Our reading today is from Exodus 32.

Exodus 32:1-20 & 30-35

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel.

The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”

But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, written on the front and on the back. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said,

“It is not the sound made by victors
or the sound made by losers;
it is the sound of singing that I hear.”

As soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’s anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.

On the next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will only forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of the book that you have written.” But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; see, my angel shall go in front of you. Nevertheless, when the day for punishment comes, I will punish them for their sin.”

Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf—the one that Aaron had made.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

There is an old Jewish teaching, which is almost like a koan. You all know what a koan is right? In Zen Buddhism, a koan is a thought or question which has no real answer, but which helps your mind concentrate and focus. The classic example is What is the sound of one hand clapping? Though koans are usually more profound than corny.  So the ancient rabbis, their koan, they wondered if God prays? And if so, what is it that God prays for?

But instead of leaving this koan unanswered, the rabbis attempt to fill in the blank. Their answer? God prays that God’s own mercy will outweigh and outlast God’s anger.

We see the struggle between divine mercy and divine anger in today’s passage. Moses, who at God’s sending, helped free the people from captivity in Egypt, led them out into the wilderness, has gone off on some sort of silent retreat. But really, we know that he is up the mountain receiving the Torah, the ten commandments from God. The rabbis say that the Torah is a gift of love from God to God’s people, but like an impatient child at Christmas or their birthday, the people can’t wait to open their gift. Actually, it is really Moses that they are missing. After all, it is Moses who has led them all this way.

Well, again, it is God through Moses, but practically speaking Moses is their connection to God. To them, no Moses, no God. And Moses has left them on their own for 40 days. One ancient commentator postulated, “How late was Moses after 40 days?” Six hours! Just six hours!

They have only been waiting six hours before they lose their ever-loving minds. But that just shows their level of anticipation, their level of dependence on Moses. And so fearing that Moses, and by proxy God, has permanently abandoned them after only six hours, they seek comfort in the next best thing, Moses’ brother Aaron. They go to Aaron and say, “Come, make god’s for us.”

Now if we were to pause here and speculate about Aaron’s response, I am guessing most of us would say that Aaron would refuse their request, remind them that the God of Moses, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one true God, and that God alone, led them out of Egypt.

Instead, Aaron says, collect all your gold rings, all your gold jewelry and melt it down so we can build a golden statue. What? I mean, I get the impatience of the people. They only seem to have a tenuous grip on what is going on, but Aaron? Aaron is Moses’ brother; he is part of the inner circle. Surely, he should know better!

But before we throw Aaron under the bus too hard, let me point out one redeeming factor: the people ask Aaron to produce for them gods, the generic Elohim in Hebrew. Aaron responds with the name Adonai, which is a direct reference to the God of Moses. So essentially, Aaron consents to the overwhelming need of the people to connect with something greater, but he does not help them build a statue to replace God, rather he does so as a substitute for Moses.

You see, what Aaron fails to recognize is that God acts through people, not inanimate objects like statues, even statues made of gold. God has used Moses, but God can use Aaron too. God can use any of us.

One of the fundamental claims of our faith is that God chooses not to be God without us. Presumably God could have. God didn’t have to create all that is, but God chose to. God could have just created beings which would do God’s will, no questions asked, but God chose to create beings that are free to make their own choices, free to experience joy and pain, love and loss.

Too often life makes us question, what kind of God would allow innocent people to suffer, children to die, disease, war, violence? What kind of God? The only answer I know to that question, and I admit it is not the one we are looking for, one that brings great comfort, is that it is a God who doesn’t want robots as children, but is willing to risk giving us freedom, which means the freedom to experience all the ups and downs. Because love is not love if it is forced or coerced.

So really, in this story, what we have is the sting and pain of rejection that God feels when the people God has chosen, so quickly abandon them and seek comfort elsewhere. The text tells us that God speaks to Moses saying, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”

There is a lot going on in this short passage. God is clearly upset. We get that. But then God tells Moses to leave God alone so that God’s wrath may burn hot. In other words, God knows that Moses will try to talk God out of it. But not only does God tell Moses to leave them along, God makes Moses an offer. If Moses lets him wipe out the people again, like we are told happened in the great flood, God will appoint Moses as the new Noah, the new Abraham. He will raise up a new people, a new nation, through Moses. It is a temptation not unlike that which Jesus faces in the desert.

But Moses is the hero of this story. He refuses to give in to temptation. He refuses to leave God alone to stew in his anger. Moses argues with God and reminds God of God’s own compassion and mercy. And then we get this gold nugget: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”

Moses won the argument. God is persuaded. Mercy wins. Love wins. Anger subsides. God’s own prayer is answered and God acts out of compassion, not judgment.

The picture that emerges from this text is that the relationship between God and humanity, between God and creation is much more of a two-way street than we may have been at first led to believe. If God chooses not to be God without us, if God wants a genuine, not forced or coerced relationship with us, if God gives us the freedom to choose, then God also chooses not to remain far off and distant. The god we first met, the god who is in charge of everything, and makes everything happen, who has us like puppets on a string, well it turns out, according to the biblical witness that this god may be as false as the golden calf the people built at the foot of Sinai. This god may be one we invented to absolve ourselves from responsibility. We say, God is in charge. God will fix it. If it happened, it must be God’s will. As pious as these sound, they are golden calves of our own making.

The true God, Adonai, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of Jesus Christ, is not a bully or a tyrant, but a partner. And arguing with God, disputing with God, is not blasphemy, but the living out of that relationship. Notice who in the text argues with God. It is not, as we often suppose, those who are against God, those who are far off. It is Moses, God’s own right-hand man in this scene. The one closest to God, who trusts God. Disputing with God is a sign of faith!

What does God pray for? I might answer that question a little different than those ancient rabbis. I think God prays for us to love God and to love one another, the way that God loves us. And that, I believe, is beyond dispute. Amen.

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In many ways, we can think of the book of Genesis—the creation stories, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph—as kind of prequels to this story in Exodus. Because, in many ways, this is the foundational story—the foundational text of our faith tradition—as well as that of our Jewish brothers and sisters, and that of our Muslim brothers and sisters as well.

The story of Moses meeting God in the burning bush and being called to confront Pharaoh… to let the people of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt.

Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; 4:10-17

After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “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 at God.

Then 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, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He 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 serve God on this mountain.”

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:

This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.

But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.” But he said, “O my Lord, please send someone else.” Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, “What of your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know that he can speak well; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you what you shall do. He indeed shall speak for you to the people; he shall serve as a mouth for you, and you shall serve as God for him. Take in your hand this staff, with which you shall perform the signs.”

For the Word of God in Scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

When Dave Muir was born in 1961, the doctors predicted that he would be some kind of athlete—maybe a football player—because even as a newborn, he had these strongly defined muscles. He was like a jacked little baby.

But as his mother observed him as he grew, she started to notice some things. When he started to walk as a toddler, he would do this weird thing where his foot would halt before he fully put it down. Then one day he was playing, but he couldn’t get himself up off the floor. And these instances kept occurring, to the point where Dave’s parents began to worry. So they took him to see the doctor.

And the doctor ran some tests and then broke the news to them: their young boy, Dave, had muscular dystrophy.

So the doctor explained the prognosis. Eventually, he would not be able to walk or breathe on his own. Even his heart—that all-important muscle—would cease to work on its own one day.

The doctor said that he probably wouldn’t live past the age of 12.

Dave’s parents took the news hard, of course. But Dave—Dave was not deterred.

When he was in elementary school, he was in a wheelchair, and at playtime he got his friends to push him as fast as they could to clear that ditch in the playground—then again toward the berm so that he could catch some air in his wheelchair. Even in the hallway between classes, he would have his friends race him down the hallway, calling out to everybody, “Watch out! Watch out!”

The principal seemingly had his parents on speed dial.

In addition to being a little bit rambunctious and a bit of a troublemaker, Dave was also an unstoppable communicator. That’s a nice way to put it. His dad called him a “motor-mouth.” He loved to talk, to debate, to laugh.

In fact, when he was in high school—yes, high school, well beyond his original prognosis—he threatened to sue the school’s administration because they had not provided a ramp, even though the law required it of them. And so, at his behest, they put one in.

But in his twenties, the muscular dystrophy began to affect his breathing. He needed a tracheostomy to breathe. But it took away his ability to communicate.

Still, he would not be deterred.

He got an idea: if you put a valve in the tube that would act kind of like a door—releasing air or keeping it trapped—you could recreate the pressure that is necessary for your vocal cords to make sound. And so, with the help of an ENT specialist, this ended up being the Passy-Muir Valve, which is still in use today, giving hundreds—even thousands—of people their voice back.

Dave writes:

“I learned many things from this experience. I learned that anger, if turned toward a problem rather than toward oneself or circumstances, can be overcome. And God can work wonders. Indeed, just as I thought God had turned his back on me, He, in reality, gave me an incredible opportunity to help myself and others.”

Our passage today—God hears the pleas of His people and God speaks to Moses from a burning bush.

It starts with the Israelites suffering under slavery, writes Justin Michael Reed. The severe oppression goes beyond slavery when Pharaoh commands genocide against the newborn boys. At the start of our passage, the tyrannical king has died, but the oppression continues. It’s now become systematic. And therefore Exodus says:

“The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out to God.”

And God tells Moses that He has heard this cry and is sending him to the new Pharaoh to demand to free the people.

But Moses, you’ll notice, has questions.

First, he asks, “Who am I that I should go?” The implication being that Moses is nobody. It’s not really important. He’s not a prince of Egypt or a hero of Israel. He’s just some guy who was caught in between.

But God tells Moses not to worry. He promises:

“I will be with you.”

Next, Moses objects because he’s afraid that people are going to ask God’s name. And Moses doesn’t know it. You kind of get the impression that Moses just wanted to know it anyway—he’s kind of using this as a bit of an excuse. He’s like, “So… you know… tell me your name.”

So God reveals the divine name to Moses:

“I Am who I Am.”

God tells Moses, “Tell them I Am sent me to you.”

That should keep them occupied for a while—parse that sentence.

Finally, Moses brings out his big objection. He says, “God, I think you’ve overlooked something in this plan. I’m really not good at talking to people.”

The text is a bit vague, but the Hebrew literally means:

“I am of heavy mouth and heavy tongue.”

You can see why scholars and rabbis have theorized through the years that Moses maybe had some sort of speech impediment. And that’s the way they expressed it—”I am of heavy mouth and heavy tongue.”

So God responds that Moses doesn’t have to go it alone. Aaron will be there to help him—to speak this truth to power.

So there’s this interdependence that’s part of God’s plan.

Sarah Wolf explains that this interdependence is not beside the point—it is the point. God is thus simply explaining to Moses that just like God can’t and doesn’t speak directly to most people, so too Moses does not have to do all the speaking himself. God not only reassures Moses that he will have support, but also admits to Moses that God’s own role requires assistance, too.

I think Robert Williamson summarizes our passage for today this way. He says:

“The way God works in the world, it seems, is through people like Moses, who pay attention when things are on fire in the world and don’t ignore them or run away. But even Moses—one of the heroes of scripture—is at first afraid to do what God asks of him, begging God to send someone else, anyone else. Yet it turns out that this God of ours is an equipping God who gives Moses what is needed for the task ahead of him: a staff, a partner, even the divine name.”

During a major renovation of our sanctuary in the late 1950s, a wooden sculpture was added—it’s just out of my sight over here—that is a depiction of the burning bush and the divine name.

So this passage has special meaning for us as a congregation who, for over 60 years, has worshipped with that sculpture in our space. It reminds us of those who have gone before us. It reminds us of our grounding in God’s story. It reminds us that God’s revelation is not “once upon a time,” but is ongoing. God is still speaking—sometimes in ways that are just as strange as that.

And so it also reminds us to keep asking: Who is God calling us toward today? And how is God equipping us for the task at hand?

I would say it reminds us of a theological reality too—and that is that the eternal work of God is the work of liberation.

Famed liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez writes:

“The God of Exodus is the God of history and of political liberation.”

So that God calls Moses to go to Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go”—it’s not a surprise, right?

But what might catch us off guard, what we might not always notice in the story, is that in order to do that, God must first free Moses. Free him from self-doubt and pity. Free him from what others have labeled as a disability. And God also frees Moses of this notion that he has to go it alone—to show him that he is, in fact, dependent on others.

And this interdependence is a good thing. It’s a really good thing.

Desmond Tutu, the renowned South African Anglican bishop and social rights activist, once stated:

“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”

This powerful quote encapsulates the interconnectedness of individuals and emphasizes the significance of our shared humanity. It calls upon us to recognize that our well-being and our fulfillment are deeply intertwined with the well-being and fulfillment of others.

Friends, today is the last Sunday that we are going to worship in this sanctuary as it is. For the next several weeks or so, we will worship downstairs in our assembly hall while work is done to make this space more accessible, more open, and more friendly for all of God’s children.

A big part of our renovations over the past several years has been about making our building ADA accessible and making sure that people who have abilities that are labeled as different from the norm are made to feel welcome and valued just as they are.

This place where I am standing now is the last place in our building—literally—that is not ADA accessible. And so I cannot overstate the importance of the ramp that we are putting up here.

It’s not just a structure. It is the physical embodiment of who we want to be—who we believe God is calling us to be.

But like Moses, we’ve had our reservations and our objections along the way. There’s been self-doubt, other priorities, and that ever-present temptation of the status quo.

Yet God’s call has persisted.

And in seeking to invite and welcome others, in responding to God’s call—maybe, I hope—we have found our own sense of God’s grace deepening as well.

We have experienced God equipping us.

We have experienced our vision expanding.

We’ve grown our ministries.

And through it all, we’ve learned what Moses and Dave Muir and Desmond Tutu know:

We are all connected.
Our freedom and our well-being are inseparable.

You know what?

In a world that seems to increasingly believe the lie that we’re different because of where we come from, or where we’re born, or the color of our skin, or our socioeconomic status—in a world that believes that lie and wants us to live in that lie—it seems to me that as people of faith, we have a story to tell and a truth to proclaim.

Yes, with our voices—but also with our actions.
And yes, even our building.

That we are connected.
That we are all God’s children.
That each and every one of us are recipients at a table of grace.

May we find the courage to speak and to live this truth.
And let our hymn now be our prayer and our call.

Amen.

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