In the name of God, amen.
God.
We use that word all the time: sometimes in discussions about religion,
sometimes in prayer, sometimes in vain. But how often do we stop and consider what
we mean when we say “God”? What do you think of that word “God”? Is it provocative,
troubling, overused, comforting? How has your view of God shifted through the
years?
So many of our
disagreements in our culture and within the wider Church are due to the fact
that we make assumptions about that word, “God,” that are not shared by others.
It’s quite common for all of us to have our different understandings of God
based on our own reading of Scripture, or our own life experience, or our own
worldview. But all of that really is idolatry – it is to put our vision of God
in place of the God who is. Instead of wondering what God is, how about if we
pay attention to who and what God is, according to the Bible? Exodus 3:14
records that God says to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” To be fair, it is a rather
enigmatic name, but it is the one that God gives.
Before
we dive into that word, some of the context is helpful. God doesn’t come to
Moses to just make an introduction and hand out a business card. The story of
the Exodus, of liberation from slavery in Egypt, is the defining narrative of
the Old Testament. You’ll recall that Abraham was called by God to be the
father of a great nation, and that promise was passed on to his son, Isaac, and
then his son, Jacob. One of Jacob’s twelve sons ended up in Egypt after his
brothers left him for dead in the desert. As God’s providence would have it,
this son, Joseph, rose up the ranks in Egypt and in a time of famine, brought his
entire family to Egypt. Later, new Pharaoh arose who didn’t know about all that
Joseph had done to ensure that Egypt would not be plagued by the famine. This
Pharaoh became fearful of the growing number of the descendants of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob in the land, and so he decided to make all of the Hebrew
people slaves, and even ordered them to kill their babies, in order to slow
their population growth.
And
so the Hebrew people cried out, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob heard
those cries. And not only did this God of the Hebrew people hear the cries, as
it would be expected that any god would be aware of such a situation, but this
God is concerned about the people. And more than that, this God will deliver
the people from their misery. God isn’t just the God of the victors, but of the
oppressed. But fascinatingly, this God doesn’t just overthrow Pharaoh and his
army. No, instead he calls on a fugitive named Moses who fled from Egypt after
killing an Egyptian in a fight. This God calls to Moses and says “I will send
you to Pharaoh to free my people.” Why exactly God chooses to act through us, I
don’t know, but as we’ll see later in this narrative, I suspect that it has
something to do with the fact that God is together with us in this whole
endeavor. It is important to remember that this story about the giving of God’s
name is rooted in an act of attention, compassion, and mercy.
One
of the problems with trying to understand what we mean by “God” is that we have
to use words. In the face of the mystery of God and ideas like eternity and
infinity, words will always fail. In the work of faith, words are necessary,
but inadequate. This is why literalism is such a pernicious heresy in the
modern world – we can never say that any word fully captures that which is
beyond words. In thinking about God, we must realize that words are vehicles that
draw us closer to God, but they do not take us as far as the destination.
I
recently listened to a podcast that talked about the problem with words in
trying to understand God. The issue is that so often we use directions to speak
about God. So we say that God is “up there” and that God “comes to” us in
Jesus. And the problem is that this language forces God out of our realm of
being into some other one. We then have to fight about whether or not God even
exists, which will always be an endless debate. And if God exists somewhere “out
there” then we struggle with questions like “Why does God help some people find
parking spaces, as they claim, and yet God doesn’t stop the Holocaust?” God
becomes a trivial sort of deity. When we force God out of the universe with our
language, then we essentially say that God is unnecessary, perhaps still
helpful, but not necessary. When we’re not careful with our language, God
becomes a vengeful deity who demands the blood sacrifice of his own innocent son
to atone for the sins of the guilty. God becomes someone who prefers some
groups to others. God becomes someone who thinks that certain people are abominations.
God becomes someone who affects the trajectory of footballs, but doesn’t thwart
the plans of human traffickers. God becomes something we sing songs about on Sunday,
and then disregard the rest of the week. It has been said that nothing has
caused more people to become atheists than Christians.
And
so instead of grasping for answers about who God is and making God look bad in
the prcess, let’s pay attention to who God says that God is. Moses, before
going to Pharaoh, asks “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?” What an odd request – if they don’t already know God’s
name, what good will saying it do? But, God responds with a phrase that we
heard translated as “I AM WHO I AM,” but it’s nowhere as simple as that. In
Hebrew, the phrase is ehyeh-asher-ehyeh,
and even has a mystical sort of sound to it. Some scholars translate this phrase
as “I will be who I will be” or “I will cause to be what will be.” We might
read this as God saying back to Moses, “You ask who I am; I simply am.” God’s
name connotes freedom – God will not be defined by a name, God will be what God
is. In answering the question, God refuses to answer the question.
In
the next verse, God says “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent
me to you.’” This response by God is seen as the proper name for God. Many
faithful Jews, out of reverence for the power of this name, will not even utter
the sounds of the name. It is even so holy that it cannot be written down. When
you read the Bible and you see the word “Lord”
in all capital letters, that is this Divine Name. You may have heard it as it
is often transliterated into English: “Yahweh.” God’s name of I AM consists of four
letters, yod-he-vav-he. Adding to the
allure and mystery of this name is the fact that in Hebrew, these letters are
all essentially vowels. And so some interpreters of this name point out that God’s
name is essentially God’s breath. Moses asks God what his name is, and God
simply breaths life as a response. It is a powerful reminder that God is as
close as your breath, that God fills your lungs and is absolutely vital to your
life.
I
think that every Christian should know how God describes Godself in Scripture.
In Jesus, we see how God acts, and in this Divine Name, we hear what name God
claims as identity. God could have refused to give a response to Moses; God
could have said “My name doesn’t matter,” but God reveals something very deep about
the very being and nature of God. There are a few things that we might consider
upon reflecting on God’s name of I AM.
This
first is to reiterate that God is beyond our comprehension. The very name of
God is a mystery, and so we should be cautious when anyone, including
ourselves, clings too much to a definition of God. Secondly, God’s name
connotes a sense of presence – “I will be” or “I am” both make it known that
God is always near and always accessible. God is always with us and we are
always with God. Thirdly, by giving the Divine Name based on the imperfect form of the verb “to be,” God identifies as an unfolding action. The name says that all of existence itself is bound up in God. There is nothing
that is distinct from God and there nothing in which God is not present. So
often we think of God as something that is foreign to us, as something that
needs to be lured or invited into our lives. But here, God’s name reveals that
our very being, the entirety of the universe itself, is bound up in God’s
ultimate reality. And fourthly, in claiming such an open-ended name, God
expresses ultimate freedom and possibility in having a name that is radically
inclusive and infinite.
Today’s
Psalm says “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you,
my flesh faints for you.” In another Psalm, it says “deep speaks to deep.” I
don’t know exactly how, but given God’s name, I trust that God’s being and God’s
breath is united in somehow with our breath and our being. As we seek to go
deeper into our faith this Lent, may we spend some time today in silence,
listening to our breath, listening to the breath of the earth in the wind,
listening for the depth of God’s being within our being. God is, and for that,
we give thanks and praise.
Sometimes, in response to
the Scripture readings, it is important that a sermon includes a call to action,
a take-home message, a “so what?” This is not one of those sermons. Instead,
this is an invitation to reflect on God’s Divine Name. There is nothing that I
can do to summarize this sermon, as God’s name is beyond summary. Words have
taken me as far as I can go.
