This ancient story of divine calling centers on sacred

vision. This Sunday, the scripture invites us to stop, to

look, to listen. This holy word offers blessed assurance

that God sees us and hears our cries.

You probably remember: the story began under the threat

of a terrified tyrant. Moses barely escapes Pharaoh’s

blueprint of brutality for baby boys thanks to the quick

and courageous action of his mother and sister. We meet

him this morning a fugitive far from home in Midian.

Moses is living below the radar and beyond the demands

of justice. It may be a dull life for one raised in Pharaoh’s

court, but at least he is secure. Moses is not on some

soul-seeking expedition, no quest to find himself or

encounter God. He comes to Horeb, God’s own mountain,

entirely by accident, following the flocks of his father-inlaw. As far as Moses is concerned, when we meet him

today, the ground on which he stands is no more holy

than any other field meant for grazing.

But something makes the man stop. A brush fire. A

bush burning but not burned up. At that moment,

Moses makes a decision that changes his life. He stops.

It was not inevitable that it would be so. He could have

kept walking. He could have ignored the sign. But

Moses turns aside, and only then does God speak.

Remember the text:

When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to see,

God called to him.

And what does God say? “I have seen my people’s

misery…I have heard their cries for help…I have come

down to deliver them.” The initiative is entirely God’s.

The plan is clear. God has seen and heard. God shows

up. And Moses is sent to speak God’s message to the

King of Egypt. Let my people go.

Now, you biblical scholars in the sanctuary may recall

that the encounter does not end there with Moses

gladly accepting his charge and marching off to fulfill

his God-given calling. No, Moses is skeptical. He has

questions. Objections. Excuses. Five of them to be exact.

My favorite is the final one when Moses simply says to

God, “Oh, Lord, please send somebody else.” It’s not

hard to understand why. The call placed on the life of

Moses is not an easy call. The words he must speak are

not easy words. The journey he is about to begin will not

be an easy journey.

You likely know that The Lord of the Rings trilogy was

deeply influenced by the Christian faith of its author. At

the beginning of the first book, J.R.R. Tolkien describes

a dialogue between Frodo, the young Hobbit, and

Gandalf, the wise wizard. To my reading, the encounter

echoes the stories of divine call and response scattered

throughout the pages of scripture. I’ve been thinking

about it this week. Frodo has just received his calling in

the form of a ring of power, a sign of his vocation and

his immense responsibility. And he does not respond

with enthusiasm. Rather, he responds with lament. “I

wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this

had happened.” Gandalf responds, “So do I, and so do

all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to

decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time

that is given us.”

In the time of Moses, the people of God were suffering.

God saw their misery. God heard their cries. God showed

up. And Moses did too, eventually. God’s persistence pays

off. Divine initiative compels human response.

Divine initiative. Human response. It is a good day, I

think, to consider the call of people and communities of

faith. This people. This community of faith. To ask again

the ancient question of the prophets: what does the

Lord require of us? There are many good and faithful

answers to that question. But for me, the answer, like

this morning’s scripture, centers on sacred vision. It

must begin by looking for the presence of God in the

ordinary, noticing the needs of our neighbors with our

own eyes, seeing the divine image reflected in every

human face, attending to the places of pain in our own

hearts and the struggles of those around us, setting our

sight on the promise of God as yet unfulfilled and always

still ahead of us. Never in jeopardy. If there is anything

of which I am certain this Sunday morning, it is that

God has work for us to do. Yes, work that is uniquely

and unavoidably assigned to people of faith. That’s you.

For the sake of the gospel and the people we are called

to love, we must not ignore, abandon, or abdicate this

responsibility. We must not rush past this moment of

divine encounter. The bush is on fire! Stop. Look. Listen.

God is still speaking.

It is commitment season at Second Presbyterian

Church. By that we typically mean that we’re beginning

to build a budget based on financial pledges received

from members and friends of the church. And that’s true.

And so, I should probably remind you that everything

we do in this place depends on your generous response

to God’s grace and our invitation. And, perhaps more

importantly, to remind you that here at Second, literally

everything we do has grown and expanded in the last

four years. I wish I had time to recount the stories and

share the statistics that prove that statement true, the

outreach to the city, our membership, our ministries

of music and fine arts, our care for each other, our

commitment to children and youth, our presence in the

public square, our faithful voices in places of influence.

Growth, growth, growth. And that growth is God’s gift,

but it is your responsibility. This year’s commitment

theme, Imagine Second, invites us, with the prophets

and the disciples at Pentecost, to keep dreaming about

the time that God has given us and our call to use it well.

Through this lens of imagination, we see a bright and

promising future, and we pursue it with our gifts, our

time, our talent, our commitment. We listen for God’s

voice calling each of us to be a part of the movement of

the spirit in this place. Yes, we rely on your pledges and

your giving. I trust you know that, and I know you will

respond faithfully.

But your commitment to God is about more than your

money. It is about answering the call, accepting the

responsibility, and living in ways that honor Jesus

Christ. Our focus this program year is on the work of

repairing the breach. Friends, that breach is now laid

bare. There is no denying the chasm between us. You

can feel it in daily encounters, even in this space, the

tensions of our divisions that threaten to choke off our

call to repair. And so, this season, we must commit and

recommit to that responsibility.

Friends, it is time to double down on our God-given

mission, so that we might demonstrate to a watching

world that faith can make one more loving. That faith

can make one more compassionate, more gracious.

This week, a dear friend sent me an essay written by

the author and editor Sara Sherbill. The title of the

piece is, “You Might Consider Praying,” and the first line

sets the stage. She writes, “This year keeps breaking

my heart.” After sharing a partial list—anger, anxiety,

resentment, personal loss, the violence of war, the

suffering caused by natural disaster—the author asks,

“What can we do when our hearts are breaking?”

Her suggestion? “We can pray.” Now, Sherbill is the

daughter of a rabbi, raised in an Orthodox Jewish family.

And while she confesses that she has departed from

much of that tradition, she writes, “Prayer was the

one thing I grabbed on my way out.” She shares this

witness, “For me, sometimes prayer looks like this: I am

driving and it is raining and the windshield wipers are

going back and forth and I am crying and I am asking

God for help. Help me…I whisper over and over. Just

please help me.”

If you have ever been with her, if you have ever been

driving and it is raining and the windshield wipers are

going back and forth and you are crying and you are

asking God for help, then you know the power of her

witness. I read her words with tears in my own eyes, and

then I thought of the verse that precedes this morning’s

passage. “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. God heard their

groaning. God remembered his covenant…”

The story that is our faith would remind us again and again

that God hears. That God remembers. That God speaks.

Burning bushes. Holy ground.

The man turns aside. He looks. He listens.

As those called by God, gifted with the burden of

responsibility, let each of us answer with courage and

with faith, “Here I am. Send me.” Amen.