Steve:

As we’ve been in this spring series on prophetic living, we’ve talked about prophetic living as seeking best as we’re able to feel the feelings and think the thoughts of God in our day and age, and to live as if that matters.

In some circles, though, the word prophetic has a narrower meaning, which is drawn from the source of the prophets of the Bible’s insights, when they claimed to hear and speak the voice of God. The claim or hope to hear the voice of God has both been one of the more wonderful and awful aspects of faith experience and faith communities for me.

 

On the one hand, to practice prayer as if it isn’t just a one way street, as if God can stir my imagination, activate ideas and thoughts and words I don’t experience as coming from me but from God - well, that’s been one of the sweetest and most powerful aspects of a life of faith for me. To feel that I’m never alone, and that there is a personal, spiritual force is with me, that is responsive to me, that cares. And yet on the other hand, running in circles where people think God is speaking to them has also meant on occasion that I’ve heard people confidently speak for God when I thought they were only working out their own fears and resentments. More than once, I’ve had a religious person with this sense of the prophetic go out of their way to curse me, literally curse me - like pronouncing bad things God will do to me and the people and work I care about.  And then they’ve told me that they were speaking on behalf of God against me, but you know they love me and will pray for me. Pastor life. Now I’ll say these experiences, which were odd and unpleasant didn’t seem to be of God at all for me.

 

I’ve also had people say wonderful things to me that they told me they thought God had spoken to them, encouraging things members of this church have shared with me. There was the time when I was 23 years old, and a stranger walked up to me and told me that when he saw me, he thought God spoke to him that I was to become a pastor. He was like 16 years early, but hey, it happened. That was cool.

 

But then on the other hand, I’ve had someone say to me, confidently, that God showed them that God was going to heal my hearing loss when they prayed for me, and they were wrong.

 

So, all to say, the talk about hearing God’s voice today has been mainly awesome for me, but it’s had its weird and uncomfortable sides too. How about for you, Michaiah? When did you come to this hope or faith or experience of people today feeling God was speaking to them?

 

MICHAIAH:

 

Just to react and give voice to what I think some of us are thinking hearing your stories, is that some of those experiences you had sound yucky and yah, powerful too.

 

So when did I come to experience the feeling that God is speaking? If you will, I’d like to expand the term “hearing” from God before launching into my history and perspective, just  because that word “hearing” lends us toward a sensory experience or particular mode of communication.

And I’d like to swap or replace that word with “experiencing God.” It’s not a perfect word either, but “experiencing”, or “perceiving” or “recognizing” the presence of God, will more broadly capture our various ways of knowing God.

 

When I was young, there were times when people told me that I could perceive things about people’s lives that I hadn’t been told. People told me that this ability to notice and detect an event or particular difficult situation in someone’s life such as a struggle with an addiction or an affliction, was a spiritual gift. I was told that I had “discernment” and more specifically a gift of “discerning spirits”.

Good morning. We’re in a series called Prophetic Living and I’ll share from one of the prophets in the Bible, a book called Hosea. A quick Bible overview. Old Testament is made up for 39 books. It’s really a library rather than one book. It’s ordered loosely according to genre, Genesis being the origin accounts, then some law texts, and then we’ve got some history books, then some poetry which is often called wisdom books, like the psalms and proverbs, and then the rest are the Prophets. There are “major” prophets and “minor” prophets, not because Isaiah was so majorly cool but cause the book is long. Hosea is one of the minor prophets. 14 chapters. A quick tell-it-like-it-is. When I finally read this book in seminary, cause I never once read it before then although I grew up Christian, I was floored by the content, and since then have always wanted to preach on it. So when we decided to do a series on Prophetic Living, I was like, this is my time! To talk about a very weird book!

It’s a book that isn’t often mentioned in Sunday School, you’ll see why. And you know what, prophetic living can be kind of weird, as we’ve heard about that other Prophet Ezekiel past few weeks. He weird for sure. And that’s an aspect of prophetic living, kind of weird, out of the box. It can sometimes look very different from what’s normally accepted. And I think that’s kind of cool.

 

So let me read the text for us and see what this peculiar book might have, anything, to say to us today.

 

Hosea 1:2-11

2 When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” 3 So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

4 Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. 5 In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”

6 Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”), for I will no longer show love to Israel, that I should at all forgive them. 7 Yet I will show love to Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but I, the Lord their God, will save them.”

8 After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. 9 Then the Lord said, “Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for you are not my people, and I am not your God.[b]

10 “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’ 11 The people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together; they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.[c]

 

You see why we don’t read this in Sunday School. Go marry a promiscuous woman. And in fact, there are a lot of parts of the Bible we don’t read for kids, but for adults either. I mean, talk about biblical marriage, there’s this one, and Abraham with his wife Sarah and Hagar the maidservant who bore him a son. And many other marriages in the Bible that is FAR from our culture and tradition, or norms of our days, or even their days frankly.

 

So let me say a few things right off the bat about this text. First of all, it’s a story and it’s a metaphor. It’s set in a time long ago with ancient cultural context. It’s also provocative. So I just want to say that, if any of this is triggering or offensive to you for any reason, a difficult topic, please feel free to step out and take care of yourself. You know your needs best.

We’re about half way through our spring series on prophetic living, where we look at the lives and words of some of the great ancient prophets from the Bible and try to see what it looks like to live boldly, wholeheartedly as if what we hope to be true about God is real. So far we’ve talked about speaking encouragement and affirmation as people who are learning to love a God who speaks life to us. We’ve talked about looking for and magnifying deep, inner beauty as a way of honoring a beautiful God who loves shaping beautiful stories among us. And we’ve talked about learning to ask for help, in a world where a good God is glad to help us and to to shape communities of mutual help.

Maybe the most memorable thing I’ve heard so far, though, was Ivy’s description last week of prophets as people who burn stuff down and then die. I listened to Ivy quoting her kid about prophets as people who burn stuff down, and I thought - we like people these days who burn stuff down, don’t we?

 

Dramatic, angry people with a serious beef are in.

 

On both sides of the aisle, we’re voting more for politicians who promise to burn stuff down. And in that, the US isn’t taking the lead, but following something of a global trend. Demagogues who channel popular anger against a common enemy are in right now, in many places in the world. Burning it down is trending.

 

Even in fiction, we have Game of Thrones coming to a close tonight. I actually haven’t watched a single episode, but I read some of the books, and I ask my wife to give me all the spoilers now, and I gather that last week, even that universe chose to give us a leader who decides to burn it down.

 

At some level, this is in fact what prophets do. And it’s why we’re both drawn to them and also kind of frightened by them. Through the pages of the Bible’s great prophets, we get lots like this, from Amos, who spoke to the Northern half of ancient Israel, in the 8th century BC.

 

Amos 2:6-8 (CEB)

6    The Lord proclaims:

   For three crimes of Israel,

       and for four, I won’t hold back the punishment,

   because they have sold the innocent for silver,

           and those in need for a pair of sandals.

7     They crush the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,

       and push the afflicted out of the way.

   Father and son have intercourse with the same young woman,

       degrading my holy name.

8     They stretch out beside every altar

       on garments taken in loan;

   in the house of their god they drink

       wine bought with fines they imposed.

 

Here are some of the many fiery words of the prophet Amos, saying not just, “Burn it down,” but God is gonna burn it down.

 

For three crimes of Israel, and for four, I won’t hold back the punishment. So which is it? Three or four? Just how many crimes?

 

That’s not the point. It’s a poetic device in Hebrew for a list - to say, there are so many things coming. Can we even count them all? It’s two, no three, no, maybe four - so many crimes. And not just crimes against law, but crimes against humanity, crimes against justice, crimes against decency.

 

Economic exploitation, sexual exploitation, religious practice that instead of coming to grips with these problems, just papers them over.

 

Amos calls out ot the nation and says: You are sick. And unless you change, unless you reckon with your sickness, you’re gonna get it.

 

Burn it down, Amos says. God doesn’t want to prop up a system,

Good Morning!  What a joy and honor it is to be here with you, together this morning. I’m Ivy and with nervous delight I'm excited to share some thoughts with you this morning, around this series that we are in right now, called Prophetic Living.

I was talking with one of my kids about this idea of prophetic living this week— what does prophetic living actually mean?  It was a conversation more for me than a quiz to my child! And some point in our conversation, I rolled prophetic living back a bit to focus on what a prophet is. What can we notice about people we regard as prophets?  Their characteristics? What they did? And my child said, “Oh yah, prophets are people who light things on fire and then die.”

I laughed and thought about the truth and accuracy in that statement.

And the story of perhaps the craziest of prophets, Ezekiel, came to mind. One of the many odd and strange things he did was when he used a sword to shave off his beard, dividing his hairs into thirds. He set one third on fire. He scattered another third around the city and stabbed it with his sword. He threw the remaining third into the wind. And then Ezekiel took the few hairs he saved and sewed them into his clothing—burning some of those hairs too—and a fire will spread to all of Israel. (Ezekiel 5).

This was a wild, ridiculous move of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was trained in the Jewish priesthood and Jewish priests were commanded by God not to shave their heads, as the pagan priests did.  And so for Ezekiel this was not only a bold, counter-cultural move, but one that symbolized the truth of how God would move—how he was going to preserve part of Israel as his chosen people.

I just think—wow! Prophetic living, there you go. And I look out at all of you guys with beards and I think—I don’t know? Who’s to say that picture of prophetic living is completely off the table?  Maybe on your way home today, you should stop and pick up a sword somewhere!

Really though, Ezekiel’s crazy move aside, I think there is something to this sentiment of prophetic living—being a way of living that sets things ablaze, that may cause a combustion of our hearts and our lives, in a way that makes way for new miracles of rebirth and of new creation that God is doing right in front of us?  And how do we get to be a part of that?  How do we get to tap into what God is doing here and now, and step out with imagination, with action, embodying a new reality for ourselves and the people around us and for the next generation?

I’ve been a part of an experience here in our community, just as of late called Unpack. It’s a place created for people who have been particularly hurt and wounded by the church and who are seeking a spot of safety to let these truths hit the air.  We spent 6 weeks doing just that—letting the  truth of pain and the truth of one’s story, full of emotions and doubt, hit the air in the hopes that the power that hurt had would be released in that holy space of speaking truth with others . The only agenda we had was to not have an agenda—to create safe space without judgement, without a need to FIX or resolve, or to rescue. And the last week we all engaged in a burning ceremony.

I invited everyone to call out and write down the lies that had woven into their stories—about who they should be, or who God should be to them... And then also asked everyone to call out and write down a hope, a value—something they still believed could be true, even if they couldn’t see it as a present reality, but could name it as something they didn’t want to let go of or  sacrifice as they moved forward to the days to come.

And then we burned it all.

And I thought, my gosh, no one is shaving their beards over here, but these people are fearless truth-tellers (that calls out lies), and fearless hopers,

Last year a leader in the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization asked me if I would convene a group of clergy to advocate for at-risk immigrant families. We were going to be part a national effort to try to keep families together. We’ve all learned about children and parents being separated at our Southern border, we’ve seen pictures of these kids in detention, we’ve heard stories of their trauma. It’s been heart-breaking! And our hope was to highlight that this is not just a border issue. That immigrant families all around this country, in our city included, risk being separated. Particularly when you have citizen children of a parent or parents who are undocumented, well, we have millions of these kids whose families live in fear.

Getting involved in this cause, I discovered that for many people of faith, there are some common convictions we share. Regardless of our political affiliations or whatever we think about immigration policy, we feel there is something sacred about families, and about children’s rights to be with their family. And many of us - Christians, Jews, Muslims I’m working with - people of other faiths as well - think God expects us to treat immigrants with dignity and decency and honor, again whatever our views are on policy.

But I also discovered that sometimes we say yes to things we have no idea how to do. I’m a pastor, not a legal or political expert, but these past six months, I’ve been in conversations with national community organizers, with immigration and constitutional lawyers, with aids to high ranking politicians. I’ve been trying to do the good work I think Jesus is calling me to do, without needlessly offending any of you or anyone else in my life. And now and then, I’ve felt like I am out of my element.

I felt this particularly when I was with our GBIO clergy team preparing for a meeting with our state’s attorney general. We were strategizing about a big ask we were going to make of her, and wondering just how best to do that. And I thought: what am I doing, tying to advocate to our state’s top law enforcement leader in an area that she and her team know so much more than I do, and an area they care a lot about. Who am I to ask them to do more?

But then one of my colleagues reminded me that as people of faith, we have the opportunity to do this rather unique thing, which he called speaking prophetically - speaking in public as if what we hope to be true of God, is in fact true. Connecting the big, timeless hopes we have about God to timely reality.

And this call to speak prophetically gave us focus and courage as we prepared for our meeting with the attorney general, and as we’ve started to work on the follow-up to that meeting, after it didn’t go quite as we’d expected.

To speak and to live prophetically is not just the business or calling of religious leaders or people with faith expertise. It’s an opportunity that we all have.

As people seeking to practice Jesus-centered faith, we do that in a prophetic tradition. Prophets are people who try to feel as God feels, and to connect the heart and mind of God to our present reality. The Hebrew Scriptures, the Bible’s Old Testament is full of books of prophecy - collections of writings from the several hundred years before the birth of Jesus, where inspired people try to speak for God in their age, and to live in their embodied action as if God is present and relevant.

Sometimes this is really weird. The prophet Ezekiel for instance might represent the pinnacle of weird prophetic living. We did a little series in Ezekiel a few years back - it was fun. One of my colleagues was like - I don’t know, Ezekiel seems to belong in an institution more than in my Bible. Which might be part of the point - God can speak anywhere, through anyone.

Anyway, Ezekiel is trying to come to terms with the end of the spirit...

Well, again, a very Happy Easter to all of you! It is a joy to be celebrating this day with each of you. And it’s my joy to share a few words about the events and message of Easter even for downcast people of certain doom. Let me start by praying for just a moment.

 

Well, it is again so good to be here with you this week. Last Sunday, my daughter Julianna and I were away at my friends’ church in Pittsburgh. It’s a much more formal situation there - there are robes and choirs and an enormous organ - lots of pomp, lots that is beautiful. But I am also very glad to be home with my community, my family, at Reservoir.

 

I was in Pittsburgh because I was on a college tour with my daughter, visiting a few schools around the northeast. And I have got to say I am so proud of her. You know, as parents, you send your kid - soon your young adult out into the world - whether you’re sending them off to higher education or to their first full-time employment, or to any other first adult set of experiences, there’s so much to be excited about, but wow, also so many fears hiding inside that transition. What if this or that awful thing happens? What if my kid fails to launch well into adult life? We worry, and kids, I know you think we don’t need to worry so much, and parents of older kids, you’ve told me that we need to get our stuff together, because the worries of a parent don’t stop - they can just go on and on through life.

 

Still, this is a unique season in the life of a parent, and it’s easy to worry. But wow, as I listened to my daughter’s questions she was asking, and heard her reflections on what she is and isn’t ready for, and watched her start to make choices about her future, I thought - she is so ready for what is next, and I’m really, really proud of her.

 

All this took me back to myself when I was turning 17, and when I was getting ready to leave home. In my case, I too was heading off to to a college, but where my daughter was asking about class sizes, and athletic programs and educational philosophy, I was more like…. will anyone take me, and where was it sunniest when I visited campus? I knew next to nothing about colleges. I tell my kids about this and they wonder: Dad, were you really that naive? And I say: yes, I was.

 

I headed off to school hopeful but without a clue, and then everything fell apart.

 

I decided to transfer colleges during my first weekend away from home. And it only got worse from there.

 

I was shocked by campus life, by how boozy it was, by how wealthy everyone seemed to be, and by how little I knew about finding my way forward. I thought college life would be this idyllic intellectual, feel-good experience, and I was disappointed by what I found and wanted out.

 

I had also become an avid churchgoer during high school, and so I tried out a few churches in this college town. One of them I went to had a  Vietnam vet in full uniform preaching in front of a big American flag. And I don’t know, maybe it was Veteran’s Day weekend and I can get behind supporting our veterans of course. But this one was preaching about the greatness of America more than anything about God, and his sermon peppered by anti-commie racial slurs. That was not was I looking for, and so I was downcast about church, and I got up in the middle of service and walked away.

 

Leaving home, by myself, I also for the first time came face to face with the pain and the problems I carried around. I didn’t know it yet, but I’d need a therapist, and I’d need some serious coming to terms with myself, and I didn’t know how to do that. So I wasn’t just leaving behind my dream of college, I wasn’t just leaving church behind,

Good morning, my name is Lydia. I’m one of the pastors here and it’s my honor to share the Word with you today. Let me read for us the Scripture text, pray, and get us started. The reading today comes from John 12:12-13 and John 19: 1-6 and 14-16.

John 12:12-13

12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Blessed is the king of Israel!”

John 19: 1-6, 14-16

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3 and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.

4 Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” 5 When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”

6 As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”

But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”

14b“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.

15 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”

“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.

“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

 

Let’s pray

Loving God, Our crucified Lord, We pray that we may have the eyes to see and the ears to hear your Word this morning. Spirit of God descend here now. And would you reveal yourself to us, your deep sacrificial love for us, that we may see and experience your comfort and compassion in our lives today, we pray, in Jesus Name Amen.

So, I was driving around Oakland, CA one day. I stopped to get some gas, and while I was filling up, this beautiful car pulls up, a fixed up low rider, shiny with the pastel purple coat of paint, rims and all, and the license plate read, “The Reverend”. The driver comes out of the car, dressed real nice, sharp sunday best, and I said, “Nice ride Reverend!” I had just gotten ordained so I’m like, yeah, pastors, so I walked over and said, “So you’re a pastor?” And he said, “Yup” and named the church nearby. And I said, “I’m a pastor too. Man, I wish my church was cool with me having a nice car like that. Korean churches especially, (I knew this because I was raised as a pastor’s kid in Korean immigrant churches), they love to see a pastor suffer for the Lord. I feel like black churches have some respect for their pastor, you know?” And he laughed and said, “Oh you know folks, they will glorify you, and then, they will crucify you. Like they did to our Lord.” They’ll glorify you and they’ll crucify you. That is what folks do. The human mob mentality. And this is the case yes, for Jesus and his time on this earth.

We’ve been journeying through the season of Lent with the theme of Wild Places, wilderness places of doubt, exile, and uncertain in between spaces. Places where God might surprisingly show up and meet us in the wilderness. We’re reaching the last few weeks of the season, today being Palm Sunday with Jesus’ Triumphant Entry to Jerusalem, and it takes us to the rest of the Holy Week to Good Friday, to the Crucifixion and to Easter Resurrection. So these last few days, there’s a lots packed in here. And today, Palm Sunday starts out with Hosanna! And Glory! But it is the beginning of the end. Jesus’ last few stretches, as he journeys into his own wilderness,

So we’re half way through our celebration of Lent this year. Lent is again the 40 days before Easter in which churches have traditionally devoted time and energy to the forming of our inner lives and our connection and devotion to Jesus. This has included breaking rhythm and letting go in different ways - fasting from food or practicing more generosity. And it’s included different types of spiritual formation experiences. For your personal use, we’ve got a guide you can use five days a week - those are out on a table in the dome behind you and online. And then together we can look forward to next Sunday as we skip the sermon and share what one of our participatory liturgies - music and storytelling with the chance to react and interact as we sit in small groups with others. I hope you’ll join us next week for that.

Today, though, as part of this year’s Wild Places theme, I want to talk about doubt. We’ll have 3 different Petes speak to us - kind of a fun coincidence there - but we’ll start with one of the Bible’s ancient poems of prayer in the Psalms. Let me read the start of Psalm 77 for us.

Psalm 77 (CEB)

I cry out loud to God—

   out loud to God so that he can hear me!

2 During the day when I’m in trouble I look for my Lord.

   At night my hands are still outstretched and don’t grow numb;

       my whole being refuses to be comforted.

3 I remember God and I moan.

   I complain, and my spirit grows tired. Selah

4 You’ve kept my eyelids from closing.

   I’m so upset I can’t even speak.

5 I think about days long past;

   I remember years that seem an eternity in the past.

6 I meditate with my heart at night;

   I complain, and my spirit keeps searching:

7 “Will my Lord reject me forever?

   Will he never be pleased again?

8 Has his faithful love come to a complete end?

   Is his promise over for future generations?

9 Has God forgotten how to be gracious?

   Has he angrily stopped up his compassion?” Selah

It’s interesting to experience doubt as a pastor. Teddy Hickman-Maynard talked about this last week, as he shared how troubling it was to be raised in a religious home, so full of confident faith, only to have that unravel on him as a young adult. He described his torment as he threw his Bible across the room in frustration, full of doubt, even as he continued to try to fake it as a preacher and a pastor - to teach and preach what he no longer believed.

I read a survey once that talked about the experiences pastors have on Sundays, and how many of us feel we have to fake it before the church. It was a lot of us.

Now for reasons I think I’ll get to, this has not been my experience as your pastor. But I can see how it happens. Life is long, we all suffer, but some pastors get the vibe that churches want a leader whose life is untroubled and victorious, blessed by God, they might say. If that’s the case, the pastor fakes it through personal pain and trouble. And then even more pastors feel their churches want a teacher and a spiritual model who is without error or doubt, who has certain confidence in all God’s truth and goodness. That’s a high bar, and if you think that’s what is expected of you in your job, or in your identity, than of course you’re going to need to fake it.

Because we all doubt.

I’ve had all kinds of doubts. I won’t catalog them all for you, but I have noticed they are stirred up unpredictably. I’ve faced the death of some very dear people in my life and had deep confidence in God’s care for their spirit, and in their coming life in the age to come. But there have been times when someone not close to me has died,

24 So Moses went out and told the people what the Lord had said. He brought together seventy of their elders and had them stand around the tent. 25 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took some of the power of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied—but did not do so again.

26 However, two men, whose names were Eldad and Medad, had remained in the camp. They were listed among the elders, but did not go out to the tent. Yet the Spirit also rested on them, and they prophesied in the camp. 27 A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

28 Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses’ aide since youth, spoke up and said, “Moses, my lord, stop them!”

29 But Moses replied, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” 30 Then Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Numbers 11:24-30

Exodus 2:15 - 3:4

15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.

18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”

19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”

20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”

21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom,[c] saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”

23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

3Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

We’re talking about Wild Places, in this season of Lent. Places of wilderness, that might be an inbetween place, a lost space, uncertain, null, negative space, or even of discomfort or pain. But also Wild Places are places of discovery, of new space, surprised by what’s found in the barren. Most of this season we’re engaging in how we end up in wild places that we might not choose, anxiety, doubt, exile, or suffering. But before we go there, there are some wild places that we might choose to go to. Some wilderness that we may be surprised to lean into. A place that we might not have thought we wanted or needed, but jump into the depths of the wild.

Because maybe, for some of us, things might've been green pasture for the most part. For many of us, our upbringing, our time in place and culture, has pretty sheltered us from the rugged wilderness. For a lot of us, here, in United States, in this day and age, in this area, we’ve had the privilege of being safe and protected, and maybe haven’t really experienced a wilderness of sorts. I’m not saying that there has been difficulties, or struggles. We all have each our own. But the reality is that for all of us, it is sometimes easy to be left to our own communities and cocoons that keeps us blind to some wild places others may experience. If we’re not intentional about moving towards the edges of those known comforts, we just might miss out on the whole of human experience that is vast, deep, and wide.

 

Here's one way to put it causally. This may be why people of privilege love to travel. #wanderlust and backpacking and just getting lost in a new city. As someone who’s moved around alot and uprooted every few years that sounds horrible and stressful to me. But for some folks, maybe born and raised in one place, going outside of their comfort zones gives them a new perspective and new light into the world that you just can’t experience when you stay. Like the movie Lost in Translation,