Broadview Baptist Church, Chesapeake, MD Sept. 3, 2006
Church is not just for you and me who are members of the church. Church is for others. Church is for the world out there. Freedom is not just for you and me who have accepted Christ. Freedom is for others. The free gift of salvation is for those who do not even know they need it.
Church is not just for you and me, freedom is not just for you and me. We have discovered that we can make ourselves available to God in such a way that He can shape our lives. But why would God want to do that? For what purpose does God shape us? Just so that we can look good? Just so that we can bask in self-satisfaction?
Last week we thought together about what it means for God to shape us. We said that if we are going to be available for God to shape our lives into what He wants them to be, we would first have to: downplay disappointments. There are always going to be failures and disappointments, but they are not the last word. Downplay those disappointments.
And then we said that God uses other people to help shape us, so it is important for us to: pick perceptive people. Find somebody who can and will tell us the truth about ourselves, so that we do not live in an illusion. Pick a perceptive person, and let that person become an instrument of shaping you.
Third, we said that you must: consider the consequences. Consider the terrible consequences of not disciplining yourself, not learning new truths or new skills. Consider the consequences if you stop short of maturity in Christ. And then, finally, we said that you can be shaped as God wants to shape you if you accept affirmation. Build on your strengths and let others show you where you have a gift that can be given. Accept affirmation.
All right ... so now you are shaped. Now you are sculpted. You have downplayed, picked, considered, and accepted. You have a sense of yourself and know that you are in relationship to God. So what? What do you do with all that? Is it just for you and me, for the church? Is it just for self-satisfaction and the assurance of salvation?
Church is not just for you and me who are members of the church. Church is for others. Church is for the world out there. Nor is freedom just for you and me who have accepted Christ. Freedom is for others. The free gift of salvation is for those who do not even know they need it.
Once there was a man who thought he was settled and secure, fat and sassy, but who faced a call to liberate a people. That man, told that there were those whose lives were not as safe as his, realizing that he was supposed to do something more than just live in comfort day by day, felt some powerful emotions. This man felt, first, self-doubt, then he felt uncertainty, and finally he felt unreadiness. But this man learned how to be available for God to use for the liberation of others.
Moses had lived a rather unusual life. In fact, it was nothing short of a miracle that he was alive at all. Born into a Hebrew family at a time when the powers that be in Egypt were threatened by the strength of their slaves, Moses was scheduled for destruction, along with a host of other young boys. But he was saved. By the grace of God and the ingenuity of his mother, he was given not only his life, but also exceptional privileges, right in Pharaoh’s palace. It looked like Moses was headed for something special.
But then Moses made a mistake. A huge, life-changing blunder. He killed a man. Moses became a fugitive from justice in the far away land of Midian. There he took on a wife, raised some children, and settled down into herding sheep. Moses got very comfortable! If the promise of his earliest years had been forgotten, then also the mistake of his young adulthood had been covered up, so now Moses was lying low and keeping cool. Like Bill Cosby said when he observed a little old lady standing around looking cool: “That’s how you get to be a little old lady, by standing around looking cool”. That was Moses’ strategy: tend the sheep, raise the children, keep the wife happy, be cool, stay out of trouble. The suburban dream!
But Moses had not reckoned with God. God had other things in mind. God wanted Moses to free His people. God expected Moses to be available for liberation. When God’s call came, Moses was full of frightening feelings. Even while the words, “Here I am” were coming out of his mouth, he felt self-doubt – which he expressed with the question, “Who am I?”; he felt uncertainty, which he voiced with, “Who are you?”; and he felt unreadiness, offered as, “What if?”. Remember those three questions and you have the whole message today: “Who am I?”, “Who are You?”, and “What if?”
I
First, look at Moses’ self-doubt. “Who am I?” he said. “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt?” Who wouldn’t be anxious, given the assignment God had in mind? Only the most arrogant think we have what it takes to do everything. But I am prepared to say that doubting ourselves is actually a very valuable part of being available for God’s causes. Moses doubted himself; that’s a good thing. It made him available to be used of God, for God’s purposes.
In my lifetime, I have known a few “no problem” people. Do you know the kind of person I mean? You ask him to do something, and he answers, “No problem.” Can you teach my class for me? “No problem”. Can you repair my broken-down car? “No problem”. Can you leap tall buildings in a single bound? “No problem”! What’s going on here? What is this all about? Strangely, there is a kind of insecurity that makes us arrogant, a kind of deep down fear that doesn’t acknowledge danger. There is a kind of rash insecurity that just cannot admit that life is demanding. In my experience, the folks who always pronounce that there is “no problem” doing something seldom actually get it done. They promise the world, but they deliver very little. They are so caught up in their own insecurity they cannot tell you they are scared, and so they make fools of themselves trying to look heroic. Self-generated confidence does not work.
So I applaud Moses when he says to the Lord, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh to bring my people ... out of Egypt?” I affirm Moses when he says, “Who am I?” It’s good to doubt ourselves when we’re faced with God-sized tasks. Our self-doubt will teach us to depend on what God has given us, and not to jump out there and be false heroes.
There are a lot of things that people need to be liberated from. They need to be liberated from poverty; they need to be freed from addictive behavior; they need to be released from emotional oppression; and of course they need to be set free from the burden of sin. All these things oppress, and God is calling us to be available for the work of liberation. But if we are tempted to jump in with both feet and fix somebody’s messed-up life, wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute. Do we really know what you are doing? Do we have the skills we need? Probably not. These are God-sized tasks, which none of us can do on our own. We need to get in touch with a little healthy self-doubt, and like Moses, ask, “Who am I that I should ... bring my people out?” And when we do, we will find the same answer that Moses found: that God will be with us. God will prepare us. God will show us the way. God will fight it with us. Ask “who am I?” and we will discover that God will make us available for liberation.
II
But not only did Moses ask, “Who am I?”. He also asked God, “Who are you?” Not only did Moses struggle with a healthy self-doubt, but also Moses confronted his uncertainty about God. “Who are you?” Just what are you really about, Lord? “When they ask me, ‘what is [God’s] name?’, what shall I say to them?”
When you look at the great issues of life, most of them are spiritual issues, not just psychological stuff. When you see broken families and hear of battered children; when you counsel with addicts or you hear the story of someone’s long illness – you are not just hearing a hard luck tale. You are not just listening to someone’s emotional issues. You are hearing their theology. You are hearing about the kind of God they have. And you will be confronting the kind of God you have too. It’s good to find out who your God is!
Let me shake you up a bit. Many of us are functionally atheists! Do you believe that? Some of us are acting like atheists, because we don’t really believe God is alive and active in the world today! Oh, God may have spoken and acted back there, in the world of the Bible. But here and now? In America, in Chesapeake Beach, at Broadview? No, the God most of us talk about is a museum piece, on the shelf, retired. And so when there is a great cause in front of us, when injustice needs to be faced down – do we expect God to be involved? Do we think God cares, or if He does care, that He will do anything? What do we do? We turn to politics, we call up military action, we resort to force. We act like atheists, believing that God is dead, or on vacation, or just useless, and that if you are going to get anything done, you have to do it yourself.
And so let’s applaud Moses. Moses asked God who He was. Moses wanted to find out if God was in this or not. Are you out there, Lord, and if so, what do you intend to do? “Who are you, Lord? What is your name?”
And when God answers, it is powerful. It speaks volumes. God says, “I am who I am.” My Old Testament professors taught me that there is an even better way to read it; using a verb tense that the Hebrew language has, you can read God’s answer, “I make happen what I make happen.” In other words, when you probe our God, He lets you know that He is in charge. He is the Lord of history, and He will do what He sets out to do. He sets out to do a work of justice, and so calls on Moses to lead that work of liberation.
The other day I read a commentator who said, “It is not surprising that bad people do bad things, or that good people do good things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion!”. Ouch! That hurts. It is distressingly true that certain forms of religion drive people to implacable hatreds and horrible hostilities. But I would add one more observation. It may take religion to make good people do bad things, but I would argue that it takes faith – not “religion” but faith, a relationship with the living God – it takes faith for bad people or good people or just average people to do truly good things!
Know who God is and what God is about. Ask Moses’ question, “Who are you, Lord?”, and then listen to His answer, “I will be who I will be. I will be on the side of the poor and the oppressed. I will be with the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely. Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.”
If you would be available for liberation, know who this God is. This God is one who calls us to be agents of liberating power. III
But now, stay with me, for there is one more issue. There is something else that Moses felt, and this is the most threatening feeling of all. Moses wanted to be available for the work of liberation. We’ve established that he felt self-doubt. He asked “Who am I?”, and that taught him to depend on God. We’ve found that Moses felt uncertainty about God too. He asked “Who are You?”, and that made him understand more clearly what God was doing in human history. But now, finally, Moses also felt unreadiness. He felt as though he had nothing with which to work. He had no resources. Lord, how can I do this liberation thing? I am not a good speaker, the people will not follow me, I have no skills, I have nothing with which to work. To his original questions, “Who am I?” and “Who are you?”, Moses has now added another desperate query, “What if?” What if they do not believe me? What if they do not hear me? What if they reject the whole mess? What if, what if, what if? More things have been destroyed by “what if’s” than this world dreams of. Who can blame Moses when he cries out, “Please, Lord, send someone else!”? I am scared of all the things that might go wrong.
But God says to Moses, “What is that in your hand?” “What is that in your hand?” What have I already given you? The long shepherd’s staff became a snake in Moses’ hand, a symbol of power. Then Moses’ hand became first diseased, then healed, a sign of God’s willingness to use our brokenness. What is that in your hand? If we would be available for God to use, and we know we are not ready, let us simply use what we have. Let us use who we are. Let us use what we have been given. Let us not worry about what we do not have. Let us just be who we are, with the confidence that the Lord who fights for justice will use us, small as we may seem.
Broadview Church, you are only a few. You have been evaluating who you are and what you can do. Doubtless you have ruled out a good many things that churches normally do as impractical for you. But what is in your hand? What gifts do you have? Tell me not what you do not have. Tell me instead what you do have, and see what God can do with one small church fully devoted to Him and to His liberating life.
What is in your hand? If you know how to teach someone to read, then teach. If you know how to listen to someone in distress, pull up a chair and listen. If you know how to use a telephone to touch someone’s heart, then reach out and touch. If all you know is how to play softball, and it would lift some child’s spirit, then step up to that plate and swing that bat and do it. Use what is in your hand and the cause of peace and liberation will be served.
What is in your hand? His broken body, by which He identifies with and makes sacred all human pain.
What is in your hand? His spilled blood, by which He has paid the price for the brokenness of us all.
Take what is in your hand, and at this Table He will make us available for liberation.
