Send Someone Else
There are two kinds of fiction readers: those who can find themselves in the stories they read and those who can’t. So, they just read non-fiction or give up reading altogether.
I’m in the first group, but with a big asterisk . *I only read stories that I can find myself in, so I’m really picky. Y’all know that The Lord of the Rings is my favorite book. There’s a reason that I’ve read it over and over again: I can find myself, the themes of my life, and characters or scenarios that I relate to all over its pages. Just because a book is fantastic or mythological doesn’t mean that there aren’t human elements in it. What is fantasy or mythology for if not to get us out of our own world so that we can understand it more clearly?
I don’t believe that the Bible is fantasy or mythology. Certainly, there are fantastic and mythological elements littered throughout its pages, but it’s all true. Even though the ancient Jewish writers (all but our boy Luke) were prone to and masters of hyperbole, the things that they recorded for posterity are true. If you think I’m nuts, that’s fine, you don’t have to read anymore, but I really wish you’d stick with me.
So, I love fantastic stories and I believe that the Bible contains many. Glad we got that out of the way.
One of my favorite things to do, when I was a campus minister, was retell Biblical stories and make them come alive for my friends. Either because of bad translations or other associations with Biblical stories, many of my friends had a hard time engaging with the story at all, much less finding themselves in it or trying to relate to the characters. So, I started reading the text from the Bible and then retelling the story in my own words.
This was wildly successful in terms of people getting excited about Bible stories and relating to the text. How are you supposed to learn from a story if you can’t relate to it? The Bible isn’t a rule book or a road map, it’s a true account of real people living real lives that we are meant to learn from, not emulate. And, thus, being real people ourselves, we have the opportunity to find ourselves in the Biblical story.
Moses is easy to misunderstand. To be sure, he was an amazing person and demonstrated incredible courage and faith in God. But he didn’t start out that way. Before the plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea, seeing God face-to-face, and performing countless miracles in the desert, Moses saw a burning bush. We’ll pick up the account in Exodus chapter 3.
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight – why the bush does not burn up.”
And honestly, who wouldn’t?! I imagine that things catching on fire was not that unusual in an ancient desert environment, but things not burning up? That’s unusual across all cultures, for all of history. So, Moses goes over to check it out. Immediately, God speaks to him and tells him two things:
Don’t get any closer.
Take off your shoes because this is holy ground.
That second one is a little tangential to my point, but I want to state, for the record, that feet have always been and always will be viewed as utterly disgusting. And yet. God tells Moses to remove his shoes on holy ground. There’s a small part of my brain that is constantly wondering if this isn’t God inviting Moses to return to Eden, where neither clothes nor shoes were required to be in the presence of God. His grace was meant to cover us, not our clothes.
Tiny parts of my brain aside, this is an incredible encounter. God is infinitely creative and could have appeared to Moses any way he wanted to, but he chose a burning bush. I’ll take this as confirmation that my love of burning things to the ground is rooted in the holy trinity, somewhere.
After Moses takes off his shoes, God speaks about his identity: “The God of Abraham,” among others. Moes would have been raised on stories of his ancestors and heritage (don’t forget that his biological mother was his wet nurse and he stayed with her during the earliest years of his life). Moses responds as all Israelites would have done and did throughout history: he falls flat out on the ground and is terrified.
God, unsurprisingly, is nonplussed. He keeps going:
I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey…And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.
Two things to note here:
God is going to perform the rescue.
Moses is going to lead the people out of Egypt.
Contrary to some interpretations, Moses does not rescue the people from slavery. God does. God turns the Nile into blood, sends frogs all over the place, and obliterates crops and livestock with hail. Moses just shows up and tells Pharaoh that he ought to let the Israelites go because God is going to have them out of Egypt one way or another. And, when Pharaoh refuses, God does the rescuing.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Rather than being honored and overjoyed at the opportunity to play such an important role in God’s plan and lead the people out of slavery, Moses freaks out. He suffers from imposter syndrome. He tries to talk God out of it. Sound familiar?
I don’t know about you, but I find myself right here in this story. For context, Moses is out here in the wilderness because he ran away from Egypt as a young man after committing murder. He killed an Egyptian slave driver for mistreating an Israelite. He didn’t think that anyone saw, but they did. When he found out, he ran as far and as fast as he could and ended up in the wilderness for, he thought, the rest of his life.
This burning bush thing was NOT supposed to happen. Moses was NOT supposed to go back to Egypt. And he certainly was NOT supposed to speak to or lead anybody anywhere.
Here’s a quick recap of his conversation with God:
Moses: Who do you think you’re talking to?
God: Doesn’t matter who you think you are. Matters who I AM. And I’m going with you. You’ll bring the people out of Egypt and you’ll worship me, right here afterwards.
Moses: Ok, but what if I go and talk to the Israelites and they ask me what your name is?
God: I AM WHO I AM. Tell them that. The God of your fathers has come to rescue you and you’re going to follow Moses the heck out of here. I’ve seen what’s been going on and I’ve had enough. They’ll listen to you.
Moses: Ok, ok, but what if they don’t?
God: What’s that you’ve got there?
Moses: A staff?
God: Throw it on the ground.
Moses: *throws staff on the ground. Runs from the snake that the staff becomes*
God: Grab that snake by the tail.
Moses: *grabs snake by the tail. Snake turns back into a staff.*
God: Show them that and they’ll believe you.
Interlude: another couple of signs whereby the elders of Israel are supposed to believe Moses that involves a serious skin condition and blood on the ground.
Moses: But God!! I don’t talk good!
God: I made your mouth. I made you to speak. Go. I’ll give you words and the ability to say them.
Moses: (this is a direct quote) Please send someone else.
God: (the text says that he is angry at this point) What about your brother? Aaron? He’s a good speaker and he’s on his way to meet you. Tell him what I told you and he will speak for you. He’ll be your mouth and you’ll lead the people out of Egypt. Don’t forget the staff.
It’s that last protest of Moses’ that I think is the most honest, “Please send someone else”. This is where I find myself in the story.
For so much of my life, God has invited me to play a pivotal role in his story and I’ve asked him to send someone else. For one reason or another, I’ve been afraid to step into who God made me to be. I’ve settled for stop-gaps and half-measures when I should have been experiencing the fullness of God. I’ve been herding sheep when I should have been leading people out of slavery. I wanted to stay in the desert when God wanted to bring me all the way through it into the Promised Land.
There’s a reason that this story is so central to the identity and culture of Jewish people. This is really when they become a nation, when God fulfills his promises. And. If you take the whole Biblical narrative together, this is the small picture of what God is doing for all his people for all time. He intends to free all people from the slavery to sin in their hearts and bring them into the Promised Land of his abundant freedom and ultimate kingdom. He’s going to make everything sad come untrue. It’s just the beginning.
I find myself in this story because I’ve missed what God is trying to do both in and through me. God wasn’t just rescuing Israel through Moses, he was doing something in Moses, to his heart. Keep reading the Exodus account. Moses becomes an excellent leader, ready to sacrifice himself for his people and stand before God on their behalf, even though they drive him crazy.
I’ve seen some of what God wants to do through me: tell people who think they are on the outside of his Kingdom that they’re actually in. But I think that I know, deep down, there’s more. I’ve missed the more because I’ve been afraid of what God might want to do in me. He might want to heal me, deeply, through the forgiveness of folks who have no excuse for what they’ve done to me and they’re not even sorry. He might want to make me into someone who doesn’t need to be approved of by everyone in authority over me. He might want to heal some childhood wounds so that I don’t need external validation to know that I’m doing the right thing.
There’s a lot that needs to be done in me before he can do more through me.
I wonder what that journey back to Egypt was like for Moses. I wonder what God was doing in Moses as he prepared to do a heck of a lot through him.
Could it be that he wants to do some work in you before he’ll do anything else through you? Or, even more controversial, could it be that he cares more about the work that he intends to do in you than anything he could ever do through you? He didn’t need Moses to free Israel from slavery. He wanted to do something in Moses while he freed Israel from slavery. He doesn’t need you to do whatever work he’s invited you into. He wants to do something in you as he does something through you.
He doesn’t want to send someone else.
Do yourself a favor, the next time that you read the Bible. Find yourself in the story. The Scriptures are like their author: multi-faceted, complex, and deep. You can find more than one meaning in every account. So, don’t be afraid to look for yourself in the story and wonder what God was saying to that person that he might also be saying to you.