I Will Be What I Will Be

Scripture — Exodus 3:1-6 (NRSV)

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. 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. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 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.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 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.

Read all of Exodus 3 here.

Devotion

I’ve told you before about the Methodist Bible study I attend regularly even though I’m Episcopalian. Last time I checked in with you about it, we were halfway through Genesis, but now we’re in Exodus—we just dealt with the passage where God works a miracle so that the Israelites can cross the Red (more properly Reed) Sea, but a few months ago we were talking about exactly this passage, which the lectionary assigns for the Third Sunday in Lent.

I’ve (regretfully) quoted only a small part of Exodus 3 here, but even from part of the passage you can tell this is a story about two things—call and identity. God has a job for Moses, as later verses make clear:

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, 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. . .I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt (3:7-8a, 10).

Moses is not too keen on this job for a whole bunch of reasons. One of them is his own perceived inadequacy, which comes out a bit in the complete story of Exodus 3 and keeps cropping up throughout the narrative. Another reason, or at least a roadblock Moses gives for wanting to take this task on, is that he doesn’t know God’s name: “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?” (3:13).

One of the things you wanted to know about any god of a group of people in the Ancient Near East was his (or her) name; if you possessed the name, then you could implore that god to do something you wanted. The God that speaks to Moses here is—as we already know if we’ve been following along, as I have been in Bible study, all the way through Genesis, and it comes up again now—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of a particular family, people, tribe, and nation. But—as God tells Moses in almost the very next breath—this God is more than that.

God 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’” (3:14).

This name—Yahweh—is not the name of a local god and a local tribe and a local people. It is not even really a noun. It sometimes gets translated as “I will be what I will be.” It is a word expressing lordship over all peoples, tribes, and nations, and over all past, present, and future. And it is a word which God gives as a promise to Moses. You may be inadequate, God says, but I am not. I am not to be tamed by any one people or group or nation; I am not even to be tied down by the distinction between past, present, and future. But be comforted that I am the one who sends you and will be the one who goes with you, whatever lies before you.

That is a message for the hard journey of Lent. And for all the other hard journeys right now, too.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: God’s Call to Moses (Exodus 2:11-3:22).