June 10, 2012 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

When You Overcome Your Own Objections

Rhashell D. Hunter
General Assembly Mission Council, Presbyterian Church (USA)

Psalm 138
2 Corinthians 4:13–5:1
Exodus 3:1–15

“But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’”

Exodus 3:11 (NRSV)

Your presence is here.

In the city—on the busy bus, in the factory, in the cockpit of the airplane; in the hospital—in the patients’ rooms, in the intensive care unit, in the waiting room; in the home—at dinner, in the bedroom, in the family room, at my workbench; in the car—in the parking lot, at the stoplight.

Lord, reveal your presence to me everywhere, and help me become aware of your presence each moment of the day.

Robert Wood
A Thirty-Day Experiment in Prayer

We all know the story of Moses. Moses is the son of a Hebrew slave and is brought up by Pharaoh’s daughter. He rises through the ranks of Pharoah’s household and, one day, kills an Egyptian guard who was beating a Hebrew slave. Moses escapes to the wilderness of Midian, and there he meets a young woman named Zipporah, marries her, and is welcomed into his father-in-law’s business.

He’s tending Jethro’s sheep when he sees a burning bush. He takes a closer look, and he hears a voice instructing him to take off his shoes, for the place on which he is standing is holy ground. Moses recognizes the holiness of the place where he’s standing. He knows he’s at the “mountain of God.” By the way, anytime you see “the mountain of God” in the Bible, you know something is going to happen. If a place is known by the spiritual activity that happens there, you can expect that another spiritual experience may, indeed, happen in this place. Spiritual things happen at mountains in the Bible. Moses hears his name spoken, and he’s presented with the opportunity to meet the God of his mother and father. Moses knows he’s on holy ground.

Curiously, this is the first time the term “holy” is used in the Bible, here in Exodus 3, verse 5. God is here at the mountain and Moses experiences the holy. (An exception is Genesis 2:3, where the imperfect of “holy” is used: in the creation, God “hallowed” the seventh day.) Have you experienced the holy, the majesty, the mystery of God? I experience it when I walk outside and notice the beauty of nature. Maybe you’ve experienced it in a breathtaking landscape, at home when you get on your knees to pray, in the Sanctuary of this church, or at a concert where you hear beautiful instruments and voices and are suddenly drawn into experiencing the holy, mystery of God in a big way.

In his book The Idea of the Holy, Rudolph Otto spoke of encountering “the holy.” For Otto, Bach’s Mass in B minor, Mendelssohn’s setting of Psalm 2, and the “Popule Meus” of Tomas Luis de Victoria “gets as near to the heart of the [mystery and majesty of God] as any music can” (Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, pp. 72–73).

There may be pieces of art or places in the earth that are holy ground for you. However we experience holiness, we are often struck with awe and unworthiness when we encounter it. Moses hid his face. He was made aware of the power, mystery, and awe of God, and he turned away—afraid to see more, afraid to hear more, afraid to know more.

God calls Moses to lead God’s people out of Egypt to a land of freedom. Moses resists God’s call. He offers several points of resistance. The first resistance is that he’s nobody: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Moses didn’t know who he was. Moses didn’t know he was Moses.

Do you suppose Moses thought, “Darn, I knew I shouldn’t have led this flock to the mountain of God”? Before he could even fully hear his call to ministry, he was already trying to back out of it, to question it, to doubt himself, to doubt God. Moses has many objections to God’s call to him. “Who am I?” he asks. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

And then he says, “People won’t believe me.” He’s afraid he’ll be rejected by his own people. He says he’s a poor speaker. Eventually, Moses just says, “Lord, please send someone else.” Have any of you had that experience? God, fed up with Moses’ objections, says, “OK, take Aaron along with you to speak for you.”

Here’s another curious dynamic. God doesn’t answer or refute Moses’ objections, but God overrides them by continuing to place Moses’ call before him. When Moses says he’s inadequate, God doesn’t say, “You’re adequate.” God says, “I will be with you” (Exodus 3:11–12). When Moses says, “I don’t even know your name,” God doesn’t say, “Let me tell you who I am.” God gives Moses a formula, which yields no name at all (Exodus 3:13–14).

When Moses says, “I’m a poor speaker,” God doesn’t say, “You’re a great speaker.” God says, “I preside over speech. I give tongues as they are needed” (Exodus 4:11–14). Finally, God does give Moses Aaron, as his spokesperson, but still Moses is the leader in the confrontation to come (The New Interpreter’s Bible, Genesis/Exodus, 199:720).

This is Moses’ pivotal moment. And look at how badly he’s trying to get out of it. Is anybody here relating to this stuff? Moses was at a time of great possibility, a time of transformation, a time of challenge and leadership and ministry, and he questioned his call. Sometimes we get in our own way in responding to God’s call in our lives.

I understand Moses’ questioning, because I questioned God, too. I don’t know how God’s call has presented itself in your life, but it took me many years to respond to my call to ministry. I thought if I just ignored God long enough, maybe God would go away. I convinced myself that I was hearing somebody else’s call, but it was coming to me. You know, like when wires get crossed on telephone lines and you hear someone else’s conversation. There’s an African American spiritual, “Jesus Is on the Mainline, Tell Him What You Want.” Well, Jesus was on the mainline, and I kept telling him, “You have the wrong number.”

Jeremiah and Isaiah questioned God’s call to them. Some of their objections were similar: I’m not worthy enough. I don’t speak well (That’s one people use a lot). I’m not good enough. I am only a boy. I am a woman. I’m sixty years old. I’m in a wheelchair. Who am I, Lord?

Sometimes we don’t know who we are. And sometimes we don’t recognize where we are. We have to be reminded that we are on holy ground. We know we are members and leaders in the church, but we forget the awe of it all—the honor, the privilege, the mystery, the holiness of the place where we stand. We stand before God at a pivotal time in the life of Fourth Presbyterian Church. It is a time of great possibility, a time of transformation, of reformation, of regeneration, of renewal. We can be changed, re-created, empowered, freed, and we don’t even know it.

Some of us do not know who we are. God has endowed us with gift upon gift, with a cloud of grace to walk upon, and we don’t even know it. Many of us are called to a special and particular ministry. God is going to do great things with us. We are effective in what we do, and we do things in a way that no one else does them, and we do not even know who we are. Some of us feel that we have no effect on anyone. We feel worthless in our lives and ministries. We act as if we have no value. We don’t realize that there are people who are still alive because of us, people whose days are good because of us, people who love us, and we don’t even know it. We do not know who we are.

And the funny thing is we think that God doesn’t know who we are, that God doesn’t know whom God has called. Can the almighty God not know whom God has called? Moses’ question implies that God has made a mistake. God calls him by name; he hears God’s call; he is in the holy presence of Yahweh, the great I AM, yet he asks, “Who am I?”

Calls are tricky and funny things. They are paradoxical, as we’re chosen and called by name, yet we are to discern the call and where we are to go, and then we are to go there. And we can spend years asking the clarifying questions, stalling, trying to talk our way out of it, fighting it, asking the rules of the game before we pick our game pieces and begin to play the game.

James Hillman wrote a book called, The Soul’s Code. It was on the best-seller list for some time some years ago. In it, he defines call as “that essential mystery at the heart of each human life” (James Hillman, The Soul’s Code, p. 6). He suggests that “each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived” (p. 6). He says, “A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it [wins] out. It makes its claim. The [call] does not go away” (p. 8).

We discern our calls individually. Hillman says, “The call comes in curious ways and differently from person to person” (p. 19). And together as a church, we discover and rediscover our mission. You are a light in the city, reflecting the inclusive love of God. Comforted and challenged by the gospel of Christ, you strive to be a welcoming and serving community. At the intersection of faith and life, you share God’s grace through worship, preaching, education, and ministries of healing, reconciliation, and justice (from the Fourth Church mission statement).

Your mission statement’s directional goals are worship, preaching, education, ministries of healing, reconciliation, and justice. You affirm the worth of all and nurture each individual’s spiritual pilgrimage. Inspired by our heritage, you confront your future with hope and confidence in God’s purpose.

Part of setting an action plan to do this is to lay out, specifically, how you will reach your directional goals of worship, preaching, education, ministries of healing, reconciliation, and justice. When the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago was formed in 1871, you had a mission; 141 years later, so many things have changed in the world.

On October 8, 1871, the day the Fourth Church congregation dedicated its new home, who would have known that Patrick and Catherine O’Leary’s cow would kick over a lantern in their barn and start the Great Chicago Fire? (Now to set the record straight, Mrs. Catherine O’Leary has been exonerated. You can read the website “Did the Cow Do It?” and learn all about the numerous mistakes that were made that dreary night in 1871.) At any rate, losing the church was one tragedy that occurred.

Three years later, in 1874, the new Fourth Church building on Rush and Superior Streets was dedicated. The church’s programs grew, and another building project began in 1912 on what would many years later become know as the “Magnificent Mile.” John Timothy Stone led the congregation through that building of a new church on Michigan Avenue to serve the city. The building was dedicated in 1914 and is now, other than the Water Tower, the oldest surviving structure on Michigan Avenue north of the river.

Harrison Ray Anderson responded to the need to reach out and welcome young adults who were pouring into the city. Westminster House was built, and young adult and children and family programs were held there.

During the 1960s, a turbulent time in our country’s history, Elam Davies led the church in deepening its mission. This city church engaged in mission with its neighbors and sought to be a place of justice, compassion, and peace.

John Buchanan led the church through re-creation of its buildings, and church leaders today are working on Project Second Century. The congregation has grown in size dramatically in the last decade and continues to grow, as you join us from city neighborhood and suburbs for worship, preaching, education, ministries of healing, reconciliation, and justice. Church leaders today are designing the church and its facilities to meet the needs, once again, of this growing and vibrant congregation.

How will you be a part of the movement igniting a light in the city for the next 150 years? Like Moses, sometimes we do not know who we are. We have to be reminded of our calling and of our mission. And often we have to prepare to change and set new vision.

There’s a book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, and in it, authors Chip and Dan Heath suggest that what looks like a “people problem” is often a “situation problem.” We think we need to change a person’s mind and help them discover things in order to change, when sometimes what we need to do is change the situation.

At a theater here in Chicago, moviegoers were handed a free bucket of popcorn. They did not know it, but they were participating in a study of irrational eating behavior. Brian Wansink, professor of marketing at Cornell, who was then at the University of Illinois, and Sea-Bum Park, a Northwestern grad, led this study. The popcorn in the free buckets was stale. It had been popped five days earlier and was so stale that it squeaked when you ate it. One person later said that it was like Styrofoam. Two others, forgetting they had gotten it for free, asked for their money back. Some of them got their free popcorn in a medium-size bucket, and others got a very large bucket.

Both buckets were so big that none of the moviegoers could finish their individual portions. The researchers were interested in a simple question: Would the people with the bigger buckets eat more?

The results were that people with the large buckets ate 53 percent more popcorn than people with the medium-size buckets. They put their hands in the bucket twenty-three more times. They ate 173 more calories. If someone showed you the data from the popcorn-eating study but didn’t mention the bucket sizes, you might think, we need to motivate these people to adopt healthier snacking behaviors. But wait a second. If you want people to eat less popcorn, the solution is pretty simple: Give them smaller buckets. This is an easy-change problem—shrink people’s buckets—not a hard-change problem—convince people to think differently. And that’s the first surprise about change. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

Moses’ situation changed. He was given Aaron to be his companion and spokesperson on the journey. He was given the words from God to speak to Pharaoh. He was asked by God to go. And the Bible says, he went (Exodus 5:1): “Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Let my people go.”’” He got past his own objections, and he went, fulfilling his destiny. That is how the people began to have hope and to live again. Sometimes changing the situation gives you just what you need to make different choices. So how do you change things when change is hard?

Chip and Dan Heath suggest that we practice new behaviors by finding and emulating the bright spots. Sometimes you have to act your way into a new way of thinking. It becomes your change. Maybe the only thing we can do when God says to go is to follow what Moses and Aaron eventually did. They went. Every day we face the choice to offer objections and be stuck in sad situations or to work for empowerment, transforming ourselves, the community, and the world into bright spots, igniting a light in the city.

Every day we can ignore our call and our mission or we can overcome our own objections by trusting in God’s plan for our lives and our church, changing our situations to become the change we want to see, and returning to the mountain of God and reconnecting with the majesty and mystery of God.

And God says you don’t have to know who you are,
as long as you know who “I AM.”
I AM the God of your ancestors and your foreparents.
I AM the God of your mothers and your fathers.
I AM the God of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar.
I AM the God of Isaac and Rebekah and Ishmael.
I AM the God of Jacob and Rachel and Leah.
I AM the God of Moses and Zipporah.
“I AM WHO I AM.”

God promises to be with us.
God will not leave us out there alone.
God does not call us and leave us to fend for ourselves.
God will not abandon us.

God said to Moses, “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” (Exodus 3:12). Spiritual activity happens on mountains in the Bible.

And so we end the way we began, in the presence of the holy, on holy ground. When the work is done, we come back to the mountain to worship Yahweh, whom, alone, we worship and adore.

Once we overcome our own objections and experience God’s presence, then we may be bold enough or excited enough or faithful enough to be led into the future church—to be like Moses, to speak God’s word like Jeremiah, to affirm God’s call like Mary, to answer like Isaiah “Here I am, send me!”