Amoeba Tag!
A spiritual game of tag that turns our weakness into community strength.
📖 Scripture Reading to center my thoughts
Exodus 4:10–17
10 Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” 11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” 13 But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.” 14 Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. 15 You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. 16 He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. 17 But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.”
🧫 Amoebas and Slugs
How many of you remember high school biology? I learned about amoebas around that time of my education. Amoebas, those funky little single-cell organisms that kind of blob around on a slide under a microscope. You can see their nucleus and their organelles sloshing in whatever direction they’re moving, forming pseudopods (fake feet) that give the impression that they are walking around the glass, taking in the sights. In fact, they are not taking in the sights, but flowing based on various stimuli, including hunger! Amoebas eat! They eat algae, bacteria, and other microorganisms. They do this by sending out their pseudopods and surrounding their prey until the goody yum yums are enveloped into the cell. OR, if there’s no food close by, they can join with other amoebas and zip along at an accelerated pace toward a food source. This aggregation is called “merging,” and it results in a mega amoeba known as a “slug.” Which is different from a garden variety slug, but has the same name.
Anywho, you’re probably wondering what amoebic slugs have to do with Moses…yes?
🏃 Tag, You’re It!
Before I answer that query, allow me to flash you further back in your childhood, to a time when you played a game called “tag.” Do you remember that??? Chasing each other around, touching each other, and transferring “it” ness to one another. Not too many people in my friend group wanted to be “IT” because it meant that you had to do most of the running, and chasing, and catching! Everyone was trying to get away from you. Go their own way, remain “free”. And so if someone put their finger on the side of their nose and yelled, “NOT IT” well, you know what to do.
Or maybe you don’t…or else you all want to be IT! I wonder if you’d want to be IT if it meant that you had to speak hard words to your community? Or if you would have to go before Pharaoh and tell him to let your people go? Or if you’d have to lead your people across an impossible wilderness that began in water, passed through the desert, and ended in…well, somewhere called a promised land? You’d never see it, but you’d get the good people close enough that they could make it on their own. “NOT IT!”
📣 Moses’ Refusal
The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
God says, I see that my people are suffering. I have heard their cries. It’s time to intervene. It’s time to play and Moses, YOU’RE I–, “NOT IT!” Moses cries out, “Not IT!” For a guy who claims he’s not very eloquent, he makes a good case for not being it. Moses starts with humility, “Who am I to go to lead your people?”, and moves to “But what if they won’t listen to me?”
Have you been there? God sends you out to do something, and instead of trusting that God will clear the path, you catastrophize the mission? You look at your life and humbly deny that you have the skills necessary to relieve the suffering of God’s people. You think about all of the times you’ve come up short in the past and cannot believe that now you will succeed. It would be terrible to fail God. It would be awful to serve coffee that wasn’t on par with the local restaurant. It would be a spot on God’s good name to arrange flowers that were not up to the local florist shop’s standards. It would ruin the Holy’s reputation if you put the wrong price on a bobble head of Keith Hernandez at Rummage. And so you, and I, cry, NOT IT!
🙅 Resistance and Reluctance
We back away, we excuse ourselves from leadership in the simplest things, and in the biggest things. We say NOT IT to reading scripture during worship, singing in the choir, serving on a board or committee, sharing the Good News with a neighbor that you belong to an Open and Affirming Church, asking the community to support the mission of BCC with a financial gift or pledge. We say, NOT IT! Like Moses said, NOT IT! We say with him, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” NOT IT!
But God knows the game has to be played. God knows that the needs of the community must be addressed. God knows that with God’s help, we’ll be JUST FINE. And you may have felt it, or heard it from some leader who sees in you another leader, that God will be with you. You don’t have to do this all on your own. The Holy Spirit will guide you.
🔥 Childs’ Commentary
God cajoles Moses by saying, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”
And there it is. No excuses. Moses just doesn’t want to do it. He won’t do it. He says, “Get someone else.” The Exodus scholar Brevard Childs notes that this is the climactic rejection of Moses’ call. Childs says, Theologically, it reveals the tension between divine command and human resistance. The narrative does not smooth this over: Moses really doesn’t want to go. Moses’s last protest reveals not only his deep-seated reluctance but the true nature of Israel’s resistance to the divine claim on its life. The call of God is not received by heroic, willing response, but through reluctant obedience, which has first encountered the judgment and mercy of God.”
🐾 God’s Persistent Grace
When we are asked as members of a faith community to take the lead on relieving suffering or speaking a difficult word to power, our response reflects on the wider community. It tells God who we have become as a body. We may say NOT IT! Or NOT NOW! And there may be some very legitimate reasons for that reply, but Childs points out that our answer as individuals reflects a wider relationship with the Holy. It reflects our trust in God to lead us in these ministries…for better or worse. It reflects our need for others to be part of the mission.
Fortunately, God is as persistent as a child at the bathroom door, or a cat by its food dish. God takes a deep, frustrated breath and responds with intentional grace to Moses/us.
🧩 A New Game: Amoeba Tag
God says, “OK, you won’t play the game that you know, I’m going to teach you a new game. It’s called Amoeba Tag. I mean, that’s not exactly what God said. Exodus records the Holy saying, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.”
Amoeba Tag is played by everyone agreeing that they will move slowly, like they are swimming through the agar in a petri dish. One person starts out as IT, but when they tag someone else, that person becomes a co-IT. They travel together, trying to collect other ITS, and each time they do, the IT becomes bigger, stronger, slower, but more able to envelop a needy amoeba.
Take a moment to imagine the game as the amoeba grows larger and larger, slower and slower, closer and closer to enveloping everyone around you. To make it more fun, as you become part of the amoebic slug, begin to chant, A-MOE-BA, A-MOE-BA, A-MOE-BA! Give yourself and your playmates a sloshy round of applause and continue reading…
🌍 Together in Mission
See how that is different from doing it all alone? See how God accommodates our fears and hesitance by tagging others to work with us? See how the Holy recognizes different gifts of the Spirit and pulls them together to speak a word of hope to the LGBTQIA community? Advocate for more just immigration laws by speaking with our legislators? Gather clothing for the poor at Rummage? Coffee and conversation for the thirsty at Fellowship? See how God gives us both the courage to speak difficult words and the hands to attend to God’s people’s needs when we respond to God’s accommodations? When we join the game? A-moe-ba! A-MOE-BA!
Like an amoebic slug, when we join together with God and one another, we are able to meet the community’s needs more effectively. We are able to send out pseudopods of faith to gather hope and peace to a world that is hungry for those gifts.
✨ Mercy That Gathers Us
Moses said, NOT IT! And sometimes we do too. Childs reminds us the call of God isn’t about heroic volunteers but about reluctant obedience, sustained by mercy. That’s what Amoeba Tag looks like — God’s mercy gathering us up until together we can move. I believe that today’s lesson teaches us that before we lay a finger beside our nose, we look around to see who else might be playing, and who else may join their gifts with ours to become a representation of God’s love and justice working itself out in the world.
I mean, if an amoeba can do it, surely so can we. Amen.