Rev. Rebecca M Heilman-Campbell
Exodus 3:1-15
For just a moment, I invite you close your eyes if you’d like, take a couple deep breaths in and out and as you do that, think about where you’ve seen, felt, or heard God in your life. Think about all the places you’ve lived, all the experiences you’ve had, all the ups and downs that life brings. All the houses and apartments. All the friends you’ve known. The wise older family members that maybe you’ve lost or the newer members that have joined right in. All the places you’ve called home, even if it’s brief. Where has God been in your life? Recently, I gave this some thought and for me, God is never in one spot. I’ve seen God in the eyes of a Zambian baby on her mother’s back as they push through the market to get home. God walked with my dog Sadie and I every morning and every evening in Central Park when I lived in NYC reminding me to breathe through my first call. God just lives in my parent’s kitchen and the tuned chimes outside the window and God is in the warmth of my pups on a cold winter night. God is in the bright, innocent eyes and mischievous grin of my 2-year-old. For me, God is always resting in the sanctuary of my home church, and still, somehow, able to be in the quiet chill mornings as I look out at my overgrown back yard. And even in those long, loud, fun nights of dancing with my friends in college, God was there too, dancing among us. God has been in the hands of a stroke patient and in the room of rough looking construction workers saying their goodbyes to a young man who died way too young. God has not showed up to me in a burning bush, but God’s been around. Thankfully, God is not bound to just holy places and thankfully, encountering God is not bound to just “holy people.” This is a promise to all of us who are feeling exceedingly ordinary today. And you know what, ordinary is exactly who God worked with in our holy scriptures.
Moses was going about this ordinary routine life, keeping the flock for his father-in-law when we decided to take them beyond the wilderness to Horeb, the mountain of God. And there, God appears to Moses in a burning bush. A tale as old as time. We know it like the back of the hand. Moses is frightened and yet, curious. He wants to look, but after learning who is in the bush, Moses turns away, not daring to look directly at God. God calls Moses by name, setting the genre of a call story into action and speaks to Moses with such heartfelt emotion. God says, “Moses, I’ve heard my people’s cry of injustice…I know about their pain. I’ve come down to rescue them from the Egyptians.” And without even asking, God continues to say to Moses, “So get going. I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” Really God, no reasoning, no explanation? Moses doesn’t get a say in this? He should just go?
Honestly, Moses seems like the last person God should call. Moses has a long history with Egypt, not exactly welcomed to that nation. He’s wanted for murder and Pharoah would be a happy man if he, personally, could take such justice. Not only that, Moses, while a Hebrew at birth, is not known among the Israelite people. They have no idea who he is and the likelihood of them following Moses is slim to none. And so it makes sense that this ordinary shepherd roaming the wilderness hills, responds to God with, “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
Moses is so relatable. The conversation continues between God and Moses for one and half chapters and every time God finishes God’s speech, Moses pipes in with questions dripping with lack of confidence. “What shall I say to them? Who am I to do this? Supposed they do not believe me. I’ve never been eloquent in speech. I am too slow. O my Lord, please send someone else.”
Fairly ordinary responses in my opinion. Imagine, going about your day and being told that you are to go and rescue people in a nation that is completely against you. In fact, I’m sure you’ve had these thoughts or said these things in much less intense situations. It’s only natural. And usually when we have these responses, we are looking for assurance as to why we have been asked to do something. We need someone to toot our horn for us. To remind us of our gifts, our talents, the things that we might be proud of, but too humble to say. We need someone to say that no matter what we think about ourselves, that we have the leadership skills in this area, that we are amazing at this and that. Please tell me how amazing I am! We want the compliments and affirmations to shower over our ordinary thoughts of I am not enough. But it doesn’t work that way…at least not in call stories. We simply must trust that we are called. We simply must trust that we are called by God. We simply must trust God that we are called. But how is call different from our gifts and talents?
On Wednesday night this week, my son and I cuddled into our rocking chair to read a couple of books before bedtime. We have our favorites. We rocked and read Green Tractor, The Little Engine That Could, and When You Love a Book. After each read, we’d flip to the back, point to the picture on the flap and in his sweet little voice, he’d say, “thank you, Dolly.” Dolly Parton has given us all of these books. You had to expect Dolly showing up in my sermon today. If you don’t know, Dolly Parton, who died at the age of 80 this week, was more than a profound and prolific singer and songwriter. She was a philanthropist, community leader and advocate, a believer and servant to the Lord. My son receives a book each month from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a library, she established in 1995 for her local community. By 2025, her Imagination Library has gifted more than 300 million books to children around the world, providing free, age-appropriate books to children from birth to age five. [1] She has invested in early childhood education, providing literature for the most impoverished. She has also invested in her community, the poor, mountain community she grew up in giving millions to her homeland of eastern Tennessee, never becoming political or a divided figure. In fact, she used some of the royalties she earned from Whitney Houston’s cover of her song “I Will Always Love You” to invest in an office complex in a Black neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. [2] What I want to say about Dolly Parton this morning is that her gift, her talent, was music. She made millions, maybe billions in her music. BUT, from my perspective of Dolly, her CALL was to her community. She reached out beyond the millions of dollars she made and touched the community with hope, confidence, and effective change. Often and quietly and with deep, authentic care for people in need. Her call was to see God in her community and then to reach and uplift the beloved that lives within the community. Who knows if she saw it as a call. Regardless, she could have said no like other millionaires and billionaires do in our world today. Instead, she said yes and used her gifts to fulfill a call.
So much of our lives, including myself, is invested and identified by our jobs, our social life, committees, car lines, pick-ups, meetings, emails, busyness. You name it. We are defined by the day-to-day gifts of leadership, organization, excel spreadsheets, parenting, and more, important aspects of our lives. The things that keep us up at night. But is it everything in our life? Where are we called within the day-to-day life we live? What are our gifts and where do we use these gifts as a call? Are you able to see it without being told? What brings you warmth? What pushes and pulls you? What gets you outside of your comfort zone? What seems impossible but important? As Frederick Buechner said, where is “The place God calls you to, where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet?”
Is it to the man on the corner asking for money? Or to the children in this church eager to learn about God? Is it to go to Western NC and rebuild homes affected by the hurricane from almost two years ago? Is it to this church and thinking about its future and how it fits into the current world and community at large? Is it in-home visits and communion for our elderly? Or on our prayer team, reimagining how we care for those in need? Where might you be called to meet the world’s deep hunger? It doesn’t take one person, but a whole community to live into a call.
Look at Moses. Moses is objecting left and right, never satisfied with God’s assurance because those personal affirmations are never given. God’s reassurances are less about Moses and more about God’s people. Such a God thing to do, right? God doesn’t reassure Moses that Moses, himself, is called, but that the people will listen, if he trusts in God, and they ALL are called together. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes about this passage, “Moses, it now becomes clear, was entitled to have doubts about his own worthiness for the task. What he was not entitled to do was to have doubts about the people.”[3] That’s what God is speaking to in our passage today.
God tells Moses that when you, Moses, tell the people who I am – “I AM WHO I AM, and I AM has sent you” – they will know and they will listen. God tells him, Moses, when you show my people signs of my power and presence, they will know and they will listen. God tells him, Moses, I know you don’t think you can speak well, but I AM in your words. They will know and they will listen. And God tells him, “Come on, Moses. Give my words to your brother, Aaron, and with his mouth, I will teach you what you shall do.” They will know and they will listen. Moses and God go back and forth, every time both a little more frustrated with the other. And never once does God say, Moses is not worthy. His doubts are justified. But as Sacks writes, God was teaching Moses a lesson on sustainability and hope – “a leader does not need faith in him [or herself], but [they] must have faith in the people they are to lead.”[4]
Trinity, I have faith in you. I have for the last six years. I’ve always believed you are church called to be together and be in the community of Charlotte. Look at where we were six years ago – in Covid, worshiping outside, hardly gathering, very few children on the front row for children’s time. Look at where we are now. Who are we now? It’s through your day-to-day gifts that you are called and have stepped up. It’s through your day-to-day gifts that you lead this church, even if you don’t realize it, even if you are scared to do more, even if it feels pointless, even if you are wondering what else you can do, even if you are so critical about where we are today and how different we are as a church. This is your church and Trinity, you, you are the leaders of this church. You are the leaders that will sustain Trinity and prepare the way for God’s transformation. Nick and I believe in you. Look at where we were and where we are at today. God is up to something to quote Nick.
And so just like Moses, while you might have doubts, God is saying, I will use you regardless of what you say because I believe in you and now you must believe in me and thus, believe in my people, my church. Believe in this church. Invest in it. Dig into where you are called to serve God and serve God’s people. There’s something about a prophetic task, a leader’s task “to speak out of love for one’s people; to defend them, see the good in them, and raise them to higher achievements through praise and not condemnation.”[5] There’s something about believing that God is enough and if God is enough then we know we are enough. There’s something about believing in God that makes it a whole lot easier to believe in the Church and the people who make up the Church. This is a path towards sustainability and hope. And I promise you, if you believe, other people will believe it as well.
Moses was an ordinary man, watching his flock in the wilderness, unable to believe that a group of people would follow him out of Egypt. But this scripture was never about Moses, it always been about God and God’s people. It’s always been about God’s presence showing up in unexpected ways and remaining with us and with God’s people forever. It’s always been about ordinary people who believe in each other, using their gifts and transforming them into a call. And ultimately, we do because we believe in God. And that’s enough to sustain us and to lead us into hope.
[1] https://www.billboard.com/lists/dolly-parton-good-deeds-timeline/1988-the-dollywood-foundation/
[2] https://www.npr.org/2021/08/02/1023889920/dolly-parton-invested-royalties-from-a-whitney-houston-cover-in-a-black-communit
[3] Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, Exodus: The Book of Redemption (New Milford: Maggid Books, 2010), 31.
[4] Sacks, 32.
[5] Sacks, 33.