“The Voice from the Mop Bucket”

Exodus 3:1-15

August 28, 2005

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

A preacher tells a story that may sound a little bit familiar. Let me set it up for you. Imagine that it is late at night at a downtown office building. On one of the top floors houses one of the most powerful law firms in the city. As I said, it is late, so everyone from the firm have been gone for hours. Everyone, that is, except for Hank. Hank has worked for the firm for more than twenty years. He’s a lawyer, but no one knows that. For twenty years he has been the firm’s janitor. His shift lasts from ten p.m. to six a.m.

On this particular night, all is quiet except for the sound of Hank’s mop bucket as it squeaks across the tile floors. Hank knows these floors and these offices better than anyone else. For years now, he has put up his yellow caution sign that reads: Wet Floors. And when he does, he always laughs, because no one is around to heed the sign’s warning.

Hank used to be in better shape than he is now. Years of walking up and down stairs and bending over to mop has taken its toll on his body. Arthritis makes him wince, but still he works. Every night around ten he shows up for this job. He works through the night only taking thirty minutes for supper, usually around three o’clock. He spends those eight hours splashing wet water on tile floors, pulling trash, vacuuming offices, and scrubbing bathrooms. He will finish his work early. Usually he is done with everything an hour before his shift is over. If he is finished early enough, he will use his master key to get into the senior partner’s office. Everything is nice and plush in there. The carpet is thick. The art on the walls is expensive. He usually walks in and brushes his hands over the leather couch. Then he goes up to the desk, walks around it, and sits in the leather office chair. Hank has witnessed many a sunrise sitting in that chair. When he sits in the chair, in that big office, he remembers. He recalls a time before he was Hank. He remembers a time when he was Henry. He remembers back before his uniform, back before his mop bucket, and back before his secret. The lawyers who he works for do not know that he works at night so he won’t be found out in the day. They also do not know that he has been a fugitive for all of the years that they have employed him.

Hank tells that on this particular night, something strange happened. He was in one of the hallways, mopping, when he heard a voice. The voice called out to him. It said, “Henry. Henry.” Hank looked around, but saw no one. At first he thought that either some of his friends were playing a trick on him or that it was time to change the battery in his hearing aid. But the voice called out again, “Henry. Henry.” It occurred to him. No one had called him Henry in years and years. The voice called out a third time, “Henry. Henry.” This time he looked up and saw that there was an orange glow coming from the middle of his mop bucket. He walked over towards the yellow bucket and noticed that the water was boiling, but it was not overflowing. Did I mention that this is a true story? Hank heard the voice for a fourth time. The voice said, “Don’t come any closer, Henry. Take off your steel toed boots. You are standing on holy tile.”

I know, the story does sound a little irreverent. After all, God would never call out to a janitor on the run while he worked at an office building. If the details of the story were different, then it might seem more likely. For instance, if you changed the janitor’s name to Moses, that would make the story more believable. And if you made Moses something other than a janitor, then that would help. So if he were a shepherd instead of a janitor, then the story would be more believable. And if Moses the shepherd were taking care of his father-in-law’s sheep and saw a bush that was burning yet not consumed, then that would be more believable than a mop bucket whose water was boiling, but not overflowing. Wouldn’t it?

It is believable all right. In fact, it is one of the most beloved stories in all of scriptures. It is a story that we teach to our children, and it is a story that we don’t mind hearing again and again. Moses, you will remember, was on top of Mount Horeb, one of the many mountains in that part of the country. The writer of Exodus, who may have been Moses himself, tells us that Mount Horeb was the mountain of God. Moses was on top of the mountain tending to the sheep that belonged to Jethro, the priest of Midian, and his father-in-law. It must have been nice up on that mountain. My guess is that the hills of green grasses and the streams of water were wonderful places to be. Moses, most likely, saw some beautiful sunrises and sunsets while he kept an eye on the flock.

Most of you know that most of the Fleming vacations are spent on beaches (that is unless hurricanes get in the way). I have some great memories of our beach vacations. But I also love the mountains and remember trips to the hills. Maybe the Psalmist knew what he was doing when he said, “I lift my eyes to the hills.” I remember the vacation that Susie and I took to Colorado to visit her brother. I remember the rides up the mountain on the tram and the view when I mustered up the courage to look down. I remember the snowmobile ride that we took one morning. The view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking. I also remember the family vacations from my growing up years to the hills near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I still remember seeing the smoke rise from the Great Smoky Mountains, and the jumps that my sister, brother, and I made on the rocks on the Little Pigeon River.

So I understand why Moses liked it up on the mountaintop. It was quiet up there. It was peaceful up there. And since Moses was trying to stay out of the limelight and out of the public eye, the mountain and his job as shepherd seemed perfect. You will remember that Moses was a fugitive. Moses wasn’t a high profile kind of guy. In fact, he was trying to lay low. As you will remember, he was wanted for murder back in Egypt. I think that he was the kind of guy who noticed things, who wondered about things. Our text begins by telling us that the bush caught his attention as he was tending the flocks. He could have passed it by and none of us today would have ever heard of Moses.

The great poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was inspired by Moses’ going toward the bush. She once wrote these lines, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; and only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” Moses saw the bush, walked toward it, and said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up. Our lesson says that when God noticed that he had Moses’ attention, he called out to him. And that is when his whole life changed. John Keller wrote these words, “Moses took off his shoes and there went the rest of his life.”

For the first time since the forty-sixth chapter of Genesis, God speaks. There were many who had noticed His silence. Some had thought that God had abandoned His people. God was not talking. But, as it turns out, he was listening and he was noticing things. He says to Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people. I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings. The cry of the Israelites has come to me. I have come down to deliver them. I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress my people.” Moses must have been shaking his head, agreeing with the Lord, happy that God was about to do something great and wonderful. But Moses problem came when the pronouns changed. They went from “I” to “you.” As in, “Come, I will send you.” And Moses, of course, isn’t too fond of the idea.

Now, people have talked about this burning bush for years and years now and the voice that came out of it. Some commentators have said that there could not have been such a thing as a burning bush. They contend that there was a flowering bush, that, in the fall of the year, had leaves that turned from green to bring red. They say that from a distance, it appeared as if these bushes were on fire. I once had one of those bushes. I planted it in my yard in Camden. It was glorious in the fall, but it didn’t ever look like it was on fire. Could it be, friends, that the real miracle in this story is not that there was a bush that was on fire, yet not consumed, but that God lit a fire under Moses?

Moses’ story is a true story. It is also a common story. It is the story of a derailed dream. It is the story of a high hope colliding with a sure enough reality. It happens to us dreamers, and since we have all dreamed, it has happened to all of us. Few of us have killed someone and ran away to the hills. Almost all of us have had to live with our regrets.

I had lunch with a man the other day who had great grades in high school. To top it off, he was a great athlete and had several offers from wonderful schools. But he did not take any scholarship offers. In fact, he did not go to college. Instead he joined a rock and roll band. He said to me, “Preacher, now I’m stuck! What was I thinking?”

I don’t know if they still do this or not, but when I was in high school, under our pictures, there was a sentence telling of our dreams and hopes for the future. We all wrote what we hoped would become of our lives. Some wrote of attending Ivy League schools. Others wrote of hoping to be a doctor in a third world country. A friend of mine hoped to teach school in an inner city like New York or Dallas. To tell you the truth, I cannot remember what I wrote. I am sure that I did not write that I hoped to be a preacher one day.

My sister is going to her twentieth high school reunion in a few weeks. She’s a lot older than me, of course. My reunion is not until next year. I probably won’t attend it! If Emily takes her yearbook, she will be able to match the names and the faces and the dreams. Some of the dreams will have come true. Other dreams have not happened. Some dreams did not need to come true. There is nothing wrong with changing direction in your lives. There is something really wrong with losing passion, though. Somewhere along the way, convictions of changing the world downgrade to the importance of paying the bills and instead of making a difference, we draw a salary. And instead of looking forward, we look back. Instead of looking outward, we look inward. And often we do not like what we see.

Moses did not like what he saw. There are several sermons in these fifteen verses. One of them is that God ain’t through with us yet. Oh, we might think that He is. We might think that we have peaked. We might think that God has found someone else for some job here in our church. If that is what you think, then think again. I want you to go home with some of the apostle Paul’s words on your hearts and on your minds. To the Philippian Christians, he writes, “I am confident of this, that the one that began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus.” I am confident of it, too.

We are very close to beginning our emphasis in this church on every member having a ministry. We have been talking about doing this for some time. The time is near. We have identified some one hundred and eighteen ministries that people will be able to sign-up for. The possibilities are endless. You can sign-up for everything from reading scripture on Sunday mornings to preparing food for our contemporary worship service. None of us have permission to say that they don’t have a gift. We all have a gift and no matter how young or how old we are, God ain’t through with us yet. I hope that you will join me in praying for our ministry together. Amen.

(Special thanks to Max Lucado for the opening story)