A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Winnette

Distracted – Turning Aside

Acts 2: 1-4, Exodus 3:1-15

August 8, 2010

            The angelic bush burns with Spirit power and Spirit promise. Its brilliant flames, messages from God, divided hundreds of ways lighting down upon Jerusalem’s new disciples. Pentecost decentralizes God’s call to Moses dividing it into messages and calls to a people. Not to an individual but a community. Bright Pentecost flames danced on the thousands of new disciples’ heads, not scorching their hair but enlightening their minds. Surely, they all walked away from that Christ-rich day with some bright ideas about how to better live their lives.    Ways to better serve God’s will. Some preached amazing sermons. Some cooked and fed strangers. Some adopted orphans. Some stopped charging interest on loans. Some praised God with artistry. Some stepped up to lead the church. Many more deeply attended to their parents and children. Many sought justice for the oppressed. Some quieted their lives in contemplation and gratitude. Many shared extravagantly of their bountiful resources. Surely, all of the Pentecost children were transformed into holier people. That was the promise of Jesus fulfilled on that Pentecost for them and for us today. Yet, human sinfulness, selfishness, fears, hungers and greed distract the children of God again and again.   Too, too many return to old less God-mindful living. Too many forget to live into the extravagant flames’ message. 

            Have you ever had good intentions, even divinely inspired intentions and then you got distracted? You got allured by a glittering new ambition or you stumbled back to an old habit.   How awful it would have been had Moses been distracted returning to serve as a humble sheep herder. What would have happened to the children of Abraham? 

The novel, God’s Little Acre, written by Erskine Caldwell, is about the 50’s post-depression Southland. I remember my mother telling me how she and her sisters as children secretly read the racy book.   When its character Ty Ty purchased his farm, he promised to consecrate one acre as holy ground calling it, “God’s little acre.” He explained the commitment to a friend, Pluto, “Twenty-seven years ago when I bought this place I set aside an acre of my farm for God, and every year I gave the church all that comes off that acre of ground. It if is cotton, I give God all the money that cotton brings at market. Same with hogs, corn, too.” Pluto asked, “What’s growing this year?” Ty responded, “Growing, nothing is growing this year. Me and the boy have been so busy I just had to let God’s acre lie fallow for a while.  “Where did you say that acre was Ty Ty?” “Well, you won’t be able to see it from here.” 

Ty Ty had been called by God to minister with the one little acre. But he became distracted. A traveling oil man told him that he might have oil under his farmland. So he and his son dug and discovered black gold. Ty confesses to Pluto, “You see, I’ve been compelled to shift God’s little acre around a heap recently. ‘cause every time me and boy start digging it always seems to fall on God’s acre and so we just move God’s little acre out back.” Every time he found oil on the holy acre, he moved the acre farther and farther into the obscurity of his farm so he would not need to give the church his promised tithe. 

            Ty was called by God to give a portion of his sweat labor and the fruits of a piece of his land. But he got distracted by the oil’s wealth.   Ty was called to devote a place for God’s ministry in his life. Today’s scriptures are about God’s call to all of us to apportion our lives for ministry. God calls that we give of our sweat and income, give of our intellect and language, give of our life stories, songs, and leadership.  

Moses was enjoying a reasonable life as a sheepherder. He did not employ the diplomatic skills learned as a child of the Pharaoh. Instead he cajoled the sheep. But God had a different plan, God called him back to Egypt with a holy distraction.  

Have you ever journeyed along on your life plan and then been surprised with a distraction that pulled you to a new adventure?   Moses was called by God to shepherd the Hebrews from slavery and oppression to freedom.   To what does God call you? Ponder what God might want to distract you to do or be? 

At every stage of our lives, God has holy tasks for us to accomplish. We are the children of Pentecost; we are all touched by the flame.    Yet we get tamped down, our spirits get compacted into rutted routines, God’s ambition within us gets snuffed out with day-to-day demands. Instead of pondering God’s calls for our next minute we orient ourselves to our task lists. We shoulder through each day without enough moments devoted to watching for God’s fiery revelation, God’s white hot ambition for us. 

We can be too preoccupied with limits and excuses or too stuck in past events or in old ambitions to see God’s flames at our periphery. I wonder what Moses was pondering as he cared for his father-in-law’s sheep; was he bored or content. He may have been bemoaning the loss of his royal privileges, as an adopted child in the Pharaoh’s family.   Was he relieved to be free of Egypt or did he long for the wealth? Maybe he recalled his amazing rescue from death as an infant and how his mother put him on the Nile in a floating basket.   Was he prideful that his mother was so crafty or did he feel abandoned by her? He could have been recalling that awful moment when he so terribly lost his temper and killed the Egyptian guard who was abusing a Hebrew slave.   Was he remorseful or did he excuse himself for the murder?  But all of a sudden wherever he was in his thoughts, he was distracted – yanked into a theophany. Yanked into a new God-touched life.

The bush was aflame; flames licked in and above the bush.   He saw it and decided to “turn aside” from his preoccupations and to go see what was up. The flames did not eat the bush’s branches.  They had another fuel.    And he heard God’s voice calling to him to pay attention. “Moses, Moses!” “Stop where you are. Take off your shoes for you are now standing on holy ground.   I am the God of your Hebrew ancestors.”   Moses encounters God in a fiery way. And the flame revealed to him God’s hot passion.   God really did hear the pain of the children of Abraham. God’s passion is a compassionate kind and God called Moses to rescue his people.   God’s passion remains the same today for there are people still enslaved. God calls us to an extravagant rescue of people.

Most of us may not feel called to usher an entire people to justice.   Since Pentecost the call to rescue seems more a collective call. So we work together for peace and justice in the world.   How can we situate ourselves to best use our gifts and talents in service to God’s librating passion?   Ethicist Amy Fleming at Emory’s Center for Ethics suggests three questions that we might ask as we seek life direction. One – What do I like to do? Two – What am I good at? And three – What needs to be done in the world?   The place where the answers overlap she calls our “sweet spot.”[1] Maybe this is where we find and honor God’s little acre in our lives. So – consider.   What do you like to do? What are you good at?   What needs to be done in the world?     And then watch for a flicker of flame, listen for a voice calling your name and saying, “Stop where you are. Take off your shoes for you are now standing on holy ground.   I am God. Stop where you are. Realize life is holy and go rescue my people, go be a disciple of love.”

I was concentrating.  If I put the turkey in the oven first, can I bake the pecan and pumpkin pies too?   Do I want to peel the potatoes or shall I leave the skin on? Should I make my parents sandwiches while I fix the Thanksgiving Dinner? They may want a nap after the sandwich.    I was driving from Frederick on I-70 to collect my parents from BWI.   As I drove I strategized cooking the meal.   The blazing reds and golds of the Autumn trees slowly got my attention. The beautiful stretch of trees accumulated in my vision until it got my minds’ attention. I asked myself why I had never noticed them before on my way to Baltimore.   I did not have a grand epiphany, but I turned aside from recalling my mother’s cornbread dressing recipe to watching the roadside. Why did this all seem so unfamiliar? I had driven to BWI many times. Then it really hit me as I saw the billboards for the Hagerstown Outlet Mall.   I had driven all the way to Hagerstown.   Fortunately, I was able to have my parents paged at the airport and told that I would be very late picking them up.  

Friends, try not to get too distracted by your lives. Don’t allow them to tamp down or snuff out God’s flame. Be open to God’s divine distractions.   Look around the edges of your life. Like the stretch of blazing Autumn trees – a “no duh” moment – like I’m going the wrong way can be revealed. Like Moses you will see in the periphery something surprising, bright like a burning bush. You will likely hear God’s voice as a whisper within, maybe spoken through the voice of a friend, in the prayer of a hymn, or in a sun beam on an August day.    Turn aside again to holy intentions.

Eleventh century mystic Hildegard of Bingen encountered a call from God through an internal fire. She described her experience as, “a burning light of tremendous brightness coming from heaven poured into my entire mind. Like a flame that does not burn but enkindles, it inflamed my entire heart…just like the sun that warms an object with its rays…All of a sudden I was able to taste of the understanding…”[2] May it be so for us today. Amen.