Where do you go to hide? What an odd question with which to begin this week’s bible study. Hide? Who’s hiding? I mean maybe as a kid we would hide, hide and seek. It was a fun game. When I was a kid I was really good at hide and seek. We used to play in the yard of the church that my dad served. It was a neighborhood church, which I now know was a small church, but at the time it seemed big enough for me. There wasn't much yard, but there was enough to play and real good game of hide and seek.
We would start in the twilight, just as the street lights were turning on and you were beginning to have to strain to see clearly. Whoever was “it” would sit on the church steps and cover their face and we would scatter around the building and alleyway behind and our house across the street. I loved to hide, and was pretty good at it. Because I lived at the church I knew all the hiding places, inside and outside. My favorite was in the bushes near the front door of the church. They were low, landscape bushes that looked like they brushed the ground, leaving no room for hiders. But I knew that if you got down on your belly and scooted under the low and prickly branches, you could find a little chamber inside next to the thin trunk of the bush. It wasn't very big, not big enough to stand, or sit, or even kneel. You kinda had to squat, bent over and clutching the trunk, trying to slow your breathing enough so that when the searchers walked past, they didn't hear your panting breath from underneath the impenetrable bush. I was never found when I hid in that bush. Could stay there for hours, it seemed like secure that no matter what no one would find me. And I would win!
There aren't many games you can win by hiding, And yet it seems a common survival trait for many of us. “What are you talking about?” you might be saying. “I don’t have to hide from anyone!” And you’re probably right. You don’t hide, in a hide and seek kind of way. But when was the last time you were really yourself with someone? When the secret thoughts of your heart were shared in a public gathering? When you told stories of who you used to be and who you wanted to be and who you had become? When was the time you felt known? And loved even though?
Being known isn't all that it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes it is better to just keep your head down and keep moving forward. Away. Out of the picture. Away from where you are known, where you can start over without carrying all the past that only gets in the way. You want to go where nobody knows you name. Right Moses?
Ah, Moses, our hero who hasn't been very heroic. Our savior who had to run for his life. You know his story, right? Baby in a basket, survives his own birth by the skin of his teeth and the disobedience of some righteous women. Rescued by a princess, raise in a palace, afforded all the advantages of the privileged class, except for a way to deal with the pesky sense of justice that inhabits his DNA and the growing realization that his status is built on the backs of those who suffer to serve him. And one day all these forces at war within him rise up and he strikes out in anger, killing a wielder of violence and oppressor of the weak. But rather than hailed as a rescuer, he is feared as a perpetrator of an unjust system, and he realizes he only dealt with a symptom and hasn't eradicated a disease, he only damaged a cog in a vast machine that spins on laying waste to any in the way. And worst of all he now realizes that he doesn't belong anywhere, among the ruling class whose clothes adorn his back he is a renegade, an outsider who no longer is fit to walk the gilded hallways; and among the slave class whose blood pumps through his veins he is the worst kind of oppressor, one who kills in anger. So he does the only thing he can do, he runs. And runs and runs and runs. For forty years he runs and hides. He makes some kind of life, hidden away from himself, from his past, from his heritage. And he is content, out there in the back of beyond. Until one day.
Exodus 3:1-6 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up." 4 When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." 5 Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." 6 He said further, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Did you catch that? He led his flock beyond the wilderness. Beyond. Actually the Hebrew says behind. He went out behind the wilderness. The wilderness is the “there be dragons” kind of place. The edge, the outer limits, the danger zone. And Moses, still trying to hide led his flock behind the wilderness. Pay no attention to that man behind the wilderness. That was the message he was sending. Leave me alone. I mean how far does a guy have to go before everyone leaves him the heck alone? Behind the wilderness. The back of beyond. Far enough?
God shows up. In the back of your beyond, God shows up. In the place you went to hide from the world or just yourself, your history and your vulnerabilities, your blind spots and your habits that you swear you could stop at any time. But hiding is safer, hiding means you don’t have to change anything. Hiding means you don’t have to put with people who claim to love you but always telling you lighten up or calm down or get help or get out. You’re happy with yourself out there in the back of beyond. Who’s going to find you behind the wilderness?
God shows up. So, what exactly did the bush look like? A flame of fire, it says, but it wasn't burning. A trick of the light, a sunset glowing through the branches of that bush in the back of beyond? Who knows? It caught his attention, Moses turned aside. That means he set aside that which he thought was most important and went to see what God had in store. He put his own plans and his own dreams aside long enough to see what his life might be like if he dreamed God’s dream. Moses turned aside and found himself on holy ground.
Wait a minute, you’re thinking, he didn't know it was God. He didn't know he was about to be called the deliverer. He just saw something shiny, a trick of the light, an unexplained phenomenon. That’s all. Good job, grasshopper, you took the pebble from my hand. He didn't know. But knowing doesn't matter. Openness does. Certainty isn't a requirement for participating in God’s dream. Willingness is.
The ground wasn't holy because there was bush burning in it. It wasn't even holy because there was an angel there. Angels show up in all kinds of places, can’t get too excited about that. No, it is holy because God shows up in the back of beyond. God shows up behind the wilderness, just where you thought God would never go. Truth is we should always walk around barefoot because any ground is holy ground because God is with us always, even to the end of the age.
And God hands out a dream to Moses. It was a dream that was woven into his bones. It was a dream that he was made to dream. It was a dream that drove him to act in such a way that got him exiled from home for forty years. But that was when he was trying to work the dream on his own. The dream of freedom, the dream of an end to slavery and oppression. Now, he was partnered with God.
“We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life– longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I’m so happy, tonight; I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
The last speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ever gave. “I just want to do God’s will.” I just want to dream God’s dream, because I've been to the mountaintop, the back of beyond, behind the wilderness and God was there.
Shalom,
Derek
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