“Moses Who Stuttered”

September 18, 2005

Scripture Reading:   Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

In the beginning lies the ending.  In the hard pit of the olive lies the burled ancient tree.  In the smallest mustard seed the tallest tree waits to grow.  In beginnings destiny lies curled up.  As an olive pit cannot grow into a rose bush, or a mustard seed cannot grow into wheat, the seed dictates the ending.  This is so even as the vicissitudes of life fall upon it.  Undaunted the beginning unravels as planned. 

I am Moses.  I am at the end of my long life, 128 years now.  I, Moses, led my people from the evil oppression of the Egyptians, to the land God promised.  It is our land flowing with milk and honey.  It took us eighty years but finally we are here.  We are at the Jordan river and the boundary of this land.  I have climbed mount Pisgah, and God showed me the promised land in all of its glory.  The sparkling river, the vast dense blue sea that is dead with salt, and on the horizon there is the long streak of gold which is the great sea, where ships can sail to far off lands. It is our land.  We will conquer it and live in it.  We will be free.  We will never be slaves again.  My heart pealed as a bell with unbounded joy gazing upon Canaan. 

I am wondering about beginnings because the ending, my ending is disturbing.  It is that  I can look but I cannot touch.  God told me that he has led me to the edge, and although my people will enter and prosper there, I will not be allowed to go.  He said and I quote “Moses this is the land I promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  I have let you see it, but I will not let you enter it.”  I don’t understand why I can’t just enter the land for a few moments and then die.  But no, God will not allow it.  My eyes are red with crying.  Finally, there are no tears left.  My emotions are spent.  My only hope is to find the beginning, then perhaps I can understand the end. 

What kind of seed produces such a terribly bitter sweet fruit?   Was it the ten commandments.  No it began before that.  Was it the manna in the wilderness, miracle food for a starving people.  No it began before that.  Was it the red sea parting for us and flooding the Egyptian chariots.  No, not that.  Was it the burning bush, and the voice of God?  No not quite right either.

 Where do I think it really started?  I think it began with my stuttering.  I have stuttered since I was a young boy. I get stuck on  a simple sound and repeat it like a mule kicking a post again and again.  I get stuck and desperately want to move on and finish the word.  It is embarrassing to stutter.  People are waiting for you.  The conversation stops.  The nicer ones feel sorry for you and smile politely.  The meaner ones roll their eyes.  I know people laugh and imitate me behind my back.  All my life I dreaded speaking.  If I must, I will use the shortest sentences.  I am relieved when someone asks a simply Yes or No question.  The beginning lays in my stuttering.  My heart was always so full, but it was unable to spill over because I could not speak. 

Why did I stutter?  Because from the beginning of my life  I had to keep a secret.  Speaking the truth would be horrible, deadly, and shameful.  You see, I was born a Hebrew.  My people were slaves of the Pharaoh.  The Pharaoh hated how many there were of us.  So, he wanted all the babies killed.  My mother floated me in a basket, and I was discovered by, of all people, one of the Pharaoh’s daughters.  She thought I was like a doll, wanted to keep me for her own.  She got my mother there to nurse me.  It didn’t bother her to lie to her father.  But for me this meant that from the beginning, my life was a deceit.  My existence was a lie and I had to keep the lie up.  I stuttered because my mouth was stammering between two realities.  The world of luxury, wealth and privilege of the Pharaoh court and the world of my suffering people.   

When was I a young man, I would go for walks outside the palace.  I would see my people being worked to the bone.  It seemed a kind of cruel game of the Egyptians,  the sport of who could perpetrate the worse injustice on the Hebrews.  The physical pain they inflicted was not as bad as the emotional pain.  We were the butt of jokes.  At the courts I would laugh as hard as anyone when the talked about how stupid we were.  I dare not blow my cover.  I was so good at laughing that I would convince myself we were awful people.    I would catch myself despising myself. 

I could have gone on living like that for ever except that prejudice creeps inside you like mold.  It climbs the walls of your heart and begins to rot your hope.  One day I was again walking outside the walls of the court.  I saw someone torturing a Hebrew slave.  He was crying out in anguish.  He was pleading for mercy as his two young children watched and cried for their Daddy.  I couldn’t keep silent anymore.  I shouted to the Egyptian to stop it.  Only I stuttered.  I said, “S-s-s-s-t-t-top it!”  The Egyptian laughed at me.  He mocked me.  “S-s-s-s-t-top it!”  in a sing-song voice.  Then he came up with what he thought was a worse insult.  “What are you one of them too?”   Something snapped.  I dared not utter another word, so I slit his throat. 

I fled.  Such was the result of my reckless efforts to help.  I had made it all much worse.  For the slave certainly, but whose destiny I forgot.  I saw my future implode before my eyes.    I went as fast and as far as I could go.  Secrets grow greater secrets.  Now, I was a Hebrew disguised as an Egyptian who was a murderer and fugitive.  The further I went as far as I could go, so no one would recognize me or know me.  I fled to Median, married one of the daughters of the priest Jethro, and became a shepherd.  As terrible as this might sound, there was one benefit.  Alone with the sheep in the mountains, I didn’t have to talk to anyone and I didn’t have to stutter.  I was nobody, neither Egyptian or Hebrew and I had convinced myself it was a relief.

Then I saw the burning bush.  I was way out in the fields, all alone, and liking it, when I saw a bush crackling with flame.  The leaves were licked with searing heat but remained green, soft and tender as on the first day of spring.  The smoke smelled like blossoms.  My hair stood on end.  I took off my shoes, holy it was.  Then I heard the voice of God and I quote, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – your God.  I have seen the affliction of my children in Egypt and have heard their cry.  I send you, Moses, to Pharaoh to bring my people out of slavery.” 

I was terrified.   I was terrified I was crazy.  I was terrified of going back and being found out as the murderer  I was.  I was terrified of being found out the Hebrew I was.    But these weren’t the reasons that I knew God was wrong to choose me.  It was clear to me as a bell.  It was the one part of me that was completely rational.  I couldn’t possibly do what he asked.  You see I don’t stutter a little and in a cute sort of way.  My mouth gets stuck.  My face can distort.  The muscles can become rigid in a certain position like a seizure.  Everyone is  relieved when I finally spit out the ending of the word and hope I don’t attempt another one.  I could barely imagine talking to  two or three people much less crowds.  I couldn’t finish a sentence let alone convince them to follow me, and convince Pharaoh to let them go.

God, I discovered was more persistent than even my stuttering.  God licked me with the same terrible conflagration that was on the bush.  It was a burning, wrathful love that overwhelm, fascinated, terrorized, and engulfed.    

I asked what was his name?  He said, “I am who I am.”  That is my name.  And thus it was that God laid upon me, of all people, and upon this stammering voice, of all things, the great mission he constructed to bring the words of heaven down to earth. 

What happened next is a blur to me.  It all happened at such a feverish pace.  I went back to Egypt demanded that my people be let go.  The Pharaoh broke his promise time and time again.  It took ten plagues from God to make him finally relinquish.  The last plague was not a pretty sight.  The firstborn of every Egyptian family was slain.  But, the Hebrew homes were passed over and spared.  Pharaoh consented.  We had to go fast.  We didn’t even wait for our bread to rise.  Then we got cornered between the red sea on one side and the Pharaoh chariots coming after us again.  The people panicked.  I stretched out my hand and God divided the waters.  We walked through as in a pleasant park.  The chariots tried to follow but were drowned beneath the waves. 

I discovered that although I stutter when I speak, when I sing the words flow out from my mouth  as easily as wine slides into the mouth of a thirsty man.   When we looked back from the banks of the Red sea and realized God had saved us I sang and sang.  Before the Red Sea we were dead men.  Now we were alive.  Before the Red Sea we were slaves.  Now we were free.  Before the Red Sea we were desperate.  Now we were filled with hope as if flying on the wings of eagles.  I sang, He has covered himself in glory.  Horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.  Yaway is my strength, my song.  Yaway is my salvation!  I had begun to find my voice.

There was one other time I was able to speak clearly.  After the Red Sea the hard part began.  We wondered in the wilderness.  Sometimes I was completely lost and didn’t know where I was leading the people.  As great as God was saving us from the Egyptians, they quickly forgot His salvation.  They grumbled and complained.   But, God brought us through each time.    First we didn’t have enough food.  Then God gave us manna, sweet bread like flakes all over the ground in the morning.  Then they were thirsty, but God told me where to find water.  Then I went up to the mountain and God gave told us how to live as a people.  Not just living as a vagabond group of wandering, complaining escapees, but to really become a people who worked and worshiped as one.  I went up on top of the mountain and God gave me his ten commandments.

 When I came down, though, the people had forgotten all about Yahweh.  They had the nerve to be dancing before a golden calf.  They had made their own, cheap version of God.  God became really angry.  Who could blame him?  I was furious myself.

However,  God became so angry that he wanted to destroy his people.   Suddenly it wasn’t the golden calf I thought of.  What flashed through my mind was the face of the Hebrew slave that was being tortured by the Egyptian whom I murdered.  I remembered the fear in his eyes, like a sheep caught and to be slaughtered.  I remembered them flicker with love as he rolled his eyes for the last time towards his two children crying out for him.  I felt as angry at God at that moment as I was angry with the Egyptian then.  Someone had to save that man.  It made no sense.  God should not free his people only to turn around and kill them.  I reminded God of his promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.  I reminded him of the words I delivered for him from heaven to earth as I had stuttered and stammered to get them out, that God was to make a great nation that would shine before all other nations.   I pounded my bare fists on holy ground and shouted once again “Stop it!”  Only this time the words came out in one piece.  “Stop it.  Stop it.  Stop it.”  Clear and true for the first time in my life was the sound of my voice.  I defended the life of my people before God.  I said to God exactly what I should have said to the Egyptian that day.  I said, “These are my people.  If you insist on destroying them then go ahead and kill me too!” 

So God relented.  Even though we sin, we truly are God’s people.  We can ague our case before God and God will listen and have mercy. 

Days and weeks went by and I asked God for a sign if he was still there.  He let his goodness pass before me.  The Lord is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”  (Ex 34:6)

Finally we made it.  We arrived at the promised land, beautiful, vast, flowing with milk and honey.  Where did it all begin?   I, Moses, am a man who could not speak the truth from birth.  My life depended on a secret.  That is the secret of who I really am.  So I stuttered, afraid to speak, torn between two worlds, afraid for my life, and hating my life.  For reasons still not known to me, God found in this spastic word maker the agent to deliver his divine utterance.  God’s truth was my truth.  I was no longer divided, torn, and shamed.  I found myself and led my people to find who they were too.

I will climb Mount Nebo as God instructed to die, not in the promised land.  I will enter the cloud covered summit and no longer be able to see my people.  Do I love them more than God?  Of course I do.  But, I do not worry about that.  For they are God’s people.  Love God’s people – love God.  Love God – love God’s people.  It is all one.  God will never be separate from his people.  I know that now. 

God waits for me on the summit.  There I will lie down and close my eyes.  I will say one last thing.  I will stutter it as I have so many times before, “Th-th-th-the p-p-p-p-rom-mis-s-sed l-l-l-aand.”   May God kiss the stuttering lips of this old man and breath in the words I so strain to complete.  Thus, the hope for my people will find shelter in God’s breath.    I see now that it will end exactly where it began.  In the heart of God.