Call

Exodus 3:1-15   

Last week I talked to you about the best first lines of novels. Today I want to tell you about one of the best book titles I have heard: A Good Walk Spoiled. It’s a book about the game of golf.

I don’t play golf, but I like the title very much. It speaks to me, and I’ll tell you why: The author writes, “One week you’ve discovered the secret to the game; the next week you never want to play it again.”  This could be said about ministry. And when I say ministry, I mean every Christian who is called to walk the walk of faith. Sometimes it feels like a good walk spoiled.

Moses would relate. There he was, out for a walk – just Moses and the flock – and the angel of the Lord calls to him from this burning bush. He just had to look. I know he was sorry, because once he looked he was hooked.

And Moses was living a good life, perfectly content with his wife, his family, his work. He didn’t need this – whatever it was God was offering him. But once he looked, he couldn’t look away. He couldn’t not walk over that way and heed the voice of the Lord saying to him: take off your sandals for you are standing on holy ground. He couldn’t not listen.

And once he heard it, he couldn’t unhear it. The Lord called him to a new vocation: to deliver God’s people out of the bondage of slavery and into the promise of freedom. Moses was going back to Egypt, like it or not.

He didn’t really like it. In fact, he had run away from it years earlier. Moses, who was lifted out of the river and taken by the Pharaoh’s daughter, raised in the lap of power and privilege in the land of Egypt –

Yet knew who he was. When he was grown, he went out among the building sites where the Hebrew slaves were working. He watched an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave and Moses intervened, killing the Egyptian. Maybe he thought this would endear him to the slaves, but it didn’t. And when Pharaoh learned of it, the text says, he sought to have Moses killed. So Moses fled. He found a new home in the land of Midian, where he was safe and comfortable.

It seems like the last place Moses wanted to go was back to Egypt.

He tried to talk his way out of it, just as many others have done when faced with the call of God. Not too many of us say, “Thank you, God, for this opportunity,” when God calls us into our particular ministries. You don’t see the prophets of Israel raising their hands, begging God to choose them. They whine, they make excuses, they act like they don’t understand. But God is persistent.

They say, “I can’t do this,” and God says, “I will equip you.” They say, “I don’t know how,” and God says, “I will show you the way.” They say, “I am afraid,” and God says, “I will be with you.” You see – it doesn’t all depend on you, it isn’t even about you, when you are following the call of God.

This past week I watched the film Harriet about Harriet Tubman. She escaped slavery and fled to the safety of the north. Then she returned to the land of slavery again, and again, and again to lead more than 70 others to freedom. They called her Moses because she was following God’s call to deliver God’s people.

The film portrays how Harriet Tubman always believed that God was guiding her and protecting her. God led her to freedom not just for her own sake, but so that she could be an instrument of liberation for others. I believe this is how it always is with the call of God.

People of faith should recognize that what riches we have in this life are gifts from God, who is the source of all blessings. If we feel that we have been blessed with good things – a loving family, a secure home, material abundance – we must also recognize that God doesn’t bless us to become self-satisfied and complacent. The whole story of the Bible tells us that God blesses us to be a blessing to others. and God’s call will always lead you to, somehow or another, be that blessing.

Moses took his blessing and went back to Egypt to become an irritant to Pharaoh and eventually lead God’s people to freedom. Harriet took her blessing and went back down to the plantations to take slaves out of the fields, out of their chains, and lead them to freedom.

In one scene of the movie, a minister tells Harriet, “Fear is your enemy.” This is true. If Harriet had given in to fear she would have been captured. If she had given in to her fear she would not have returned to liberate others.

It is important to say this because fear is not uncommon when faced with the call of God. There is a reason the angels in the Bible always say, “Be not afraid.” It is natural to be afraid because God is always calling us to venture out into unknown territory, for the sake of God’s people. God is often calling us to step out into a place where we will be criticized and scorned for acting against the majority interest – against what may even look like our own personal best interest.

And as I said, when I talk about God’s call to ministry I am not just talking about pastors and prophets and missionaries. I am talking about every Christian who is called to walk the walk of faith.

Each of us must ask ourselves repeatedly whether the decision we are making, the direction we are taking, is guided by God. How are we serving God, and the people God loves, in our actions? The question of the day is: How is God calling you?

God calls some to walk into the land of Egypt and deliver people to freedom – but God’s call takes many different forms. God calls some to simply refrain from acts of violence. God calls others to sacrifice their presumptions about others and just listen to their stories, imagine their journeys. And God calls others to stand up and say, “I will not entertain you while my people are suffering and dying.” As professional sports leagues did this past week. As the psalmist says, our tormentors demanded songs of joy, but how could we sing?

And I commend these men and women for deciding they will not just play it safe and protect their assets. They will risk something for the sake of those whose very lives are at risk.

God’s call will always call you out of your little safety zone and invite you into a bigger place. It may seem scary. It may seem like too big a sacrifice to make. But it will always, surprisingly, lead you into a place of greater love.

Reverend Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And so the call of God will always lead us toward greater justice, greater light, greater love. My prayer today is that you will hear God’s call to you; that you will turn aside from whatever you are doing, just as Moses turned aside to see that burning bush; and that you will open your heart to the power of God’s love moving you toward freedom.

photo: Reflection on Sand and Water.  © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46457765