I have a new appreciation for Moses’ struggle after digging into the text this week. We heard part of chapter 3 today but let’s back up just a bit and review the origin story of Moses as told in Exodus 2.

Moses is born in the midst of the Egyptian pharaoh’s murderous executive order to kill all the baby boys. In an attempt to save their sweet family member, Moses’ mother and sister put him in a basket on the Nile River. He is found in his little boat by the Pharaoh’s daughter who adopts him. But first she gives Moses back to his mother to nurse him. Then when he is weaned, deemed old enough, the pharaoh’s daughter moves Moses to live in the palace with her and his adoptive family.

I wonder how much Moses remembers those early years, how much he remembers his birth family. Does he know the Hebrew traditions? Does he claim his Hebrew heritage? Or does palace life teach him to look down on those enslaved Hebrews? After years in the palace, does he identify with the Egyptians, with palace life and power? Does he feel like he belongs there?

We are left without answers to these questions because the writer jumps from Moses’ rescue as a baby to his life as an adult.

One day Moses sees an Egyptian being cruel to an enslaved Hebrew worker. At this moment, does Moses remember his family of origin? Moses becomes so angry that, seeing no one else around, he kills the Egyptian. Then for fear of Pharaoh’s retribution, Moses flees to the desert where he has no family, Egyptian or Hebrew. Now he is a stranger in a strange land, an immigrant alone.

Water is essential for life and in biblical stories the well is where things happen, where couples meet. So it is with Moses who is sitting at a well in Midian when seven sisters come to get water for their sheep. Soon some other shepherds show up at the well and harass these sisters. Ready to use his manly power for good, Moses chases the harassers away and waters the sheep for the sisters.

The seven young women happen to be the daughters of the priest of Midian. When they go home and tell their father, Jethro, what has happened, he tells his daughters to bring Moses home for dinner. In gratitude for Moses saving the flock – and his daughters, Jethro gives Moses one of his daughters, Zipporah, as a wife. This strange and problematic custom raises a whole other set of questions – which we will leave for another day.

Moses and Zipporah go along with this marriage plan and soon have a baby, which Moses names Gershom, meaning “alien.” (Sounds like Moses doesn’t quite feel comfortable in his new home.)

The pharaoh that Moses knew – and lived with – dies, but the oppression of the enslaved Hebrews does not stop just because that pharaoh dies. The desperate cries for freedom grow so intense that God hears the people. Does Moses also hear them, remember them?

This is where we find Moses in Exodus 3. Moses, the immigrant, has married and become a father in a land he does not know, and is now tending his own flock of sheep. He goes “beyond the wilderness,” (so says the NRSVue) to Mt Horeb – also known as Mt Sinai. Is he lost or is he just getting away from it all – with the sheep?

Moses is on the mountainside when he sees, or does he imagine, a bush that is on fire – a fire that blazes but does not consume. Instead of turning away from this strange and mysterious experience,    Moses moves closer. That is when he hears a voice call to him, a voice that says his name.  “Moses, Moses.” This must be pretty unnerving since Moses is out there with no one – except his sheep.

Moses experiences this as a holy moment – which calls for a physical response from him. He takes off his shoes. Then the voice identifies itself, calling back to the tradition in which Moses was born. Does Moses recognize or remember the litany of names – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel?

The voice sees and hears and knows the suffering of “my people.” The voice wants to relieve that suffering, and lead them to freedom in a new land, a place of flourishing and fertility. What is remarkable about this new land is that it is a place where others are already thriving together – and there is room for more. This land of “milk and honey” where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites live is also a place where the Israelites can find a home. And Moses is the one to help make that happen.

But Moses, a man without a land or a place he calls home, is not so sure that he is the one. “Who am I to go back to Egypt, the land of my adoptive family? Who am I to go there and tell the new pharaoh he is a tyrant and must let the people be free? Who am I? Am I really one of the Israelites? Didn’t I leave that identity behind when I was weaned? How can I claim now that I am one of them? How will they ever trust me?”

The voice gives a strange reassurance. “I will be with you. And – when my people are free you will all end up here on this very mountain.” How is that reassuring, to end up “beyond the wilderness” on this mountain with people he is not sure he belongs to? Moses does not consider this a very persuasive argument.

He lifts up another excuse or maybe he just needs more proof that this burning bush is not a hallucination. Moses asks more questions. “How will they believe me when I tell them the God of their ancestors sends me? Who am I to them but a traitor, a failure, a murderer? What is the password to use so they will listen? Who do I say sends me? What is your name?”

And then the voice gives Moses a mystical name for God – YHWH which translates I AM WHO I AM, or I AM AS I AM or I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.

The name is just a breath, a puff of air, an indication of life, of existence. This name for God is so holy that in the Jewish tradition it is not to be spoken aloud. It is written Y H W H, only consonants. This mysterious name for God names nothing more than God is. What kind of name is this? God is because God is.

The brilliance of this name is that it can help Moses hear himself, find himself. Moses has been asking “who am I” and now God says “I AM.” When Moses (or any human) dares to say this name for God, it is almost as if he claims his dignity, maybe even his divinity.

Is this why “the name” must not be spoken? Is it too close to blasphemy, heresy? Too close to narcissism, too close to idolizing ourselves? Or is this ingenious name for God a way to recognize that there is a part of God in everyone (so said George Fox and still today the Quakers.)

Out of respect, and perhaps in order to keep humanness and egos in check, the Jewish tradition is to not say the name aloud or even write it completely. This name, that reveals itself to be forever and for all generations, is not spoken. There are many other names for God that can be spoken aloud and written: Adonai, Jehovah, Elohim. But this name, the name that is revealed to Moses, is not spoken; some do not even spell it. Sometimes it is written G*D. Many Jews just say, “the name” or don’t speak of God at all.

The voice knows the hesitation that Moses has so it tells Moses one more time where he comes from, reminds Moses of his ancestral and religious lineage. He must remember again that he is part of something bigger than himself, something that goes back before his own misery, before the misery of his birth parents, before the cruelty of the Pharaoh. This name will always be the name, because as along as people can speak it, as long as people can breathe it, there will be The Holy.

The story of Moses and his people crying for freedom is never really over. This week a call came for religious leaders to go to Springfield, Ohio for up to 5 days, to stand with the Haitian community. The voice sounded like a webinar on Monday and this email on Wednesday (from Congregation Action Network):

Temporary Protective Status (TPS) ended for Haitians and Syrians on July 27th. Now, Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are facing a severe onslaught of persecution by U.S. immigration enforcement officials. In the past week, two pastors have been detained by ICE, and many community members have been shackled with dehumanizing ankle monitors despite doing all that they are asked to do, including reporting for their mandated immigration check-ins and hearings. Deportations have begun.

Obviously, I have some Moses in me. I did not answer this call – this time. But many others from the midwest did. Right now, hundreds of people that heard the voice are gathered in Springfield to support the Haitian community. They are praying with their bodies for an end to the mistreatment of the Haitian community – and all immigrants.

The text we heard today is just the beginning of Moses’ struggle with the voice. (Maybe he is more in tune with his ancestors than he knows, remember Jacob wrestling all night with the angel?) The voice is persistent, and Moses keeps finding excuses to say No. “The people won’t believe me. They will say The Holy did not really appear to you.” So the voice gives Moses very tangible signs  to refute his excuses (think snakes and leprosy.)

But then Moses remembers another really good reason that he cannot do this hard thing. “I don’t speak well. I am not quick with a retort. I get nervous in front of crowds.” The voice has a solution for that excuse as well. (You can reconnect with your birth brother, Aaron, he is a great speaker.) Finally Moses has no more excuses. “Please,” he says, “please just send someone else.”

Perhaps Moses is a bit like the disciples in Michelles’ sermon last week. Michelle reminded us that, Simon’s community, living under occupation, was hoping and praying for a messiah that would come and overturn the political powers of the day, disrupt the systems of the empire, and bring about justice and freedom for their community.

            Thousands of years earlier, Moses hopes the same thing, that there is some Messiah, some other person that can respond, someone else to go back to Egypt. But the voice persists. This is something that Moses can do. He will not be alone; his brother Aaron will speak – and help root Moses in his Hebrew identity. ——————

The Holy still hears the misery of the people. The voice of the Holy still calls. And the people still say – Who am I? Who am I to respond? Who are we to respond? Please, please, send a powerful figure to tear down the system, to bring freedom. Send someone else.

Michelle also reminded us that Jesus, in his preaching, teaching, and healing ways was about the work of disrupting the order of the empire. The disruption came not through political power or military force – but instead through community care and connection, healing and hope.

My friends, we know about community care, we know about connection.

We know the name of the holy, that unspeakable, but breathable name. Breathing in ——— and breathing out ———YHWH. Breathing in ——— and breathing out ———YHWH.            Breathe in——— breathe out ———      

Who am I to care? Who am I to respond?

Can you hear the Voice tell us the name? “I AM WHO I AM.”

Breathing in ——— and breathing out ———YHWH.

The name might just be the beginning of an answer to the question.