Exodus 3:1-4 (Common English Bible)

Moses was taking care of the flock for his father-in-law Jethro, Midian’s priest. He led his flock out to the edge of the desert, and he came to God’s mountain called Horeb. The Lord’s messenger appeared to him in a flame of fire in the middle of a bush. Moses saw that the bush was in flames, but it didn’t burn up. Then Moses said to himself, Let me check out this amazing sight and find out why the bush isn’t burning up.

When the Lord saw that he was coming to look, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!”

Moses said, “I’m here.”

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I think that South Dakota is a fascinating state through which to drive. If you are driving east to west, say traveling along interstate 90, you enter South Dakota near Sioux Falls and continue for 6 hours until you cross into Wyoming.

The eastern part of the state from the border to the Missouri River has very much an upper Midwest landscape full of flat land and farms and crops and trees. But as you cross the Missouri River at Oacoma, you immediately enter into a vastly different landscape. From the Missouri River westward, South Dakota is designated as high plains desert.

It is semiarid, it is windswept, there are very few trees for the 250 miles between Oacoma and the Black Hills, the landscape rolls with nooks and crannies everywhere and the vegetation is sketchy. Acreage is littered with spotty grass and some cactus. The most abundant vegetation is a variety of scrub bushes. Scrub bushes grow in some abundance in that rain deprived climate.

These scrub brushes in western South Dakota include several types of plants, which are classified as tumbleweeds.

According to Wikipedia, “A tumbleweed is a structural part of the above-ground anatomy of a number of species of plants. Once the plant is mature and dry, it detaches from its root or stem, and rolls due to the force of the wind.”

Tumbleweeds are abundant in plains and deserts where constant wind and the open environment permit rolling without prohibitive obstruction.

Tumbleweeds grow and as they mature they dry out. As they dry out they detach from their roots and just roll as the wind moves them.

While tumbleweeds have been romanticized in old western stories, they can actually be a nuisance. They can be plentiful to the point that they cause hardship as they can pile up and create all sorts of problems. Notice the pictures of tumbleweeds piling up outside somebody’s home on the front of the bulletin.

An AP news report originating in Mobridge, South Dakota in 1989, tells this story,

One morning, after hearing an unsettling wind throughout the night, people came out of their homes to discover that a number of houses in their town were buried, literally buried, in tumbleweeds. Some homes had only the roof sticking out.

During the night, 50+ mile an hour winds swept thousands of tumbleweeds into town covering roads, vehicles and houses.

People who could get out of their homes could not get out of their driveways, their cars were gone, buried under the tumbleweeds.

The town had been invaded by tumbleweeds.

The Mayor Darrell Bender said ″It’s developing into what could be a very dangerous situation, We need to use extreme caution. I warn people not to drive through those tumbleweeds because you can get buried and trapped in the mess.

Those that have homes that are covered up to their chimneys need to get those weeds cleared so they don’t start a fire.″

Removing the tumbleweeds was a difficult job. As one resident said,

″Nobody knows for sure what to do with them. You can’t crush them. All you can really do is just move them around.″

Tumbleweeds, common and plentiful and yet, full of intrigue.

Moses finds himself in the high plains desert outside of Egypt. He had had a fit of rage, and killed a Egyptian Overseer for mistreating a fellow Hebrew. Once word got out that Moses had killed an Egyptian, he is forced to flee into the desert.

In the desert by a well, he meets a family. He marries a daughter and goes to work for the father tending his sheep and goats. He has been shepherding in this exile for many, as many as 40, years when ...

One day he has the flocks up in the hill country, in the desert.

He looks down the way, and the sees a sight that he has not seen before. A scrub bush, whether it’s still attached to its roots or just a tumblin’, we don’t know, catches fire. This is not the unusual occurrence. In the high temperatures of the desert, dried out bushes would just ignite from the heat and burn up quickly.

It is a common site. But what catches Moses’ attention is that the bush doesn’t just burn up, but remains in full flame. It keeps burning for so long that Moses finds himself walking toward it to see what is causing it to stay aflame. The dried out tumbleweed should have flashed out in just a moment, but it didn’t.

As Moses comes close to the bush, he hears a voice.

The Voice simply inquires, “Moses Moses.”

And Moses replies “I’m here.”

Stories told about settlers in South Dakota and Wyoming include a condition labeled Prairie Madness, wherein people begin hearing voices in the ongoing, never ceasing wind. Perhaps Moses is wondering if the voice he hears is a real voice or just a wind projected auditory hallucination.

But then the voice declares itself to be God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whose name is Yahweh, “I am who I am.” God speaks to Moses and tells Moses that Moses is about to be a hero as he will, after centuries of slavery, lead the Hebrews out of Egypt on toward freedom.

The scripture adds an interesting element to the story, it is only when Moses pays attention to the bush, and starts to move toward it, that God begins to speak. Perhaps, if Moses had just walked away from the bush, he would never have heard the voice. But Moses is in position to hear the voice of God in the bush because Moses is willing to listen to a bush, an ordinary common scrub bush that might soon be rolling away.

There is nothing extraordinary about the source of the voice of God, except that it is so ordinary. And yet, Moses is ready to listen.

I believe we all have burning bush moments, times when we hear the voice of God and sense the presence of God, and if we will listen and discern that voice and presence of God, we just might be invited to embark on new paths of discovering faith.

I am also convinced that sometimes we have burning bush moments, but we turn away because it seems so ordinary. Just a bush burning in the desert. I wonder about all the adventures I have missed, because I saw the bush and turned away.

A question to ponder- Where have burning bushes sprung up in your past? Please realize that your reflection on this question might itself be another burning bush.

How has God spoken to you?

In what mundane every day experiences has God called your name?

Through the voice of a child,

In the complaints of the broken,

In a sentence that is hidden in a paragraph that is found in the middle of an ordinary book,

Through a verse of Scripture that you have read 1000 times before, but suddenly, it speaks new truth to you,

In a line from dialogue in a movie,

In the quiet still small voice of prayer,

Has God spoken...

In a lyric from a song,

As you hold that tiny cup of juice,

Through a conversation with a good friend,

As you march in the street, stand up for justice, stoop down to console the hurting,

As you wrestle with God over the tough realities of life,

Where has God revealed Godself to you. . .

On the trail, as your pedal, as you swim your laps, as you do your yoga stretches,

Through the booming thunder as you sit in the basement during a Tornado warning,

In the kindness of a stranger,

In the kindness you show a stranger.

What is your tumbleweed?

Be forewarned, as Eugene Peterson said, “To eyes that see every bush is a burning bush.”

The fact that every bush can be a burning bush is significant in that God instructs Moses to take off his shoes because the ground around the burning bush is holy ground.

And that means, every moment of every day is ripe to be a holy moment wherein God speaks.

Brendan Manning speaks of this sacred potential thusly,”We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that God should bother to call us by name, bewildered that at this very moment, and at every moment, we are standing on holy ground.”

Amen.

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Pastoral Prayer/ Lectio Divina

from Isaiah 6

In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, the edges of his robe filling the temple. Winged creatures were stationed around him. Each had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew about.

They shouted to each other, saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heavenly forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory!”

The doorframe shook at the sound of their shouting, and the house was filled with smoke.

I said, “Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lord of heavenly forces!”

Then one of the winged creatures flew to me, holding a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has departed, and your sin is removed.”

Then I heard the Lord’s voice saying, “Whom should I send, and who will go for us?” I said, “I’m here; send me.”