August 31, 2014
Exodus 3:1-15
1Moses 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.
7Then 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.”
13But 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 forever,
and this my title for all generations.”
Sermon: “What’s in a Name?”
I remember it vividly, when
I first learned about the divine name of God.
(You know you’re destined to be a nerdy preacher when…”)
I was on a retreat with my
campus ministry group from Texas A&M University. We were a ramshackle bunch of Catholics,
Baptists, Presbyterians and “others.” As part of that ministry, I spent nearly
two years in college meeting before church every Sunday morning with a small
group of fellow students discerning a call to the ministry. We drank coffee, we studied scripture, we
prayed, we told our stories. And we
accepted God’s call to each of us. I
wouldn’t be here without that campus ministry.
But I digress…let’s get
back to when I first learned about God’s name in the Bible. It started, like all good exploration of God,
with a question. I held up my Bible,
noticing for the first time that, in the Old Testament, sometimes “Lord” was in
all caps. I asked our awesome campus
minister Kyle about it: “Hey Kyle, what’s with these all caps “LORDS” all over
the place?
He responded quickly, “Oh,
that’s just the tetragrammaton.”
Ah, yes, that. At this point I think lots of people would
have their eyes glaze over and just go hang out with the other college
students. But I was curious (nerdy minster-to-be,
you see).
“What in the world is that?” I asked.
“It’s the divine name of
God – Yahweh. Any time in scripture
they’re referring directly to the divine name of God, it’s put in all
caps. This distinguishes it from any
other use of the word “Lord” in the Bible.
This is the name of God revealed to Moses, called the “tetragrammaton”
in Greek, meaning 4 letters.
Y.H.W.H. Yahweh.”
You lost yet? Well I was all sorts of excited about this
revelation (plus I now had a pretty cool word to impress people with at
parties). I began looking through
scripture for every time that divine name of God appeared.
Of course, it appears in a
big way here in our Exodus passage this morning, when Moses is sent to liberate
the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.
Like all good exploration of God, it began with a question: “Whom shall
I say sent me?” Moses asks God. He can’t
very well say a smoldering shrub sent him, can he?
God then reveals God’s
name. This is a big deal, y’all. This moment of self-revelation by God doesn’t
happen often. God says, “I am who I am.” This is the root of the word Yahweh (all caps
LORD in our Bibles, remember), but our English unfortunately fails us miserably
in the translation.
We’re pretty tense about
tenses, you see. For example: you will
run, then you’re running, then you ran.
Past, present, future. Hebrew’s a
bit more fluid, so when God says “I am who I am”, God is actually saying, “I
was who I was, I am who I am, I will be who I will be.” Past, present, future, all in that one little
word Yahweh.
Woven within God’s very
name is a promise of constant presence for all time. Like we talked about last week, names matter
-- they are our legacy in this one,
fleeting life. God’s name matters,
too. God was, is, will be. Like Moses, we’re given a glimpse of the true
character of God. And each time this
word Yahweh appears as an all-caps LORD in our Bibles, God is revealing God’s
character once more.
“The Lord is my shepherd.” We all know it, right? Well, that LORD is all caps, the name of
God. This is no lesser lord, this is the
self-revelation of God, as a shepherd who leads us beside still waters,
prepares a table of friends and enemies together, restores our soul. This is who God was, is, will be.
Another favorite Psalm,
27: “The Lord is my light and salvation,
whom shall I fear?” Yep, all caps
again. God’s name is light, freedom from
fear and giver of salvation. This is who
God was, is, will be.
On to Isaiah, those words
Jesus used, “The Spirit of the LORD God is upon
me, Because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; sent
me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to
prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD And the day of vengeance
of our God; To comfort all who mourn…”
You guessed it, the name of God once more, all caps. God is good news, God cares for the broken
hearted, the prisoner, the mourner, God sends us out as messengers. This is who God was, is, will be.
You see, God wasn’t just content to
tell Moses God’s name by writing it on a nametag with a sharpie (or a stone
tablet with a chisel). God gave a name
wrapped in enigma (I was, am, will be), and then showed what that name
meant: people were freed from slavery,
and provided for in the wilderness.
Promises of restoration were made when these people found themselves in
an occupied land again. Prophets were
sent to bring the people back to God when they strayed away.
God’s name is inextricable from what
God does. God’s nametag throughout
scripture is story after story of restoration and salvation, challenge and
faithfulness. That is who God was, is,
will be.
So why does this matter? Why the big “tetragrammaton” word to throw
around at parties, why the need to recognize that LORD in all caps means
Yahweh, the divine name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush? What does that have to do with our faith
today?
In a word: everything. God could have said, “I was who I was” and
spent a lot of time detailing to Moses all the ways God had made creation with
ingenuity and care, or speak of how God used people like Joseph to bring
salvation in times of famine and fear.
God could have reveled in the glory days gone by, and decided that
enough was achieved. God could have
ignored the cries of the people of Israel in slavery and say, “Oh that’s really
too bad, good luck with that. But have
you heard about what I used to do? Man,
I was good.”
Or God could have said, “I am who I
am” and decide to act impulsively in the moment, a flash-in-the-pan God who
performs with instants of inspired brilliance but then fades into irrelevance,
refusing to do anything else.
Or God could have said, “I will be
who I will be” and flippantly told Moses to just stay the course, support the status
quo and trust that somehow, all would work out in some distant future. (Just not now, because God was a bit too busy
at the moment.)
But God said all three – am, was,
will be. And that matters because it
means the God who led the Moses’ people to freedom, who was spoken of as a Good
Shepherd who prepares a table for us, who was then most fully revealed in the
person and work of Jesus Christ, is our God.
God has constancy unlike anything in this universe, but at the same
time, works in new and surprising ways in our own time. And God will be. Oh, this might just matter most.
We do not know what the church will
look like as we divide ourselves and young people leave us to our
disagreements. We do not know how we can
hold fast to our distinctly Christian faith in a world of plurality in a way
that is respectful, faithful and reconciling.
The church of 30 years from now might well look very different from the
church of the past 30 years. But God
will be.
And if God will be, then there is
always hope. The hope that guided our
ancestors in faithfulness and perseverance, the hope that sustains us in present
days of doubting and uncertainty, the hope that will continue to draw future
generations to their Creator, and gather them together in worship and
service.
Thank God that God was. Thank God that God is. But especially thank God that God will
be. For if God will be, there is always
good news to share. News worth all caps,
worth sharing in our every action and word.
We do not always know who we are as followers of Jesus. We do not always know how to seek unity and
healing as a denomination, or even in our own families, for that matter. But we do know God’s name, the name that
binds us together for all time, past, present and future.
What’s in a name? Everything.
Amen.