01 August 2010
Looking for Hands to Use
08/07/10 07:58 AM Filed in: From the Pastor
Imagine, if you can, an eighty year old man, a dark weatherbeaten sheepherder, standing barefooted by a burning bush in the middle of the desert, hiding his face in his hands like a modest maiden. That’s Moses in Exodus, chapter three. He’s barefooted because the voice out of the midst of the bush told him he was on holy ground, and bare feet were in order. Hiding his face was his own idea, and a good one, for what man among us dares to look the Almighty in the eye.
In moments like that, when it’s just you and God and nobody else, every selfish act, every disobedience, every failure returns with shameful clarity. And yet, God did not chasten Moses, did not chide him. Instead He called him, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:10)
Moses responded, “…Who am I…?” (Exodus 3:11) Which was his way of saying, “Don’t you remember who I am? I’m a wanted man, a murderer. Forty years ago I tried and I failed. I’m flattered God, but you’ve got the wrong man. I’m not qualified.”
And Moses was right – as far as he went – but he missed the point. God’s call was not so much the confirmation of Moses gifts but a testimony of His faithfulness. His call is always a sovereign act, independent of our personal goodness. As Gene Bartlett puts it, “…’the audacity of preaching,’ is found in the awareness that the person who preaches is, himself part of the guilt and need to which he speaks.”
Maybe Alexander Irvine said it best in his novel “My Lady of the Chimney corner.” The “lady” goes to comfort a neighbor whose son had died and she says, “...God isn’t a printed book to be carried around by a man in fine clothes, not a cross dangling at the watch chain of a priest God takes a hand whenever He can find it, and just does what he likes with it. Sometimes He takes a bishop’s hand and lays it on a child’s head in benediction, and then He takes the hand of a doctor to relieve pain, the hand of a mother to guide a child, and sometimes He takes the hand of a poor servant like me to give comfort to a neighbor. But they’re all hands touched by His Spirit, and His Spirit is everywhere looking for hands to use.”
As I mentioned in last week’s sermon, “Christ has no hands but ours.”
In moments like that, when it’s just you and God and nobody else, every selfish act, every disobedience, every failure returns with shameful clarity. And yet, God did not chasten Moses, did not chide him. Instead He called him, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:10)
Moses responded, “…Who am I…?” (Exodus 3:11) Which was his way of saying, “Don’t you remember who I am? I’m a wanted man, a murderer. Forty years ago I tried and I failed. I’m flattered God, but you’ve got the wrong man. I’m not qualified.”
And Moses was right – as far as he went – but he missed the point. God’s call was not so much the confirmation of Moses gifts but a testimony of His faithfulness. His call is always a sovereign act, independent of our personal goodness. As Gene Bartlett puts it, “…’the audacity of preaching,’ is found in the awareness that the person who preaches is, himself part of the guilt and need to which he speaks.”
Maybe Alexander Irvine said it best in his novel “My Lady of the Chimney corner.” The “lady” goes to comfort a neighbor whose son had died and she says, “...God isn’t a printed book to be carried around by a man in fine clothes, not a cross dangling at the watch chain of a priest God takes a hand whenever He can find it, and just does what he likes with it. Sometimes He takes a bishop’s hand and lays it on a child’s head in benediction, and then He takes the hand of a doctor to relieve pain, the hand of a mother to guide a child, and sometimes He takes the hand of a poor servant like me to give comfort to a neighbor. But they’re all hands touched by His Spirit, and His Spirit is everywhere looking for hands to use.”
As I mentioned in last week’s sermon, “Christ has no hands but ours.”