Turning toward God

 

Exodus 3: 1-15
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
September 3, 2023

Photo of a campfire.  Wood is charred black and well-burned.  Orange and white flames give rise to a shower of sparks popping up into the darkness.

Sometimes it is easier to turn toward God—toward what is good, holy, and true—than it is other times. We find a nest with three tiny eggs wedged in between the front porch light and the side of the house, and we guard the nest, return to it often to check on their safety. The sound of thunder and raindrops on the roof at night. A super blue moon or a meteor shower. The touch of a loved one. The feel of water on our skin. The smell of pine needles warmed by the sun or bread baking or pumpkin spice—well, some of you anyway. The taste of a good meal or bread and wine or juice.



The belief that God is in the world and in all things and the world and all things are in God is called panentheism, and God introduces herself to Moses with a name that says this very thing. “I Am Who I Am” can also be translated as “I Will Be Who or What I Will Be” or “I Am the One Who Brings Things into Being”. There is no division between the divine and the creation, no limits. There is only relationship, beingness, and becoming. All are interconnected, all are one. Everywhere we are, there God is.



Sometimes turning toward God means turning toward injustice, suffering, and loss, because God is the God of the oppressed. In the story of Moses and the burning bush, God has already turned toward the suffering of her people enslaved in Egypt. God has witnessed the abuse of her people. God has heard their cry. God knows their pain. Now Moses must turn toward God in order that Moses would help free God’s people. So, a messenger from God, an angel of the Lord, gets his attention in the form of a burning bush, blazing and yet not consumed. God wants to set our hearts afire but not to the point of burnout. When we turn toward God, to witness what God wants us to notice, we realize we are on holy ground, that wherever we encounter the divine, we are on holy ground. And there, God is calling out to us in a voice we can ignore no longer.



Just weeks before his death, Trappist monk Thomas Merton addressed an audience of Asian monks at a conference in Calcutta with these words: “We are already one. But we imagine we are not.” This is what it means to be woke. To be woke is to be awake to the extravagance of diversity, the richness of what it means for each of us to be a whole person, for the earth to be whole in all its blazing glory. Thus, to be woke is also to be awake to the pain and suffering that follows when we are self-seeking, greedy, violent, dehumanizing, when we act as though we are disconnected from each other and from the earth. To be woke is to be in solidarity with suffering.



When was the first time you were aware that this world is infused with glory? When was the first time you were aware of an injustice, that something was wrong, and you felt connected to those who were affected? What was your burning bush that compelled you to turn aside and pay attention to a reality unlike your own? Not only that, but when did you first try to do something about it?



Thinking about the life of Jesus, I sometimes wonder if he had his own burning bush moment, when he knew he was called by God to liberate his people. In the stories we have, perhaps his parents told him about when they had to run for their lives to Egypt, to escape Herod and his wrath. Maybe it was when he was in the temple as a teenager and asked probing questions of his elders. Perhaps it was growing up on the underside of an empire, witnessing daily how cheap was human life and yet in the synagogue knowing we are all created in the image of God.



When we turn toward this Table, we turn our hearts toward the sacred and toward the pain and suffering of others and we know ourselves to be connected to the fate of all beings. At this Table we commune with queer, trans and non-binary siblings, people seeking abortions across state lines and those forced to give birth, Black people killed because of their skin, disabled people still denied access and equality, the isolated and forgotten, the unhoused and homeless, the impoverished and those barely hanging on, the earth and its climate which are becoming a literal burning bush for humanity.



It can feel as though any or all of this could consume us yet let us remember this rabbinic wisdom from the Mishnah: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Move humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, neither are you free to abandon it.” The movement of liberation is greater than us. It is an evolution. It is that long arc of the universe that bends toward justice and bends us with it, turns us toward God and God’s vision of wholeness and holiness. Each day we have breath, may it be so.



As my brother would say, Namaste.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


In a world where evil is woven into the ordinary,
may we linger with the unthinkable, unbelievable, and impossible.
May we find our worlds turned upside down
with wisdoms strange and bewildering.
May we recognize the voice of God
in disruptions of daily life,
calling us toward something different, something brave,
something determined to fight for life - ours and everyone’s.