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Sunday, January 25, 2009
Whom shall I say is sending me to the Pharaoh?
4th in a series on Questions from the Bible
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: Exodus 3:1-14 – New Revised Standard Version
1 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 Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 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. 3 Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up." 4 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." 5 Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." 6 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.
7 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, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."
11 But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" 12 He 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 worship God on this mountain." 13 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?" 14 God said to Moses, "I am who I am." F5 He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, "I am has sent me to you.'
The story of God calling Moses is one of the most famous stories in the Bible. The story occurs about 1200 years before Christ. The Israelites had been in Egypt for about 400 years. They went to Egypt after Joseph, of the many colored coat fame, came to power as the Pharaoh's assistant. The Israelites had become so numerous that they were made slaves.
God came to the murderer Moses, who had been sent away from Egypt, after he killed an Egyptian who was beating a fellow Israelite. He is approached by God at work, while he is tending a flock of sheep. God tells him that He has observed the suffering of God’s people and that God wants to deliver the people and He wants Moses to be the messenger.
Moses is very reluctant: “You must be mistaken, God, that is above my pay grade. Besides I can’t talk so good. And, what about my brother Aaron, he talks much better than me!”
Finally Moses agrees, but then says, “OK, if I go to the pharaoh, whom shall I say, to the pharaoh and to the Israelites, is sending me? Who are you?”
God replies in a puzzling and a profound manner: “Tell them, I AM sent you.”
There are several names for God in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. The Hebrew words are El, Elohim, El Shaddai, and Yahweh. Yahweh has been misread sometimes as Jehovah but the true translation is Yahweh. It is from the root word “to be” or “being itself.” I am who I am is another way God’s answer has been understood. God may be saying to Moses that God is not like the other deities who were known in ancient times, who could be pictured and drawn as figures. God is the source and ground of all being. God is mysterious and bigger than we think.
Who are you, Moses is asking, and what are you like? We ask that also. And we come up with some shallow ideas about God. We sometimes think God is magical.
I have told some of you about a time when I was about seven years old and my mom took my sister and me to see the movie about Samson, the hero in the Bible who lived about 100 years after Moses. The Israelites had settled in the Promised Land and were not a nation yet but a confederation of tribes who banded together, at times, when they had a common enemy. The leaders who pulled them together, from time to time, were called Judges, a poor name because they really became military and political leaders. Samson was one of the judges and was a very strong person physically, even slaying some of the Philistine enemies with the jawbone of a donkey.
He was captured by the Philistines. His hair, the supposed source of his strength, was cut off, and he became a slave after being blinded by his captors. His hair grew back while they were not paying attention. His last heroic act was to stand between the pillars of the building, while everyone was feasting, and pull the pillars down so that all his enemies were crushed as well as himself.
I was seven years old and I was impressed by the story. When I came home and was still thinking about it, I finally asked my mother this question: Do you think if I pray hard enough, God could make me as strong as Samson? I don’t recall her exact answer, but it gave me enough encouragement to try an experiment. I was not a very athletic kid at that time and not very strong. About three years later I even responded to a comic book ad for a strength program that Charles Atlas offered so that no bully could ever kick sand in my face at the beach. (You have to have grown up in the fifties or sixties to remember this).
Anyway, I prayed as earnestly as I could for God to make me as strong as Samson. I then stood in the front doorway of our home and closed my eyes and put my hands against the door frame and pushed as hard as I could, just like Samson did. All that happened was that my arms got very sore - luckily for me and for our family’s modest house. I learned that God does not work like that. I learned that God is not a magical kind of God and that our prayer life is more complicated.
People can have strange ideas about God, and Moses’ question to God about who are you is important for us to keep working on, because, how we understand and think about God is important.
We said a few weeks ago that the idea of God that some people have, people who call themselves atheists, is the same shallow idea of God that many of us have also rejected!
Who are you, God? Some people think of God as a frowning judge, or a cosmic police officer who is just waiting to catch us doing something wrong so we can be duly punished. One writer says that he grew up in a fairly rigid faith where the pastor in a black robe was frequently shaking his finger at the congregation, and that as his faith matured as an adult, he had to get rid of that image of a finger shaking God.
Some people see God pictured as an old man in the sky or in the clouds with a beard, such as Michelangelo’s famous image of God and the first man in one of the creation stories. God probably does not have a beard or a body, even though that is one portrayal of God that a current popular religion believes in.
Some people see God as a very exclusive god who only will have place in heaven for just their tribe of people and not for anyone else. They say: We have the exclusive truth and no one else does and everyone else is going to hell. That is not a Methodist perspective but it is a common perspective. I have told about my friend Rod Wilmoth, retired Methodist pastor from Minnesota, who used to tell his church members in Minneapolis that he hoped they were getting along well with their Jewish friends and neighbors because he believed they were all going to be together in heaven. He was saying that God is bigger than just our limited ideas of God.
Some people believe and see God as a cosmic puppeteer. They believe that whatever happens is because God wants it to happen that way. They believe that tragedies are sent by God, illnesses are sent by God and are sent sometimes to teach us a lesson, and that we should just accept that as an expression of God’s will. That was the attitude of some preachers who, when vaccines were first invented, said that people should not get vaccinated because the illnesses were God’s will. If we believed that, there would be no physicians or health professionals! I have told our health professionals just the opposite, that they are instruments of God’s will for wholeness and healing, and that Jesus gave us the right example when he went about healing people. God’s will is not for disease but for wholeness and healing. God’s will is not for suffering. Part of what God says to Moses is: I have seen the suffering of my people and I want to deliver them. God is not the cosmic puppeteer who sends tragedy and suffering. God is at work to comfort us in our suffering and to relieve our suffering!
Still, people say some terrible things in the name of God. We reminded each other of that yesterday at the memorial service for forty year old Mark Frain, of our congregation, who was killed in a snowmobile accident and who leaves a grieving wife and three children.
Harold Kushner addresses some of the destructive theology around accidents and death in his classic book: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. He tells about persons who tell children such awful statements as, God needed your daddy in heaven!—more than you need your daddy? What a terrible thing to say, and what a destructive image of God!! For a young father to die is NOT the will of God.
Most of us believe what Jesus believed, that accidents happen, that God does not cause suffering or tragedies, and that God hurts when we hurt and God weeps when we weep. Most of us believe what Paul said in the 8th chapter of Romans, that God does not send the tragedies or the pain or the suffering, but that God is at work for good in all things and the audacious statement: God is big enough to bring hope when there seems to be no hope.
Who are you, God? Are you like the caring father that Jesus tells about in his story of the father with two sons? Are you like the mighty fortress that Martin Luther wrote about in his profound hymn that we will end worship with today - are you the one who is our helper amid the flood of mortal ills? Luther wrote those powerful words while his life was at risk, as he tried to reform the church of his time, the most powerful institution in the world. The church felt a mortal threat as Luther made Bibles available for all persons to have and read on their own. Luther is one of my heroes and I have sung his hymn enough to know it and memorize it and to use it as part of my personal devotional life; I commend it to you as well. Even as this world threatens to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed God’s truth to triumph through us.
Who are you God? What kind of God are you? God says, I am bigger than you think, I am more inclusive than you think. I am who I am. And I have seen the suffering of my people and I am going to do something to help them. That is a marvelous starting point for us to begin to understand God.
It is the starting point of the psalm that we began worship with. The ancient Israelite poet, who might have been David, though not necessarily, gave us the most lasting images of God that we know of. God is a shepherd who cares for us daily. God gives us calm and repose and even nourishes us in the presence of our enemies. God walks with us through the darkest valleys, even the valley of the shadow of death. And we will never be without the presence of this God who is the source of all life and all being.
Have you heard the story of the seven year old in the Sunday school class as they were doing their best to memorize the 23rd psalm? He got it mostly right, but his version may have been even more profound for us, especially in a time of economic stress. When his time came to recite the psalm with his teacher, he stumbled a bit and began this way: “The Lord is my shepherd and that’s all I want!”