Why Moses?

He is so reluctant. Not that I wouldn’t be. Not that I’m not.

But why does God persist with Moses, with the reluctance?

It’s a strange perspective. Knowing as Creator that this one was made for this purpose, yet in the freedom of self, the person resists his purpose. Like encouraging a frightened child to step up to the plate and actually swing the bat. The child wants to. He wants to hit the long ball. He wants to enter into the possibility. But what if he misses. What if he strikes out. What if he looks silly. These are the things that keep the child from even wanting to approach the plate.

Conflict. Conflicted.

We really are deeply bound by this. If it’s not one thing, then another.

Avoidance, anxiety. How long O Lord?

Signs Wonders

We interpret our experiences. It is in this way that experiences offer testimony. And on the testimony of two or three, we are brought to certainty – true knowledge.

About process, we say, “this caused this”. Predictive power. Not merely an historical ascription – but an association that can be anticipated and even counted upon.

We all say we want to know the truth but what we really mean is that we want certainty. The elimination of risk. No one wants to risk. No one wants to fail. Moses didn’t want to fail.

But believing in some other person is faith and saving people always involves risk. Loving is total risk-faith. God created a will so at liberty that it can choose to reject God. He risked creation. He has faith in His creation.

He risked on Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob. He was willing to risk on Moses. He has risked on you.

I AM

Receiving a word from God has this inevitably irrational quality. No one will deny what they don’t know. Few will actually say, “No, you didn’t hear from God.” But they will all think it. And, I suppose, even when someone hears from God – even as they are hearing it – they realize in the back of their mind that no one is going to believe this. Moses knows that this is going to change the way he functions in his network of relationships.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob cares about the children of Israel. His project continues. The covenant family will now become the covenant nation. They will see it in their own time as the pursuit of blessing for themselves. They will know success and failure.

But in the end, the covenant nation will be scattered like salt in a dough. It will inform and season all of human culture. No more the private God of a few fortunate.

Burning Bush

Strange sight. Holy Ground. The God of fathers. The cry of Israelites. I am sending you.

You get up one morning thinking it’s going to be just another day. And then this happens. The whole reason and possibility of your life unfolds before you in a vision.

It’s always God. It’s always holy. It’s always irresistible.

Flight from Egypt

The handful of brothers and sisters who entered Egypt have become a great nation. They won’t integrate. They can’t integrate. The one thing they know for sure.

There is no national leader and they are entirely subjugated by the nation of their sojourning. They are bound together by the culture and by the promise. They cry out to the God whom they have heard about, but do not really know.

They do not have liberty and so they cannot develop the freedom to serve God.

Liberty is the absence of constraint. Egypt must constrain them or risk being displaced by them. This is neither the intended destiny for Egypt nor for Israel. The exodus toward liberty is forgone. The tectonic forces will not be forever staid.

The only question is what provocation will set loose the earthquake to come. Which side will I chose when it comes?

Choosing and Chosen

The challenge of having two mothers: One who has given you life and one who has given you everything else.

Mothers have their demands. They always seem to come with brothers and sisters. And I am always called to be bound in solidarity and community with one family or the other.

Mothers are uninhibited. They make these claims.

So what happens when the claims of these two mothers of mine cannot be reconciled.

I have to choose.

“Choose you this day whom you will serve…”

Nile Babies

It’s a diabolical plan. Kill the male infants but allow the females to live. In a generation or two of no men, the woman will be enslaved spinsters or else they will marry Egyptian men and lose their identity as the children of Israel. Genius as it is ruthless.

God’s project looks like it could have died. So somewhat less than forthright midwives, and mothers with baskets, dance around the letter of Pharaoh’s evil laws. And this preserves the identity of God’s chosen people.

I take baptism as such a simple, formal ceremony. It’s a polite sacrament. An exciting celebration.

This going down in death is all a positive symbol because of the anticipation of being born again. But casting your child into the Nile river, even if you’ve waterproofed a basket and left him in the reeds, is a resignation to the inevitable death that awaits.

She gave Moses to God. No real choices. Her only hope was God and this little basket. It was enough.

Comes Slavery

The subjugation of a nation of people. The harder they worked, the more they proliferated and spread out.

Pressure forces humans beings to focus and commit. It is typically when we are pushed that we achieve. The freedom to act is the movement from unknowable essence to revealed being. So, the more pressure, the more revealing.

Greatness in life comes from embracing pressure.

Hell of Unforgiveness

“What if Joseph bears a grudge”? What if he really means to kill me? What if I am not loved? What if I am not successful? What if I fail?

Anxiety has this debilitating effect. The uncertainty of what might be is interpreted with the anticipation of evil. “Nothing goes my way….”

We ask the great “What If” with trepidation. Only evil can come from it. All the imagined negativity pushes us toward learned helplessness and practical entitlement. We are tempted to say, “this isn’t fair,” as we roll over in our bed – afraid to even rise.

It needn’t be this way. “You meant it for evil but God meant it for good.” The great “What If” is eclipsed by the greater “What If” – “What if I gave to this person in need?” What if we taught this person to fish?” “What if we worked together to accomplish this?”

“What if I loved?”

“Perfect love casts out fear”.

Canaan

The strangeness of this event could not have been known in the moment. All of Egypt mourning Jacob, Joseph’s father. They grieved for Joseph loss. But they celebrated the life of Jacob – known also as Israel.

So Egypt celebrates the formation of the nation of Israel.

A true nation embryo. The question of how we overcome hatred and divisiveness without a social contract is made manifest in the forgiveness and reconciliation between brothers. This could be.

A big step in the advance toward the kind of world that we all imagine. Yes, this embryo will form in the womb of one of the most ancient and important social contract communities, but the new life is radically different from the surrogate who bears it.