Sojourn
The Exodus story can be informative as we consider the ambivalent blessing of calling, the perceptive powers of strangeness, and the community of travelers on a spiritual path. This sermon was delivered on April 10, 2011.
I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true.
Moshe was tending his father-in-law’s sheep on the rocky mountainside. It was a day much like the one before it, warm and full of the sounds and smells of life. Outwardly, he looked like any other shepherd. You would never know that he had been raised in a palace far away.
This wasn’t Moshe’s first attempt at blending in. He was the son of a princess, yet he had been born to poor, Hebrew slaves. His Egyptian mother, Thermutis, arranged it so that Moshe could get to know his birth family. Whether visiting with the Hebrews or playing with Egyptian children, he always knew that there was something under the surface that made him different.
Moshe remembered the day he came to the defense of a Hebrew slave. He couldn’t maintain a quiet existence in Egypt after that, and fled to the desert. His temperament served him better in Midian. Moshe met his wife Zipporah when he defended her and her sisters from some ruffians at the local watering hole. Now he defended sheep from predators and rustlers. Shepherding was not as peaceful as he imagined it when he lived in the palace, but he learned to get along in his new surroundings, as he always did.
He named his first son Gershon, which means “stranger” or “sojourner.” Moshe was thinking about the lifelong experience of being an outsider, never quite like his birth family or his playmates or his wife’s relatives. Gershon would inherit some of that difference from his multicultural family.
Moshe thought about the various roles he had played in his life, all of the different places that had been home and yet not quite home. Out of the corner of his eye, flames on the hillside caught his attention. Moshe turned to look. He saw a bush that was on fire, yet not consumed by the flames. He heard a voice calling his name. Letting go of his lifetime of disguises, Moshe answered: “Here I am.”
This is the Passover story. This is a story about being called, about returning to a place and knowing it for the first time, about finding a way to journey with other travelers. Moshe, despite his reservations and self-doubts, follows the call and returns to Egypt. “Return” may be too strong a word; he sees and is seen differently once he gets back to Egypt. Yet the courage to say, “here I am,” and to learn with the Israelites to say “here we are,” is what brings them across the waters of change and into freedom. The ambivalent blessing of calling, the perceptive powers of strangeness, and the community of travelers may sound familiar to you as you consider your own journey.
Calling
I believe that all of us are called to something. Calling is not reserved for an elite few, preordained to success. For me, calling is a stark reminder to live congruently, to do what’s most important and in line with your values. In a way, calling demands that we recognize our own worth and the worth of others. Sometimes that means making big changes, or at least making plans and working toward that change.
The calling does not always come during happy times. I imagine that there are people who hear their calling while journaling in the garden at sunrise as doves coo overhead. That has not been my experience. No, the times when I notice calling are when something is out of whack and I finally have to drop something that’s not working for me. That’s the “here I am” moment, the realization of honesty.
Moshe answered “here I am” before he knew what would be asked of him. When the voice called out, he didn’t say, “who wants to know?” He didn’t have caller ID. He might have regretted that later, when he realized what he would have to learn in order to do what needed to be done. It’s a vulnerable feeling, to notice where we are and what’s going on beyond our defenses.
I was not prepared for that kind of honesty with myself when I was called to return five and a half years ago. I was in my office at the Sacramento church when my mother called. The building was made out of reinforced concrete and was terrible for cell phone reception, so I stepped outside to take the call.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said. Just from the tone of her voice, I wanted to run in two different directions, to comfort her and to hide. I vividly remember the dandelions on the grass in front of me, shining like tiny candle flames. “I have cancer,” she said. We talked about the diagnosis, and about how she was reluctant to share the news with other family members, and about her surgery dates. It was a brief conversation.
Under most circumstances, my mother and I would have done the same thing at that point. Buck up and figure out how to take care of someone else. With silence on the other end of the line, under the relentless blue sky, there was no one else who needed my attention. I had to figure out where I needed to be.
As it happened, I was facing some decisions in my work around that time. My position at the church was an experiment with a year-to-year contract. I had to decide if I wanted to try to renew the experiment for another year, or if it was time for me to look for a new ministry.
A few days later, I walked across the parking lot to the church office, thinking I needed to talk with the administrator about practical things like schedule and vacation days. As soon as I explained out loud what was going on, I had to admit that this was not business as usual. We were talking about life and relationships, not calendar items. I realized that I needed to learn to trust people on my team a little more. “Here I am.”
Our conversation about a brief East Coast trip hummed with the subtext of whether I would leave my position. “I’m not sure yet if I’m going to go,” I said. “Let’s assume that you are going to go, and see what that looks like,” she said. And she was right. I needed to seek out a new direction for my career, and I needed to come home. The church needed to experiment with other ministers, to test whether the position was strong enough for a transition.
And that’s what happened. The transition was good for us. Not easy, but good. I was able to spend the last two years of my mother’s life within driving distance. She wouldn’t have wanted me to abandon my career, and I didn’t. I had some terrific opportunities, leading up to the chance to be with you today, which I believe is exactly where I should be in this moment.
As an aside, I want to affirm that other people would have made different decisions in my place, and those decisions would have been right for them. Each one of us lives with a different set of gifts and limits, each one of us responds to a different call.
My point is that the stark realization of “here I am,” the realization that change is in order, comes to us in the difficult valleys as well as the heights of spiritual bliss. Our house band performed a song this morning that I think could be an allegory for this. Being called out of a situation can be painful, even if we’re headed for something better.
Deciding to be on a journey is hard, yet I believe it’s worth it. There comes a time when following the call is a more honest, soul-expanding choice than hanging on to the status quo. We can discover more of ourselves as we look and listen from the perspective of a stranger, and we can hope to find fellow seekers on the way. Calling begins with willingness to declare who and where we are, even before we fully understand where the calling might lead.
Perception
Moshe met his brother Aaron in the wilderness, and the two of them returned to Egypt to deliver the message of the Holy. The leaders of the Hebrew families thought liberation was a great idea at first.
Moshe and Aaron went to Pharaoh, and started their negotiations off small: a three-day pilgrimage to worship their God. Pharaoh was so angered that he ordered the slaves to make the same number of bricks per day, but they had to find the straw themselves.
The Hebrews scattered to gather straw, but they couldn’t keep up. The workers blamed the foremen, the foremen blamed Moshe, and Moshe complained to God.
“Why did you ever send me? Do something!” God gave Moshe words of history and identity to share. The Hebrews “would not listen to him. Because of their cruel slavery, they had reached the depths of despair.” (Exodus 6:9)
“If the Israelites do not listen to me, how will Pharaoh listen to such a halting speaker as me?” Nevertheless, God gave Moshe and Aaron their commission, and back to Pharaoh they went, again and again, until the people left Egypt.
I can relate to Moshe’s complaint. “Why me? I’m not really part of this. Why would anyone listen to a poser like me?” The feeling of being an impostor is compelling, especially when we see ourselves as being a bit out of place. Moving from city to country or vice-versa, transgressing borders of culture and class, or even just getting through the day with a calm exterior during an inner crisis can all bring up feelings of being not-enough.
This is one of the risks of returning home as a stranger, yet it’s also one of the gifts. A traveler can perceive some of the things that have become part of the background for others. The journey is demanding, bringing up lots of useful information about what we have to learn, and also information about what we have to give.
Moshe, despite all his complaining, is able to see the unreasonableness of forcing workers to make bricks without supplying the materials. He seems to understand that this push back is part of the system of oppression. The Hebrews see it as the consequence of over-reaching, they don’t seem to be able to see the big picture because they have been so worn down. Of course Moshe doesn’t feel up to the task. He has more to learn and more to do. He needs Aaron’s help. He needs the community to change their thinking. He needs more practice speaking truth to power.
Back at the burning bush, when Moshe asked what he should say when the Israelites ask for the name of the Holy, the voice answered, “I am that I am. Tell them that I AM has sent you to them.” At least, that’s how it’s translated in the Revised English Bible (Exodus 3:14). In his book, Understanding the Bible, John Buehrens says the name could also be translated as “I will be what I will be,” or “I am the one who brings into being.” It seems that this is a sacred voice of becoming, of process and growth. In other words, the spirit of life.
I’ve heard it said that God does not call the qualified, God qualifies the called. A more humanist way of saying this would be that understanding the quest does not give us everything we need to complete it, but understanding may provide the strength and motivation to build skills and find companions as we accomplish the task together. We can be worthy AND in need of more learning and growing to complete the task in progress.
When I was getting ready for seminary, my minister told me about how every member of her first-year seminary class, during the first individual advising appointment of the year, said something like, “I think the Student Affairs Committee made a mistake. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m just going to gather up my things and quietly withdraw.” With the help of compassionate listening, most of the students talked themselves out of it.
I was a relatively new Unitarian Universalist, and my undergraduate degree had been more professional than academic, so I spent a couple of years brushing up before I started seminary. I took a couple of classes on the historical and literary aspects of the Bible, plus a class on mysticism in world religions. I studied Thoreau’s Walden until my eyes were squinty, figuring everybody else in my seminary would already be experts on the Transcendentalists. So I thought I was prepared and could avoid that feeling of being not-enough. Nope.
Once I met my classmates, I could not fathom what I had been thinking. They were bold! Stylish! Experienced! They seemed ready for a new chapter in their lives. Somehow, I managed to hang on. I discovered that, like the classes that had come before, all of us experienced that feeling of not-enough-ness. Once we had built enough trust to reveal what we thought were our inadequacies, we could loan each other our strengths. Someone who was good with music could teach someone who was familiar with liberation theology. That person, in turn, could comfort someone who had talent with designing worship spaces, who sought the advice of someone who had experience with the District Board.
Perhaps my mistake was looking ahead to what I thought I would need two steps down the road, instead of returning to the “here I am.” Mary Oliver writes, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”
The stranger sees what is not yet complete, including in the self. The sojourner perceives what is out of balance but is thought to be “normal.” Understanding that the journey is not the destination, that there is more to learn, helped to put me in relationship with others. Making myself at home as a stranger helped me hear the call like Mary Oliver’s “wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
Wandering Together
Following a call seems like a breaking away, yet I think the journey is more about realigning relationships, finding a “place in the family of things.” It seems to me that a community of travelers helps us stick with it when the call is faint. Just as my classmates and I found in seminary, banding together with people who hear their own variations in that call means a bigger, stronger body of wisdom and experience.
My retelling of Exodus today has focused a lot on one character, but it’s really an ensemble piece. This is especially clear to me once the people get across the sea and out into the wilderness. The Israelites and Moshe are trying to figure out how to be the people of God, trying to figure out how to work together despite their different perspectives on what it means to be free. None of them get it right all the time.
Moshe is impatient, destroying the tablets when he gets frustrated. He embellishes the messages from God a little bit. He scolds when he should comfort. The rest of the community is famously prone to doubt, with the golden calf episode being the most famous example.
One of the things I like about the Hebrew Bible is that it depicts flawed heroes and heroines, people who struggle. That’s the meaning of the word Israel, people who struggle with God. It’s good to know that doubt and challenge are ancient traditions. Yet so is wandering together, somehow finding a way forward when the voice of the Holy calls to different people in different ways.
UU minister Barbara Merritt has something to say about our various ways of journeying in her essay, “Migrating Souls” (from Amethyst Beach: Meditations). She writes:
Unitarian Universalists have gotten one thing completely right. We are right about ‘diversity.’ We say that all of God’s children are welcome. We don’t ask that everyone believe the same thing or walk the same walk. We affirm the unique truth of each individual’s experience. We have a deep trust that each soul will come to truth in its own time and in its own way.
I know this theology is right because it corresponds so clearly to the reality observable in the natural world. God is obviously deliriously in love with diversity …
A marvelous documentary entitled Winged Migration finally drove home for me just how right our insistence on diversity is. You might think that birds migrating—sometimes just a few hundred miles, sometimes over 12,000 miles from the Arctic to the Antarctic—would all flap their wings in a similar manner and arrive according to the same schedule. You would be wrong.
Close camera work reveals that some of the ducks have to flap their wings to strenuously and rigorously that they look like they will have heart attacks before they have crossed the lake. Other birds, notably pelicans, are so adept at riding the wind currents that they look like they float rather than fly. Some birds are graceful, especially the storks—when they walk they have the grace and elegance of ballerinas. Some birds land on water with a smooth and seemingly effortless agility. And then other birds seem to just hope for the best in their rapid descent as they crash-land, dropping their legs like stumbling clowns …
Remember these extraordinary birds the next time you find yourself in profound disagreement with another soul who sees the world quite differently than you do. If you are having a day that appears to be going awkwardly, slowly, and with far too many harsh winds, snowstorms, or collisions with rocks, take heart. You are not alone. Every soul is trying to go home.
Perhaps that’s the description of calling that makes the most sense. “Every soul is trying to go home.” Home can be at either end of the migration, or any stop in between. Winter to spring and summer to fall, the traveling souls are always trying to go home.
Conclusion
Shortly after I moved back to the East Coast, I had an occasion to drive a good stretch of Maryland Route 193. I got on near my parents’ house, drove past the office building where my pediatrician used to practice. I passed my high school, and the Denny’s where we used to hang out. I kept following 193 almost to my alma mater at the University of Maryland. It was an episode of “This Is Your Life” written in asphalt. My reflections at the time were all about what those places had meant to me, and the way that long years seemed to go by in minutes of travel.
These days, when I find myself on that road, I think about the travelers who are there now. Ooh, watch out for that new traffic pattern. What’s going on at the school? I hope those independent restaurant owners are doing OK in this economy. Maybe the difference in my internal monologue has to do with different ways of trying to go home. A few years ago, pilgrimage was a kind of nostalgia. Now it’s more like wandering in the wilderness, knowing that our best bet for fulfilling the promise of this journey is to open our hearts to the family of things.
As the warmth of this season calls forth the tulips and daffodils, may you hear your calling touched with beauty. When you find yourself a stranger in a place that both is and is not your home, may your observations bring you wisdom. In all of your travels, may you and your companions treasure each other with love for the quirks and differences that bring wholeness to the journey of life.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
