August 28, 2005: Pentecost 15 Year A
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
Steven Sondheim’s play “Into the Woods” is a rollicking tale of a collection of fairy tale figures—Jack of Jack in the Beanstalk, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel and others—who find their way, as the title suggests, into the woods and come out the other end with their understanding of the world and their relationships with each other changed. At one point, Jack, fresh from his first trip up the beanstalk comes onto stage and sings these words: “There are Giants in the sky. There are big tall terrible awesome scary wonderful Giants in the sky.”
In the play as in the folk tale, Jack is a simple lad who spends most of his life within the confines of his mother’s home. It’s only when he travels far from home, when he stumbles into a kind of alternate universe up in the clouds, that he encounters a power larger than himself that changes the way he looks at the world.
Like Jack, in our reading from Exodus for today, Moses stumbles on a power larger than he is. But Moses doesn’t travel up any magic beanstalk to an alternative universe in order to find this power. Instead, he’s just doing his job, out for a little stroll with his father-in-law’s sheep somewhere in the area of Midian.
And what makes this possible, we’re told, is that just for a moment, he decides to “turn aside,” to give his attention to something that only a second before was an ordinary part of the landscape—a simple shrub, a bush that he discovers is on fire with the living God— the Hebrew people’s big, tall, terrible, awesome, scary, wonderful living God.
And if Moses thought encountering a burning bush was scary, what he hears from within that bush is scarier still. For this big tall terrible awesome scary, wonderful Hebrew God has an agenda. The Hebrew people need a liberator. And God has chosen Moses to do it.
And so what might Moses have felt? How do you suppose he reacted to what seemed like the abrupt redirection of his life and, within this, a new role for him, one that he did not feel qualified to do?
The Biblical text does not suggest this but I like to think that on some level he felt annoyed. For he, just like you and I, already had plenty to do—flocks to tend to, a family to deal with. He, just like you and I, had a stake in things continuing pretty much as they had in the past, nurtured by a God of the past, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for Pete’s sake, the God of our forebears, the God we already know.
And his other feeling? Abject fear. Listen to his words right after God says that he’s sending Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt: “Who am I?” Moses says, “that I should go to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt? In other words: “How could a big tall terrible awesome scary wonderful God need or want a person like me to get personally involved in God’s liberation of the Hebrew people?
Both of these reactions—“I’m busy already with my life as it has been” and “Who am I to get involved in God’s ongoing work in the world”—are stumbling blocks for us today. For both ask us to go beyond where the past has led us or what we can imagine we can do.
Now this is the part of the sermon where the preacher might begin talking more specifically about our vocations—about how those of us who are not Moses experience figuring out what we’re called to do, what roles we’re to play in God’s work in the world. Often this would begin with “Now most of us don’t ever really see a burning bush….”
But this morning I want to tell you that I don’t believe this at all. I believe that burning bushes are to the left of us, burning bushes are to the right of us and sometimes burning bushes are right in front of us. And, I believe, we’re either too threatened or too afraid to see them.
And so how do we spot them? How can we turn aside long enough to hear what they have to say to us even if they threaten to upset our lives or ask us to do what seem to be impossible things?
Well, to start with something obvious, the experience of church itself—what we hear and do together on Sundays at this Eucharist and during the week in daily prayer—is a kind of turning aside, a time to listen to the powerful voice of God out of a fire that is not consumed. Writer Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk describes it this way:
"Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we (in church) so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?…churches are (like) children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT. It is madness,” she says, “to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews."
And so, as Dillard says, the experience you and I have here in this place—listening to the stories of Scripture, chanting the psalms, singing hymns, praying for the world, being in silence together, participating in a Holy meal with a God of mercy, forgiveness and peace—is a “turning aside” of the most radical kind.
In addition to this, we can explore our godly vocations by ways to turn aside.
We can listen to our lives, noticing in the silence of our hearts or simply in the moment what we’re experiencing or what others are experiencing of us. Here I mean taking notice of things like what makes us angry, what evokes our compassion, what makes us cry out, what breaks our hearts, what lifts us up, what gives us a deep joy, what stirs us to action, what brings us to life.
But that’s only part of the listening we need to do. For we also need to turn aside, notice and listen to the world which is oftentimes right in front of us: listen to where the hunger is, listen to where peace is needed, listen to where people yearn to be restored to unity, listen for where broken things need mending or, like Moses, notice and listen to where the oppressed cry out for liberation. And, again, all of these may be right in front of us.
Turning aside, noticing and listening to what’s going on within us; turning aside, noticing and listening to the world around us. Both are a critical part of discerning our vocations.
Frederick Buechner describes it this way: “The place God calls you to,” he says, “is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And if we take Jesus’ words in our Gospel this morning, we will find that following the path of deep gladness will cost us everything.
“There are Giants in the sky,” Jack sings in wide-eyed wonder. “There are big, tall, terrible, awesome, scary, wonderful Giants in the sky,” he sings, remembering his powerful encounter in a far away, magical land. You and I do not live in a far away, magical land. Like Moses, we’re busy in the world we live in day to day. We’re tending our flocks and dealing with our families and friends. We’re busy doing all these things when for a moment out of the corner of one eye we see the slightest flicker of a flame, beckoning us to stop what we are doing and to turn aside. Who or what is it that calls us? Someone who is big, tall, terrible, awesome, scary and wonderful: the God of our forebears, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the Christ of our future; the one who calls us to a new vocation and promises to be with us.
Works Cited
Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, p. 45.
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, p. 119.
