There is an old saying here in Washington that nothing ever happens in August. Government people head off on vacation to the beaches, to the mountains, or to beautiful downtown Crawford, so there is nobody to make things happen. So, it is said, nothing ever happens in August.
Of course that idea was damaged in 1914 when an anarchist assassinated an Austrian Archduke and started the first World War. Then there was the build-up in German arms in August of 1939, leading to Hitler’s invasion of Poland on the first of September. Most of all, ingrained in the memories of some of us still living, there were those August days in 1945 when the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by American bombs. August is a bitter month, a terrible month. It behooves us to be wary of August and its awesome consequences.
And here we are again, in the August of 2006, with war raging, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now between Israel and Hezbollah. Who will deliver us from the guns of August? What can we who follow the Prince of Peace do to create peace? There must be something we can do to participate in the struggle to liberate lives and minds and hearts. How can we be available for peacemaking and liberation?
Once there was a man who thought he was settled and secure, fat and sassy, but who faced a call to liberate a people. That man, impressed that there were those who did not share his safety, felt several things. He felt self-doubt, he felt uncertainty, he felt unreadiness. But that man learned how to be available for liberation.
Moses had lived a rather unusual life. In fact, it was nothing short of a miracle that he was alive at all. Born into a Hebrew family at a time when the powers that be in Egypt were threatened by the strength of their slaves, Moses was scheduled for destruction, along with a host of other young boys. But he was saved. By the grace of God and the ingenuity of his mother, he was given not only his life, but also exceptional privileges, right in Pharaoh’s palace. It looked like Moses was headed for something special.
But then Moses made a mistake. A huge, life-changing blunder. He killed a man. Moses became a fugitive from justice in the far away land of Midian. There he took on a wife, raised some children, and settled down into herding sheep. Moses was achieving the suburban dream! If the promise of his earliest years had been forgotten, then also 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, stay out of trouble. Sound familiar?
But Moses had not reckoned with God. God had other things in mind. God wanted Moses to free His people. God expected Moses to be available for liberation. When God’s call came, Moses was not so sure he really wanted that. Even while the words, “Here I am” were coming out of his mouth, he felt self-doubt – which he expressed with the question, “Who am I?”; he felt uncertainty, which he voiced with, “Who are you?”; and he felt unreadiness, offered as, “What if?”. Remember those three questions and you have the whole message today: “Who am I?”, “Who are You?”, and “What if?”
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 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; 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, a kind of deep down 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 God-sized tasks. 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 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; and of course they need to be set free from the burden of sin. All these things oppress, and God is calling somebody – maybe you, maybe me, likely all of us – God is calling somebody to be available for the work of liberation. But if we are tempted to jump in with both feet and fix somebody’s messed-up life, wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute. Do we really know what you are doing? Do we have the skills you need? Probably not. These are God-sized tasks, which none of us can do on our own. We 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 we do, we will find the same answer that Moses found: that God will be with us. God will prepare us. God will show us the way. God will fight it with us. Ask “who am I?” and we will discover that God will make us available for liberation.
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, 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, most of them are spiritual issues, not just psychological stuff. 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 a 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. It’s good to find out who your God is!
Let me shake you up a bit. A lot of us are actually atheists! Do you believe that? A lot of us are functioning atheists, because we don’t really believe God is alive and active in the world today! Oh, God may have spoken and acted back there, in the world of the Bible. But here and now? In America, in Silver Spring? On Forest Glen Road, Georgia Avenue? No, the God most of us talk about is a museum piece, on the shelf, retired. And so when we face 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? We turn to politics, we look for military action, we resort to force. Because we act like atheists, believing that God is dead, 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 Moses. Moses asked God who He was. Moses wanted to find out if God was in this 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?”
And when God answers, it is powerful. It speaks volumes. God says, “I am who I am.” My Old Testament professors taught me that there is an even better way to read it; using a verb tense that the Hebrew language has, you can read God’s answer, “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. He sets out to do a work of justice, and so calls on Moses to lead that work of liberation.
As a nation, we set out on a war of liberation for Iraq. Many of us had reservations about that war. Many still are anxious about whether we have been told the truth concerning weapons of mass destruction. But are you as troubled as I am about the role religion is playing in our 21st Century conflicts? Does it bother you that it is religious people who are firing up these wars? The other day I read a commentator who said, “It is not surprising that bad people do bad things, or that good people do good things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion!”. Ouch! That hurts. But it is distressingly true that certain forms of religion drive people to implacable hatreds and horrible hostilities.
But I would add one more observation. It may take religion to make good people do bad things, but I would argue that it takes faith – not “religion” but faith, a relationship with the living God – it takes faith for bad people or just average people to do good things! God is able to give us a new perspective and a new hope. God has a new way of making peace.
We ought to have learned during the Cold War that God wants us to love His children with food and shelter and jobs and not to batter them with drugs and guns. Well might America ask Moses’ question, “Who are you, Lord?”, and then listen to His answer, “I will be who I will be. I will be on the side of the poor and the oppressed. I will be with the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely. Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.”
If you would be available for liberation, know who this God is. This God is one who calls us to be agents of His liberating power. 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 be available for the work of liberation, but he felt self-doubt. He asked “Who am I?”, and that taught him to depend on God. Moses felt some uncertainty about God too. He asked “Who are You?”, and that made him understand more clearly what God was doing in human history. But now Moses also felt unreadiness. He felt as though he had nothing with which to work. He had no resources. 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 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 reject the whole mess? What if, what if, what if? More things have been destroyed by “what if’s” than this world dreams of. Who can blame Moses when he cries out, “Please, Lord, send someone else!”? I am scared of the “what ifs”.
But God says to Moses, “What is that in your hand?” What resources have I already given you? The long shepherd’s staff became a snake in Moses’ hand, a symbol of power. Then Moses’ hand became diseased, yet healed, a sign of God’s willingness to use our brokenness. What is that in your hand? If we would be available for God to use, and we know we are not ready, let us put ourselves out there where He is at work, and then simply use what we have, use who we are, use what we have been given. Let us not worry about what we do not have. Let us just be who we are, with the confidence that the Lord who fights for justice will use us, small as we may seem.
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. Use what is in your hand and the cause of peace and liberation will be served.
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. Who are we? And who is this God? And what if? What if? What if we should spend our very lives in the fight to set men free? What if? What is that in your hand? His broken body, by which He identifies with and makes sacred all human pain. What is that in your hand? His spilled blood, by which He has paid the price for the brokenness of us all. Take what is in our hands, and at this Table He will make us available for liberation.
