Bill Blessing was the first person I ever spoke to from this church. He was chairing the search committee looking for the next Senior Pastor. I first met Bill on a video call in September 2016 and then in person in October that year. From that time on, Bill and I spent time together in session meetings, committee meetings, worship services, and occasionally on and around Spring Lake.
Late this summer Bill reached out with his news that he was home under hospice care and he wanted me to visit. This fall, Bill and I spent significant time together talking about his life and faith, talking about what and who he loved, and talking about what was most important to him.
In our last visit, Bill said to me, “Troy, there are three major decisions a person makes in life.” “Well, what are they?” I asked him. And he said this: “First, what you will do for work. Second, who you will spend your life with. And third, what you believe about God.” Those first two items are really about deciding who you believe you are. The final question is all about who God is.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to dive into several Old Testament stories. They are stories that you’ve likely encountered before in Sunday School, in your own reading, or even in popular culture. Today we’re beginning with Moses and the burning bush. This is a story that is constantly wrestling with those same two crucial life questions. Who am I? And who is God?
We actually get those questions directly in our passage. In verse 11, when Moses asks God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Who am I? Moses asks. A few verses later, Moses asks God’s name, which in other words is like saying, Who are you?
So, today, we’re going to walk our way through this essential story (or greatest hit, if you will) asking those two questions — what does this say about God, and what does it say about people?
In the first two chapters of Exodus, we learn that Moses was rescued from certain death by brave Egyptian midwives, that he was raised in Pharaoh’s house, and that he’s always been a bit of an outsider. He saw how the Egyptians were treating the Israelites, and he killed an Egyptian who was abusing an Israelite, an act that sent Moses into exile, which is where we find him. Decades have passed, and he’s married into a foreign family that lives east of Egypt.
It begins with Moses tending his father-in-law’s sheep out in the wilderness. Moses is a foreigner and shepherd, simply minding his own business. So, what does this say about God? First, God relates to everyday, ordinary people just doing life. Moses’ father-in-law is a priest, that is, someone whose very role was to relate to God on behalf of others, yet God skips over the priest and goes straight to Moses. Also, it shows how God often works in the margins of life. Moses is ethnically a Hebrew, but he was raised as an Egyptian. He is now married into a Midianite family. A person’s background is not something that stands in the way of God’s acting; rather, it’s an asset that God leverages for good.
So, in the wilderness, an angel of the Lord appears in a fire that is burning in a bush but that is not actually burning the bush. For decades that bush grew unremarkably in the wilderness until one day it was ready for God’s purposes. What we have here is God showing up remarkably in everyday life, which is something God is doing all the time, if only we’re curious enough to pay attention.
Which brings me to the first thing this says about Moses. He is curious. He doesn’t flee the scene when he encounters something that does not make sense. Rather, he engages it with curiosity. “I must turn aside and look at this great sight,” Moses says. Who are humans? Well, we are God’s creatures that God has endowed with curiosity and the ability to ask questions even in situations that seem strange. God made us to ask questions. Isn’t that amazing? The hard questions we come up with aren’t a reason to run from faith; rather, they’re the precise avenue by which God opens our understanding. Our questioning leads to a deeper understanding of God. Be curious, folks!
So, Moses hears the bush calling his name, which is another odd thing. Not only does the bush burn without burning up, but it also talks. Moses comes close and the encounter goes from strange to sacred. “Remove your sandals, Moses, you’re standing on holy ground.”
Holy.
It’s a word we speak around churches, but it’s not a word that we really understand well.
Holy. Set apart. Something other than the normal.
We Presbyterians don’t do holy so well. We’re much more engaged with the God-with-us-ness of it all. We don’t build many cathedrals. We bring coffee into the sanctuary. Few of us put on our Sunday best these days. (Which I’m OK with, by the way, but I will say that our casualness about worship and holiness has created a whole new set of issues for us.)
What do we learn about God? Well, where God is, there is holiness. Holy ground Exodus calls it. God has Moses remove his shoes as a sign that there is something charged where he is standing, something wholly other. This is no mere weird happening in the wilderness; it is an encounter with the Holy One. While we don’t have many burning bushes around us, we’d do well to remember that “the earth is charged with the grandeur of God,” to borrow from the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.
But, what does this say about us? Like Moses, we humans respond to the holiness. We don’t create it. Holiness is there because God is there, not because we’ve manufactured some sort of experience. All of our efforts in worship — the glories of the music, the artful placement of candles, the spirit of welcome — are all signposts to something far greater. They help us see, experience, feel, know deep in our bones, that God is here, that we are standing on holy ground without even knowing it.
This encounter is not simply about God showing up in the everyday world, however. Rather, God is there because God is invested in what is happening. The rabbis observed that “‘God made his presence lowly’ in order to give room for humankind to enter into a genuine conversation regarding the shape of the future.” In Exodus 3-4, God speaks to Moses thirteen times, which is pretty amazing.
Did you notice the words God uses when speaking to Moses? The Lord says, “I have observed the misery of my people….I have heard their cry….I know their sufferings.” What does this say about God? God is not far off and uninvolved. God is present, particularly where there is suffering. I know it is tempting to feel that God is absent in our suffering or in the problems we see all around us, but that kind of hopelessness runs against the witness of Scripture. God’s timing and actions may not match ours, but God is always on the side of justice and healing.
This also says something about who we humans are. God chooses to partner with us in these acts of justice. As Exodus unfolds, God does plenty Moses has no power over. Just think of any of the ten plagues — frogs overrunning the land, utter darkness, people covered with boils. Moses does not cause these. He simply announces what God is doing and is faithful in his part of God’s action in the world. God sends Moses to Pharaoh with a purpose and in partnership.
Yet, this says even more about us humans. We are stubborn. I said earlier that God speaks to Moses thirteen times in Exodus 3-4. Part of the reason God has to speak so often is that Moses keeps saying no. He rejects God’s offer eight times in the same span. We see that right in verse 11, where we get this question that has guided us today. “Who am I?” Moses says. “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” In other words, I’m just a shepherd living in exile. I’m no leader. I don’t even like public speaking. I have all sorts of reasons NOT to do what you’ve asked me to do!
And, of course, that’s the same for us. Don’t we have all sorts of reasons for delaying or saying “no” to God? I’m too busy. I leave prayer for the professionals. It’s too risky. I’ve never served on a committee. I don’t know enough. I’ve done my time. I tried before, and it didn’t go how I expected it to go. You get the picture. We’re stubborn — full of excuses as to why we can’t partner in God’s work. Yet, God still keeps reaching out and insisting that God will not do this work without us.
All of this leads to one of the key moments in the Bible. After all of this interaction, Moses asks God for a name so he can share with the people on whose behalf he is acting. God says, “I am who I am,” and if you’re looking to shorten it, just go with “I am sent me.” There’s a lot to say about this name. Notice first of all that it’s really a state of being. I am. God’s name is not some random noun. God is being itself. So, it’s both a name and something that constantly is moving beyond the confines of a name. It’s from this designation that we get YHWH, which we pronounce Yahweh and which many Jews never pronounce out of reverence for The Name, instead saying “Adonai,” which means “Lord” when they come across the word. In fact, if you’ve paid attention to your Bibles, you’ll see that this word gets translated as “The Lord” in small caps.
So, God answers Moses’ question and then goes further to show how God is directly relational and involved in history. The Lord is God of Moses’ ancestors, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. God is not distant and far off. God is present in history, working with and through humanity for justice and freedom.
That is one of the central beliefs of Christianity. We just finished celebrating Christmas, and there is something to be said about how over a thousand years later God would again appear to shepherds out in the fields with another announcement of how God is acting in history, this time decisively in the birth of Jesus.
This God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush continues to reveal himself in so many ways. Our New Testament text comes at the end of Luke’s gospel, where two dejected disciples were piecing their lives back together after Jesus’ death. On the road to Emmaus, the resurrected Jesus walked with them, although they did not recognize him throughout the journey. Still, he pointed to all the ways God was working, and finally it was in the breaking of bread — like we will do momentarily in communion — where the revelation became complete.
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” they marveled. Like the burning bush, God in Christ through the Holy Spirit keeps burning in our hearts as we experience this gospel. God keeps bringing the holy here and working for the salvation of the world.
What are we to do with this? We, like Moses, need to be curious. We need to notice God in the world. We need to go at it with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Even in the extraordinary showing up right here in the ordinary, we need to press in and see who God is and what God wants of us.
Who am I? It’s a question we’ll continually ask ourselves in every season of life, but part of its answer comes in engaging with who God thinks we are.
Who is God? It’s another question we’ll spend our lives asking, going deeper and deeper in God’s love, mystery, and grace.
For the holy is here, if only we tune our hearts to experience it.
