Twenty-five years ago, the summer before my final year of seminary, I took part in travel study seminar to the Middle East led by biblical archaeologists. For three and a half weeks we traveled throughout Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and Greece to see the land that some Christian scholars call “the fifth gospel” for the way the land itself tells the story of God’s relationship with God’s people. One of the stops was to a 1600 year old monastery that claims to have been built around the burning bush, a bush that was (and I believe is) still alive and well, although not still burning, in the courtyard of the complex.
As the monk who was our tour guide that day stopped to talk about the massive plant, I took a picture, of course, and then we moved on. When I returned home to the United States and developed my film – this was twenty-five years ago and I traveled with a real film camera – I saw something in the picture that I hadn’t noticed that day in the courtyard. On the left side of the composition was the monk who was telling us about the burning bush. Filling most of the frame was the subject, but off to the right, sort of behind the bush and against the wall of the courtyard was a fire extinguisher.
It totally cracked me up.
Of course, I’m sure it was simply to meet standard safety codes and to protect this piece of botanic and biblical history, but gosh it was funny to think that should the famous bush spontaneously combust again, there would be something to put it out right away.
I wonder what Moses would have paid for a fire extinguisher that day the bush in front of him began to burn.
Moses was living in Midian, a region outside of Egypt, a bit east of the Sinai peninsula. Having been born to a Hebrew mother when the Egyptian authorities were murdering the sons of their Hebrew slaves at the moment of their birth, he had survived when his mother had hidden him away as soon as he was born and then famously put him in a basket of reeds to float down the river when he was three months old. The daughter of the Pharaoh found him and decided to bring him up as her own child, although somehow, the text doesn’t explain how, he grew up knowing he was a Hebrew, not an Egyptian.
One day, as an adult, Moses was watching his own people in their forced labor and saw an Egyptian beating one of his kin. Move by compassion and clearly no small amount of anger, he killed the Egyptian and hid the body. The next day he began to realize that news of his action was spreading and even the Pharaoh had become aware and now wanted to kill him. To save his own life he fled Egypt and landed in Midian where he met the local priest. Conveniently the priest had seven daughters, one of whom, Zipporah, became Moses’ wife.
Away from Egypt, away from Pharaoh who sought to end his life, away from the enslavement of his people, Moses settled into a new life. Moses worked for his father-in-law, keeping the flock. He and Zipporah had a son, Gershom. He was out of reach of Pharaoh. Life was good. Or at the very least life was unremarkable.
Right up until he stumbled upon a curious bush in the wilderness one day. There have been times that I have read this story and been jealous of Moses. How wonderful it must have been, I think to myself, to have had such an obvious message from God. How easy, I imagine, it would be to know exactly what God wants me to do if that message came with pyrotechnics and the divine voice talking right to me.
But I don’t think Moses saw it that way.
He was curious (good for him). He was compliant (better than I would be), but he doesn’t seem exactly excited, which makes a lot of sense. What a scare it must have been, first because of the actual flaming plant, second because the flaming plant was not being consumed, and third because the voice of an angel, then that of God delivered an unexpected and unimaginable, even dangerous, call on his life. God was asking him to go back to Egypt, where Pharaoh had a bounty on his head, and go right to Pharaoh to ask for God’s people to be released. Should he choose to accept this call, it would be a total upheaval to the familiar life he had built in Midian. It was a call that would not only challenge his comfort, but threaten his very life.
For Moses, this burning bush was anything but the wonderful and easy sign. Instead it marked a moment where he had a very important and difficult decision to make – a decision whose outcome he really couldn’t predict or imagine, a decision that felt terrifying, a decision that would disrupt his life if he decided to follow the call, but a decision that could lead to freedom, fruitful and abundant life for so many more people than just himself.
Literal burning bushes are in short supply outside of this ancient story, but figurative ones might be smoldering even among us. Throughout this year at First Presbyterian Church we have been talking about the work of a Task Force that was formed three years ago this month. This group of highly qualified, faithful people was asked by the session to consider ways the church’s property could be used, maybe repurposed, possibly renovated in order for it to be more of a financial asset and less of a financial liability. The research the task force undertook led them down a path that, frankly, wasn’t where they thought they would go. At one point, when they thought they were just about finished and ready to present a recommendation that preserved our current footprint, they were struck by the reality that what seemed like the best solution really didn’t help the congregation with the financial challenges presented by owning and maintaining a building of this size with our current membership. They asked for more time and for permission to think even farther outside of the box than they had previously.
Last winter the task force shared with the session a new outside-the-box conclusion that owning this building and this property are not the way to get the most financial value from them. We started to talk about our challenges and possibilities within the whole congregation this spring. And now, reflecting on this story from Exodus, with the tremendous help and insights of the folks who came to Wednesday Bible study this week, I’m starting think that maybe in 2026 our burning bush isn’t a plant on fire, but a power point presentation and some spreadsheets.
It has a lot of the same hallmarks of the burning bush. Like Moses we were just going about our fairly comfortable lives when it showed up in our midst. We were healing and strengthening from past challenges. We had turned to a new chapter in our book and were finding our groove. Life was and still is looking very promising with some hard times behind us and a bright future and new life ahead.
But then we heard a voice. I mean, it sounded like the voices of our friends and neighbors, people from our own pews, but within their voices, in and under and around them, came another voice, a voice with something to say that is, for some of us at least, understandably shocking news – news that rattles our comfort to some degree, news that feels uncertain, news that doesn’t have a clear path or a predictable outcome, news that even sounds kind of threatening to what we know, what we enjoy, what we have come to count on. We have heard and are hearing a voice that is asking us to consider that we might have a new calling in this next part of our life together.
When Moses got the call he immediately started asking questions. (And we sure have to!) His first question (but not the last) was, essentially, “Why me?” In his words it came out, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” I can hear where that might be coming from. Moses knows he is a marked man in Egypt. Moses knows that his temper got the better of him, even if the source of his anger was compassion and grief. The story goes on to reveal that Moses doesn’t think he speaks well enough to lead such an important task. He’s unsure that people will listen to him or believe him that the Lord appeared to him.
But this first question – Who am I? – is a very special question both for Moses and for us. I don’t think God picked Moses by accident, and I don’t think God is nudging First Presbyterian Church to look at our future differently by accident either. Moses clearly had a deep love for his people. Moses clearly wanted something better for them than the treatment they were receiving, and when he was in Egypt he was willing to step in and try to make a crisis situation better. Clearly his tactic, murder, is questionable at best. Do not hear me endorsing this. It’s his motive that I am noticing, and that I think God noticed too.
It’s a motive this congregation has operated from for almost two centuries and definitely in very concrete ways in the living memory of those in this room. We have been and are a church where compassion leads the way.
- From our vital support of the YMCA Warming Station that serves the houseless in dangerously cold seasons, to a partnership with Sheridan Elementary School that brings school supplies and food to the students and families of that community,
- from the thousands of hats that have been knit over the years for first graders to the guest from Daybreak who receive shoes and a picnic each year from our congregation,
- from the medical care we have partnered to provide in Honduras to the water and community development we are a part of in Malawi,
- from the pastoral visitors who make connections with members who are less mobile to the multiple styles and languages in which we hold worship,
- from the quilts given to guests at the Sixth Street Shelter to the food collected for and distributed at the Allentown Ecumenical Food Bank –
we are a people motivated by compassion. (I have left plenty of examples out, and I’m sure some of you will add more to the list on the way out today!)
We are people who are driven by compassion, people who know ourselves to be called to address the hurts and pains in our community and in the world. We are people, like Moses, whose hearts are broken along with God’s when we see people suffering, when we see people being mistreated and forgotten and discarded.
So what if, like Moses we are also being called to a next step where we have to let go of some of the comfort and predictability of our current reality in order to follow God’s call in bold ways? That’s what Moses had to do when God called him to leave Midian and return to the Egypt on a new mission. Grounded in his compassion, he was tasked with a new purpose that built on his existing gifts, a task not just to meet the immediate needs of those who were enslaved, but to release them from Pharaoh’s control, to lead them from bondage to freedom. Moses was called to do more than just give the Israelites comfort in their oppression, but to get them out of the system that was bearing down on them completely.
What if we, too, are being called to step into a future that is grounded in our compassion, but tied less to the places and spaces that bring us comfort and more to the call of God to help release people from the bondage of systems that keep them poor? What if our resources – our energy, our talents, and our money – can be used less to maintain our building and more to free God’s people?
It’s a daunting call to consider. Like Moses had no idea what the next chapter of answering God’s call would look like, we too have a lot more questions right now than we have answers. We know that considering this call and the future it holds will be a challenge. We know that answering it will require change, and change comes with loss, and loss comes with grief.
But that next chapter is also a chapter of freedom.
“Who am I?” Moses asked God. Now I leaned on Moses’ history to answer that question, that Moses is a man of compassion, that he cares for his people and he wants to alleviate their suffering, but God actually answered it in a different way. God answers Moses’ question about his identity and ability to answer this call with a promise, “I will be with you.” Who Moses is to accomplish his mission is one who walks with God, and that is all that matters. When we are faced with challenges, when we are faced with uncertainty and the potentiality of a new call and new direction, all that matters is that God is with us and God will walk us in the new purpose that lies before us.