Tommy Thompson
Exodus 3:1-15
Lent 3C, Family Worship Sunday
3 March 2013
In the Name of God: + the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ.
As most of you know, my name is Tommy and I am
minister to youth and children here at St. Thomas. Now, my colleagues here would try and argue this point, I am
sure, but I want you to know, that I have the funnest job here. I get to play and have fun all the time
-- it’s part of what we do. So,
why not today, during the sermon.
Today I brought something with me...here it
is. My genie in the bottle. It has a little dust on it, as i don’t
play with it very often. It stays
on my bookshelf until i really need something. But today I thought I would do a bit of “show-and-tell” with
it...
Did anyone else bring their genie in an oil lamp
or genie in the bottle? Very good.
As you know, depending on the genie, there are
different rituals one must perform in order to get the genie out and at your
beckon call. For me, since my
genie is “Genie” from the movie Aladdin, all I have to do is rub, because as he
once said, “I got a powerful urge to help you out, so what you wish I really
wanna know, You got a list that's 3 miles long, no doubt, so I'll you gotta do
is rub like so, and ohhh..."
And once he comes out of the bottle he says to me,
"Mr. Thompson, Sir, have a wish or 2 or 3.
I'm on the job, you big nabob, you ain't never had friend like me."
Isn’t that fantastic!? This genie is here to serve ME! Whenever i’m in a rut and I need some help, i just blow of
the dust, rub it just right and out comes my servant Genie -- whatever I need.
You know, the more I think about it, I think, if
we aren’t careful, our relationship with God can begin to look a lot like my
silly made-up relationship with this genie in the bottle?
There have been times in my life where my journey
with God was almost identical to this...
God is safe and secure on my shelf, collecting
dust...he never hears from me...my footsteps are not falling in line right
behind his...I ignore God in my daily life...don’t have much use for him until
it happens...
I find myself in a rut. Maybe it is a financial rut, maybe a medical rut...it
doesn’t really matter...all of the sudden God becomes my favorite contact. I dust the bottle off, say the right
words, and bam! I expect God to do whatever I need God to do because I need to
get out of this rut, thank you very much.
If we aren't careful, God can become nothing more
to us than a divine genie-in-the-bottle.
There when we need that “A” on that test we just so happened to FORGET
to study for...There to somehow persuade that lovely young lady or that
handsome young man to go out with me...there to somehow get me out of the
speeding ticket that that officer behind me should be writing...there to get me
that promotion...there to get me the new job...to get me out of the mess I just
put myself in...but that’s it...nothing more and nothing less -- God is that
divine genie in the bottle.
And it’s not necessarily bad to bring any of these
things to God through Jesus...he told us to...but is this all God is to
us? Our divine-genie-in-the-bottle? Called on when we’re in a rut but
largely forgotten about in our everyday lives?
Sometimes it is as if we are on the throne and God
is the servant... the genie in the
bottle says to his master, "What wouldst thou have? I am ready to obey
thee as thy slave, and the slave of all those who have that lamp in their
hands; I and the other slaves of the lamp.” What scares me is how many times it would be accurate of me
to have this become God’s speech rather than a genies, “What wouldst thou
have? I am ready to obey thee as
thy slave and the salve of all who hold this divine lamp in their hands...
In our Old Testament Lesson for this morning, God
reveals to us the proper relationship and it isn’t one where I am the master
and God is the slave in a bottle, contained and controlled ready to serve
whenever I call.
In that all-too-familiar lesson that we read just
a few moments ago, God appeared to Moses through a burning yet never consumed
bush as he was tending his flock near the mountain of God, Mount Horeb. God appeared with a vocation for Moses:
“Come, follow me, I’m going to lead you to Pharaoh so that we might lead my
people out of Egypt.” To this
news, Moses appears to be in utter shock.
He responds with excuses as to why he doesn’t qualify for the job...But
God will have none of it. God is like, “Of course you’re not qualified...and as
long as you remember that you’ll do quite well. Never forget, I am with
you...that’s the only way your gonna lead my people out of bondage and into freedom
-- by taking heart that I am with you and will never leave you.”
But then Moses asks a bizarre question. “But what if ... I come to the
Israelites and tell them about this new vocation you’ve given me and they then
ask me, “What is his name...this God who sent you?” What should I tell them then?
And the response that God gives to Moses is one of
the most fascinating responses from God in all of Scripture.
There’s a lot to a name you know...Names aren’t
just for the sake of identifying this person over and against that
person...there’s a lot to a Name and in the world of Moses, there was even more
to a name than there is today. In
Moses day, to name someone or to name something meant that you were sovereign
over that thing or person or entity you have named. And the meaning of the name
you gave to that person thing or entity had everything to do with that person’s
fate, etc.
In Genesis, God speaks and that which he names
comes into existence. God is
sovereign, then, over all that which he has named into existence.
Now Moses asks for God’s Name. But God will not be named. He will not be controlled. He will not
be easily undesrtood. He cannot be
contained. He will never become
anyone’s genie-in-the bottle.
God’s response is at the same time a refusal to respond, as he says to
Moses, “I will be/become whoever/whatever I will be/become.” Many translations simply say “I Am,” as
if God were saying, “No problem, “The Great I Am” is my name... but the hebrew
clearly reads, “I will become whomoever or whatever I will become.”
This is the invitation God gives to all his would
be disciples at the outset...way back when God first called Moses. And this is the invitation God gives us
today as we walk the lenten journey towards new life and new creation. Repent of the illusionary divine
“genie-in-the-bottle”--the domesticated and tamed God that collects dust on the
shelf until it’s time for him to serve us according to our desires.... God will not be contained. Step down from your illusionary throne
and be the servant...the servant who follows the elusive God, as Terrance
Freitheim calls him, who refuses to be contained or controlled by anyone or
anything.
Now, That is risky business...there is no telling
where such faith will lead you. It
is a journey always filled with mystery and awe. If the journey lacks mystery and awe for any of us, it is
time to repent because the domesticated god we’ve been controlling is not the
God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob and most certainly isn’t the Jesus whose
journey always leads to a cross before an empty tomb.
But always remember, there is one thing God does
choose to reveal to Moses -- the one thing Moses needs to remember and that we
need to remember. It won’t always
make sense, and it most definitely won’t always be easy, but God will be with
you and he will never leave you. And that assurance of his presence daily in our
lives is enough.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
