“Dare to Dream: Your Burning Bush” Exodus 3: 1-15

The first article I ever had published wasn’t so much an article as a story. My call story, in a book aptly titled Beyond the Burning Bush. Most of the stories in the book are ones about encounters with God, but not a one of them was exactly the same as the next and none were the same as Moses’s, yet they all were transformative.

The thing about calls from God is that the come when we least expect them. For Moses, he was simply doing what he did every day, tending his father in law’s flock. Over forty years earlier Moses had fled from Egypt, where he had been adopted by the Pharoh’s daughter even though the law said that he should have been killed. He found himself with a complete change in life circumstances - from being a child and young man in the palace to tending sheep. 

On this particular day, Moses took the flock to Horeb, where the mountain of God was located. There, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a bush that was on fire, but did not burn up. Moses thought the only thing he could do was turn and not look directly at the bush itself, but out of the bush came the very voice of God, calling his name.

It is appropriate that today is the day we talk about burning bushes and call, because for years and years, our brothers and sisters in the northern part of our conference took the last Sunday in January to celebrate call. All sorts of calls. Reaffirming calls. Listening for the voice of God in our lives.

For me, my call came in a time in my life when I thought I had everything figured out. I planned on going on to pursue my doctorate in psychology. However, I was planning on being out of the country most of my senior year of college, so I started visiting schools my junior year. While I was standing in the room that held all of the dissertations, hard bound and aligned in alphabetical order, in the school that was my top choice, it was as if the Holy Spirit finally broke through my heart and said ‘this is not what you are called to be doing.’

Honestly, I probably knew that well before that particular moment. I switched colleges and majors after my freshman year, and in the process of doing so was invited to go to an event held in State College. My pastor described the event as one of discerning what to do with your life, so imagine my surprise when I found out it was people exploring different aspects of ministry - something that had never been on my radar before other than to say, ‘nope, not for me.’ I left that event sort of playing around with the idea of becoming a lay speaker or certified lay minister, something where I could still have a “real” job and be involved in the church.

After transferring colleges, I was a double major, psychology and religion. But my religion professors, who knew that this wasn’t what I was planning on doing full time, kept giving me opportunities. One professor in particular arranged for me to preach my first sermon at a small church in New York. It was very bad. Less than eight minutes and worship was over super quick that day, but he kept encouraging me. 

After that moment in the dissertation room it was like a switch was flipped, but the same time line still existed. I was still planning on being out of the country for a good chunk of my senior year, which meant I needed to start the certification process for ministry and looking at seminaries within eight months. But after being obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit, doors started to open and circumstances aligned that I was able to be certified as a candidate for ministry and be accepted to the seminary I felt called to go to, all before boarding a plane in August to leave for a semester in Australia prior to graduating in December. 

Does that mean that following this call wasn’t hard and down right terrifying at times? Absolutely not. Moses knew that there was something holy happening in the moment with the burning bush, but that doesn’t mean that he could describe it. That it made sense to him. 

God told him that he was being called to go to the Pharaoh, on behalf of God, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt. That’s the thing about calls and being on holy ground - it’s not about me. It’s about something bigger than just me or just what I want. It’s a vision to do something for God, to be part of the work of the Kingdom that is beyond my wildest imagination. 

By no means, however, does that mean that we all hear the same call as Moses. Or the call to be a pastor. Or the calls to _____________, fill in the blank with whatever you may be thinking. Your call is just that, your call. Not someone else’s. When we are in places where we can listen to God, we realize that God is speaking to us about our purpose, not anyone else’s.

How we hear God may also be different for each of us. Moses heard the audible voice of God. But for many of us, we hear God in the quiet, inner voice. The leading of the Holy Spirit. A lot of folks tell me that they wish that God would speak to them in an audible voice. Then they would know what to do. Then they would know how to respond. But look at Moses. Even though he heard the voice of God, Moses still asked “Who am I to do what you say?” We also know that Moses goes on later in the story to give a list of excuses as to why God should pick someone, anyone, else. 

Jesus told a parable in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of Luke about people who made excuses as to why they couldn’t attend a great dinner party. It's one that we heard this morning through our call to worship. People had all sorts of reasons not to come, but the excuses just made the owner throwing the party angry. 

Honestly, just like Moses and just like the people in Jesus’s parable, we all have a list of excuses. Reasons that we say that we will follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit, but only if everything else lines up. Or I’ll do that eventually. Or we say that we pray to God to show us the way and will of God, but really we just mean that we are praying that God bless the decisions that we have already made. 

Sometimes following God is simply taking the first step, trusting that God will be with us. Several times in this section of Exodus we find God reminding Moses who God is and that God will be with him. God said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” God said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” God said, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord,[b] the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.”

When we follow the call of God, we do not go alone. But that doesn’t mean that we have all of the details worked out exactly. We simply respond. 

The truth is that we all have a purpose, a call from God on our lives. Have you been listening for the call of God in your life? What is most important to you? Is it following the way and will of God? Now is your time, dear friends, to dare to follow wherever God may be leading. No more excuses. Just chasing after the heart of our God. Amen.