Text: Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; 4:10-17

I think many of you know that for the past 6 or so years I’ve been on the Pastoral Leadership Team of our conference. Our role is to discern and hold ministry credentials for the pastors and other ministers (like chaplains and spiritual directors) in our conference. So we read a lot of theological reflections and listen to a lot of sermons and see a lot of references. 

This week we welcomed a woman named Susan who was already ordained in another denomination into the Mennonite fold. She’d been a chaplain for many years and she is so wise and thoughtful and it was an honor just to listen and learn from her. Very different from the time we spend with brand-new pastors seeking ordination.

One of the roles that Susan played during her time as a chaplain was as a nursing school instructor, teaching about spirituality in the hospital setting. She shared that one of the things that she always told her students was, “You need to decide who you’re going to listen to and then pay attention.”

She meant this both in the care of patients and in the sense of finding a spiritual and moral grounding in the sometimes ethically complex world of patient care. For Susan, it was entirely clear that she is – and has always been – paying attention to how God is calling her and to the teaching and model of Jesus as her centering foundation. 

I was struck over and over as we talked with Susan that she embodied that idea of hineini. With every answer, it seemed like she was saying, here I am, focused and ready to listen. Read to respond.

In the stories we’ve had until now, that idea has been about the attention and focus has been about the human response to God or directed in relationship to another person. This story suggests that if we’re really paying attention, there will likely be consequences – that paying attention means there might be something asked of us that we’ll have to decide – are we going to follow through.

As a parent – and in the times when I’ve worked with youth or kids – I use that phrase, “Pay attention!” a lot. Kids (and not just kids) get distracted. But more often than not, when we say pay attention, it’s because we’re giving instructions or asking a question or engaging in a way that requires a response. 

That’s what happens to Moses. That’s what happens with God.

The story starts with the way God is attentive to people. God’s people, the Israelites, came to Egypt seeking relief from hunger and improved circumstances. But over the generations in Egypt, under a new and hostile leader who is threatened and fearful of their growing numbers, they are now oppressed and enslaved. They cry out and groan in lament and God pays attention.

That attention leads to a chain of events in which there is attention and then response and then intention and response:

Humans groan – God pays attention and hears.

God shows up in the wilderness – Moses pays attention and turns aside.

Moses turns aside – God calls him to be a leader.

Moses responds with reluctance – God provides Aaron and a promise of community and support and constant presence.

This interaction with God is a back and forth. Paying attention is not a one and done kind of deal. Moses’ curiosity about this odd bush – which, how long does he need to be paying attention to that bush before he realizes that it’s not being consumed? He must be pretty closely attentive to it to figure that out. To not just keep walking and moving his sheep along. 

But his curiosity draws him close enough to hear and respond with hineini – I’m here. I’m paying attention. And that allows him to hear God’s call on his life in a way that will change his life. We can’t be paying attention for God’s presence or God’s voice and then expect that God is not going to ask something of us on God’s behalf.

I actually think it’s kind of funny the way that it plays out in this story. God’s like, “I’ve seen the people,” “I know their pain,” “I’ve heard their cry,” I’ve come to rescue.” But then, “So you. Get going.” So compassionate, so demanding!

But I think we already know. God’s work on earth is done primarily through God’s people paying attention and responding on God’s behalf. 

Every week we light our peace candle and we pray for peace. We pray, hoping that God is paying attention, that God’s vision for a just peace is realized in our communities and in the world. But God is also expecting us to be paying attention. Expecting us to be enacting that vision of peace and compassion and wholeness and justice.

I think one of the things that frustrates me most about the ‘thoughts and prayers’ kinds of responses to tragic events like gun violence is the lack of action.  That’s probably the thing that bothers a lot of people. 

David Cross has a very funny bit in his comedy act. He says, “I would like to officially substitute, ‘casting spells and chanting’ in place of ‘thoughts and prayers.’ I’d love if we could make it, next time the twitter machine gets going and there’s a tragedy somewhere. You know, there’s 120 people die in a mass shooting, you’re like, ‘Just so you know, I’m casting spells and chanting for everybody’s soul.'”

If you are actually thinking about and praying for God’s intervention, for fewer gun deaths, for communities to experience less violence, then God might actually be inviting you to lead our communities beyond and out of enslavement to violence. Paying attention – including through prayer and meditation and thoughtful reflection – will probably require action.

Last week I talked about Jacob’s experience in the wilderness that had some parallel’s to Moses: an experience with God that was unexpected and mysterious and in which there’s this sudden realization that the place that you didn’t know was holy, is actually the dwelling place of God. Any place and every place is that.

That means that God can be encountered anywhere, everywhere and we should be paying attention for those encounters all the time. Which is terrifying! The idea that God could ask us to lead or serve or act in ways that might change our lives. Terrifying!

Moses thought so too. But God will not leave us alone – both in the sense that now that God has your attention, God’s probably going to keep talking until you respond. And in the sense that God will give us community. Moses didn’t want to talk? God’s like, I gotchu. And we see as his story continues, he also has his sister, his father in law, even a kind of board of elders who companion him in his work.

I see this happening in both in the work of the church and in other organizing work I do in the community. I will tell you it feel like nothing less than a miracle that the PTSA in my school that I thought was going to die is being revived. I was like a remnant board member ready to throw up my hands when a couple of people from the bigger PTA community asked me to hold on a little longer, to call a meeting, to talk to the school admins and low an behold, there are in fact people stepping up to lead. I wasn’t actually alone. 

I feel a little the same in the work with Mennonite Action. I do my little piece. We invite and people respond – because we do the work together, each offering what we can and God surrounds us with others who have our backs, who carry the work of proclaiming peace, teaching justice, together.

Friends, I pray that we may pay attention. Attention that responds ‘Here I am.” Attention that moves and acts and shares the movement and action with all others who are listening and responding to the call. Amen.

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