Arguing With God
This Sunday we’re going to be walking through a rather long - and rather curious passage of scripture. This is the story of Moses encountering God in the burning bush and the difficult conversation he has with God. Difficult? Oh yeah - no question about it. God has considerable difficulty with Moses - and Moses has some trouble with God, also. In a nutshell, God asks Moses to lead the Jews out of bondage and slavery and Moses says ‘no’.
Not the story we’re used to hearing, is it? Moses puts up a lengthy argument and his final word to God was
“Lord, please! Send anyone else.” (vs. 13) God, we are told, became angry, and sent Moses’ brother Aaron to help him. With that Moses - and God - both reluctantly relent of their argument. It seems to me that neither one really got what they wanted. Moses took on a job he didn’t want and God took on a less than enthusiastic servant - and then added Aaron to the mix, something he (apparently) hadn’t already planned on. As the Exodus story progresses we see that their relationship doesn’t improve much.
God has no trouble with any aspect of creation. Thunder and lightening, storms out to sea, the Coney in the rocky crags - none of it is a problem for God. People? That’s another story. But I can also understand where Moses is coming from - he’s settled down now among the Midianites, has a wife and young family and now, suddenly, God is asking him to go back to Egypt and… then what? For Moses, the outcome is hardly clear; God has not provided enough information on which to build a plan.
This Sunday we’re going to look at the dialogue between Moses and God. It’s far too easy to fault Moses for doubting God . This becomes an entirely different story when we read it from Moses perspective. The story becomes even more powerful when we consider it from our own perspective in relation to our encounters with God.
The image above is a Russian icon of Moses and the burning bush from the 18th C. [via About.Com]