From portions of Exodus used in daily readings this week:
Exodus 3:1-12 New American Bible (Revised Edition)
1 Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock beyond the wilderness, he came to the mountain of God, Horeb. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him as fire flaming out of a bush. When he looked, although the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed. 3 So Moses decided, “I must turn aside to look at this remarkable sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called out to him from the bush: Moses! Moses! He answered, “Here I am.” 5 God said: Do not come near! Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. 6 I am the God of your father, he continued, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
The Call and Commission of Moses. 7 But the Lord said: I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry against their taskmasters, so I know well what they are suffering. 8 Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them up from that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Hivites and the Jebusites. 9 Now indeed the outcry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 Now, go! I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 God answered: I will be with you; and this will be your sign that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will serve God at this mountain.
Let us step back and place this episode in Moses’s life in context. Moses’s first attempt to deal with the oppression of his people was an all-too-typical worldly approach: hit them back, harder. An Egyptian was beating an Israelite worker.–Moses kills the Egyptian. The “cure” was at least as bad as the disease. Un-thought-out and ineffective, too.
Moses has to flee and make a life in exile across a desert. Isolated from his people, he marries a non-Israelite, starts a family, and works as a shepherd for his father-in-law. The impulse to want to free his people from the Egyptians was good–God had placed it in Moses originally–but Moses needed a lot more human and spiritual maturity to handle that impulse correctly. There was no turning to God when Moses first decided to act on that impulse–his only concern back then was to be careful that no one would see him commit the murder.
Years later, God finds a more mature and humble man in Moses. Now God takes the initiative and begins the patient process of getting Moses to try again to take on this huge task. This time with foresight and with help from others such as Aaron and Miriam. This time insisting that Moses step out in faith and make every move under God’s direction. Now God has a humble man to work with, one whose first response is “who am I that I should go to Pharoah…?”
With a humble man, a man obedient day by day to what God is calling him to, the true Kingdom can be built.