Sundays message: The Reluctant Hero Exodus 3:1-15 To start our message time today, we have a story. This is a folktale from Egypt, appropriately enough. It’s called “The Monster Who Grew Small.” Far to the south, beyond the great river, there was a small village where a boy lived with his uncle. The uncle was known far and wide as “The Brave One,” for he was a mighty hunter, but the boy was called Miobi, which meant “Scaredy-Cat,” because he did not like to hunt and was afraid of the hungry lions that lived outside the village. Every day Miobi had to go down to the river to fetch water, and to get there he had to cross through some of the scariest jungle around – a place full of snakes and leopards and giant spiders. And every time he went into the forest, he was so scared that he could barely breathe. One day, just as he was crossing the very scariest part of the forest, he heard a voice crying out for help. He wanted to run away, but the voice sounded so frightened that he summoned up every bit of his courage and ran to see if he could help. He found a small rabbit caught by the leg in a tangle of creepers. Very carefully he freed the rabbit, who was very grateful. The rabbit said, “I was so very frightened, but now you have come and rescued me. You must be very brave to come alone into the forest.” “I am not at all brave. I am called Miobi, the Frightened One – but when I heard how frightened you were, I just had to help. I know I am too weak and scared to protect you, but if you want, I will carry you home and make sure you’re safe.” “That won’t be necessary – I live up there, in the moon, so you can’t come with me. But I want to give you something to show you how grateful I am. What do you want more than anything in the whole world?” “Courage. I want to be brave, like my uncle!” “I can’t give you courage,” said the rabbit, “but I can tell you where to find it. The road is long and you will have to walk it alone – but whenever you are scared and want to turn back, just look up at the moon and remember that I am your friend and will always watch over you.” Miobi followed the road the rabbit showed him, and after many days he came to a village where everyone was crying and hiding under their beds. “What’s wrong?” Miobi asked the first person he met. “Why are you all hiding?” “Wouldn’t you be hiding if you were about to be eaten by a monster?” “A monster?” “Yes, a monster. It has the head of a crocodile, the body of a hippopotamus and the tail of a giant snake. It breathes fire from its jaws and will soon destroy us all! See, it lives up there in a cave on top of the dark mountain.” Miobi gulped. He was terrified, but he saw that the road the rabbit had shown him went right up to the very top of the mountain where the monster lived. Miobi looked up at the moon and knew what he must do. “I will go challenge the monster,” Miobi said quietly, almost trembling with fear. And so he set off up the mountain on shaking legs, sure he was about to be eaten, burned, torn apart or maybe all of the above. Climbing the mountain took a long time, but soon he could see the monster in the distance. It was even bigger than he had feared – it was very big, even for a monster – and it really did breathe fire, burning everything in sight. Miobi kept climbing, but then the monster roared a terrible roar and Miobi was so scared that he ran right back down the trail as quick as he could. Now the monster seemed even bigger than before. “This is curious indeed,” thought Miobi. “The farther I run from the monster, the bigger it seems, and the closer I get, the smaller it seems. I wonder what will happen if I get very close.” And so the boy closed his eyes and started running as fast as he could up the trail so that he wouldn’t have time to start being frightened again. When he finally opened his eyes, the monster was nowhere to be seen. Then Miobi felt something hot on his foot. He looked down, and there was a little tiny monster blowing a tiny flame out of his tiny mouth. The fire wasn’t very hot at all. Crocodile head? Check. Hippo body? Check. Snake tail? Check. It really was the monster – but it was so small and cute! Without a thought, Miobi picked it up and scratched its back, and the monster made a funny sound halfway between a purr and the simmer of a cooking pot. “Poor little monster! You must be so lonely in this big old cave all by yourself. Come with me, I will be your friend.” Miobi put the monster right on his shoulder and walked back down to the village with his new friend. He wasn’t afraid anymore. All the people of the village were amazed and crowded around to see the monster. It woke up, yawned a small puff of smoke and began to purr. A little girl asked, “What is its name?” The monster cleared his throat and answered her question himself. He stopped purring, looked around to make sure everyone was listening, and said: “I have many names, but most people call me ‘What Might Happen.’ ” Everyone thought that was a very silly name for a monster. But Miobi, who was on the path to wisdom, understood, and laughed at how foolish he had been. * * * The Moses of today’s scripture could have stood to hear that story. Maybe your image of Moses – great leader of the Hebrews, deliverer of his people – comes from the way Charlton Heston played him in The Ten Commandments. That’s the alpha Moses, buff, big beard, in control all the way as he stands up to the powerful Pharaoh. But the Moses we encounter in the third chapter of Exodus, in this story of his call from God, is more like a Woody Allen movie. He’s kind of neurotic. He second-guesses himself, and God, too. And most of all, he’s afraid of that monster called What Might Happen. We can see it in the text. God speaks to him in this amazing holy encounter, speaks from a burning bush, saying, You’re the one I have chosen to lead my people out of Egypt. And what does Moses say in response? “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” In other words: God, I’m nobody special. Why bring this huge task to me? Don’t worry, says God, I’ll be with you. But Moses keeps at it: “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?” And again God meets his argument: “I am who I am.” That is, God is self-sufficient and needs no explanation. But Moses isn’t finished. And notice the absurd comedy of this exchange. Here is this humble shepherd who is having a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with Yahweh. You’d think he’d be stunned into silence, or at least reduced to saying “Yes, sir” to just about anything God says. Wouldn’t you, in that situation? Nope. Not Moses. If you read on into Chapter 4, you’ll see that he keeps on scratching up reasons why God has the wrong guy for this important job. “Suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say, The Lord did not appear to you?” he says. And then again: “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” And finally he runs out of excuses, and he just lays it out: “O my Lord, please send someone else.” God gives an exasperated sigh and says, OK, you can bring your brother Aaron along, he speaks fluently. God says, “You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do.” In other words: Your excuses don’t cut it, Moses, but I’m going to work with you here. Let’s get this done. Has this ever happened to you? Probably not the voice from a burning bush, but the nagging feeling that you’re being tugged to do something that needs doing. Maybe it’s reaching out in reconciliation toward someone you’ve had a break with. Maybe it’s standing up against an injustice you see happening at work. God’s call comes in so many ways. And you know you should respond, you know you should act bravely and in love in this situation, but the monster called What Might Happen rears his ugly head. What if she rejects my peace offer? What if I get fired? What if I make a fool of myself? That’s a familiar monster, and a persuasive one. It’s easy, it’s comfortable to bow before that monster, to let your wild imaginings of What Might Happen trump that insistent call that something has to change. Like Moses, we’re only too human in this regard. We’d rather stick to the safety of the tried-and-true, and if the world isn’t perfect, well, so be it. It’s too scary to try to fix things. But this encounter between God and Moses tells us something different. It says yes, it’s scary to obey God’s call sometimes, to act in loving ways even when it’s risky, to stand against injustice even when it costs us something. But as we follow Moses’ story and see what results from this call – nothing less than the liberation of his people and the founding of the holy nation of Israel – we see that when God calls us to act, God walks alongside us in the working-out of that call. God doesn’t issue orders and then leave us to our own devices. God calls us individually because God knows us individually, and because God knows we’re up to the task. The monster called What Might Happen is born of fear. God’s call is born of love – love for us, and love for God’s world in which we live out that call. “Perfect love drives out fear,” says the first letter of John. Like Moses, we too can respond when God nudges us to be the hero. And when we’re reluctant heroes, God works with us in our weakness to make it happen anyway. What is God calling you to do this week? What’s holding you back? And how will you tame that monster called What Might Happen?
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 15:35:45 +0000
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