But Moses said to God, “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and to bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 God said, “I’ll be with you. And this will show you that I’m the one who sent you. After you bring the people out of Egypt, you will come back here and worship God on this mountain.”
13 But Moses said to God, “If I now come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they are going to ask me, ‘What’s this God’s name?’ What am I supposed to say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. So say to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”
15 God continued, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, Abraham’s God, Isaac’s God, and Jacob’s God, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever; this is how all generations will remember me. 16 “Go and get Israel’s elders together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me. The Lord said, “I’ve been paying close attention to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 I’ve decided to take you away from the harassment in Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land full of milk and honey.”’ 18 They will accept what you say to them. Then you and Israel’s elders will go to Egypt’s king and say to him, ‘The Lord, the Hebrews’ God, has met with us. So now let us go on a three-day journey into the desert so that we can offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ 19 However, I know that Egypt’s king won’t let you go unless he’s forced to do it. 20 So I’ll use my strength and hit Egypt with dramatic displays of my power. After that, he’ll let you go." (Common English Bible)
“From Haran to the Negev:
When God Foretells Transition,” Week Two
The
images were quintessentially Olympian, but also personally poignant. One, a
devastated second-place finisher, skating on home ice, trying and failing to
hold back the tears. The other, a newly-crowned Olympic champion, but taking
her first moments in that newfound status to embrace and comfort her vanquished
opponent.
Japanese
speed skater Nao Kodaira had just won gold in the women’s 500m event, but
beside her was an inconsolable Lee Sang-wha of South Korea, who lost the gold
to Kodaira by less than two-fifths of one second.
We tend to see our Olympians as champions, representing what is supposed to be the very best of our nations, and whose dedication to their craft is unparalleled. It has to be if you are going to end up on an Olympic podium in any event.
But
what is very best in us cannot be limited only to the physical. The very best
of us spiritually matters as well. It mattered then, on that ice rink, and
especially so given the extremely fraught history that Japan and South Korea share,
as the latter bears extensive historical trauma from being conquered and occupied
by the former.
Every
two years, we send our very best to the Olympics, knowing that they are our
very best. But even then, our very best find ways to confound us, to be even
greater. The nature of their greatness are made known through their deeds. Such
are the ways of God, and of what God expects of us.
This
is both a new sermon series and my last sermon series for you here in Longview.
With my last few weeks as your pastor, I want to speak to you in spirit and in
truth about the nature of our transition into new roles in one another’s lives,
and what my own hopes are for this mighty family of Jesus followers when I am
no longer here.
To
do this, our Lenten sermon series will cover different stories of transition,
moving, and new starts throughout Scripture. We began this series last week
with one of the oldest and greatest—the calling of Abram and Sarai by God to
pick up their lives at Ur in Mesopotamia and relocate to Canaan by way of a
place called Haran, from which this sermon series takes part of its name.
Haran
is located in what is now southern Turkey (and is now called Harran, with the
extra ‘r’), and its name comes from ancient Akkadian to mean “road” or
“crossroads,” which is an appropriate name for both a waystation for a
traveling couple and this series as we approach a crossroads in the life of our
congregation. So, this series derives its name from it and from the ending of
that passage from Genesis 12, which says that Abram and his household continued
on toward the Negev.
We
pick up today with the story of Moses at the burning bush. Moses is itself an Egyptian name, because as a child, Moses's Israelite mother set him adrift in the Nile to save him from Pharaoh's purges of the Israelite boys, and he was in turn discovered and raised in Pharaoh's own household. Moses subsequently went into exile after killing an Egyptian, and we pick up with him here as a shepherd in the service of his father-in-law, Jethro.
The voice of God has
just told Moses that God has seen the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt and
is sending Moses to right this historic wrong, but there is still more: Moses
needs to know who it is that is sending him to undertake this monumental task. God
simply replies, “Say to the Israelites, “I AM” has sent you.”
Well,
that clears things right up!
What
God’s name communicates, though, is that God is beyond all our finite words,
labels, and classifications such that only God’s name is capable of accurately
depicting and describing God. Only God can accurately describe God. Indeed, the
name God gives to Moses, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, is perhaps best translated as “I will
be what I will be,” not the more traditional Christian translation of “I am what
I am.” Or, as my Jewish Study Bible puts it, “My nature will be made known
through my deeds.”
God’s
nature will be made known through God’s deeds. God, in other words, will be
shown through God’s best, the love, grace, and protection that God has to
offer. God is made known by expressions of those virtues, and we are mean to
see those expressions in our own lives.
God
is, and will always be, the very best, but it is not God who appears before
Pharaoh. It is Moses, through whom God eventually performs the plagues that
lead up to the Israelites’ liberation.
It
is emphatically not a role that Moses wanted, and one that he spends a great
deal of the following chapter trying to plead his way out of, and really,
understandably so. This isn’t what he has signed up for. He killed a man and
expected to live out the rest of his life in exile from his former existence as
a prince of Egypt. Why would he, of all people, be the one to now return and be
sent to Pharaoh to demand the freedom of Egypt’s Israelite slaves?
Because
he still, with all his failings, represented Israel’s best. He became their
champion. He was the one to represent them, and he did so movingly.
We
do not always get called by God to do that which we think we have signed up
for, either. Our circumstances change, the communities around our churches
shift, and as much as we might want our church to feel like a time capsule, in
which only the bare minimum changes from year to year, we know that this is not
a sustainable way to be church. More is required of us. Just look at the children of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This is never what they signed up for. But they have taken on new roles as our nation's consciences with grace and composure.
We
cast about, then, for our own freedom as a parish—freedom from insecurity,
freedom from fear, and freedom from a mentality of scarcity. We have been
blessed with an incredible story and space, and as poor as we may sometimes
feel, we must remember in those moments that spiritually, we truly are not.
It
is easy, far too easy, to forget the feeling of being blessed. That ease is why
spiritual disciplines are needed of us, for while negative reinforcement tends
to turn into stone, positive reinforcement often evaporates into the ether.
So
even though I will no longer be here several weeks from now to cheer you on, I
hope that you will continue cheering each other on with that positive
reinforcement that comes from a belief that your Christian faith still has a
role to play in our community. I hope that you will continue to see what is
best, and bring that to the fore, during the transition period you are about to
undertake.
For
I realize that this upcoming interim period will require strength that I
imagine will at times, feel herculean or Olympian in nature. You may wonder or
even worry if you have such strength in you at all. Rest assured, you do. I
have faith in this church to do what is right by God, by the Holy Spirit, and
by the Body of Christ. I have faith in what is the very best of us.
That
faith does not, and will not, change after I leave. I will always be praying
for you and cheering you on from afar. God asks an awful lot of us, but generally
rightly so, and I will be hoping for you to keep rising to God’s call in your
ears.
I
continue to believe that God is calling you to be something new and freeing,
that, whatever it is, might unshackle us from feelings of scarcity and back
into faithful abundance. It is a big task, but nowhere near as big as what God
is asking of Moses here, to free a people from not just spiritual scarcity, but
physical and existential scarcity that comes from being enslaved.
Moses,
understandably, thinks that God has picked the wrong person. But we know that
God did no such thing. Nor, then, should we believe that God has picked the wrong
church or congregation.
The
Exodus story is one that is, at its core, about liberation from the bondage of
slavery. It simultaneously belongs to Judaism while also inspiring generations
of abolitionists and liberation theologians to change the course of human
history for the better. I pray that it, in turn, inspires you to change the
course of our own community, and of your own faith and its deeds, for the
better.
For
there is still much work to do. And you are still among those who can do that
work.
Do
not ever forget that divine truth.
May
it be so. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
February
25, 2018
