CHURCH CROSSING Lesson #37

CHURCH CROSSING Lesson #37
That stuff in the Bible connects . . . with real life . . . a lot

Since I renamed this blog “CHURCH CROSSING” and used the story of the Israelites seeking to cross the desert as a metaphor for our life together at St. Pauls, I’ve been thinking a lot the Moses story. I first learned the story of Moses’ life and leadership in Sunday School when I was a kid – starting with his placement in a basket in the bulrushes to escape Pharoah’s edict of death, continuing through his murderous rage, his encounter with the burning bush, his leadership of the Israelites out of slavery and into desert crossing, and his death on the edge of the promised land. It’s a truly amazing and powerful story.

And wouldn’t you know, I come all the way out here on retreat, and the stories read in Chapel are about Moses. This is clearly no accident.

The story I heard on Wednesday morning was about Moses and the burning bush. The preacher (a priest friend of mine, Pat Hames) put a very interesting spin on it: Moses ended up in Midian, away from his friends and family, because he had murdered an Egyptian who was hurting one of his fellow Israelites. Pat reminded us that Moses committed the murder because he wanted justice: a good desire to be sure, but definitely not a good way of going about it. At the burning bush, God invited Moses to do something he had always wanted to do – help get justice and freedom for his people. And God gave Moses a job (leader) and a plan (plagues then exit across the Red Sea) that would leave no mistake that it wasn’t Moses, but the one and only true and living GOD who was in charge.

I don’t know about you, but one of my biggest fears about getting deeply involved with God is that He’s going to make me do something I don’t want to do, something that won’t let me become all I want to become. According to Pat (and this Bible story about Moses), the opposite is true – God’s always and only about helping us to blossom and flourish – giving us a way to live out the desires of our hearts.

Oh, and then there was another Moses story in Chapel at noon today. This was the story of the birth and saving of the infant Moses, when his mother put him in a basket in the bulrushes and floated him toward Pharoah’s daughter, hoping that Pharoah’s daughter would raise Moses as her own and thus save him from the fate of other Hebrew babies: death. The plan worked and Pharoah’s daughter not only fished him out of the river, but through some conniving on the part of Moses’ aunt (who was servant to Pharoah’s daughter) Moses’ own mother was brought in to be his wet nurse. The powerful thing about the story as it was read in Chapel today was that when we got to the part about the conniving women, everyone (a group of all women) laughed out loud.

Another one of my fears is that God’s promise that “all things work together for the good of those who love Him” won’t come true. Not for me. Not this time – in whatever crazy, deep, fascinating challenge cum problem I’ve stumbled into now. Laughing together in the midst of the Scripture reading today was a spontaneous recognition: it does work and, more than that, we DO know how to follow our instincts and participate in making good happen. God delights in a little crazygood sneakiness. In the name of helping it work. In the name of love.

My prayer for me – and for all of us at St. Paul’s – is that God will use this desert time of figuring out our path to the promised land to free us from all the extra baggage we carry – fear, guilt, anger, hopelessness – and whet our appetites for more milk and honey.