We have just heard a story that I suspect for
many, especially those who are not part of a
faith tradition before, would be a little bit
new or fresh. This story, the Transfiguration,
it's one of the stranger stories in Scripture.
We're going to turn to a different story that's
sort of on the opposite end of that spectrum.
My guess is that if I randomly stopped 100 people
out on the street, regardless of their own tradition,
whether they've ever been to church before or
not, and I asked them to name one Bible story,
I'm willing to bet that easily in the top five
stories that would be named, maybe the top story
that would be named is this story. From the book
of Exodus, the third chapter, it is the story
of the call of Moses. The call of Moses out of
the burning bush. So friends, let us continue
listening now for a word from God as we hear
these verses, Exodus chapter three, beginning
with the first verse. Moses was keeping the flock
of his father -in -law Jethro, the priest of
Midian. He led his flock beyond the wilderness
and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And there
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame
of fire out of a bush. And he looked and the
bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then
Moses said, I must turn aside and look at this
great sight and see why the bush is not burned
up. When the Lord saw that he had turned aside
to see, God called to him out of the bush saying,
Moses, Moses. And Moses said, Here I am. Then
he said, Come no closer. Remove the sandals from
your feet for the place on which you are standing
is holy ground. And God said further, I am the
God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid
his face for he was afraid to look at God. Then
the Lord said, I've observed the misery of my
people who are in Egypt. I've 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 the land to a good and broad land, a land
flowing with milk and honey to the country of
the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites
and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.
The cry of the Israelites has now come to me.
I have also seen how the Egyptians oppressed
them, so come, Moses, and 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? And God 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.
Friends, this too is the word of God for the
people of God. Thanks be to God. Will you pray
with me? Gracious and loving God. draw near to
us now, quiet, whatever it is that is filling
our heads and hearts in this moment. Speak to
us, O God, in the quiet, that we might hear afresh
and anew your word, your word for the living
of these days. We pray these things for we know
that with you and you alone, O God, they are
possible for you and you alone are our rock and
our redeemer. Amen. I have a bad habit. I listen
to music all the time. Craig's office is right
next to mine, so he can probably attest to this,
that there is music playing in my office. Even
though I try and keep it quiet, I don't want
to distract others, but there's music playing
basically any time I'm not visiting with someone.
At home in the kitchen, Alexa's always playing
some playlist. Even when I'm going to sleep,
much to the chagrin of my wife, I am listening
to music. Even as I wrote this sermon, what am
I doing? I'm listening to music. We have a group
of friends who we have done vacation with every
summer for 12 or 13 years. These are two other
families who we met in seminary. And there's
a joke in that group that our vacation has not
truly started until Alan pulls out his Bluetooth
speaker and begins whatever playlist he has concocted
for that year. I remember the first time they
made that joke, though. It sort of stopped me
short. I hadn't really thought about how much
I listened to music, how much I seemed to not
like empty space. It stopped me short because
it forced me to confront the fact that I am a
little uncomfortable with quiet, I think. That
maybe, just maybe, I listen to things so that
I don't have to listen to things. Anyone else
have this habit? Right? How many of us are guilty
of this? I recently read a piece on the art of
listening. And one of the things it said was
that most of us are good at hearing, but really
bad at listening. Right? Usually when we're in
a conversation with someone, and I think we all
know that you can tell when you're in a conversation
with someone like this, where you're talking
to them, you're looking them in the eye, but
you can tell what's going on behind their eyes.
They're plotting their next move. You're plotting
your next move. What am I going to say as soon
as this story finishes? How am I going to defend
this piece of whatever they're saying I don't
agree with? We're always thinking about what
we're going to say, how we're going to say it,
maybe even how we're going to get ourselves out
of whatever conversation we are in. The author
of this piece said that to truly listen, to truly
listen is to shed your protective mechanisms.
Kind of like that. Whenever I'm in a conversation,
there's a little piece of me that's ready to
be defensive if I need to. To truly listen, the
author of this piece said, you have to shed your
protective mechanisms. You have to be present
with what you are hearing without necessarily
trying to control it. or to figure it out. So
Moses in the story that we've just read, Moses
is one of the grand characters of all scripture,
right? As evidenced in the fact that the passage
Millie read for us from Mark, who is it that's
up there on the mountain with Jesus? It's some
dead people and Moses is one of them up there
with him. He's that important. He's coming back
all these years later. He's this just foundational
character in the biblical narrative and he's
a flawed character. Moses, like David and like
so many others, he gets it wrong as much as he
gets it right. That's a recurring theme. That's
where grace enters because we all get it wrong
as much as we get it right. But here, Moses has
kind of a shining moment. His call story at the
beginning of Exodus chapter 3 is sort of this
moment where Moses is really at his best. And
one of the things that shines through most clearly
for me in this story is that Moses here is a
good listener. Let me explain what I mean by
that. It's been 40 years. So you turn from chapter
2 of Exodus to chapter 3, chapter 2, Moses flees
Egypt. Remember, he's born in chapter 1. He grows
up in Pharaoh's household against all odds. He
kills an Egyptian. He flees Egypt. By all accounts,
it's hard to really know the math, but in all
likelihood, 40 years has passed. Since Moses
fled Egypt. That's a long time. He's been in
Midian, this rural area, for 40 years. He has
been tending to his father -in -law Jethro's
flock for a long time. He knows the area that
he is leading these sheep. He knows it like the
back of his hand. Anyone here commute every day
on I -85? Or maybe Pine Street or 29, right?
If you have a terrain that you are familiar with,
it's easy to just get into autopilot. Anyone
else ever had the experience where you're driving
down 85 and then suddenly you just come to and
you realize you're like 20 miles further and
you have no recollection of anything that happened
in the last 20 miles? You just slip into this
go with it because it's so familiar. You know
the milestones. You know the ups and downs. You
know when I get to the airport, I'm about this
far away from my destination or vice versa when
you're coming home. That's Moses. He knows where
he is. And even here where he's pushing beyond
the wilderness, that's the phrase that is used.
He's beyond the wilderness, which when you are
a shepherd, sometimes you have to push beyond
what is familiar to find those green pastures
and that water for your flock. Even out there,
he is a good listener. And what I mean by that,
even out there in that familiar terrain, he is
open. He's attentive. Right? He's aware. He's
paying attention. He's noticing who and what
is right in front of him. If you've ever spent
time in the desert, there are a lot of dry bushes.
You don't notice any of them because you notice
all of them. But even out there amongst all those
bushes, in that familiar terrain, that I -85
of Moses' life, he notices the one thing that
is different. That burning bush. And the way
we know this is because he turns aside. Did you
catch that language? When I read that, it's been
a while since I read this story, and when I read
it again this week, that turn aside language
caught me a little off guard because when I heard
that, I thought Moses turned away from the bush.
That's what I think when I think turn aside.
He's avoiding it, a little bit like the disciples
do, in my estimation, in the transfiguration
story. This amazing thing is happening. This
otherworldly thing is happening. And they sort
of turn away from it. They get busy. They set
up their Bluetooth speaker and playlist and say,
we better do something, guys. Let's build some
dwellings for all these people. But instead,
what we read here is that Moses turns aside.
And when you read the passage, it says he turns
aside in order to look closer. And sure enough,
when I looked closer at the word that is translated,
turn aside, it's this Hebrew word, sir. What
it means is that you deviate from the path of.
It means you step off towards something new.
It's this movement of curiosity. It's this movement
of paying attention, right? Moses is stepping
off the familiar path in order to investigate
this thing that is a little different that he
has noticed in his surroundings. And then this
other remarkable thing happens because it's not
just Moses. who is listening. It's apparently
God who is listening as well. There's this phrase
in the passage where it says, when the Lord saw
that Moses turned aside, God called to him. Isn't
that interesting? I read someone writing about
this recently, and they said, I wonder how many
people walked past that burning bush and didn't
notice it. How many people were on that familiar
path? How many people were out there beyond the
wilderness and they see this thing and God is
just waiting for them to turn aside? But it's
only Moses who actually does. And when the Lord
sees that Moses turns aside, that is when God
calls to him. There's a notion in this passage
that good listening is the doorway to hearing
God's call. It is interesting to me when I think
about churches and ministries and leaders who
I admire, they all tend, or seem at least to
me, to have one thing in common. And the thing
they have in common is that they are all good
listeners. They are people who tend not to be
defensive, reactively. They tend not to be overly
controlling. They have a vision. They have an
idea of what they're trying to do, but they're
not coercive in trying to get it done. They're
comfortable in their own skin. They're comfortable
in the wilderness, and they're also comfortable
in their own backyard. They also are these people
who see a need, so they see that bush in front
of them that is burning but not consumed, and
rather turning to it and saying, wow, that's
an interesting need. Someone should really do
something about that. Instead, what they do is
they turn aside and they say what Moses says.
Here I am. There's a difference in those two
things. I don't know about you all. Sometimes
I walk through my house and I see needs and I
think, man, someone in this house should really
take care of that. That's not being a good listener.
I may even hear it, but I'm not listening. To
be a good listener in the vein of Moses is to
notice the need. and to turn towards it, to step
off whatever the path is that we are on, to investigate,
and then to say, here I am. Do you know people
like this? I think about stories like Clarence
Jordan and Millard and Linda Fuller. So these
were people who were off in the wilderness of
South Georgia, which really is a wilderness if
you've ever spent time down there, which I have.
They were out there in the wilderness of South
Georgia, and they saw people all around them
who were stuck in the cycle of generational poverty,
people who didn't have adequate housing. And
rather than saying, you know, someone should
really do something about this, they turned towards
it. They got curious. They investigated it a
little bit, and they ended up starting a fund
called the Fund for Humanity that we know today
as Habitat for Humanity. Or I think a pastor,
about a pastor in St. Louis. 1970s, a pastor
in St. Louis who looked around his congregation
and he saw just the sheer volume of need. There
were so many people in this congregation who
needed care and he could not possibly care for
all of them on his own. And he listened. And
he noticed people around him who had gifts for
listening. And so he thought, I could train these
people. to minister to others by listening to
their stories, to entering into their story with
them, and that's the birth of Stephen ministry,
a ministry that is all over the world, including
in our own congregation today. I think about
Juliette Gordon -Lowe on Girl Scout Sunday, same
thing. Notice, listen to the stories of people
around her there in Savannah, Georgia, and hear
all these years later. We see an amazing ministry
because one person said, here I am. And it's
closer to home as well. I think about our own
church. We had a witness season Sunday last week,
and we heard about Haiti Outreach Ministry. And
then on Wednesday, we heard a presentation about
a medical mission trip to Honduras, building
on our long legacy of service in the Dominican
Republic. All of these ministries, including
Cuba, all of this in one week. We had a team
in Cuba that just returned. All of those ministries
were born out of people who were paying attention.
Not just with their eyes, but with their hearts
and their ears, their souls. They were listening
in the way that Moses listens. We could go on
and on, cast, hand in hand, away, home, starting
this afternoon again here at our church, our
Thursday meal ministry. All of them, people who
notice, who listen, and who raise their hand.
Not, you know, someone should really take care
of this, but here I am. It's not lost on me either,
and I hope not on you. As I mentioned last week,
this whole sermon series is being born out of
this vision process that we as a church have
been about for the last year that we're about
to conclude. We'll present a report to our officers
later this month and then share that with the
congregation. But the cornerstone of that work
was listening sessions. That's not by accident.
That's us as a church. We didn't necessarily
have this language at the time, but that's us
turning aside, looking at each person who is
their own burning bush and saying, tell us what
it is you sense. Let us listen to where you feel
God is at work in this place. I was in a study
this week, and someone who was a part of those
listening sessions, and I know there's a number
of you, we had church members, much like Stephen
Ministry, wasn't led by staff, it was led by
church members who facilitated those over 40
conversations with about 250 people across our
church through the fall. One of them was serving
as a scribe, so their job was to just write down
what they heard in the listening session. And
his comment to the group was, you know, it's
really hard. To just listen and not say anything.
And it's true. It is really hard to be a good
listener. Right? Because we are people who prefer
distraction. I like my playlist while I make
dinner. We are people who like easy answers.
We are people who are told it is okay to choose
being heard over actually hearing. But friends,
what I'm convinced of is that what the world,
what the church, our church included, most needs
in these days are people who listen before they
lead. The rest of this series is going to be
the leading part. We're going to dig into the
different areas that we feel God might be offering
a vision for our church, where we move forward.
But before we get there, we first have to learn
to listen because that is the foundation of it
all. What the world most needs are people and
churches that get quiet enough to notice those
bushes that are burning without being consumed
and who, when the voice calls, will turn aside
and speak those simple but courageous words,
here I am. Now listen, I will confess that I
am not likely to turn my playlist off this week.
But I will commit to all of you, and Craig, you
can hold me accountable, I'll turn the volume
down a little bit. I'll try and make one more
space to just sit in that quiet. And I want us
to do the exact same. And we're going to start
that right now. We're just going to have a little
quiet before we move towards the beautiful sacrament
of baptism. And I want you to notice what...
I notice when I get quiet. It's not always comfortable.
But I want you to be willing to sit and just
go a little deeper and begin that hard but faithful
work, that critical work of listening before
we lead. Amen.