How do you feel about eager volunteers? What’s your
reaction to the kind of person who is always ready to step up
to the plate and take a swing at some issue? How do you
really feel about those who quickly volunteer when
something needs to be done?
Maybe you remember what it was like to be a kid in the
classroom, and the teacher would ask a question. What did
you think about the kind of kid – and there was always one
seated next to me – who would vigorously wave her hand
and stage whisper, “Oh, oh, me, me, call on me, me!”?
Come on now; what did you really think? Miss Know-It-All.
Show-off. Teacher’s pet. You didn’t much care for the eager
volunteer, did you? She showed up your ignorance, and she
made you feel guilty. At the same time, you secretly were
glad she was there, because it meant that you didn’t get
called on. Volunteers are appreciated, and they’re not. They
are liked; and they are disliked. We feel uneasy about folks
who are always so available.
And so when there is a need, and somebody seems to think
we should volunteer, what goes on in our minds? What stirs
in our memories? When it is time to step up and meet a
challenge, we think we should, but we hope we don’t have
to. We think we maybe could, but then we suspect maybe
we couldn’t. When it is time to be available, we know we
shouldn’t feel this way, but we do want to say, “please send
someone else.” Anyone but me, please.
On that 4th of July in 1776 a number of men felt called to step
forward and to volunteer for a cause far larger than they
knew. They spoke that day of pledging their “lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor”. That was not an easy
thing to do. Some of them would lose their wealth. Others
would lose their families, as their sons would march off to
Lexington and Concord, Saratoga and Yorktown. And some
would lose their own lives as citizen soldiers who knew they
had to do more than shout ringing rhetoric in King George’s
face. They were volunteers; some of them were reluctant,
others more eager. But they found themselves at a time and
place where they knew they had to be available, available for
the cause of liberty.
Just as, at another time and place, a man who thought he
was settled and secure, fat and sassy, faced a call to
volunteer for the cause of liberating a people. That man, like
those of us who sat in classrooms with Miss Know-It-All, felt
several things. He felt self-doubt, he felt uncertainty, and he
felt unreadiness. But what he learned about being available
for liberation is of great value.
Moses had lived a rather unusual life. In fact, it was nothing
short of a miracle that he was alive at all. Born into slavery,
into a Hebrew family at a time when the powers that be in
Egypt were threatened by the strength of their slaves, Moses
should have been destroyed, along with a host of other
young boys. But he was not. By the grace of God and the
ingenuity of his mother, he was given not only his life, but
also an exceptional training, right in Pharaoh’s palace.
Moses had privileges well beyond what most of his peers
enjoyed; it looked like Moses was headed for something
special.
But then Moses, like a lot of young people, made a mistake.
A big mistake. Not just a little boo-boo, but a huge, life-
changing blunder. He killed a man. In the heat of the
moment, he took another man’s life, and had to run. Moses
became a fugitive from justice, and ran to a far away land
called Midian. There he took on a wife, raised some kids,
and settled down into herding sheep. Sounds like Moses
achieved the suburban dream! It seemed the promise of his
earliest years had been forgotten, and that the mistake of his
young adulthood had been covered up. You can imagine
Moses just lying low and keeping cool. Like Bill Cosby said
when he observed a little old lady standing around looking
cool: “That’s how you get to be a little old lady, by standing
around looking cool”. That was Moses’ strategy: tend the
sheep, raise the children, keep the wife happy, be cool.
But Moses had not reckoned with God. God had other
things in mind for Moses. God wanted Moses to volunteer to
free His people. God expected Moses to be available for
liberation. Moses knew he should be available, and so he
spoke up, “Here I am”. And yet at the same time Moses was
not so sure he really wanted to be a volunteer. Even while
the words, “Here I am” were coming out of Moses’ mouth, he
felt self-doubt, he felt uncertainty, and he felt unreadiness.
I
First, look at Moses’ self-doubt. “Who am I?” he said. “Who
am I that I should go to Pharaoh to bring my people out of
Egypt?” Who wouldn’t be anxious, given the assignment
God had in mind? Only the most arrogant of us think we
have what it takes to do everything. But I am prepared to
say that doubting ourselves is actually a very valuable part of
being available for God’s causes. Moses doubted himself;
and that’s a good thing. It made him available to be used of
God, not for himself, but for God’s purposes.
In my lifetime, I have known a few “no problem” people. Do
you know the kind of person I mean? You ask him to do
something, and he answers, “No problem.” Can you teach
my class for me? “No problem”. Can you repair my broken-
down car? “No problem”. Can you leap tall buildings in a
single bound? “No problem”! What’s going on here? What
is this all about?
There is a kind of insecurity that makes us arrogant and
foolish; that doesn’t admit fear; that doesn’t acknowledge
danger. There is a kind of rash insecurity that just cannot
admit that life is demanding. In my experience, the folks who
always pronounce that there is “no problem” doing something
seldom actually get it done. They promise the world, but
they deliver nothing. They are so caught up in their own
insecurity they cannot tell you they are scared, and so they
make fools of themselves trying to look heroic. But you do
not want self-serving hero antics on the front line of a
battlefield; that’s likely to get everybody hurt. You want
people who have a healthy respect for the enemy.
So I applaud Moses when he says to the Lord, “Who am I
that I should go to Pharaoh to bring my people ... out of
Egypt?” I affirm Moses when he says, “Who am I?” It’s good
to doubt ourselves when we’re faced with the task of
liberating people from the things that bind them. That will
push us back on God. Our self-doubt will teach us to
depend on what God has given us, and not to jump out there
and be false heroes.
There are a lot of things that people today need to be
liberated from. They need to be liberated from poverty; they
need to be freed from addictive behavior; they need to be
released from emotional oppression in their families; and of
course, it almost goes without saying, they need to be set
free from the burden of sin. All of these things oppress, and
God is calling somebody – maybe you, maybe me, likely all
of us – God is calling somebody to be available for liberation.
But if you are tempted to jump in with both feet and fix
somebody’s messed-up life, wait a minute. Wait just a
cotton-pickin’ minute. Do you really know what you are
doing? Do you have the skills you need? Probably not. You
need to get in touch with a little healthy self-doubt, and like
Moses, ask, “Who am I that I should ... bring my people out?”
And when you do, you will find the same answer that Moses
found: that God will be with you. God will prepare you. God
will show you the way. God will fight it with you. Ask “who
am I?” and you will discover that God will empower you. He
will make you available for liberation. It will not be your own
doing; it will be His.
II
But not only did Moses ask, “Who am I?”. He also asked
God, “Who are you?” Not only did Moses struggle with a
healthy self-doubt when he got his assignment to be a
liberator, but also Moses confronted his uncertainty about
God. “Who are you?” Just what are you really about, Lord?
“When they ask me, ‘what is [God’s] name?’, what shall I say
to them?”
Friends, when you really look at the great issues of life, it is
not long before you realize that you are dealing with spiritual
issues, not just psychological stuff. You are dealing with
theology, not just sociology. When you see broken families
and hear of battered children; when you counsel with addicts
or you hear the story of someone’s long illness – you are not
just hearing someone’s hard luck tale. You are not just
listening to someone’s pain. You are hearing their theology.
You are hearing about the kind of God they have. And you
will be confronting the kind of God you have too.
Let me shake you up a bit. A lot of folks, even church folks,
are actually atheists. Did you know that? A lot of us are
atheists, because we don’t really believe God is alive and
active in the world today! Oh, he may have spoken and
acted back there, in the world of the Bible. But here and
now? In America, in Washington? On Aspen Street or
Piney Branch Road or Georgia Avenue? No, the God most
of us talk about is a museum piece, on the shelf, not active
any more, retired. And so when we face the tough times,
when there is a great cause in front of us, when injustice
needs to be faced down – do we expect God to be involved?
Do we think God cares, or if He does care, that He will do
anything? A lot of us are actually atheists, believing that God
is dead, on the shelf, on vacation, or just useless, and that if
you are going to get anything done, you have to do it
yourself.
And so let’s applaud brother Moses. Moses asked God who
He was. Moses wanted to find out if God was in this thing or
not. Are you out there, Lord, and if so, what do you intend to
do? Or are you just asking me to go out and fight this thing
all by my lonesome? “Who are you, Lord? What is your
name? Who are you?”
And when God answers, it is powerful. It is real. It speaks
volumes. God says, “I am who I am.” A better reading is “I
will be what I will be.” My Old Testament professors taught
me to read it, “I make happen what I make happen.” In other
words, when you probe our God, He lets you know that He is
in charge. He is the Lord of history, and He will do what He
sets out to do. And it is not until you probe that that you can
really sing, “What a mighty God we serve”!
As a nation, not long ago we set out on a war of liberation in
Iraq. Many of us had reservations about that war. Many still
are anxious about whether we have been told the truth about
weapons of mass destruction. I must tell you that I, for one,
do believe that God has called the American people to be the
harbingers of freedom and the caretakers of liberty. I believe
that God wants all people to be free; Iraqis, Liberians, North
Koreans, Bosnians, and on and on. Does that mean I think
we should send troops to every corner of the earth? Does
that mean I believe we should foment rebellion around the
world? No, not at all. I am not for war-mongering. But I
know that there are going to be times when we as a nation
will have to step forward, when we will have to accept the
role which God has ordained for us; and when we will have
to understand that the Lord we serve is always working for
the freedom of His children. America, in order to fulfill her
destiny, must be available for liberation.
That means, among other things, that we had better not be
out there setting up dictators like we set up Saddam, that we
have to take down later. And it means, as we ought to have
learned during the Cold War, that we had better understand
that God wants to love His children with food and shelter and
jobs and not batter them with drugs and guns and
depression. Well might we, the American nation, ask Moses’
question, “Who are you, Lord?”, and then listen to His
answer, “I will be who I will be. I will be the Lord of human
history. I will be on the side of the poor and the oppressed.”
If you would be available for liberation, know who this God is.
III
But now, stay with me, for there is one more issue. There is
something else that Moses felt, and this is the most
threatening feeling of all. Moses wanted to volunteer and to
be available for the work of liberation, but he felt self-doubt –
and that was a good thing, for it taught him to depend on
God. Moses felt some uncertainty about God too. Yet even
doubting and questioning God was a positive thing, because
it made him understand more clearly what God was doing in
human history.
But now, when all is said and done, Moses also felt
unreadiness. He just felt as though he had nothing with
which to work. He was at the end of his rope, up a creek
without a paddle. Lord, how can I do this liberation thing? I
am not a good speaker, the people will not follow me, I have
no skills, I have no tools, I have nothing with which to work.
To his original questions, “Who am I?” and “Who are you?”,
Moses now adds another desperate query, “What if?” What
if they do not believe me? What if they do not hear me?
What if they say this is not right? What if they are scared
of the whole mess? What if, what if, what if? More things
have been destroyed by our “what if”’s than this world
dreams of. Who can blame Moses when he cries out,
“Please, Lord, send someone else!”? Anybody but me, Lord.
Send someone else!
But God says to Moses, “What is that in your hand?” What
is that you already have in your hand? How have I already
equipped you? Look at what is already in your hand, Moses.
The long shepherd’s staff became a snake in his hand, a
symbol of power. Moses’ own hand became diseased and
then healed, a sign of God’s willingness to use our
brokenness. What is that in your hand? If you would be
available for God to use, and you know you are not ready,
put yourself out there where He is at work, and then simply
use what you have, use who you are, use what you have
been given. Do not worry about what you do not have. Be
who you are, with the confidence that the Lord who fights for
justice, will use you as long as you are available for
liberation. You may wish He would send someone else; and
He will. He will send someone else to do someone else’s
task. But He will send only you to do what you are to do.
Use what is in your hand as a weapon for liberation.
When the British redcoats arrived to punish the colonists for
that infamous Tea Party, they came equipped with food
supplies and military tradition and artillery. All the colonists
had were rickety rifles and a lot of passion. But this rag-tag
army, hastily cobbled together under George Washington,
used what was in their hands, and won the struggle.
When the crunch came down in Montgomery, back in the
50’s, all the people had was their feet. But Rosa Parks and
Dr. King and all the others used those feet to march for
freedom and boycott the buses until segregation was beaten
back. Use what is in your hand.
If you know how to teach someone to read, then teach. If
you know how to listen to someone in distress, pull up a
chair and listen. If you know how to use a telephone to touch
someone’s heart, then reach out and touch. If all you know
is how to play softball, and it would lift some child’s spirit,
then step up to that plate and swing that bat and do it. Be
available for liberation. Use what is in your hand.
For, “once to every man and nation comes the moment to
decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or
evil side. Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering
each the bloom or blight; and the choice goes by forever
“twixt the darkness and that light”.
[TO THE COMMUNION TABLE]
Moses who was told he stood on holy ground. We too today
are on hallowed soil, for the blood of thousands, available for
liberation, has made it so. Like Moses, called to free his
people, we too are called to bring freedom to hearts and
minds enthralled to sin, poverty, ignorance, hatred, and
hostility. Who are we? We are those who look to God to be
with us in the battle. Who is this God? He is the one who in
Jesus Christ has faced down every danger, and has in Him
defeated every enemy. Death and sin and evil are all under
His feet.
Who are we? And who is this God? And what if? What if?
What if we should spend our lives, our fortunes, and our
sacred honor in the fight to set men free? What if? Just be
available; and use what this victorious Lord puts into your
hands, right here, right now. His broken body, His spilled
blood. He will make you available for liberation.
