Church of the Redeemer | Iglesia del Redentor

Exodus 3:1-15

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. 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. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 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.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 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. Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.”

Adria my wife and I were having lunch yesterday, it was her birthday, not that I take her out just on her birthday though. After we finished lunch, while having an espresso coffee, I suggested that it may be a good idea for her to take a good look at her life and talk to me about how she sees this journey together, I asked her that not without some trepidation. You see, three days before her birthday was also our 23^rdwedding anniversary.  I am not a liberty to discuss what she said, but I can tell you what I thought about my own journey.

As many of you know I was born in a single parent household, in communist Cuba, my mother a former Quaker –from whom took the uncomfortable habit of truth speaking- in the sixties with the triumphant Castro revolution became a Communist.  

One night, me a curious ten year old, coming back from the movies, I stepped in to our local Carmelite church open late that night. They were playing with fire in the dark, only much later I discovered that it was the Easter Vigil. That night my life changed forever, though I did not know it. I had what I believe now was an encounter with the Holy. Time and space concerns were suspended; everything was shinier, cleaner, clearer, and just crisp and focused.

Even today 44 years later, I can go back to that memorable night, sitting on a pew by the side of the altar, in that old baroque church of my neighborhood, not having a clue about what was happening, but feeling completely at home. You see, none of us is really a stranger to God. That very night God put me in on journey that has had many heartaches, reversals and failures. Challenges that normally will make my intellect and sense of self-preservation refuse to accept.  Yet, I am here, part of this motley crew of the Church of the Redeemer, a very proud member and pastor.

Karl Barth in his commentary to the Apostles Creed speaks of faith as Trust, Knowledge and Confession. He says that Christian faith is the gift of the meeting in which men [and women] become free to hear the word of grace which God has spoken in Jesus Christ in such a way that, in spite of all that contradicts it, they may once and for all, exclusively and entirely, hold to His promise and guidance.

I want to remind you that although I lay claim to the experience, for a good portion of my life, I had no idea where I was going, nor became a priest until my mid thirties. So my experience cannot be construed as what we normally understand by vocation. I was called, but out of that meeting of the Divine, I came away with the gift of faith. And that it is equally for all, for you and me.

We understand vocation in two very distorted ways; we think of vocation either form a secular stand point –as a career- or from a religious stand point -a calling to “monastic life” of sorts-.  Both are less than the biblical idea of vocation, of which Jesus’ raising Lazarus is a rich image [and a better image]. Vocation is about being raised from the dead, made alive to the reality that we do not merely exist, but are “called forth “to a divine purpose. To disentangle “vocation” from its religious and secular misunderstandings, and restore a sense of its original mystery and power, it should be disengaged from modern assumptions. One does not simply “choose” a course of action, but one responds to a summons—a summons that is often against the will of the one who is called into service. (A . J . C onyers)

In fact, Moses is summoned while performing his daily duties as a shepherd  and he is not ordained to sacred office, rather as a “layman” (if the term could be applied) he is called to be the leader of the nation. We have no scriptural evidence that this was a fulltime job, to use contemporary language.

God summons you to enter into a journey with Him, a journey that is life itself. In this encounter, He vows to be with you in all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly. You, not as the spoiled child of an all-powerful being, but as having a true friend and loving companion for the way, knowing that you will not use this special relationship to manipulate Him in meeting your needs, real or imaginary.

Moses saw the burning bush; Paul reminds the unruly Corinthians that the people of Israel were baptized in the cloud and the sea and they drank and ate from the hand of God during the Exodus. All of this language speaks to us of sacrament.

I was teaching liturgy in Cuba and my students asked me what was a sacrament, we were in winter and the seminary was in the highest hill of the city, I opened the great colonial window in my classroom to their protest, and I invited them to see the old city of Matanzas with its variegated structures and colors and people milling around, the bay, wide and green and the blue sky up above. I said, a sacrament is a window into the divine. It speaks to us in many different ways, its truth cannot be contained in words, human intellect cannot comprehend it, and rather we can only contemplate it. The Greek word for sacramentum is mysterion.

Father Francisco went to the Holy Land this past summer and I asked him to bring me a bit of water of the Jordan River, call me pathetic, but that is what I did. Ever since when we renew the water in our baptismal font, I pour secretly a bit of water from the River Jordan. I have asked myself why I do it, is it the water from the Jordan River special in any way? Is it necessary for the sacrament to be effective? I think the sacred attaches itself to places as it does to our hearts, it is subjective by becoming objective, concrete, pointed in someone or something, a fact that Moses founds about in this meeting with the one who is called transcendentally I am.

At our baptism we have been sacramentally put in touch with the Divine. I in fact we, all the baptized, have experienced the sacred on our own skin, we have been intimate with God, we all have been at Mount Sinai, we have been smeared on our forehead with the same shine that the Shekinah, the Glory of God put in Moses face. We all have crossed the Red Sea, We all have been at the banks of our River Jordan, we have heard the call of John the Baptizer to repent and turn to the Lord.

We have received our summons, we been risen from the dead and given a new life, a new heart instead of our heart of stone. When are we going to respond to our true vocation? Today? Tomorrow? Perhaps wait a little bit until things get clear with my wife/husband, with my job, with my life.  How about now, today, this morning?