God Calls the Broken

By Steve Peterson

August 2025 Moses Kick Off

 Scripture Readings

Exodus 3

God called him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”…Then the Lord said “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry…I know their sufferings…I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites, out of Egypt.”  But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go…”  He [God] said, “I will be with you”

Matthew 14:16-21

Jesus said to them, “You give them something to eat.”  They replied, “we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”  And he said, “Bring them here to me.”

How are you doing new cohort of Moses Project Pastors?  You are really something.  One of the things that still gives me hope for the church and affirmation of my faith is you.   Part of me is amazed, to be honest, that you are doing this in these times in our culture and church that we live in, being pastors, I mean.  You realize, don’t you, that you could do something else?  I am amazed and encouraged that you have heard and are still hearing God’s call and have been given the courage and whatever else to answer that call each day, more or less, to serve God’s people, to be God’s instrument of feeding and freedom for them.

We do have, I think, I believe, a God who still speaks to people, inviting us to trust in God and to be creative and resilient and bold in discerning who we are as God’s people, who we are as leaders in God’s church and how, as the uniquely gifted and experienced people we each are, called to lead in the settings in which we find ourselves..  I believe God has called you to be a part of the Moses project and that these months together will be a time of hearing God’s voice and clarifying your trust in God and the creative vision God may be shaping in you and the people your minister with.

It really does begin with trusting God’s grace surrounding and upholding us and letting ourselves go as we are open to where God, and the Holy Spirit can be a bit of a trickster, may be creatively leading us.

I want to share with you a story from my life when I believe I sensed God speaking to me, a time that I felt an assurance of God’s presence that felt like being give the grace to trust as well as a freedom to live creatively, almost with abandon.

Two years ago at this retreat one of the mentors was in the hospital and another mentor had just gotten home from the ICU in the hospital.  I had recently hit my head and was still suffering from the effects of a concussion.  It was Amy’s first Moses retreat in her current position.  Only Trisha and Sarah were fully healthy and functioning.  So, I felt that I really needed to come and do the best I could.

Let me tell you about my concussion.   The short version is I slipped and did a whiplash backflip on a cement pool deck and hit my head, hard.  I saw cartoon stars and my life indeed seemed to flash before my eyes.  In an instant I had the thought that i might be dying now, but that was fine, that would be ok.  I don’t know where that feeling came from, but it was so real.  Soon I began to vaguely hear voices and vision started to come and I began to assess my situation - I had no feeling or movement in one arm, head very fuzzy, hearing foggy…but definitely alive!.

Well, this experience didn’t radically change who I am – I’m still the stupid person I have always been – but yet, it has changed me.  I can’t change that feeling I had that day of greater assurance that God is present with me and that whatever happens, including deaths and death, it will be ok somehow.  I feel more free than maybe I ever have in my life.  It feels like a grace in being and a calling to live more fully and creatively.  I have been doing, very imperfectly, whatever that means, but that feeling and calling is there.

At the time of the concussion I almost immediately thought of a John Prine song from early in his songwriting career, called Please Don’t Bury Me.  It’s about a guy hitting suddenly, randomly hitting his head, dying, and then whimsically, creatively making the best of things.  To me it is a song about not taking life too seriously and being open to some crazy possibility that might appear, I would say that God might show us, for something new and good to happen.  John Prine has said that this is the best campfire song about organ donation he knows of.  I would like to play for you part of the song…

              Please Dont Bury Me      by John Prine      

       Woke up this mornin', put on my slippers

       Walked in the kitchen and died

       And oh, what a feeling

       When my soul went through the ceiling

       And on up into heaven I did rise

       When I got there they did say

       "John, it happened this ole way,

       You slipped upon the floor and hit your head"

       And all the angels say just before you passed away

       These were the very last words that you said

       [Chorus]

       Please don't bury me down in the cold cold ground

       I'd rather have them cut me up and pass me all around

       Throw my brain in a hurricane and the blind can have my eyes

       And the deaf can take both my ears

       If they don't mind the size

       [Verse 2]

       Give my stomach to Milwaukee if they run out of beer

       Put my socks in a cedar box,

       just get them out of here

       Venus de Milo can have my arms,

       look out I got your nose

       Sell my heart to the junk man and give my love to Rose

       [Chorus]

Well, I believe God calls us to die, to trust, to follow and shows us ways to live freely, creatively and joyfully in service to others.  Maybe a whimsical song from John Prine can help us remember that, inspire us…in some kind of pastor version of that!  Maybe that can be part of your Moses Project journey of discovery and clarification these months together.

Another story.   The guitar I have with me today is a Holden Village special addition Taylor GS Mini guitar.  And it has quite an origin story that I would like to share.

As some of you may know, Holden Village is a Lutheran Retreat Center, very remote and isolated in the middle of a wilderness area high in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State.  It was once a mining village and when the copper mining played out economically the village was abandoned and donated to the Lutheran Church (that’s a story in and of itself).  Well a few years ago the mining company currently responsible for the abandoned mine was required to clean up mountains of coper tailings that were a toxic threat to Railroad Creek and the whole water shed where Holden is located.  As part of that process at a point near the village the creek bed needed to be re-routed which meant cutting down a beautiful stand of Englewood Spruce trees.  As it happened a frequent Holden Village visitor in a previous life had been a forester specializing in spruce trees and was an amateur guitar builder.  Not only that he was friends with a guy who supplied a lot of the tone wood for making guitars for the Taylor Guitar company.  Long story short a plan was hatched, at first dismissed because of the cost of getting the trees out of the remote location to where they could be worked with.  But the vision was alluring enough that many partners made it happen.  The National Forest Service sold the trees to Holden Village as “firewood”, the mining company donated transportation out of the wilderness area, the tone wood supplier in Bellingham WA not only processed the spruce but also donated beautiful maple wood he had for the backs and side.  Bob Taylor donated everything except pay for his workers in creating these beautiful, very special, guitars.  All the proceeds, minus the Taylor worker’s wages, went toward clean water projects in Central America.  Thousands and thousands of dollars.   And I and I think about 1,000 other people have these wonderful guitars! Much good came out of the death of some beautiful trees…out of death, inspired imagination and new life.

God talks to Moses out of a burning bush and invites him to by his instrument in doing the impossible, set suffering people free.  Jesus invites his disciples to die to their impossibilities and become alive to being used to used their meager resources to be his instruments of feeding the crowds who are hungry for food and for life.

What about you, now, what about our congregations, ministry setting?  What might die, what might be broken that if you all are open to hearing and doing will bring forth, maybe in some very crazy and creative ways new life.

One creative thing I have felt drawn to in the last year and a half or so has been to try and write songs.  I would like to share one of those with you now that I think speaks to the opportunity we have together this year to be broken open in ways that lead to creative new life…

Seed of Hope,       Steve Peterson

 It starts at the beginning

 And then it falls apart

 It’s a dying motion 

 To open up your heart

CHORUS

 But that’s what it takes

 To plant a seed of hope

 To let it Grow up

 From the earth

The rains come on down

 They water and they drown

 It’s a dying motion

 To open up your heart

CHORUS

BRIDGE

 Can you see a way to grow

 When the grounds all cold and covered with snow

 Waiting for the springtime and the planting of your soul

 Can you see a way to let it grow

CHORUS

You think you’ve got it

And then it flows away

It’s a dying motion

To open up your heart

CHORUS

Sun won’t stop shinin

You still keep trying

It’s a dying motion

To open up your heart

Moses Projects friends, it is my hope that you will be dead and broken open enough in these months together that this will be for you an opportunity for God to open your hearts and eyes and ears to what God is calling you and your ministry setting to be and do now.  That you become more and more adept at noticing and listening to burning bushes all around you.

Anna Madsen in her book Joyful Defiance has a great idea.  She references how some of us have Apple Watches to remind us to do all kinds of things.  She wonders about setting her watch with an alarm to go off several times a day to remind her that, wherever she is, she is standing on holy ground, and God may have something to say to her in that place.

I am convinced that God still calls to broken people like Moses and you and I and invites us to see that we are standing on Holy Ground and are invited daily into Holy work together in God’s grace.

Amen