Exodus 3:11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
Things were working out pretty well for Moses. While the family of Jacob continued to work as slaves, mixing straw and mud into clay and drying the clay into bricks and stacking the bricks into buildings, Moses was living in a castle as part of the royal family with lots of money, food, power, and privilege.
But privilege and power can be like fire. A fire is powerful, but only temporarily. It feeds off of sticks and wood and twigs, consuming their energy. And when they are gone, so is the fire. And Moses’ privilege was like that fire. It was about to flame out.
Moses knew that his home had been built by slaves, and his life was sustained by their labor. And this was all the more awkward because the slaves were his own family members. Because while Moses was raised in a royal Egyptian family and wore Egyptian clothes and ate Egyptian food, he still was not actually Egyptian. He was the son of Jochebed, a member of the family of Jacob, a child the princess had saved from the Nile.
And sometimes, Moses would sneak away from the castle and see how his people worked and suffered and laughed and sang. They were enslaved, but they were more than slaves. They had traditions and culture and games and food and lives and stories. And sometimes he felt a little guilty for the life he lived and food he ate and the baths he took while the rest of his family worked. And he felt worse and worse about it until one day, when he saw a soldier whipping a slave for not working hard enough, Moses snapped.
“Leave him alone,” he shouted. “You want to fight, fight me.” And Moses shoved the soldier. The soldier stumbled, then stood and shoved Moses back. So Moses pushed him again, harder this time. And they fought, and Moses hit the soldier on the head, and the soldier fell to the ground dead. When Moses realized what he’d done, he covered his face and screamed.
Pharaoh already had every reason to doubt Moses’ loyalty. After all, he wasn’t really one of them. And murdering an Egyptian soldier to protect a slave would confirm all of Pharaoh’s worst fears. Moses had just given up his room in the palace. He’d surrendered his power and privilege in a single moment of passion. There was nothing for him to do but run for his life.
And so he ran straight out of Egypt and into the desert. And when his legs gave out and he could not run anymore, he walked. He walked further into the desert until he was too hot and thirsty to walk any longer. And then he crawled and crawled until he came to a place called Midian. There, he collapsed by a well and drank the most delicious water he’d ever tasted.
And like Isaac and Jacob, Moses found a new family at the well. They plucked him from the water hole like Pharaoh’s daughter had plucked him from the Nile, and they took him to their home. But this time, it wasn’t a palace or a comfy bed or a powerful family that Moses was carried into. There was hunger, hard work, and suffering. But there was also love, kindness and so much joy.
And there, Moses began a new, small, unimportant, unremarkable life. He was a nobody. He had no palace, no guards or courtiers, no waiters or servants. He was just a shepherd, but he was free. And even though he got sunburned from watching sheep in the hot bright sun, and his feet grew blistered and calloused, Moses loved his new life. He liked the work and the simplicity of it. And he liked the people. He even fell in love, got married, and started a family. And that could have been the end of Moses’ story, living the rest of his life as a shepherd in Midian.
But one day, Moses was watching sheep in a quiet valley by a normal, dusty mountain when he saw a light right above him in the foothills. The plants were on fire! He ran to put it out, but when he reached it, he saw the fire was different from any fire he had ever seen. It was bright and warm just like a normal fire, but the bush didn’t burn up. It was shining, radiating, beaming with flames, but it was also whole, and green, and bursting with life.
“Moses.” A voice echoed around the mountain, and Moses jumped. Who was here? How did they know his name? “Moses!” the voice called again, louder this time, singing out from the very sap of the bush.
“H-h-here I am,” he responded, trembling.
“Moses,” the voice thundered, “I am the God you heard about in the stories of Jacob and Isaac and Abraham. I am your father’s God, and your God. Wherever I breathe, the world becomes bright and holy.”
When Moses heard that, he threw off his shoes, covered his face, and hid in a corner behind some rocks. He thought God had come to destroy him. But he was wrong. God was mighty and powerful, but God did not hurt the bush, and he did not hurt Moses.
“Moses,” the voice said, a little more gently this time, “I have seen how the family of Jacob is suffering. They are miserable. How could they not be? But I am going to rescue them. The babies born today will never remember what it is like to be a slave. And Moses, you are going to help me.”
If Moses had been frightened before, it was nothing compared to how he felt now.
“Pardon me?” said Moses. “You must be mistaken. I’m not anybody anymore. I’m not powerful or important. The Pharaoh will not listen to me. I am an outcast. Beyond that, I’m not very charming or good-looking. I get nervous in front of people and mix up all my words. Nobody would follow me anywhere. I’m more of a back-row-helper kind of guy, not a lead-all-the-family-of-Jacob-out-of-bondage type of person.”
“What are you holding in your hand?” God asked.
Moses looked down. He held a gnarled bit of wood. It was his walking stick. He used it sometimes to prod the sheep in the right direction. “It’s just a stick,” he said.
“Throw it on the ground.”
Moses threw his stick on the ground, and it turned into a snake. Moses screamed and ran back into the corner.
“Pick up the snake by the tail,” said God.
Very carefully, Moses reached out and grabbed the snake’s tail, and it became a stick again. Moses rubbed his eyes.
“Child,” God said, “you are right. You are little, plain, and unimpressive. You are not powerful. And you were never powerful, not really. Neither is Pharaoh. But I am. And if I can turn a dusty old stick into a snake, then I can make you into a leader. I am already doing it. I have made your eyes and your mouth. I created your ears and your hands. I know every bit of you, and I know what you are capable of.”
But Moses shook his head. “Please, send someone else.”
“I am sending YOU,” God said. “Now, go already!”
And the bush burned brighter than ever, and Moses ran out of the cave and down the mountain and back to the camp and across the desert and all the way back to Egypt. He would become the deliverer of his people. But not alone. Never alone. He had been helped along from the moment he was born. His mother. The midwives. His sister. Pharaoh’s daughter. His wife. Her father. And just now, God was sending Moses’ brother to help him out. Help always seemed to come for Moses.
And Moses, who had grown up in the most privileged position in the most powerful empire in the world, had never felt as powerful as he did now. He was learning what true privilege was. It was not strength or money or fame, but family and friends. And he learned that true power is a different kind of fire. A fire that does not consume or eat up or burn away. And this fire is inside of every stick and bush and person. And when we see it, it is brighter and more marvelous than the sun. And nothing and no one is ordinary or plain or useless. And the world burns still with the power that created it, the power that sustains it from one second to the next, the power that is in all things and everyone. The same power that was in a bush, and in Moses, and in his stick, is also in you. And nothing can ever blow it out.
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