setup Jacob to receive Esau’s birthright and Isaac’s blessing, and raise-up Israel’s best hope for the future.  Jacob wrestled with God all night, to a draw, to secure that blessing for his 12 sons, the 12 tribes of Israel, and Joseph the last and rejected son, kept the hope alive in Egypt, until Moses could bring them home again.  Egyptian and Hebrew women, right under Pharaoh’s nose, ignored his edict to kill all the baby boys, and in faithful defiance, saved Moses.
 
There is nothing passive about the life of faith, believing in God, our creator and redeemer.  With Moses, we may complain, “Who am I that I should go to [someone like] Pharaoh” and stand up for justice and the realm of God?  But, we are the people of God, for this time.  God has called us, like a fire of rebirth, and God assures us, “I will be with you!” as we go.  
 
In baptism, Christ has called us to die with him, that we may also rise with him.  The only way through, is to face the oppression and fears we have, and know that God is by our side, as we continue our journey – as we carry our cross, and walk wet, with all our siblings in the faith.  We pray: God of the Matriarch’s and Patriarch’s; God of Moses and Jesus; God our creator and redeemer; God be with us!