Follow Your Curiosity — Exodus 3:1–12

One of my favourite authors is Gabriel García Márquez, whose work is often characterized as magical realism.

In one of his short stories, an unusually large and exceptionally handsome man drowns and his body washes ashore in a tiny coastal village.

Who he is and where he came from… nobody knows.

And as the villagers gather around his body, his strangeness becomes harder to ignore.

So they name the mystery and call him Esteban.

Soon, their curiosity begins to spark.

They wonder about the life he might have lived —

And imagine that he could summon fish from deep waters, make flowers grow in tired soil, and even call spring water from jagged rocks.

And once their wondering cracks open the closed door of certainty, curiosity begins wandering through the whole village. 

Magically, Esteban’s very impossibility turns their eyes back to everything they had stopped questioning. 

Suddenly their narrow doors, small houses, and barren cliffs no longer seem so inevitable. 

And they begin imagining a wider, brighter, more beautiful world.

That’s the magic of magical realism: Something extraordinary shows up, sits down at the kitchen table, and stretches what we think is possible.

The Bible often looks like magical realism.

A bush that burns, yet remains unconsumed.

From stone, a wellspring for parched mouths in the wilderness.

Walls of water, flanking the Israelites as they run toward freedom.

…and that’s just the Book of Exodus.

Some of us were raised in religious traditions that treat miracles like these as a kind of litmus test for faith.

Believe every word exactly as it appears on the page — or somehow you are doing Christianity wrong.

Question the virgin birth — That’s a problem.

Wonder whether the creation story happened in six literal days — Problem.

Find yourself reading a story about a burning bush and thinking, Okay...but really? — Best keep it to yourself.

As a seminary student, I’ve wrestled with how to make sense of the Bible’s miracles. 

And what I now know for sure is —

That we don’t have to take every word of scripture literally in order to take every word seriously.

That questioning doesn’t have to oppose faith — but can open it.

That wonder, and wondering, might not be a detour from God, but instead how we draw near.

You know, before I moved to Berkeley last December, 

I spent ten years studying psychology, training my eyes to trust only what could be observed, measured, replicated, and explained.

And that’s not a bad way to study the world.

It is simply not the only way to receive it.

Because some truths arrive as measurements.

And some are only revealed through the slow work of God.

I’ve come to think of biblical miracles that way.

As stories that meet us, differently, as time grows full. 

They wait.

They let us walk away and come back wiser —

Beautifully callused and creased and cracked open in ways we were closed before. 

So when I return to Moses, I think about how quickly my eyes rush to the fire.

The bush is burning — blazing — and somehow refusing to become ash.

And it calls to Moses, by name.

It makes sense that the fire gets our attention.

Of course that’s the part we remember.

But the burning bush is not the only miracle here.

Something is catching fire in Moses, too.

What if the deeper miracle is that Moses follows his curiosity?

Because let’s face it — he can keep walking.

He can say, You know what? I have sheep. I have chores. I don’t have time today for supernatural shrubbery.

But Moses turns aside.

He looks closer.

He stays with what holds his attention.

And that one tiny moment changes everything.

Before the plagues.

Before Pharaoh.

Before the sea.

Before liberation.

Before Moses becomes Moses —

There is simply a shepherd in the wilderness who sees something strange and decides to turn aside.

And only then does scripture say: “When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush: Moses, Moses.”

And Moses says: Here I am.

I don’t understand, but here I am.

I’m afraid, but here I am.

I’m curious, and here I am.

If God is still speaking, then God is still calling us to our own attention — often through the everyday miracles we have forgotten how to see.

A ripple of wind through the trees.

A child’s laughter coming from another room.

The way my dog shoves her nose into my chest.

A stranger who speaks truth at the bus stop.

Not every miracle burns.

Some miracles simply refuse to leave us alone — 

Something catches our attention, 

And curiosity asks us not to rush past it, 

But to turn aside and stay awhile.

Turn aside — and stay awhile.

Because noticing isn’t where the work ends.

It’s where it begins.

If we stay with our curiosity —

If we resist the urge to finish a question before it has finished with us —

Something in our hearts begins to smoulder.

What begins as curiosity becomes wonder.

And somewhere in the wondering,

We begin to love what has come into view.

Now, I don’t know whether Moses was literally standing there talking out loud with God.

But what I love here is the holy honesty at the heart of this story. 

And prayer is a place where we stay with God long enough for our deepest question to find a voice.

A place where we can approach uncertain, afraid, and unfinished.

So bring it all —

Bring your fear.

Bring your anger.

Bring your ridiculous idea and audacious hope.

Bring your Why Me? and What if this goes badly?

Because Moses does.

God says, I am sending you to Pharaoh.

And Moses basically responds:

Ok, couple thoughts —

Who am I that I should go?

What am I supposed to tell them?

What if they don’t believe me?

Moses also brings God what he thinks disqualifies him from the work.

Scripture tells us that Moses is slow of speech and slow of tongue — often interpreted as a stutter.

Think about that.

God puts a message of liberation in the mouth of someone who stutters.

Moses objects — and God — stays.

He questions — and God stays.

He doubts — and God stays.

He resists — and God stays.

And as God stays, Moses learns how to stay too.

And this matters because God isn’t waiting for the finished version of us.

God delights in our still-becomingness.

And with Moses, God works with who he actually is: 

Complicated and tired —

Capable but afraid —

Reluctant but curious —

Slow of speech and still called to take action —

God doesn’t need us to be remarkable.

God asks us to be available.

Moses does not suddenly become fearless.

He does not suddenly become sure.

He does not suddenly speak with ease.

And still, somehow, he remains available: Here I am.

(He also argues.)

What matters here is that God doesn’t shame Moses for his fear.

Instead, God stays with him long enough for his attention to widen.

And then God turns Moses toward bodies bruised by empire, saying:

I have observed the misery of my people.

I have heard their cry.

I know their sufferings.

First God teaches Moses to pay attention.

Then God shows Moses what deserves his attention.

Not merely the astonishing fire.

But the enslaved body.

The unheard cry.

The suffering neighbour.

And the culture where cruelty is common.

Notice how curiosity transforms Moses’s question:

First: What is happening to that bush?

Then: What is happening to these people?

And finally: What does love require of me now?

That’s important. 

Because it’s so easy to stop at compassion.

Our lives are already full.

We may care deeply and still not know what to do with what we have seen.

But if we stay with what we have seen,

Compassion begins to rearrange something in us.

And eventually — Love asks for hands.

So Moses gives his.

And God, well, God never wastes the miracle of available hands.

Now sometimes, we mistake our part for the whole work.

We start to imagine that everything might end up depending on us —

And either that importance seduces our ego,

Or the weight of it sends us running.

But liberation is too heavy — and too holy — to be carried by just one.

And this is where it gets interesting:

God hears the cry of his people — and sends a human being.

A deeply reluctant one.

An uncertain one.

One who does not believe he has what it takes.

And God says: You… 

You… but never alone.

Miriam has been there all along.

Soon, Aaron will join the work.

A whole people will move together,

And cloud and fire will accompany them.

The miracle of the Israelites’ liberation is not about one extraordinary man single-handedly saving Israel.

The miracle is collective.

Curiosity was the kindling.

Moses drew close enough to God for the spark to catch.

And what began as a small flame in one person

Spread until a whole people burned for freedom.

That’s how God’s love and freedom pass from heart to heart.

Through ordinary people, just like us, willing to lend their lives to the work of love. 

And maybe that is creation’s deeper rhythm:

God dreams beyond what is, and invites us into what remains unfinished.

And let me be clear:

Equity is unfinished.

Dignity for all is unfinished.

Access to clean water, food, and healthcare for all is unfinished.

Justice for all is unfinished.

Reconciliation is unfinished.

Freedom for all is unfinished.

Love has more work to do.

But none of us are being asked to do it all.

You do not have to know the whole road, become fearless, or wait for some brighter, braver version of yourself to arrive. 

God calls imperfect people into unfinished work, and curiosity is often where the “I” transforms into a “We”. 

Perhaps the invitation is simpler than we think.

In two weeks, as we gather for our retreat, may curiosity strengthen our life together.

My prayer is that we stay curious enough to turn aside

That we stay long enough for strangers to become neighbours, 

And that we stay open enough for the life of another to rearrange our hearts.

May your curiosity become compassion.

May compassion borrow your hands.

May you trust that God wants to work with you exactly as you are —

Imperfect and enough and available.

Here I am.

Church, may we take our place in the unfinished world God is calling us to love.

May we notice where the Spirit is stirring.

May we delight in the magical realism all around us.

And may we turn aside and follow curiosity.

Amen.