Scripture: Exodus 3:1–14
This summer, I’ve heard many great stories in our community about great days spent at the beach here in the Bay and Ocean states.
Yesterday, our daughter Rosie went for her first ocean swim in the Narragansett Bay, and I think it’s safe to say from her big smiles and kicking feet that she’s an ocean baby.
But despite these wonderful water experiences, and our nautical proximity in this part of the world, I have to say that I love the mountains! I’m a mountain person.
I’ve spent many days in New England’s beautiful ranges. The air is sharp and crisp, and the experience of being up with the clouds makes my soul soar.
If you’ve hiked in the higher Alpine-zone peaks of New Hampshire, you’ve most likely seen one of the many warning signs that are posted at the trails — bright yellow signs with big letters that say: “STOP! The area ahead has the worst weather in America. Many have died there from exposure, even in the summer. Turn back now if the weather is bad.”
Turn back now. The sign is not lying. One of the fastest wind speeds ever recorded was on Mt. Washington (231 miles per hour) and some of the lowest temperatures recorded there too (negative 108 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chill).
This yellow sign always gives me a little jolt of excitement, knowing that unexpected things might happen. The stakes become a little bit higher in the high peaks. I pay a little more attention to how much water and food I have on my back; I watch my step a bit, and pay a little more attention to how much time is left to the day, before the sun completes its journey across the sky and sends the world into darkness.
When I’m in the high peaks, I know that something unexpected might soon be happening, and I try to be ready for it. In the Exodus narrative, on the other hand, Moses encounters God on Mount Horeb, and he is not ready for something miraculous and unexpected to happen. Then he sees the burning bush, with a voice of God that speaks to him.
Remember that Moses in this story is hiding out from his past — he keeps a low profile as a remote shepherd, trying not to be noticed by anyone who might connect him to the murder he had commit as a young man in Egypt — killing an Egyptian who had been hurting a Hebrew person, one of Moses’s own people.
The mountain where God encounters Moses is Holy Ground. It’s a sacred space where anything could happen. So God meets Moses here, in the volatility of the high peaks, where you know you have to pay a little more attention because, like the yellow signs in New Hampshire, even in the most normal weather, powerful things can still happen.
God comes to Moses on Mt. Horeb, and says you have to come out of your exile and your hiding, and go back to Egypt (the place you’re hiding from), and bring the descendants of Sarah and Abraham out of there, and I want you to worship with them right here on this mountain when you’ve done it.
And Moses basically says, I can’t do it. Who am I to do this big thing?
Friends, I want to tell you about a conundrum I face, and something that I cannot do.
I can’t bring myself to kill the spotted lanternflies.
For those of you who haven’t heard about spotted lanternflies, they are widely considered to be an aggressive invasive insect in the United States, and are increasingly prevalent in Rhode Island. They’re also all around our church grounds. They’re small insects with polka-dotted wings — actually quite beautiful. They first showed up in Pennsylvania in 2014, supposedly making the trip from Southern China, Vietnam, or Taiwan on some shipped goods, and have expanded from there.
Almost every knowedgable source of information about the lanternflies seems to give the same advice, from the Department of Environmental Management to your gardening friend down the road. They all say, you need to kill the bug. I don’t judge anyone who kills the spotted lanternflies, which pose a major threat to essential ecosystems — but I feel a conflict.
I think I feel kind of like Moses about the lanternflies — killing them feels like an incomplete plan. God has given Moses an incomplete plan — he needs to go into Egypt to secure the release from slavery of a huge number of people. Moses asks for some clarity and reassurances: how will I do it? what should I do when I get to Egypt?
God says, tell them “I AM has sent me to you.”
In other words, God says it’s time to start taking action, and the plan will become clear as we go, because I will be with you.
In this moment, the mountaintop becomes a trailhead for a new journey and a new beginning for Moses. He now has to leave home, go back into a place of struggle, for the benefit of others who are suffering.
Friends, we too are on holy ground, being asked to take a journey — and we are at a trailhead time of the year; this is a back-to-school season, but this week also begins the Christian Season of Creation, which runs from September 1 to St. Francis Day in early October. How will this season of creation unfold for you? What paths will God lead you along as we seek to honor and heal this good creation?
God is commissioning Moses for something great, something challenging, and something new.
Someone recently taught me that one thing that I can do to stop the spread of the Spotted Lanternfly is to remove their favorite habitat, ironically called the Tree-of-Heaven. So I’ve learned to look for the Tree of Heaven and to remove it.
That is a new challenge for me. It’s one trailhead moment among many in my life right now — right there with the journey of ministry for and with others.
The trailhead is where all journeys begin, and, if all goes well, it’s where they end, too. In the case of Jesus and his disciples, their journey began in Galilee as Jesus called out to fishermen to drop their nets and follow him — Jesus the bellwether as we talked about last week.
Jesus and his disciples traveled the countryside preaching, healing, and bringing people together. And then, after the pinnacle of events in Jerusalem that we remember each year during Easter, Jesus tells his disciples to go back to Galilee where they first met; back to the trailhead, to complete the journey and begin a new one.
The same is true for Moses — who famously doesn’t make it to the end of his journey — he looks over the mountaintop to the land of milk and honey and says I won’t get there with you — but I’ve brought you this far through faith.
May we together continue on Moses’s journey . . . on our own Journey this season of creation, in which we might go with God and see how far we will go by faith together.
Amen.
