I want to talk about the lesson from Exodus today for a while.
I want to talk about the lesson from Exodus for Moses is watching Jethro’s sheep quite a way out of Egypt. He is at Mount Horeb, known to Jews as ‘the mountain of God.’
I hope you’ve seen a burning bush that the fire did not consume, but I never have.
And I’ve never heard the voice of God out loud.
I pray I’ve heard God whisper to me—but never like what Moses heard.
He took off his sandals—one approaches God bare footed—and knelt down.
What is really remarkable about this very remarkable passage is that Moses resists going to free the Jews in Egypt and has the audacity to ask God’s name!
And God tells him: “my name is Yahweh”, God says.
Yahweh in Hebrew means “I AM” and that’s how it is translated today.
God “IS,”
There was nothing before God created it except God. And all God created came from his ‘being’, his ‘is-ness’, his existence.
God is the great and eternal “I AM!”
And Moses followed “I AM’S” instructions and led the people of Israel out of slavery.
The Hebrews thought it was disrespectable to say God’s name. And many places in the English translations of the Bible, “Yahweh” is translated as “Lord.”
But it really means “I AM.”
Jesus is the second person of God’s being and in today’s gospel he tells his disciples about his fate—that he will be tried, crucified, and rise on the third day.
Peter doesn’t like that and says so.
Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”
He then says to them—and 2000 years plus later to us: “pick up you cross and follow me.”
What is the cross we should pick us?
It is the cross of ‘doing good’ in this darkening world.
Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, healing the sick.
We are the agents of “I AM” in this world.
We must do the work God has given us to do.
We must tell Satan to ‘get behind’ us and do good.
You at Trinity do good—lots of it.
But our work is never done.
So, keep at it.
Keep at it.
Keep at it always.
Shalom and Amen.
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