Exodus 3:1-15

March 23, 2025: Lent III 

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

 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. ²There 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. ³Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ ⁴When 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.’ ⁵Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ ⁶He 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, ⁸and 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. ⁹The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ ¹¹But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ ¹²He 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?’ ¹⁴God 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.” ’ ¹⁵God 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 for ever, and this my title for all generations.                 

 Exodus 3:1-15, NRSV

In this third week in the Holy Season of Lent, we are served up two familiar readings that seem perfectly appointed for this season. Both ask us to change course; to stop what we are doing, stop treading our usual paths tending our usual priorities and very intentionally, pay attention to God, and God’s priorities. And these 40 days of Lent, seem to give us the permission, or maybe just the very intentional space that we need to try that on, as we say.

It is no surprise that both change-agents are firmly grounded in the natural world, rooted in God’s creation. The burning bush in our reading from Exodus. And the barren fig tree from our reading in Luke. Neither one is acting according to nature’s expectations. The bush is not consumed in flames and the tree is not covered in fruit.  But in their irregularities, both get the attention that is needed for God’s work to begin. Or how about this – maybe only in and through their irregularities are they able to live into God’s call. Both are prime examples of that old addage that God works in mysterious ways. 

But let us not lose sight of the purpose of God’s mysterious ways. It is easy for us to hear this story of Moses as a paradigm of how God helps us to find our calling. Look for the burning bush in our own lives and there we will find ourpurpose. But it is God’s purpose that is fulfilled here. As soon as we put our attention on God, as soon as we turn aside and look at the divine in our midst, God’s work begins; life and liberation abound. 

Moses is the quintessential example. God does not receive any applicants for his prophet-in-charge position from the diocese or any head-hunting angel. God finds Moses the natural way……with a burning bush. A bush that ignites in the middle of Moses’ everyday life and then burns on without ceasing. Until finally, Moses “turns aside to see” what is happening. Why isn’t this bush burning up?

And then bam! Just like that, God has him. Moses is paying attention.

And so God hires him on the spot for a special project of gargantuan proportions. God puts his new…..let’s call it, Director of Liberative Operations immediately to work at a job that comes with substantial sacrifice and risk, and little clarity regarding what exactly is in it for Moses. Other than the inner satisfaction of serving the purposes of God Almighty, of course. 

It is a job for which Moses did not apply, unlike Isaiah’s story which we heard early last month. Moses does not raise his hand when God asks “Whom shall I send?” Moses is rather recruited. And without a lot to recommend him for the job, I might add. The same marginalized Moses who as a helpless baby, floated in a papyrus basket among the reeds of the river to avoid Pharaoh’s death detail, is now recruited by the Creator of the Universe to march straight into Pharaoh’s court and demand the release of the Hebrew slaves, of which he was once one. 

This second book in our Holy Bible is the consummate story of how God works with and through God’s human partners. God’s prophets. It’s a job description that is inscribed on each of our hearts at birth. We are all born to be prophets. So today’s story is a campaign ad of sorts. Or maybe a campaign promise.

Today’s story begins after the Israelites have been in Egypt for several generations. Long after the patriarchs and matriarchs, whose stories were told in the Book of Genesis, have gone. The Israelites have been enslaved by the Egyptians for roughly 400 years. And a new Pharaoh has come to power; a shortsighted, fearful, arrogant Pharaoh who rebukes and fears the number of “foreigners” in his land.  Who feels threatened from the get-go by the growing contingent of immigrants who are reproducing at an astonishing rate. In this case, the immigrants are the Israelites.

And so Pharaoh begins to make life uncomfortable for them. He uses a compliment of age-old, tried and true weapons of mass discomfort – ostracism, demonization, bondage without recourse, hard labor, and the list goes on. 

As we might expect, the oppressed people, the Israelites, suffer greatly. And they cry out for help. And the text says that God hears their cries. And God responds as God always responds to the pain and suffering of God’s beloved people, God hooks up with a human partner and begins to liberate the enslaved. In this case, the partner is Moses.

Now, we might wonder why God doesn’t just fix these things without all of this rigamaroll. After hearing the desperate cries of God’s suffering people, why doesn’t God just take Pharaoh out? 

If God is indeed all-powerful, why can’t all this suffering be taken care of with a wave of God’s almighty hand? Why does God always seem to be waiting on flawed, fragile, frail, fractured human beings to do God’s work?  Why does God even bother calling the likes of Moses – a shepherd of no special distinction, except of course that he is a criminal, having killed an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew and then burying the body. It would be a great episode for Law and Order : Biblical Intent!

And then, when Pharoah learns of this murder, Moses is forced to flee to a foreign land. And that is how he ends up in Midian. Moses is an alien in Midian.  And he is a criminal for murdering the Egyptian who was bludgeoning his Hebrew brother. Not for nothing, but this is the guy God calls to run his Department of Liberation. The heart of God’s salvation industry. An ordinary alien agricultural worker who has a criminal background. All true.

But back to our question, why does God need a human partner in the first place?

Because we know for sure that God never acts alone in our world. Nearly every story and theme in the Bible backs that up. God is never a lone wolf. The Bible would be a very short text if our Almighty God ran the world as an all-powerful ruler. God is many things, but authoritarian is not among them.

Not because God cannot work alone. It is not for lack of power. But, I believe, because God does not choose to work alone. And part of the way we know how much God loves us, is how deeply and centrally we are included in God’s work. You don’t choose to work with people you do not love. And if you love them, you give them a voice and agency. God always gives us a voice and agency.

And so God always chooses a prophet to lead the work detail. Prophets are ordinary people who pay extraordinary attention to God. Ordinary shepherds who notice that the bush is burning but not being consumed. Or the fig tree that is not bearing fruit is not being properly tended. Prophets are the ones who, like sacraments, point us to God’s purpose in this world; the ones who articulate the path to what we Christians call the Kingdom, or Kindom, of God. 

In his classic book, The Prophets, Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes that God’s biblical prophets always address a single stumbling block that keeps we humans from rising to our best God-given selves. And that stumbling block is what he calls the human “failure of freedom.” He says that the main message of all of God’s prophets is that human beings have, “choice, but not sovereignty.” ^[1]

We have the freedom to choose between options, but not the sovereignty to control the options from which we can choose. Boy that rings a bell with me right off the bat. I bet it does with you too. Whether or not we follow God’s call is up to us. But we do not have the sovereignty to change the call.  We pick up or hang up, but we cannot dial another number. This is the fabric of our partnership with God. 

And it is the first ingredient in the formula that is God’s call to God’s prophets. When God calls, the job of the prophet is simply to answer. When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And Moses said, ‘Here I am.’ God called. Moses answered.

And, God not only decides what the call is, God also decides the timing. God calls us when we are ready, not when we are wanting. We can hope and pray and wring our hands waiting for God to call. Like the barren fig tree in this morning’s Gospel reading. Only God will know when the time is right. And when it is, then the bush bursts into flame! Then the tree bears fruit!

Sometimes we are called too early for our liking. Sometimes, willing and able are in two different time zones. Which seems to be the case with Moses. And so he tells God that he cannot be a prophet because he is not prepared. And, he warns, he is a rotten public speaker and so maybe God would rather call his brother, Aaron. But God snaps back: Just go. I will be with you and teach you what to say.  Again, Moses has the freedom to act, but not the freedom to change the calling or its timing.

Moses insists on his unfitness for God’s call no fewer than four times! Moses is a prime example of how God never calls anyone into their comfort zone. Every prophet, every agent of God’s deepest will, has, at one time or another, been frightened to their core to answer God’s call.  Fear is never the opposite of courage. It is the catalyst. Just as compost is the catalyst for blooming daffodils or fruitful fig trees.

Since God never calls us into our comfort zone, God always provides a catalyst for our best work. Just ask Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, Paul, Peter……All sucked summarily out of their comfort zones. So, my prophetic friends, fasten your seatbelts.

And lastly, if the call is from God, it will be calling us to wholeness, above all else. God calls us just as we are, just as we were created to be. God calls us to be reconciled with all that we are, the good the bad the ugly and the magnificent. Any calling that denies our whole selves is not God’s calling. Any calling that seeks for us to be good rather than whole is a trap. Every time. Because good is humanly subjective. Wholeness is absolutely divine.

But as the writer Anne Lamott is fond of saying, “God loves us just as we are but too much to let us stay that way.” And so Moses is called out of his comfort zone by God to do the unthinkable. To reunite the Israelites with their freedom. Wow! With God, all things are possible. Never give up hope when God is involved. Which is to say….ever.

But, it’s not hard to see why the marquis prophets of God are few and far between. God’s call is daunting. But Moses has the courage to answer. He sees the burning bush, he hears God call his name, and he answers  “Here I am.” 

But, he does not accept the job strait away. He seems to have one condition. And only one. He wants to know the name….the exact name…..the official name of his new employer. 

Not so that he will have clout when he comes up against Pharaoh. Not to protect himself should Pharaoh retaliate. But so that the frightened Israelites whom he is sent to lead out of Egypt will have the courage to follow him.  He wants them to know that they too are called by God.

So Moses asks God: Whom shall I tell them is calling them? It will not work to tell them “the God of Your Ancestors” has sent you. That’s a cop out says Moses. I need a name. Moses as Jack McCoy. But God obliges. God honors God’s partner’s request.

God says to Moses, “ok, tell them you are sent by: Ehyeh asher ehyeh.” The NRSV which is the translation we most frequently use, reads: “I am what I am.” 

But that’s not a great translation, in my humble opinion. There are only two basic active verb forms in Hebrew. The perfect and the imperfect.  The perfect applies to things that have been completed. Finished. Perfected. Actions that have occurred in the past. The imperfect tense applies to ongoing actions, things in process or that will happen in the future. Things that have not yet been completed. Not Finished. Not Perfected.

Ehyeh asher ehyeh contains the imperfect tense of the verb I am. If it were in the perfect tense the translation would indeed be I am what I am. Completed. Perfected. Done. But it’s not. It is in the imperfect tense. And the much better translation is: I am becoming what I am becoming. Not yet complete. Not yet finished. Not yet perfected. This is how the main Hebrew Lexicon defines the verb form in this statement.^[2]

This is the name of God from God’s own lips, assuming God speaks Hebrew. I am becoming what I am becoming. And so ours is a theology of becoming.^[3]

But the question is always: Who is God becoming with us? Who are we becoming with God? Who is God calling us to become?

Keeping in mind the prophetic formula that we will have the choice to answer the call, but not the power to change it. Keeping in mind that God will likely call us out of our comfort zones. If the call feels uncomfortable…please hold for God on the line. And the true yardstick of a calling from God is that it will be calling us into wholeness. Into right relationship.

And so with God we are each and all becoming who we are becoming. Ehyeh asher ehyeh.

So the question is: Where is the burning bush in your life?

And where is the burning bush in our life together?

I don’t have a ready answer. But I do think it is some nourishing food for the remainder of Lent….and beyond!

And the people said: Amen. 

© March 2025, The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

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^[1] Joshua Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, pg 190.

^[2] The Brown Driver Briggs Lexicon

^[3] A term coined by theologian Katherine Keller in the title of her wonderful book on Genesis: The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming.