*UPDATE*
Video of the whole service is now available here (sermon begins around 31:30) for those who don't want to wait until the video of just the sermon is posted.
Exodus 3:7-15
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.
Matthew 16:21-27
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
Sermon Audio
Introduction
Old MacDonald had a farm. And on that farm there happened to be just two animals. One chicken. And one pig.
See, Old MacDonald had fallen on hard times. You know, he used to be the best farmer in town. He had so many animals—cows and sheep and ducks and geese and people would come from all over to see them! Everyone loved him and they sang songs about him and ee-i-ee-i-oh and all that.
But as the years passed and the times changed fewer and fewer people would come by to see Old MacDonald. And before long, he had run out of money. And so Old MacDonald did what any other farmer would do. He took his cows and his sheep and his ducks and his geese to market to be sold and…well, you know. And when all was said and done, all that he had left was one chicken and one pig.
But he loved that chicken and that pig. He made sure that they had enough food to eat and water to drink and enough space to roam around and play. He protected them from wolves and foxes and any other animals that tried to snatch them away. And all in all, that chicken and that pig lived quite a happy life on that little, lonely farm.
And one day, the chicken and the pig were talking—as chickens and pigs are wont to do—and the chicken said [chicken noises]to which the pig…oh, I’m sorry. I forget that not everyone is fluent in barnyard animal. Let me try that again.
The chicken said “you know pig, Old MacDonald has done a really good job taking care of us”.
“I know,” said the pig, “he feeds us and he gives us water and he chases away the foxes and wolves so we can play out in the sun”.
“Exactly!” said the chicken, “but have you noticed that he’s moving…a little slower these days?”
“You know, now that you mention it, I have,” said the pig.
“And not only that,” the chicken replied, “but I’ve also noticed that his house is starting to fall apart”.
“I know,” the pig said, “and he’s not going to be able to stay warm because winter is coming!”
“If only there was some way we could help him out and repay him for the kindness he’s shown us,” said the chicken.
The pig agreed, and so they started to think of ways they could help out Old MacDonald. And they thought and they thought and they thought and they thought until finally—a ha!—the chicken said “I got it! We can open a restaurant!”
“A restaurant?”
“A restaurant!”
“But we don’t know the first thing about the restaurant business. What do you even call a restaurant run by a pig and a chicken? What would we serve?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll keep it real simple. We’ll call it Ham n’ Eggs, and that’s what we’ll serve!”
“Ham n’ Eggs?”
“Ham n’ Eggs! It’s perfect!”
“I don’t know,” the pig responded hesitantly, “in order to make it work, it sounds like you’d only need to make a contribution, but I’d have to make a real commitment.”
In order to make it work, you’d only need to make a contribution, but I’d have to make a real commitment.
The Call to Discipleship
The call of Christian Discipleship is not a call to contribute a portion of our lives, but rather to commit the whole sum of our lives to following Jesus Christ. Making a contribution is, when all is said and done, easy. Making a contribution requires no real sacrifice. There’s no risk in making a contribution. After she lays an egg, the chicken is able to return to life as normal.
But making a commitment? If you’re committed to something, you throw your whole being into it. Commitment is costly. Commitment radically and fundamentally transforms your life. There’s no “back to normal” when we’re talking about commitment. Following Christ is not a once-a-week, ten percent, part-time job, but rather the totality of a life lived fully for the sake of proclaiming his Gospel—for the sake of building his Kingdom here on earth. To follow Christ is to commit to Christ.
And yet…
The fact of the matter is that in the midst of trials and tribulations
Ups and downs
Joys and celebrations and the mundane banality of life, it’s really easy to lose sight of that costly call.
And I’ll be the first one to confess that I myself am just as guilty as the next person. Rather than exposing myself to people who look, think, and act differently from me, I have a tendency to isolate myself into communities that allow me to feel safe and secure. I would rather store up my treasures here on earth rather than live fully into the promise of God’s abundant life. I allow comfort to drive me to complacency rather than using the freedom I have been given through Christ’s offering for all the world to offer myself as a living sacrifice for the sake of seeking justice and resisting evil.
But perhaps we can all take some comfort in the fact that this problem is not unique to our time or location, but has—as we see in our Gospel passage this morning—plagued the Church from its very institution.
The Gospel
And we all feel pretty comfortable saying that this is a weird story, right? I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s not as weird as that time Jesus cursed a fig tree out of the blue, but it’s still pretty weird. Jesus tells his disciples that he’s going to have to go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering and be killed by the religious elite—the same folks that up until that point in his ministry, Jesus and his band of merry men had been antagonizing and calling out. So Peter pulls Jesus aside “hey hey hey, look you’re not going to die—there’s no way I’m going to let that happen”.
And given what had happened just before our story began, that response makes sense. Just a few verses back—within the same chapter—Jesus told Peter that he was going to be the rock upon which he would build his Church. Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven—that beautiful city of God—and assured him that not even the gates of hell would be able to prevail against it.
Things were finally looking up for our good friend, Peter.
All that work he had put in had finally paid off. Leaving behind his family and business and traveling Lord only knows how many miles across the ancient near east by foot was finally worth it. He got that promotion. He was now Jesus’ right-hand man.
And so when Jesus started talking about how he was going to be killed, of course Peter’s response was going to be something along the lines of “hey J.C., don’t worry! I got you’re back! This venture that we’re now partners in is going to be successful”, but unfortunately for Peter, Jesus’ definition of success was very different from his.
Jesus’ definition of success is often different from ours.
In spite of all the work that Peter had already put into Jesus’ ministry, when he said “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”, he showed that all along, he was merely making contributions, but he wasn’t committed.
Jesus knew that in order to be successful in his mission—in order to reconcile all of humanity back to God—he would ultimately have to conquer death. Jesus knew that he had to show us that death ultimately has no power over any single one of us.
And if Jesus was going to conquer death, he knew that he was first going to need to submit to it. He was going to need to submit to the reality that death exists and is a part of life. A reality that I know many of us in here and around the world are living today. Jesus knew that the path to a new reality, a reality where death is powerless, meant embracing our current reality, a reality in which death seemingly holds all the power. Death wasn’t going to have the final say, but the path to resurrection led straight through the cross.
Yet Peter missed the memo about resurrection. All Peter heard was suffering and death. And Peter knew that if Jesus chose that path, then he—by virtue of being a follower of Jesus—would also have to take that same path. Even though he had shown that he was willing to give up everything to follow Jesus, he wasn’t quite ready to go that far. He was willing to contribute, but he wasn’t willing to commit.
The Drive to Survive
And Jesus called him out on it. Get behind me, Satan! You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.
And he’s right.
Peter had set his mind on human things. Self-preservation is hard-wired into our very beings. The laws of evolution dictate that we are programmed to do what we must to protect our lives and the lives of our offspring to ensure the survival of our species. When ancient human beings were threatened by a predator—say a giant saber tooth tiger—their hormones would go into overdrive, and when it came time to make the decision to fight the predator or run away from it, their body was a veritable machine. The survival of our species depended on it.
And that’s exactly what our species did. We survived better than any other animal on this planet until we found ourselves at the top of the food chain. But while you and I don’t have to worry about giant saber tooth tigers anymore, we still have that innate drive to survive. And in the absence of a threat from another species, we focused all of our fear on our fellow humans, and as a result, we’ve been saddled with tribalism and racism and sexism and hyper nationalism and ableism and every other ism that that puts a barrier between us and our fellow humans. Each and every one of those sins can be traced back to that primal, basic evolutionary drive to protect ourselves—to save our lives.
And yet Jesus tells us that a life lived with the sole purpose of self-preservation is not a life lived fully. All who seek to save their lives will lose it. Because at the end of the day, we can’t outrun or outfight death. One need only look at the world around us to see that and I know that we’ve all felt that at one time or another. There’s plenty out there to be afraid of, but Christ calls us to fundamentally rethink how we respond to that fear. Because when we let it govern the way we live our lives—when everything we do is done to stave off the fear of death—we prevent ourselves from living fully in harmony with all of humanity. When we construct artificial walls to protect ourselves from hypothetical future suffering, we blind ourselves to the very real and present suffering that already exists all around us.
Christ calls us to commit to the work of breaking down those walls. Christ calls us to make ourselves vulnerable because his power is made perfect in weakness. Christ calls us to live fully for the sake of proclaiming his Gospel of peace and comfort to all who are afflicted, even if that means putting our lives on the line to do so.
The Old Testament
Now some of us might be sitting here thinking “Yes! Wonderful! Sign me up!” and if so, that’s great!
But if I’m being honest, I’m willing to bet that a good number us are also thinking “Woah woah woah, Ian, this is too much. This isn’t what I signed up for. I can’t do this” and if so, that’s also great! Really. It’s totally fine. If that’s our response, we’re in good company. You don’t need to look very hard in the scriptures to find case after case of a person whose first response to hearing God’s call is this is too much. This isn’t what I signed up for. I can’t do this.
Isaiah: I am a man of unclean lips living amongst a people of unclean lips.
Jeremiah: I can’t speak because I’m only a kid.
Ezekiel had to literally be possessed by God in order to speak God’s word.
And we all remember the story of Jonah, who actually literally ran away when he heard the call of God.
And in spite of all that he said in our passage this morning, even Jesus—the one Lord, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten before all ages, Light of Light, True God of True God, by whom all things were made, and whose Kingdom shall have no end—that Jesus, on the night that he was going to be betrayed and handed over to the authorities to be crucified fervently prayed Father let this cup pass from me.
But as we see in our Hebrew Bible passage this morning, no one did it quite like Moses. It’s a story that I’m willing to bet is probably one of the first ten bible stories we all learned—the story of the burning bush. But one of the things that I think we all have had a tendency to overlook is the back and forth that occurs between Moses and God later in the chapter and even into the next chapter. Moses really didn’t want to answer God’s call.
He thought he wasn’t important enough—who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?
He didn’t think the Israelites would believe him—If I come to the Israelites and say to them “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you” and they ask me “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?
He didn’t think the Egyptians would believe him—But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say “The Lord did not appear to you.”
He didn’t think he could speak well enough—I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.
He didn’t think he was up to the task—please send someone else.
If you don’t feel like you’re up to the task of answering that costly call, you’re not alone, it’s ok. It shows that you understand the gravity of what God is calling you to do, and if you understand the gravity and the full scope of what it means to sacrifice everything for the sake of building the Kingdom of God I don’t think there can be any other first response.
But I can also say that it’s not going to be the last response, because like it or not, that call persists. God doesn’t give up on us—that’s the crux of the whole bible. And God will provide us with all that we need to actually live into that call. God doesn’t call the equipped, but rather God equips the called.
That’s the refrain we see over and over again throughout the scriptures. For every one of Moses’ protests, God responds I will be with you, you’re not going to be doing this alone.
For every one of our protests, God responds I will be with you, you’re not going to be doing this alone.
Conclusion
And so in light of all of this, we’re left with a choice. We can continue to live as we’ve lived since the dawn of human history—living into a mindset of self-preservation. Or we can, by the grace of God, look death in the face and boldly say together, in one voice, not today. We can let our fear of death drive us to separating ourselves from the suffering all around us. Or we can recognize that God has shown us a vision of abundant life and we can work together to make that vision a reality for everyone throughout the whole world. We can stand together as one and proudly proclaim death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?
The call of Christian Discipleship is a call to commit the whole sum of our lives to following Jesus Christ. It’s going to take everything we have and it’s not always going to be easy. In fact, more often than not, it’s going to be pretty hard. And if we strive to do it all by ourselves, we run the very real risk of being gobbled up or burnt out by that call. But thanks be to God we’re not going to be doing it alone. The beauty of being in community with one another is that we are all in this together. We’re all working towards realizing that common vision of a new reality together. We have been given each other. We are already so, so blessed, dear friends. God’s divine power has already given us everything we need. It’s now up to us to use those resources and tools we’ve been given completely and fully towards building the city of God.
And so, if you’ve been blessed with the gift of service, serve your oppressed neighbors until you can serve no more.
If you’ve been blessed with the gift of presence, stand in solidarity with your oppressed neighbors until you can stand no more.
If you’ve been blessed with the gift of care and compassion, care until you can care no more.
If you’ve been blessed with financial and material gifts, give until you can give no more.
If you’ve been blessed with the gift of prophecy, prophesy and preach truth to power until you can preach no more.
If you’ve been blessed with the gift of love, love until you can love no more and in doing so, we can break down those walls we’ve built up and replace them with one, beautiful city of God.
It’s going to take sacrifice—a lot of sacrifice—but in light of everything God has already given us, what else can we do?
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.
Matthew 16:21-27
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
Sermon Audio
Introduction
Old MacDonald had a farm. And on that farm there happened to be just two animals. One chicken. And one pig.
See, Old MacDonald had fallen on hard times. You know, he used to be the best farmer in town. He had so many animals—cows and sheep and ducks and geese and people would come from all over to see them! Everyone loved him and they sang songs about him and ee-i-ee-i-oh and all that.
But as the years passed and the times changed fewer and fewer people would come by to see Old MacDonald. And before long, he had run out of money. And so Old MacDonald did what any other farmer would do. He took his cows and his sheep and his ducks and his geese to market to be sold and…well, you know. And when all was said and done, all that he had left was one chicken and one pig.
But he loved that chicken and that pig. He made sure that they had enough food to eat and water to drink and enough space to roam around and play. He protected them from wolves and foxes and any other animals that tried to snatch them away. And all in all, that chicken and that pig lived quite a happy life on that little, lonely farm.
And one day, the chicken and the pig were talking—as chickens and pigs are wont to do—and the chicken said [chicken noises]to which the pig…oh, I’m sorry. I forget that not everyone is fluent in barnyard animal. Let me try that again.
The chicken said “you know pig, Old MacDonald has done a really good job taking care of us”.
“I know,” said the pig, “he feeds us and he gives us water and he chases away the foxes and wolves so we can play out in the sun”.
“Exactly!” said the chicken, “but have you noticed that he’s moving…a little slower these days?”
“You know, now that you mention it, I have,” said the pig.
“And not only that,” the chicken replied, “but I’ve also noticed that his house is starting to fall apart”.
“I know,” the pig said, “and he’s not going to be able to stay warm because winter is coming!”
“If only there was some way we could help him out and repay him for the kindness he’s shown us,” said the chicken.
The pig agreed, and so they started to think of ways they could help out Old MacDonald. And they thought and they thought and they thought and they thought until finally—a ha!—the chicken said “I got it! We can open a restaurant!”
“A restaurant?”
“A restaurant!”
“But we don’t know the first thing about the restaurant business. What do you even call a restaurant run by a pig and a chicken? What would we serve?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll keep it real simple. We’ll call it Ham n’ Eggs, and that’s what we’ll serve!”
“Ham n’ Eggs?”
“Ham n’ Eggs! It’s perfect!”
“I don’t know,” the pig responded hesitantly, “in order to make it work, it sounds like you’d only need to make a contribution, but I’d have to make a real commitment.”
In order to make it work, you’d only need to make a contribution, but I’d have to make a real commitment.
The Call to Discipleship
The call of Christian Discipleship is not a call to contribute a portion of our lives, but rather to commit the whole sum of our lives to following Jesus Christ. Making a contribution is, when all is said and done, easy. Making a contribution requires no real sacrifice. There’s no risk in making a contribution. After she lays an egg, the chicken is able to return to life as normal.
But making a commitment? If you’re committed to something, you throw your whole being into it. Commitment is costly. Commitment radically and fundamentally transforms your life. There’s no “back to normal” when we’re talking about commitment. Following Christ is not a once-a-week, ten percent, part-time job, but rather the totality of a life lived fully for the sake of proclaiming his Gospel—for the sake of building his Kingdom here on earth. To follow Christ is to commit to Christ.
And yet…
The fact of the matter is that in the midst of trials and tribulations
Ups and downs
Joys and celebrations and the mundane banality of life, it’s really easy to lose sight of that costly call.
And I’ll be the first one to confess that I myself am just as guilty as the next person. Rather than exposing myself to people who look, think, and act differently from me, I have a tendency to isolate myself into communities that allow me to feel safe and secure. I would rather store up my treasures here on earth rather than live fully into the promise of God’s abundant life. I allow comfort to drive me to complacency rather than using the freedom I have been given through Christ’s offering for all the world to offer myself as a living sacrifice for the sake of seeking justice and resisting evil.
But perhaps we can all take some comfort in the fact that this problem is not unique to our time or location, but has—as we see in our Gospel passage this morning—plagued the Church from its very institution.
The Gospel
And we all feel pretty comfortable saying that this is a weird story, right? I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s not as weird as that time Jesus cursed a fig tree out of the blue, but it’s still pretty weird. Jesus tells his disciples that he’s going to have to go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering and be killed by the religious elite—the same folks that up until that point in his ministry, Jesus and his band of merry men had been antagonizing and calling out. So Peter pulls Jesus aside “hey hey hey, look you’re not going to die—there’s no way I’m going to let that happen”.
And given what had happened just before our story began, that response makes sense. Just a few verses back—within the same chapter—Jesus told Peter that he was going to be the rock upon which he would build his Church. Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven—that beautiful city of God—and assured him that not even the gates of hell would be able to prevail against it.
Things were finally looking up for our good friend, Peter.
All that work he had put in had finally paid off. Leaving behind his family and business and traveling Lord only knows how many miles across the ancient near east by foot was finally worth it. He got that promotion. He was now Jesus’ right-hand man.
And so when Jesus started talking about how he was going to be killed, of course Peter’s response was going to be something along the lines of “hey J.C., don’t worry! I got you’re back! This venture that we’re now partners in is going to be successful”, but unfortunately for Peter, Jesus’ definition of success was very different from his.
Jesus’ definition of success is often different from ours.
In spite of all the work that Peter had already put into Jesus’ ministry, when he said “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”, he showed that all along, he was merely making contributions, but he wasn’t committed.
Jesus knew that in order to be successful in his mission—in order to reconcile all of humanity back to God—he would ultimately have to conquer death. Jesus knew that he had to show us that death ultimately has no power over any single one of us.
And if Jesus was going to conquer death, he knew that he was first going to need to submit to it. He was going to need to submit to the reality that death exists and is a part of life. A reality that I know many of us in here and around the world are living today. Jesus knew that the path to a new reality, a reality where death is powerless, meant embracing our current reality, a reality in which death seemingly holds all the power. Death wasn’t going to have the final say, but the path to resurrection led straight through the cross.
Yet Peter missed the memo about resurrection. All Peter heard was suffering and death. And Peter knew that if Jesus chose that path, then he—by virtue of being a follower of Jesus—would also have to take that same path. Even though he had shown that he was willing to give up everything to follow Jesus, he wasn’t quite ready to go that far. He was willing to contribute, but he wasn’t willing to commit.
The Drive to Survive
And Jesus called him out on it. Get behind me, Satan! You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.
And he’s right.
Peter had set his mind on human things. Self-preservation is hard-wired into our very beings. The laws of evolution dictate that we are programmed to do what we must to protect our lives and the lives of our offspring to ensure the survival of our species. When ancient human beings were threatened by a predator—say a giant saber tooth tiger—their hormones would go into overdrive, and when it came time to make the decision to fight the predator or run away from it, their body was a veritable machine. The survival of our species depended on it.
And that’s exactly what our species did. We survived better than any other animal on this planet until we found ourselves at the top of the food chain. But while you and I don’t have to worry about giant saber tooth tigers anymore, we still have that innate drive to survive. And in the absence of a threat from another species, we focused all of our fear on our fellow humans, and as a result, we’ve been saddled with tribalism and racism and sexism and hyper nationalism and ableism and every other ism that that puts a barrier between us and our fellow humans. Each and every one of those sins can be traced back to that primal, basic evolutionary drive to protect ourselves—to save our lives.
And yet Jesus tells us that a life lived with the sole purpose of self-preservation is not a life lived fully. All who seek to save their lives will lose it. Because at the end of the day, we can’t outrun or outfight death. One need only look at the world around us to see that and I know that we’ve all felt that at one time or another. There’s plenty out there to be afraid of, but Christ calls us to fundamentally rethink how we respond to that fear. Because when we let it govern the way we live our lives—when everything we do is done to stave off the fear of death—we prevent ourselves from living fully in harmony with all of humanity. When we construct artificial walls to protect ourselves from hypothetical future suffering, we blind ourselves to the very real and present suffering that already exists all around us.
Christ calls us to commit to the work of breaking down those walls. Christ calls us to make ourselves vulnerable because his power is made perfect in weakness. Christ calls us to live fully for the sake of proclaiming his Gospel of peace and comfort to all who are afflicted, even if that means putting our lives on the line to do so.
The Old Testament
Now some of us might be sitting here thinking “Yes! Wonderful! Sign me up!” and if so, that’s great!
But if I’m being honest, I’m willing to bet that a good number us are also thinking “Woah woah woah, Ian, this is too much. This isn’t what I signed up for. I can’t do this” and if so, that’s also great! Really. It’s totally fine. If that’s our response, we’re in good company. You don’t need to look very hard in the scriptures to find case after case of a person whose first response to hearing God’s call is this is too much. This isn’t what I signed up for. I can’t do this.
Isaiah: I am a man of unclean lips living amongst a people of unclean lips.
Jeremiah: I can’t speak because I’m only a kid.
Ezekiel had to literally be possessed by God in order to speak God’s word.
And we all remember the story of Jonah, who actually literally ran away when he heard the call of God.
And in spite of all that he said in our passage this morning, even Jesus—the one Lord, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten before all ages, Light of Light, True God of True God, by whom all things were made, and whose Kingdom shall have no end—that Jesus, on the night that he was going to be betrayed and handed over to the authorities to be crucified fervently prayed Father let this cup pass from me.
But as we see in our Hebrew Bible passage this morning, no one did it quite like Moses. It’s a story that I’m willing to bet is probably one of the first ten bible stories we all learned—the story of the burning bush. But one of the things that I think we all have had a tendency to overlook is the back and forth that occurs between Moses and God later in the chapter and even into the next chapter. Moses really didn’t want to answer God’s call.
He thought he wasn’t important enough—who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?
He didn’t think the Israelites would believe him—If I come to the Israelites and say to them “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you” and they ask me “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?
He didn’t think the Egyptians would believe him—But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say “The Lord did not appear to you.”
He didn’t think he could speak well enough—I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.
He didn’t think he was up to the task—please send someone else.
If you don’t feel like you’re up to the task of answering that costly call, you’re not alone, it’s ok. It shows that you understand the gravity of what God is calling you to do, and if you understand the gravity and the full scope of what it means to sacrifice everything for the sake of building the Kingdom of God I don’t think there can be any other first response.
But I can also say that it’s not going to be the last response, because like it or not, that call persists. God doesn’t give up on us—that’s the crux of the whole bible. And God will provide us with all that we need to actually live into that call. God doesn’t call the equipped, but rather God equips the called.
That’s the refrain we see over and over again throughout the scriptures. For every one of Moses’ protests, God responds I will be with you, you’re not going to be doing this alone.
For every one of our protests, God responds I will be with you, you’re not going to be doing this alone.
Conclusion
And so in light of all of this, we’re left with a choice. We can continue to live as we’ve lived since the dawn of human history—living into a mindset of self-preservation. Or we can, by the grace of God, look death in the face and boldly say together, in one voice, not today. We can let our fear of death drive us to separating ourselves from the suffering all around us. Or we can recognize that God has shown us a vision of abundant life and we can work together to make that vision a reality for everyone throughout the whole world. We can stand together as one and proudly proclaim death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?
The call of Christian Discipleship is a call to commit the whole sum of our lives to following Jesus Christ. It’s going to take everything we have and it’s not always going to be easy. In fact, more often than not, it’s going to be pretty hard. And if we strive to do it all by ourselves, we run the very real risk of being gobbled up or burnt out by that call. But thanks be to God we’re not going to be doing it alone. The beauty of being in community with one another is that we are all in this together. We’re all working towards realizing that common vision of a new reality together. We have been given each other. We are already so, so blessed, dear friends. God’s divine power has already given us everything we need. It’s now up to us to use those resources and tools we’ve been given completely and fully towards building the city of God.
And so, if you’ve been blessed with the gift of service, serve your oppressed neighbors until you can serve no more.
If you’ve been blessed with the gift of presence, stand in solidarity with your oppressed neighbors until you can stand no more.
If you’ve been blessed with the gift of care and compassion, care until you can care no more.
If you’ve been blessed with financial and material gifts, give until you can give no more.
If you’ve been blessed with the gift of prophecy, prophesy and preach truth to power until you can preach no more.
If you’ve been blessed with the gift of love, love until you can love no more and in doing so, we can break down those walls we’ve built up and replace them with one, beautiful city of God.
It’s going to take sacrifice—a lot of sacrifice—but in light of everything God has already given us, what else can we do?
