The Great "I Am"

The Great, “I Am”

Exodus 3:1-14

Two weeks ago, we listened to the story of the appearance of the risen Christ to two people on the road to Emmaus.  The people are talking about what they had seen in Jerusalem during the Passover festival.  They had hoped that Jesus would be the one to overthrow the Romans and return Israel to its glory as a nation.  They believed that the solution to what was wrong in their world would be a political change.

As they are walking along, they encounter a stranger who, we are told, is the risen Jesus.  They can’t see this.  The risen Jesus asks them what they’re talking about.  They bring him right into the conversation.  They are working hard to tell the story of everything they’ve seen and heard in a way that makes sense.  When they’re done, Jesus gives it a shot, starting with Moses and working his way to the present, trying to say to them that what’s happened makes sense if they look at the bigger picture.  This morning, we’re going to take another look at Moses, ourselves.

Here’s a quick refresher on Moses.  He was born a nobody.  After a brief float in a basket on a river as a baby, he was raised by Egyptian royalty.  As a young man, he saw a Hebrew—a slave—being abused and defended him, killing the attacker.  At that point, Moses ran from the authorities.  Eventually, he settles into a new life with a wife and father-in-law who, among other things, has a lot of sheep.  Moses, the fugitive, becomes Moses, the shepherd, wandering in the wilderness (ring any bells?) with no other real purpose than to evade the powers that be.

One day, while he’s in the wilderness, the ultimate power finds him, not the Egyptian powers-that-be but THE power that has always been, is now, and always will be.  How does Moses come to realize this?  First, something catches his eye.  Remember, he’s in the middle of nowhere, doing the same thing that he did yesterday and the same thing that he expects to be doing for the rest of his foreseeable days: wandering and watching sheep. “Nothing to see here” would have been the rule until one day there was something to see…and, man, was it something.  Something was on fire. Upon further examination, it turned out to be a bush.  

Stop there for a moment.  If you are doing pretty much the same thing, pretty much every day, what is the most likely thing to happen?  We start to sleep walk, right?  “The lights are on but nobody’s home.”  We’re just going through the motions.  When we are fully asleep at the wheel, its kind of a miracle if we ever notice anything at all.

I remember a day when I was walking in Open Lands, just like so many other days.  On this day, though, I’d kind of had it.  I was churning inside over 4 or 5 different frustrations.  This is the other kind of moment when we can be unreachable.  It’s not that I’m bored, it’s that the noise inside of me is so great that nothing else is getting processed: “The party you have called is not available.  Please leave a message and they’ll return your call…maybe.”  

That particular day, two things were true.  It was the end of mud season in Open Lands. Everything had been brown for months. It was so hard to believe that there would ever be anything worth noticing again. Then, I noticed something red off in the distance.  Something caught my eye.  Then, curiosity got the best of me.  I bushwhacked over and found a person with a red back pack, lying on the ground.  After a moment or two, I realized this poor person was dead.  I also felt like there was a reason that I was the one to find her.  I had been with a lot of dying people.  What would have been traumatic to a lot of other people wasn’t for me.  I felt called…

I can tell you the rest of that story if you want but some other time. Today, my point is just this:  what would it take to get our attention?  How much harder is it to get our attention when we’re convinced that there is nothing worth seeing?  How much harder is it to get our attention when the only thing we’re paying attention to is what happened earlier or what has even happened yet? 

So, here’s Moses.  He’s in the middle of nowhere.  He’s got a job with no future.  He’s got that little matter of manslaughter (at best) chasing him. Am I the child of a slave or a royal?  Am I a murderer and a fugitive? Am I just a shepherd from now on? Shockingly, something catches his eye.  Then, curiosity strikes.

In an instant, Moses goes from being nowhere to being now here.  You know this feeling.  You “wake up.” You come to life.  Before, you were floating.  Now, you are fully grounded—all present and accounted for.  And maybe, like Moses, you find yourself staring at something that makes no sense:  “What’s the deal with the bush?” It’s on fire but it’s not burning up.  That makes no sense.

Here’s the thing:  there is never any explanation given for the burning bush.  Apparently, God feels no need to explain. The burning bush isn’t the point.  The point is that it took something unusual, a little “razzle-dazzle” to get Moses’ attention. The burning bush works.  Moses is awake again.

It’s so easy to just sleep walk through life.  It’s so easy for us to get lost in the noise that churns inside of us.  I wonder if God had been setting bushes on fire for days before Moses finally saw this one.  I wonder if Moses saw something before this but just wasn’t curious enough to go find out.  I know that it takes more than one burning bush to get my attention.  If we’re awake and aware and curious, if we’re not asleep at the wheel, something will catch our eye, some urge will rise inside us that whispers, “Just go see!”

Stop and ask yourself this:  when is the next time in Scripture that you’ll hear about something that’s on fire but not being burned up?  Got it? That’s right…Pentecost.  Jesus lived and died and rose again.  He appeared to some people.  Then, those appearances stopped.  No one really knew what was next.  However, those who took Jesus seriously decided that it made sense to hang out with other people who took Jesus seriously.  (Isn’t that what we still do as a church, often without any real sense of what’s next?) Then, tongues of fire appear over each believer but they are not burned up.  The Spirit arrives and turns every believer into a burning bush, an invitation for everyone to realize that there is “something more,” that God shows up, even in this sometimes boring, sometimes frustrating world.  

Back to Moses…Moses asks, “What’s going on here?”  We’ve all asked similar questions.  God’s not big on “God-splaining” life, if you know what I mean.  The “burning bushes” in this life are wake up calls—preparation for what’s next.  What’s next is that things get personal.  God calls Moses by his name:  “Moses…Moses!” When we are awake, we look at what’s going on and realize, “This has my name on it!”

(Again, ask yourself: “What does this remind me of?  Do you remember when Saul—the Christian hunter, who later became a key founder of the church—is blinded on the road to Damascus?  (I’d opt for the burning bush, any day! What does God say?  “Saul!  Saul!”  God calls him by name and nothing is ever the same.)

What does Moses do?  He doesn’t say, “Oh, my God…it’s God!”  No…what he says is, “Yes?  I’m right here.”  I used to be nowhere but now I’m right here.  Whoever you are, whatever is happening, you have my attention.  I am present.

What does God say?  God points out that Moses is standing on holy ground.  It’s so easy to blow past the significance of this point.  In the ancient world, and still today, holy ground is generally a pretty specific kind of place.  Traditionally, holy ground is a place that has been designated “holy.” Holy ground is a shrine or a temple or a church or a cathedral.  Maybe in our world, holy ground includes Wrigley Field.  Holy ground would never be some God forsaken spot in the middle of nowhere…unless…unless you have a human being who is awake and aware and curious and God is present, too.  When that happens, all bets are off…

This is the revolutionary thought that ought to wake us all up this morning.  Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, if you are available, if you are awake and aware, if you have some sense that this world is full of the something more that we know as God’s presence, then there are no God-forsaken places any more.  Of course, this can be both good news and bad news. If you’re lost in your stuff or doing something you’re not too proud to be doing, there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.  (Remember Jonah trying so hard to run from God’s calling?) The good news—in the words of one of my favorite songs—the good news, though, is that “everything is holy now.”

How would you move differently through life if you were convinced that there’s a “burning bush” around here somewhere?  The burning bush might be the person who caught your eye or the news story that moved you or the notion that kept popping up in your mind, seemingly out of nowhere.  If you were curious and pursued that “whatever it is” that caught your eye, if you allowed yourself to go find out, the next thing that you might realize is that the “something more” that you’ve heard about is now calling you by your name.  It just might dawn on you that you are standing on holy ground.

God tells Moses that if you find yourself standing on holy ground, you really should take off your shoes.  This might just be an act of good hygiene and general respect. After all, you don’t want to “soil” a holy place, right?  Here’s a different understanding:  if you’re standing on holy ground, you should want to immerse yourself in it.  You don’t want shoes to come between you and that sacred ground.  You want to be like the kid who sees a mud puddle and pops off their shoes and squishes in the mud.  Can’t you remember how good that felt?

Of course, we all know that God had work for Moses to do (That whole “free the slaves from Pharaoh” thing you learned about in Sunday School)  God has work for us to do, too.  (That whole “love your neighbor, feed the hungry, visit the sick” agenda.)  However, the foundation for our work is our connection to the God who still meets us in the middle of nowhere and still calls us by our name, who loves to become present when we finally get around to being present, ourselves,  who invites us to take off our shoes and wiggle our toes in the sacred.

Knowing that even sacred moments end, Moses has one more question: “What’s your name?”  This time, God does answer:  “I am who I am.” God tells Moses:  “If anyone asks, just tell them, ‘I am’ sent you.” 

Meeting the God whose presence makes life, itself, holy, who calls us by name, who has work for us to do, changes everything in this life.  When we least suspect it, when we’re sure that we’re in the middle of nowhere, when we’re convinced that nothing we’re doing matters all that much anyway, something invites us to come to life, again.  As our hearts beat faster, it dawns on us that the great “I am,” still is.  Right about then, the “story” of our lives begins to make sense again…