Theme: “Even Mighty Spines Quiver.”
Sermon: Moses: Leading Well
Scripture: Exodus 3
Last summer, I discovered a gift: the poet Wilder S. Simpson, through his collection, Even Mighty Spines Quiver.
I was drawn to his images on the screen, and through his performances I saw myself reflected in his actions, leaping into a June river as if it were his desk, his library, his joy. In the still-cold water, even at summer’s threshold, words and pages scatter freely, belonging to their source: his heart, tender and quivering. Just as he writes: even mighty spines quiver, even the strongest shudder with awe, even the bravest tremble in reverence.
That trembling reminded me of Moses before the Burning Bush: a crack opening in a small corner of the world, fire blazing with fear and brightness, a mirror to the heart of the one who looks. There, the voice speaks: I am who I am. I will be who I will be (Exodus 3:14).
There is a moment when even the strongest spine shudders with awe. There is a place where even the bravest tremble in reverence. The holy ground acts upon us: not to separate us from the world, not to bury us away from it, but to draw us deeper into reality itself: the burning bush where the Divine declares, I am who I am. I will be who I will be.
What is holy ground, as revealed in the burning bush? And what is this time, now —when we are called to lead with the God who declares, I am who I am. I will be who I will be?
One more thing that struck me this summer was this information:
“The CNN.com Fear & Greed Index, now registering the US economy at ‘Extreme Greed,’ may seem like a financial curiosity. But it is a symptom of something deeper. It tells the truth we don’t want to face: our nation, our world, is being driven by a destructive energy that prioritizes profit over people. We are worshipping the wrong god.” (Cameron Trimble)
Driving through the mountains, you often see signs marking the danger of wildfire: Low, Moderate, High, Extreme. One glance tells you how close the land is to burning.
What if we had such a sign for our moral health, our human dignity? According to CNN’s index, not only our nation but the world itself now burns at Extreme Greed.
In such a time, in such a world, we are called to lead, and lead well. To lead well, we must embrace the world as holy ground. This is where God dwells, where God leads, and where we, with Moses, hear the call.
And so we must ask: In this complex, burning world, how will we recover a new moral imagination, a new economic imagination, for human dignity, peace, and diversity? How will we practice deep listening, and deeper insight, to the burning bush of our world and our inner life? How will we lead with God’s declaration as our own: I am who I am. I will be who I will be.
The world sounds its alarms every single day—countless crises demanding our attention, endless events pressing in from every direction. And in our own lives, too, distractions arrive in relentless waves. The instinct is to cower, to hide. So how do we lead?
We live in a world set to “extreme”: extreme greed, extreme fear, extreme aggression, devotion to the wrong gods. In such a world, Margaret Wheatley offers “Islands of Sanity”: a metaphor and a framework for creating grounded, resilient communities in chaotic times. These islands are not only for the world but also for the self: places where each moment’s sense of sanity can be preserved, where humanity can be remembered, where we remain open to the holy ground and relationships with the vulnerable. We must lead well to create the islands of sanity for our insane world.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim—
She lives in Pennsylvania, but her story begins elsewhere. Born in Toronto, the eldest daughter of Korean immigrants who arrived with nothing, she grew up in a house of daily struggle. At school she faced racism; at home she watched her mother work endlessly, cooking dinner after a long day, bathing the children, packing meals for the next morning, while her father rested, read, and demanded the table be reset if the food displeased him. Patriarchy stood tall in the living room, quite literally beneath the picture of a White Jesus her father had rescued from the street.
I met her this summer at the Known & Unknown Conference hosted by the Vancouver School of Theology at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church. I had been called there to lead morning worship, with the same theme as today: Even Mighty Spines Quiver (and Even Quivering Disciples are Mighty.).
A Korean feminist theologian, she wrote about Grace (Ji-Hye) Theology when she began her career, and soon became well-known. I knew about her, had read some of her articles and a little of her work, and I carried a stereotype: of what a Korean Canadian/American female theologian might be like. Calm. Intellectual. Considerate. In a word, restrained. A restrained woman doing restrained theology.
But when she came on stage as the keynote speaker, she flew. Her whole face beamed with celebration, her arms wide open—as if, she had ten new books she wrote (indeed she wrote 25 books), she would stretch out ten arms to advertise them all. Unapologetic self-promotion as an Asian woman theologian. And with a sweet, cheerful, high tone, she exclaimed:
“Friends! I usually don’t share my PowerPoints with the audience, so you’ll have to listen carefully. My book Intersectional Theology was published before intersectionality became such a widespread discourse, and I honestly don’t know why, but students keep telling me it changed their lives. I really hope you will read it too. My suitcase was already too heavy with other recent books I wrote, so I wasn’t able to bring copies of Intersectional Theology with me. But I wish I did.”
And then she pivoted:
“An intersectional leader,” she said, “is someone who understands: to lead well, we must begin within. By understanding ourselves—our emotions, motives, cultural backgrounds, even our biases—we do not lead from fear or ego, but from wisdom, courage, and authenticity. And this is what we must reflect on together.”
Grace Ji-Sun continued: Intersectional Leadership is also about:
• If our leadership doesn’t transform the world, is it worthwhile?
• We need leadership that not only changes us, but also the world.
• This is what intersectional leadership hopes to achieve.
• We all need to engage in action for God that transforms our world.
Nothing complicated. It’s nothing new under the sun, nothing that requires analysis. Simple. Clear. Direct. And yet it sank deep into me: To lead well, we must begin within. It must begin with me!
In that moment, Grace Ji-Sun Kim shattered my stereotypes with her very presence - not just her stunning celebrity persona as an Asian feminist theologian! But it also handed me, almost like the Diamond Sutra itself, a burning bush called “intersectional leadership”, drawing me to see more closely! What is this?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim also says, “I always tell my students: biography is theology. Theology is biography. I tell stories.”
Intersectional thinking, intersectional leadership is for all of us, not just those of us who are members of an oppressed group. As Grace Ji-Sun invites, it’s all about deeply looking within and learning, feeling, understanding all aspects of ourselves, through and until the point you journey in to name and say Who I Am and Who I will be. And Who we are and who we will be because of who I am and who I will be.
It also means holding together our complexities and contradictions, allowing for what I would call a “destabilization of the self.” Rather than imagining a fixed, unchanging identity, we recognize that we are both/and: I am the oppressor; I am the oppressed. It is about embracing multiplicities, and understanding both the privileges and the marginalizations within ourselves and within others.
The most important tenets of intersectional theology and leadership come in two parts, as we embrace and affirm the gifts and insights that arise from understanding marginalization:
- It helps each one move toward hope for justice and liberation for all people and their human dignity by understanding and touching our own experiences remembered deep within.
- It reminds us that none of us is only one thing. We are always more than one, single, fixed self.
In this way, intersectional leadership helps us sustain ourselves and our insistence on living and dwelling on holy ground. This holy ground is not a separate, protective space set apart from the world. It is the world itself, burning with God’s cries and our own, for a new tomorrow. These burning bushes call us to justice, peace, harmony, and dignity: to lead not with fear or ego, but with courage, compassion, and self-trust. To trust God, the One who calls us to journey into discovering the intersectionality of WHO I AM.
Now let’s talk about Moses a little more.
As a foreigner tending sheep in the land of Midian, the moment Moses encountered the burning bush was an unavoidable I AM moment. His intersectional I AM moment, on that holy ground, became the threshold into his calling—to the new story, to the new moral and economic imagination of no dominance, no exploitation in the Pharaoh-ruled world.
Moses was born a Hebrew child, a male child, who became the target of Pharaoh’s massacre of Hebrew infants (which we can see in continuity with immigration control and policies of exclusion). He was thrown into the river to escape death, hidden in a reed basket by his mother, with his sister watching until Pharaoh’s daughter discovered him. Adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses was raised and educated with royal privileges within the household of the Egyptian king. Moses, enjoying Egyptian security and luxury.
Yet when he grew up, he went out to his people. Privileged Moses, stepping out from Pharaoh’s household, saw the hard labour his people endured. He saw an Israelite being abused, defended him, killed the Egyptian taskmaster—and was then denounced by the very Hebrew slaves he had hoped to defend. This forced him to flee as a refugee to a foreign country. Moses, as Hebrew on the run.
Seen in this way, his is an intersectional biography: a continuing journey of identification and dislocation. Where does he belong? Moses journeys deeper and deeper into marginality: from Egyptian culture, from the king’s household, to identifying with his enslaved ancestry, to becoming a refugee in the foreign, non-Israelite land of Midian (Midian, the arid southern part of Palestine). Moses, as a foreign alien, an immigrant.
God’s call must come from the intersectional understanding of ourselves, just as it did for Moses. Through times of great oppression, like the Hebrew people in slavery, later escaping and wandering in the desert, we learn that even if we may not face such extreme danger or genocide, we can still relate to Moses in the burning bush moment: “even mighty spines quiver.”
I can recall many times in my own life when I faced ambiguity, uncertainty, fear, feeling overwhelmed, or the social forces that enforce self-doubt or self-restraint. What do I trust? What can I trust? Grace Ji-Sun Kim’s presentation of intersectional leadership came to me like a burning bush, making me take off my sandals, stand barefoot, and look more closely, because it reminds me that I can trust myself, my own intersectional biography, and the way I have journeyed within it. This creates for me an island of sanity, and it opens my heart to God’s call to deep listening—to the cries of God’s people, not just my own.
I imagine that this is what Moses’ burning bush moment on the holy ground was. His migrant, refugee, adoption experience all count. His dislocation, his identification, shape the memory of Hebrew people and God’s dream through the story of Exodus. The Hebrew people’s cries and sufferings deeply form God’s intersectional identity.
God says no to forced labour.
God says no to slavery, exploitation.
In fact, throughout the Bible, God is pro-immigrant (Think of Naomi and Ruth, Jesus’ family, and many more).
God is the God of the Egyptians, and even the God of abusive rulers, oppressors, kings (as God is the God of the whole universe). Yet God’s intersectionality orients Godself toward justice, peace, and dignity.
This is what the exodus—the Hebrew people’s collective memory as Israel escaping the oppression of Egypt’s kings—holds and wants to pass on. “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt,” God says. “I’ll send you to Pharaoh, to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
As God fully embraces God’s own intersectionality, we fully embrace our own.
In such a time as today: a time of extreme of everything: greed, fear, and aggression, Moses leads well. As God does. Because of the intersectionality, which is the burning bush, which is the holy ground, in which we are called to the cries of God’s people. This theology is about destabilizing and denouncing abusive ruling, kingship. It is about trusting our intersectional biography and finding our calls and gifts through embracing multiplicity, and marginalization, as the holy ground. Throughout the Bible we see God working with enslaved people, refugees (the whole of Israel were refugees), immigrants, migrants, queer people and women denounced by society as a disgrace. All of these accounts and stories shape the intersectional theology and leadership of who God is and how God leads.
We lead well by understanding ourselves. We must begin within. This is a burning bush moment. And we live on God’s holy ground. We are called to lead with our whole selves. We, the intercultural, intersectional, bold and dazzling community, together.
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