Tell Me About God's Call  Exodus 3:1 - 15

When I was 11 years old, I was called by God to become an ordained minister. It’s been so long ago when I was young and at a time that seemed so ordinary and common that I don’t really remember the particulars of my call from God. I vaguely remember the day I announced to my mother in everyday conversation what
I would do with my life, but my call has always been real and the center of my life as I have entered my 35th year since my ordination as a deacon. When I have tried to remember through the years and reflect upon its meaning for my life (which I believe has many decades yet to fulfill), I can identify very strongly with the call stories in our scriptures, such as Samuel, and Jeremiah and especially with Moses, even though he was an older man at this point.

Yet, I don’t want us to think that I am only talking about the call to ordained ministry this morning. Each one of us has a call from God to be involved in ministry for Christ. Your calls have to do with your spiritual gifts and the way God wants to use them through your life. I have been called to a specific kind of ministry, and you have been called to specific kinds of ministries much different from mine. So what is it about your call, my call,
Moses’ call that help us to understand God’s claim upon our lives and how they will be lived?

Well, let’s start with Moses. He’s lived 40 years in Egypt as a part of Pharaoh’s family when he discovers his true identity as a member of the enslaved Hebrews and because of a crime must flee for his life. He ends up far
from Egypt in a desert where he marries into a clan of nomadic herders and spends the next 40 years living in the simplicities of a tent and family life. Then one ordinary day, tending his father-in-law’s flocks, he stumbles upon a burning bush in the mountains. Only it’s not a burning bush; it is God come face to face with Moses and the rest of his life. In the confrontation, God calls Moses to go back to Egypt and to carry a message of God’s deliverance for the Hebrews to the Pharaoh and to bring the Hebrew people to the land that God has promised to Abraham’s descendants for the past 700 years. Like the later prophets, Moses has received a call to represent God in the world. Moses has been sent to work God’s miracles of love and grace like we have in our day and for God’s purposes. So what can we say about the confrontation with God that we name as a call from God? What does Moses’ call say about our call to be disciples for Christ?

First, our call comes in the ordinary experience of our everyday routines. Moses was tending sheep, he wasn’t out looking for a mountaintop experience. In my own case, I was going to school, I wasn’t even active in church yet. What each of us must expect is that our call from God will be unexpected because it will come during the common, ordinary routines of our days. We may come to church on Sundays expecting to hear God speak to us, and we should; but in all probability God will call to us when we least expect it when we are in
the kitchen cooking, or out mowing the lawn, or playing with our toys, or watching a sporting event. And the reason is that God is with us every moment of our lives, and in those moments when our spirits are free and open, God can break through much more easily. We may come to church expecting to hear God, and we may, but church and worship prepares us to hear God’s voice when God calls, and God may not be ready to call us at 9 am or 11 am on a Sunday morning. But beware. If we don’t come to church on a regular basis, we won’t
know God’s voice and be prepared to hear it when it comes. We won’t be able to recognize it. Yet it will come when we least expect it.

Second, our call establishes a new relationship between God and the one being called. When Moses goes into the mountains with his sheep and goats, he doesn’t even know who God is. But after his call when he returns home, Moses not only knows who God is, but now Moses represents God before the people of God. Moses is totally committed to God. Likewise for me, I had only been attending Sunday School for a year and a half before I heard my call and it would be another 2 years before I ever went to church. I had no idea what the
worship of God was when I received my call; but after my call, I belonged to God, for all eternity. It’s the same for you. When you hear God’s call, and if you listen, you will belong to God. You will have a new relationship with God, one that you could not have thought possible. Once you belong to God, you discover the fullness of God’s love and grace.

Third, our call is always very specific and task oriented. What I mean by that is that there is a specific situation that requires a concrete task, and God has chosen one of us. When the Hebrews were enduring harsh slavery in Egypt, God called Moses to lead the oppressed slaves to freedom in their own land. In a time when a generation of ordained ministers filled pulpits all over the Annual Conference, God called me to ordained
leadership for a latter day when those pastors retired and few had accepted God’s call. God is calling or will call you to very specific tasks in this day, tasks that will help people enslaved to sin to be freed to become God’s
people. For each of us the task will be different, but just as vital and important as every other task.

Fourth, our call will usually cause us to object. If we read on and follow the rest of the story of Moses’ call, we will discover that Moses had all kinds of excuses for why God was wrong: “I don’t really know you;” “they won’t believe me;” “I’m not a good public speaker;” “you’ve got the wrong person.” Yet no matter how much Moses objected to God’s call, God had an answer. Moses couldn’t get out of it. For myself, I really didn’t have any objections. The closest I came was considering other forms of ordained ministry rather than serving in a local church; but God made it clear that I was meant to be a local church pastor, not a teacher, not a staff person, not an executive, not a director of a church related agency. So it is with each one of us. We may have all of our excuses lined up, we may even say no and turn our backs on God. Yet God won’t give up and will provide a positive answer for every negative reason we give. Remember, when God chooses us, we belong to God.

Fifth, our objection to being called always prompts divine reassurance. What does God say to Moses? “I will be with you.” What it says is that we will never be alone, that God commits the divine to share in the journey of call, to undertake the task, to share in the risk. Now notice that God never guaranteed success nor told Moses that he was God’s answer to the world. All God said was, “I will be with you,” through success and failure, through the ups and the downs. With Moses, I too can say that that is all that God has promised me: “I
will be with you.” I have never had guarantees of success but I have always known that God has been with me in my failures as well as my successes. And it’s the same for each one of us. God hasn’t chosen us because we are God’s one and only answer for the world. To be truthful, I doubt that Moses ever knew why God chose him. I freely admit that I don’t know why God chose me and I am still amazed that God has put me here. It’s the same for each one of you. All God ever promises the one who is called is that he or she will never be alone. And I find that comforting.

As an aside, let me say that typically in the Bible, biblical characters are not evaluated by their successes but by their courage and faithfulness in following the call or commission to accomplish a task. Moses was called to
lead the Israelites into the Promised Land, but Moses didn’t get to enter. Another prophet Jeremiah was called to bring a dramatic word of change to Israel in dark and dangerous days, but he was totally unsuccessful in turning the people of Israel around to God. And in our own Annual Conference, we have been debating what success looks like. Is it membership numbers, worship attendance, excessive financial resources, discipleship, mission giving, size of buildings, influence on the community, or maybe some other quality? Yet, the one consistent word that has come to pastors and to congregations is to have the courage and take a risk by being faithful to Jesus Christ in making disciples.

Finally, our call will probably end with a sign. For Moses, he needed to know without any doubt that this call was real, and so he wanted a sign. So God turned his staff into a snake and covered his hand with leprosy. These were signs that empowered Moses not only to observe the power of God, but to tap into it so that he could use God’s power in an impossible situation and create the miracle of freeing a slave people to go into freedom to their own land. I say an impossible situation because Egypt’s economy depended on slave labor,
and when the Israelites left, their economy collapsed. Pharaoh himself didn’t want the slaves to go; only God had that power to make it possible. The sign for me was bringing me into the fullness of the church’s worship and ministry. After that there was no turning back. For each one of us, the sign will be different, but the sign will help us to know that God’s power is at work. Whatever sign God gives us, that sign will empower each of us to fulfill God’s task and call.

So what about you? Are you going to answer God’s call to your soul? You know, God is calling you, or will. Have you considered what could happen if you hear God’s voice calling you? It’s not going to be a burning bush you see, but it might as well be, because the results will be the same. God wants to send you someplace to accomplish a particular ministry. So be ready. The day is coming when you least expect it. And you life will be changed forever.