There are some great roadside attractions in this country, if you take a long car trip. We have taken several 5-6000 mile trips and have seen many wonders of America such as the Great Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. It is a large auditorium completely covered in corn.  And you wondered what those people in South Dakota do for fun.  And speaking of South Dakota, there is also the more famous attraction of Wall Drug Store, in Wall, South Dakota. Wall Drug is famous, and it literally has consumed the town of Wall, South Dakota, with a myriad of buildings. It competes mightily with attractions such as the North Pole, Colorado, and the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota. In Ontario we have seen Max the Moose and Husky the Musky, a giant fish statue. We took several pictures of Husky, and then the sprinkler system went off on us. There is the museum of torture devices in the Wisconsin Dells.  I understand it is a popular stop for Baptist deacons. There is the famous Rock City near Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

We have attractions here in Arkansas–the alligator farm and IQ Zoo in Hot Springs are age-old favorites that require periodic pilgrimages. I guess they are still open.  You may not know that in Ravendon, Arkansas there is a large statue of a Raven.  I want to go see it once, but “nevermore.” But my favorite roadside attraction has to be the “Christ of the Ozarks,” in Eureka Springs. There you will find a concrete Jesus big enough to hold a school bus in his hand, at least that’s what the sign used to say. They probably ought change it to read a Branson tour bus to better relate to the masses. I believe that the statue is located on what they call “transfiguration mountain.” Anyway, you can see him for miles. He is a little stiff, and could use some paint, although a stark white Jesus is probably apropos in that part of the state. I hear that a new statue in Fayetteville will be even bigger at Razorback Stadium, called “the Frank of the Ozarks.” Just kidding.

If you take a road trip to Amarillo, Texas, you will find the Texas windbreaker; several Classic Cadillacs buried in the ground half-way. Dianna wants one of these cars–no seriously, she wants them buried all the way in the ground. The only thing wrong with burying these cars is they needed deeper holes.  But this old favorite is now a second place attraction in Amarillo, compared to “the world’s largest cross,” which is a metal contraption that can be seen for miles. It along with the Great Wall of China can be seen from outer space is my guess. Judging by the numbers of people that pulled off the freeway, it is a popular attraction.  Either that or folks just need a break from the monotonous I-40. Indeed, religious roadside attractions seem to be growing in number. In our own fair city, (I like to call it church wars) there is a large, freeway church- monstrosity that built a larger building so that they might again claim the highest steeple in Arkansas honor. For a while they lost that title of the highest steeple because church/monstrosity number two on the way to Benton has eclipsed them. I think that the big Baptist Church on the hill has to have the highest steeple as they definitely aren’t hiding anything under a bushel as you can see the doggone thing all over west Little Rock.  The highest church steeple in America by the way is on a Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama.  But religious-type attractions are popular, so I expect more to spring up. These are monuments to human accomplishment, to be sure, and are built at great expense. I suppose they are built to be big monuments to a big faith in God.

I have seen some strange sights while traveling, some very odd curiosities that grabbed my attention, but in our lectionary text this morning we find what surely was one strange sight– the renowned burning bush that led to the call of Moses.   Renowned theologian Robert McAfee Brown gives us a little background to our story:

Moses is in a tough spot. Having grown up in Egypt, he has had to flee across the border to Midian, in order to escape from the long arm of “Cairo’s finest,” the police, galvanized in his speedy departure by well-founded rumors that he has murdered an Egyptian guard. An “All Points Alert” has been circulated by the Egyptian F. B. I., offering a handsome reward to whoever tips off the authorities as to Moses’ whereabouts. However, since there are no extradition laws between Midian and Egypt, Moses is gradually able to fade into the Midian woodwork, marry a Midian woman, and start to rebuild his life. And then, just when things have wound down and he can begin to relax, the God whom Moses supposed he had left behind in Egypt, puts in a reappearance. The voice comes out of a bush in the desert that is burning, but not burning up. However, dealing with that phenomenon is child’s play compared to dealing with the words the voice utters from that desert inferno. (Robert McAfee Brown “Our Uneasy Relationship to God” Nov. 1989)

          So the call of Moses comes in dramatic fashion, and there are many lessons we could extract from this story.  I think the obvious lesson is significant, namely that God heard the cries of his people.  The children of Israel had been in slavery for four hundred years and had felt the harshness and cruelty of their Egyptian taskmasters.  Surely their existence was only marginally better than their beasts of burden. Their lives were worthless and they must have thought that they would have been better off dead.  As the story goes their pleas did not fall on deaf ears, God decided to do something about it. That is Good News!  But I have always wondered why it took God so long.  Generation after generation had come and gone, all desperately hopeless, all dreaming of a deliverer, all wondering if this is the lot of a people chosen by Yahweh.  They must have felt like it would have been better if God had chosen someone else.  Sure God whipped the Egyptians in the end, but tell that to all those who live out their lives and the lives of their kids and grandkids and great, great, great, grandkids who saw nothing but heartache and grief.  I mean 400 years, that would be like being in slavery from 1608 until now. That is as long as the Baptist movement has been in existence.  That is 168 years longer than our country is old.  That is a lot of crying that God evidently did not hear or perhaps even worse did not care to pay attention to.  That seems a little problematic and Yahweh comes off less than sympathetic.

          So what is the lesson here?  Is it that in the end things will work out OK, just have a little patience?  That is a popular message today with the rapture crowd.  Many of them basically say that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and God will finally have had enough and step in blow up the whole sorry mess, except of course for the people who can recite the formula who will not only be spared from all the nastiness, but will be unbelievably rewarded over-the-top for leaving the world in shambles and largely unchanged.  They do of course want as many as possible to be spared, but offer no evidence of God hearing the cries of a dying planet in the here and now.  He will simply someday say enough is enough and blow the place to smithereens.

          Well, maybe we tend to press the details of the story too far and the point is really that God does hear the afflictions of his people.  Maybe it seems to take forever to find God working in our situation, in the end is always faithful to do so.  I find this explanation lacking as well.  It worked out swell for those who were alive when Moses came along, but what about all those who hurt all those years before Moses was on the scene?  It would be sort of God has heard your prayers and cries, and will do something, but it will not be in your lifetime, or your kid’s lifetime, or their kid’s lifetime, but hey, God will get around to it.  I think you can see that would not make very many left behind people very happy.

          Truly we wonder sometimes if God hears our cries. We wonder if God is aware of our plight and if he intends to do anything about it.  We say that God always answers prayers; we just don’t always see it.  I guess I can buy that, but for heaven’s sake I would like a little more clarity in things that are so darn painful.  I have seen people pray and pray and pray for God’s intervention to no obvious avail.  I have seen people struggle for years just for a glimmer of light in trying to figure out where God figured into their situation.  And many a time their cries seemingly have gone unnoticed. 

I am a realist and I understand that it is our lot to get sick and die in life, and it really doesn’t matter if you are nine or 90 it will always seem a little raw and untimely.  It is tragic to die young, but losing a spouse of 50 or more years is no picnic either.  But just once, I would like to pray and see God do something miraculous.  My young 29 year old friend in Memphis has had every person in the buckle of the Bible Belt praying (me included) for a cure for her cancer and it has not happened.  I laid face down flat on the floor along with a bunch of equally serious folk to pray for her.  She is still alive, but she has suffered greatly.  She has tumors up and down her spine now and is in great pain.  But the worse part is for a couple of months she has thrown up constantly, they cannot seem to stop it.  She is on her last chance chemo, it is one that they discontinued earlier but are giving it one more go.  A lesser person, and that would be most of us, would have rightly given up long ago. Yet her faith remains strong.  But from where I sit it is a helluva existence for a beautiful 29 year old lady.  Why doesn’t God do something? Why doesn’t God hear our cries?

          In 1981, a famous Lutheran pastor and historian was told that his wife had serious cancer and would not survive.  His doctor told him that if he loved his wife he should consider cancelling 1981, to devote his time with her last days. He spent many nights up with her, prayed many prayers as his faith was great.  But she died anyway.  Out of his own discontent he then wrote some reflections on his grief published in 1983 that is a must read for anyone who has wondered why their cries to God have gone unnoticed.  Martin E. Marty’s A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart describes and validates the Christian path that winds through the darker phases of life’s journey when the seemingly constant call is that the appropriate response for the Christian is to be sunny, cheerful and aglow in the bounteous goodness and joy of the Lord.  Marty writes. “The message in this world of spiritual best-sellers and large audiences is consistent: “Follow me, follow my prescription, think the right thoughts, and all the chill will disappear. Joy comes to those who prosper in faith.” Marty reminds us that life does not always turn out well. Relationships do not always mend, the cancer is not always healed, and one’s spiritual weather forecast is not always sunny and warm. Marty notes that, “The sunny friend and the summery gathering are of little help to many seekers. If such are still to have sufficient hope to inspire an address to the Absence, a quieting of the furious wintery wind, where do they turn?”  This is the central question that Marty’s book addresses.  We all go through a winter in our spirituality where God just does not seem to be around anywhere.  Our prayers just don’t seem to get past the ceiling.  And we are as cold and barren as a stark winter landscape.

          But Marty also points out that things become clearer in the winter.  That you see the structure of the tree only when the leaves are gone, and you can see the landscape better when the grasses are out of the way.  And this understanding gives us perspective when spring arrives in our lives, and spring always arrives.  It is easy then to see God, in the spring. But we all must have some winter.

          The world is full of poor and oppressed peoples, people who have surely cried to God for relief, and in many cases people who tenaciously cling to their faith even though for all practical purposes their cries fall on deaf ears.  Most of us who have been alive on planet earth long enough are realistic enough to know that this is so.  So where does that leave this God of ours, the one who hears our cries, say every 400 years or so?

          I would suggest this morning that God had indeed heard the cries of the Israelites, and maybe the delay was in the fact that there was no Moses to do God’s bidding.  I think in our attempts to pay homage to Yahweh we overlook this part of the story– that it is up to us.  That we are God’s instruments in the world and as such we must respond to the poor and oppressed peoples everywhere.  For God heard their cries and a man named Moses finally stepped up to the plate and responded to God’s call.  Now Moses was reluctant, he had all kinds of excuses.  Five of them are detailed here, and God said “no problem I can take care of that one and in fact I can handle all of them.  I am after all God Almighty.”  Moses had several limitations, in fact he stuttered, he was not eloquent of speech, he had a price on his head in Egypt, he was happy and content in Midian where he had married and made a good living for himself.  It was not his fight and he was too weak compared to mighty Pharaoh.  But what made God mad was when Moses simply had the audacity to say to the Almighty, send someone else. 

You see, God had him covered.  He could cover all his inability, but he could do nothing with his unavailability.  I suspect that if Moses had not come through, there might have been another 400 years of suffering in Egypt.  But in the end, Moses delivered big-time.  And the shepherd’s crook became the rod of God.

          So I ask you this morning, are you uncomfortable with an image of a God who can only accomplish his purposes through the cooperation of frail human instruments?  You might as well get comfortable, because that is the essence of the Bible.  We seldom if ever see God sending a bolt of lighting, or directing history from afar, but instead changing lives through those committed to his service.  It just does not get done any other way. The Story of God is an immensely human story.  Sorry if that changes your wholly other view of God, but it is so. It is as Brown says:

It is not surprising that this story has emerged as one of the basic Biblical resources of our sisters and brothers in the Third World, for whom the rallying cry of the whole story, and the whole Bible, and the whole gospel is…liberation. Freedom. Which means throwing off the chains, the shackles. Which means disagreeing with the leaders of your nation. Which means saying “no” to Pharaoh, the epitome of injustice, because you have to say “yes” to a God who is the epitome of justice, and who won’t put up with Pharaoh’s injustice, and tells you that it is your fight as well as God’s fight. So, keeping the imagery of the story, we have to reflect on what it means to serve in Pharaoh’s court, which is where we are located, a court that supports and sanctions many things God surely calls us to challenge. (Brown)

And that reality is a bitter pill to swallow for those of us who like our God to do battle for us.  Friends, whatever there is that needs to be done by God will not get done unless we answer his call.  It really is that pure and simple.  If we do not step up to the plate then there will surely be cries that are unheard, sometimes for an enormous periods of time.  We have to not only do a bunch of crying to change the world, we have to do a bunch of hearing.  We must hear the voice of God; we must find that we indeed are the answer that the world needs. It takes more than prayer, you can cry your fool head off.  What changes the world are people who have taken off their shoes because they were on Holy ground and were move by the God of all compassion.

Everywhere you look this morning my friends, lies an opportunity.  If we will just hear the call of God.  And if you don’t know where to look, Elisabeth Barrett Browning reminds us that “every common bush is afire with God.  But only he who sees takes off his shoes, the rest just sit around and pluck blackberries.”  In other words, God is right here, under our nose.  God is calling you to make a difference in this world that is how God works.  Is some cry unanswered?  Then someone has not stepped up to the plate and has not heard Gods call.  Are there poor, oppressed, dispossessed, or captives whose cries go unheeded?  Are there those who are sick and dying, are there those struggling with addictions?  Are there people that you feel sorry for, people who need solutions or people who need hope?  Are there those people that you wish someone would help? Do you hear the call?  What is God telling you to do?  Sit back and wait forever, or to commit to going out and saving the world.  Well, don’t be ridiculous, you can’t save the world you say?  Sure you can.  History is replete with examples of the power of one, especially by those who have heard the call and took off their shoes.   You just have to turn aside and look.  Because Browning was right, every common bush is afire with God, we just don’t always have the sense enough to take off our shoes and answer the call of God.  But finding our burning bush is critical to the success of the Kingdom of God.  Because when you stand on Holy ground, your worldview will never be the same, and in the end you will be the one burning with the fire of God, without being consumed. Will you answer the call of God today? I hope so, because this I know: someone, somewhere, not too far from here is crying.  Amen.