God With No Name

“The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” (vs. 9-10)

“The surest sign of God’s presence in our lives is that we will have the freedom to come again next week and to worship God again in this same place.”

I t was eight years ago this month that I began my ministry here at Church of the Pilgrims. I have to confess, I was pretty nervous when I started here, much more so than at my previous two positions. I had good reason to be nervous in my first call, where I served a small church on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City– but I was just out of seminary, so what did I know? People didn’t expect me to know too much, and I didn’t know enough to be anxious. In my second congregation, the folks in Wilmington weren’t really sure they were going to be around much longer, so anything I did to help revitalize things was gratefully received. Then the church building burned down and, well, what can I say? Once you’ve been baptized by fire, there is not much left to worry about.

But when I came here there was this expectation that all my experience should actually count for something, and it was expected that I would actually know what I was doing! Then, about three months into my tenure it became clear that we were running out of money so fast that if we didn’t turn things around in about three years I would be living in a nice house without any salary. The truth is, it kept me up at night. I remember consciously deciding just to let go of all that anxiety– as they say in AA, to “let go and let God.” I just decided that if God had a plan and purpose for our future, it would work out, and it wasn’t up to me to solve all our problems. In remarkable ways, since that moment I have felt that God has been with us, moving in and among us to lead us in new directions. We are stronger and healthier now than we have been in many years. There is still plenty to worry about, and no one among us really knows what the future hold, but I’m not anxious about the future anymore. As our Mission Statement puts it, “We are pilgrims, together on a spiritual journey, trusting God to show us the way.”

But how do we really know God is with us? Isn’t that a question we all ask in our lives? Not just small church leadership, but life itself is a series of uphill battles with endless frustrations. We all work hard without always being able to see the fruits of our labors. We pray and study and listen to try and discern God’s will for our lives, and for this congregation, but how do we really know that God is with us? Are there any guarantees?

I find great comfort from this morning’s passage from Exodus. Moses, after all, knows something about frustration. Moses knows about struggling and searching without seeming to make any progress. Moses knows about set-backs and defeats. If we can hear what God spoke to Moses that kept him going, maybe we can hear God speaking to us as well.

A s our story this morning unfolds, Moses has now escaped to the country-side to avoid getting caught for murdering an Egyptian guard. Angry and frustrated, goes off to hide-out at the home of his father-in-law, Jethro. Certainly at this point, Moses had no idea what would happen next. He probably felt little hope about the situation in Egypt. But just at that moment of despair, God intercedes. “And the angel of the Lord appeared to him as a flame coming from the middle of a bush, but the bush was not burned up.” Moses experienced something that he could not explain. God appeared to him in a jarring moment of revelation outside his own experience.

God speaks. “Moses. Moses.” And Moses responds in the manner that all those prophets and kings respond in the Old Testament stories, in the way that perhaps is the only appropriate way to respond to a call from God. Moses says, “Here I am.”

All the rest about Moses from this point on is merely detail. What ever else is said, the pivotal moment has now passed. God called. Moses responded. “Here I am.” That is all that God asks.

Then God proceeds to tell Moses what Moses has yet to fully comprehend. The people have not cried out in vain. God sees. God hears. God knows. God acts. “I have seen the affliction of my people. I have heard their cries. I know their sufferings. And so I will send you so that you may bring them forth out of bondage.”

Here Moses really becomes the human archetype. Moses may have lost us in that chipper response earlier, “Here I am.” But now Moses is truly one of us. “Who am I,” Moses asks, “that you would send me?” “I am nobody,” Moses pleads, “How can I go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

That is how most of us feel in response to God’s call to us. Not, “Here I am,” but “Who am I?” And then, answering our own question we say, with Moses, “I am nobody.”

And then God’s answer. “I will be with you.” How often we have repeated that same phrase in our own attempts to offer comfort. “God is with you.” In the hospital and at the funeral home, in the midst of struggle of every kind, those have been the words that have been uttered, certainly since Moses’ own era, “God is with you.” But even God knows it isn’t enough and although Moses doesn’t ask the question, God knows he is thinking it in the same way that we are all thinking it. “How will I know? How will I know you are with me? Don’t you understand what you are asking me to do? Don’t you realize what risks you are calling me to take? Don’t you recognize all the set backs, the frustrations, the disappointments that lay ahead of me? And that is your only consolation, ‘I will be with you’? How will I know? How will I know you are with me?”

To this, God offers the most curious response. Do you even remember the answer? I bet it didn’t even register with you when I told the story earlier. It would be easy to miss. It doesn’t sound like much. Probably didn’t even make much sense to you. But it is the only answer that God offers to Moses. It is the only answer that we are going to get.

Here is what God said to Moses: “This will be the proof that I have sent you. When you bring the people out of Egypt, you will worship me on this mountain.”

N ot much of a proof. I could think of better ones. How about “Nothing bad will happen to you.” But we know Moses almost gets himself killed. Or, “Everyone will do what you tell them.” That would be helpful, but it certainly wasn’t the case. The Israelites challenged Moses’ leadership every step of the way. Or even better, “The struggle will be hard, you will experience many set-backs, but in the end everything will work out just as I promised.” Even that turns out to be illusory. We often forget that Moses died before he ever got to the promised land!

No, only this: When you bring the people out of Egypt, you will worship me on this mountain. In the final analysis, that is the surest promise of the life of faith. Not safety. Not freedom from struggle. Not flashy signs that will let everyone know unequivocally that God is on your side and you lead the righteous cause. No, only this: You will know God’s presence in your worship of God, and after crossing all those Red Seas that we face in this life, you will be able to look back and say, perhaps only in retrospect, surely God has been with us in our struggle.

I sn’t that our experience? Isn’t it only now, in retrospect, that we are able to look back and see God’s presence with us over the years? It would be nice if we could have the burning bush experience that Moses had as well. And there are those moments— perhaps not quite as dramatic— when we do know God is with us. But more often than not it is only in looking back that we are able to sense God’s presence.

It won’t be enough to convince anybody else. It won’t dissuade the skeptics or convert the unbelievers. But it was enough for Moses to set out on the mission that God had chosen for him. In responding to God’s call, Moses found the power to go to Pharaoh, he experienced deliverance across the Red Sea, and by following God’s call, he was able to go back to that same mountain of revelation, where he had first heard God’s call, and to worship God again, acknowledging then, and only then, that God had indeed been with him all along, and was present with him once again on that Holy mountain. The surest sign of God’s presence in our lives is that we will have the freedom to come again next week and to worship God again in this same place.

As long as we gather for worship in this place each week, we will know that God is still with us. This gathered community of faithful people is the proof of a gracious God. Despite everything else, God still calls us to this place to lift our voices in praise, to remember what God has done for us, to celebrate what God has promised.

And when we come before God in praise and worship, we will learn, as did Moses, that this mysterious God who hears our cries and acts to save us, also calls and commissions. So God is still at work sending us into the world to save God’s people from every type of bondage. Because we are free to worship, so we are free to serve— because we know, because we are here, that God is with us. ✞