Scripture
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” [God] said, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.
Sermon
Last weekend a friend of mine invited a group of friends to her home to observe the summer solstice, a few days late. She has a recently created fire-pit, and we were the first to experience a fire there this summer. It was just beautiful. As the sun went down, the fire glowed more brightly, the fireflies (or lightning bugs, as I grew up calling them) came out, and a threatened storm cleared away to reveal a blanket of stars in the heavens.
There is something about a fire. Whether you are outside on a summer night or snuggled up in front of a hearth in the cold of winter, a fire is beautiful, inviting, even, somehow, mysterious. It’s hypnotic—the flicker of the flames and the snap of the wood as it burns are oddly soothing.
But as we know, fire is also dangerous. A fire requires caution and care to be the beautiful thing that can warm us and inspire good conversation (or even better, silence). The worst fires are those initiated by carelessness—we all know that, even when wildfires hundreds of miles away aren’t affecting our air quality and forcing us inside.
Welcome to this summer sermon series on fires in the Bible. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, on Pentecost Sunday, we explored the symbolism and meaning of those tongues of flame that settled on the disciples as the Holy Spirit initiated the work of the church. Today we have a very different kind of fire, but it is also one that sends God’s people out to do God’s work.
The story of Moses is a bedrock of the Hebrew Scriptures. He arrives as an infant under threat of murder by Pharaoh, who fears the people he calls the Hebrews, a strong community of outsiders, because they grow and thrive. His first move is to take them all into slavery—to force back-breaking work on them with increasing levels of cruelty and punishment. But still they thrive. When this doesn’t work, he tells two midwives, whom you all heard about on Mother’s Day, in a terrific sermon by Michelle Wahila, to kill the Hebrew baby boys when they are born. The women do no such thing. And when the Pharaoh asks why, they use his own prejudice against him—the Hebrew women are so strong, they don’t even wait for the midwives, but give birth and head right back out into the fields.
These are the circumstances of Moses’ birth. Hidden and protected, first by the midwives, then by his mother and sister, he eventually is taken into care by the daughter of the Pharaoh. You have to love God’s sense of humor: the man who will lead the Israelites to freedom is raised in the Pharaoh’s own household.
As an adult Moses ventures out among the people and observes the harsh treatment the Israelites suffer. He intervenes when witnessing an enslaved man being beaten; he kills the taskmaster. When he realizes there are witnesses to his crime, he flees to the land of Midian, where he meets and then marries the daughter of a priest. This is where we find him, keeping the flocks of his father-in-law in the shadow of Mount Horeb—the very same mountain where God will give the people the law.
But a fire draws Moses’ attention. Unlike the fires we gather around, this one is not consuming the wood of the bush, so Moses draws closer for a better look. It is strange. It is uncanny. I imagine Moses’ skin prickling at the sight of it. It is a wonder. It is then that he hears the call—the double call—of God. Moses! Moses! In scripture, when God calls your name twice, God has important work for you to do. And he answers. Here I am! And so it begins.
Stop, God says, as Moses starts to move even closer to the bush. This place is holy ground. God instructs Moses to remove his sandals, which, even today, can be a sign of humility in the presence of mystery; reverence, in the presence of the holy; and respect, in the presence of power.
But when I looked to Jewish scholars for their insights, the matter of removing sandals was a little more complex. It may have been that the sandals were made of animal skin, which might have been considered impure. It may have been that, since sandals collected dust and dirt, removing them would have been the respectful thing to do when entering any special space, from a home to the Temple. (The priests in the Temple always carried out their work barefoot.) But here is the understanding I found most striking, by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch: “Taking off one’s shoes expresses giving oneself up entirely to the meaning of a place, to let your personality get its standing and take up its position entirely and directly on it without any intermediary.”[i] God was asking Moses to stand barefoot on this ground as a sign of his willingness to submit himself to its holiness, to the holiness of God.
Only after Moses has taken off his sandals does God reveal who God is. “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” At these words, the first time Moses has an inkling of whose presence he stands in, he shields his face from looking directly at God. It was believed that no one could survive seeing the face of God. Then, and only then, does God reveal why Moses is being summoned. Quite simply, God sees the suffering of God’s people. God hears their cries for relief. God’s heart has gone out to them.
This is an extraordinary moment in the history of God’s covenant people. By most calculations it has been about four hundred years since the Israelites came to Egypt. Over that time, God’s people have grown stronger and more numerous, even while enduring more than three hundred and fifty years of enslavement.
But God has been relatively silent throughout this period. It would be understandable for the people to think that God has forgotten them entirely. But that is not the case. God emphasizes this in this passage. God wants the people to know, they have not been forgotten. And God vows to bring them out of enslavement and into freedom. God describes in detail how they will be taken to that land flowing with milk and honey that they have, maybe, dreamed of. Think how Moses’ heart must be soaring. Think of the hope and the joy that must be filling him—it’s almost too wonderful.
And then God says to Moses, So, you GO. Go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go. Go, and be my emissary. Go, and bring my people home.
And now Moses isn’t so sure. The shepherd who, a few verses ago said, “Here I am!” takes a step back. The man who took off his sandals, to submit himself entirely to this experience of the holy… I can almost see him shaking his head. Who? ME? And he asks God the question. Who am I to go to Pharaoh? Who am I to lead your people to freedom?
And, God doesn’t say, “Well, Moses, you were raised in the Pharaoh’s household, so you know the protocol.”
Or, “You know, you are a very well-spoken man. You really have the gift of communication.”
God doesn’t say, “I will give you the words,” or, “Here’s what to say, just practice it and you’ll be great.”
God doesn’t even say, “You were born to do this,” which really seems to be the case.
No. God doesn’t say any of these things; they are beside the point. Here’s the point: God says, “I will be with you.”
God has asked Moses to do an enormous thing, a frightening thing. But God asks us to do scary things all the time. God draws us into service when we don’t feel capable of the job. God sits us down beside people we don’t know and asks us to show that we are, together, the body of Christ. Most of us aren’t going to get a “Go to pharaoh” type of summons, or a “Let my people go” level of leadership posting. But today, in these times, God does ask us to stand against what can feel like an enormous tide of hatred and contempt that is washing through our society. God asks us to speak up for the underdogs in our midst, even when it seems everyone else has turned against them. The refugees and immigrants. The trans people and the drag queens. Muslims and Jews and Sikhs. Our siblings, all of them. God’s precious children, each and every one. God asks us to do that scary thing, and God promises…I will be with you.
The promise “I will be with you” doesn’t mean that it will be easy. Instead, it assures us that God’s presence will make it doable. We will be able to say the words we need to say. We will be able to do the thing that seems impossible.
The matter of God’s name is relevant to this as well. Moses asks the question, when I go to do this, who shall I say sent me? And God replies with the name so holy that Jews do not say it aloud. It’s four Hebrew letters, a verb. Our translation renders it “I AM WHO I AM.” But it could also be translated, “I AM WHAT I AM,” or “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.”
But there is one other possible translation of the verb that is the name of God. “I am the One who causes things to pass.” Another way to say it might be, “I am the One who makes things happen.”
We worship the God whose name is synonymous with being itself, who’s the force behind all that exists. That God was with Moses when he repeatedly approached Pharaoh to demand the freedom that every human being deserves—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you might say. And God will be with us when we advocate for that same liberty for all God’s children.
A lot of us have plans this week that may well involve fires—whether grilling delicious food or watching colorful explosions in the celebration of American freedoms. Freedom and faithfulness are all God wants for God’s people, then and now. We who worship the great I AM serve a God who is our mystery and our answer, who is beyond us and, at the same time, beside us, within us. In all our celebrations, as well all our challenges and all our sorrows, God will be with us. In all the scary and life-giving things God calls us to do, just as God was with Moses, God is with us. God is with us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Mitchell First, “Why Was Moses Commanded to Remove His Shoes?”, JewishLink, January 3, 2019, https://jewishlink.news/why-was-moses-commanded-to-remove-his-shoes/.