God’s Name is Revealed

What is the name of God?

How dare we seek to name that which is beyond all names?

Can God have a name? Can we fathom it?

These questions have been central to my faith and it’s evolution over the last 20 years. In my early twenties, I had grown quite disenchanted with many of the popular, evangelical, big church ways of understanding God. I loved church, I loved people, but I was worn out with what seemed to be cheap, surface level ways we talked about and put name to God’s way. Too many praise song chorus about how great God was…not enough witness to that true grandeur…only just these words.

But I was supposed to take most of that at face value — God is great, I am not, so embrace this unfathomable God, but also this God who supposedly comes close and knows me, that’s right, little old me, intimately.

While these ways of thinking were comforting, I began to realize that they lacked depth. And all the while, I looked around at people seemingly able to explain all of these things about what God is like and how God made the universe and how God was nearby and even, in my heart. I wanted this all to be true, but at the same time it felt empty.

How can we name the unnameable? How can our minds even begin to fathom that which is beyond all insight and clarity.

In that season, I encountered the writings of mystic and prophet, Meister Eckhart. I’m far from an expert on this medieval philosopher theologian, but his poetry and playful understanding of the Divine were of great help.

For it is Eckhart who once wrote this, in his meditations…

“I pray God…to rid me…of God. The highest and loftiest thing that one can let go of is to let go of God for the sake of God.”

Woah. What?

God rid me of God?

Yes.

God, rid me of God…for the sake of God.

What?

Put plainly, this pray states the desire that our thin, cheap, boxed-in understandings of God be thrown out. Gotten rid of. Tossed in the bin.

But not for some empty vacuum, not in seeking absence alone, not because God is not…but for the sake of God.

I’ve come to understand these words very clearly to mean this: I pray that God might pull away the curtain of all my simple, small, lacking conceptions of God, so that I might truly encounter the One who is greater and fuller and purer than all words or names might even brush up against. God, rid me of what is not you, for your sake.

Have you ever felt this, this desire to have all the stuff pulled away and to encounter what is truly God? Or maybe not even God, for that matter. Maybe, have you felt the longing to know someone, a partner or spouse or dear friend in this pure, essential way. Or maybe you’re like me — I’d really like to know myself that way. Self, rid me of self, for the sake of myself. Pull back all the layers, the masks I wear, the front I present. God, rid me of all that distorts or distracts, for the sake that I might for once see clearly.

As we move on in our narrative study of the Old Testament, today we encounter such a moment, where Moses encounters God in the wilderness of Mt. Horeb. Hear the first part of our Scripture reading from Exodus…

Exodus 2:23–25 NRSV

After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.

A quick catchup: Last week, we finished the Abraham family story in Genesis with the narrative of Jacob and Esau. Jacob receives a vision of the heavens. God is at work, ordering the cosmos.

From there, the story goes that Jacob has a large family, 12 tribes represented under his mantle as Israel. And, due to famine and the migration of people, these tribes end up in Egypt, ultimately becoming enslaved by the Egyptian monarchy. Famine drove people to migrate and find new homes, even if it meant living in poverty or under oppression. Sounds familiar to our times, doesn’t it.

And under this oppression by a foreign power who capitalizes on the people’s destitution, the people begin to cry out. They have this vague recollection of the God who sustained their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses, son-in-law of Jethro, who was a priest, is one of those people. Moses, born of a enslaved Israelite, murderer of an Egyptian slave master, now living in the wilderness of the Sinai peninsula, between Egypt and Palestine.

Before I read the second part of the Scripture, let’s also remember that we’re dealing with this unfolding understanding of who or what God is. We’ve gone from the Cosmic God who created the heavens, passed along with cultural gods and tribal understandings of the divine. God has interacted with humanity in some very clear ways through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. But still, the people we encounter in these texts are showing us very early forms of how people understand God. It is only in the narrative of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, that we start to gain the clarity that God is the God of all, but in particular, chooses this people group, the Israelites, to interact with and care for. God’s preference for this particular group is just now being revealed. As Jacob was blessed by God to become Israel, now his descendants are beginning to take ownership of their identity as God’s people.

Ok, let’s hear more of the story of Moses…

Exodus 3:1–15 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.

Ok, quick pause here: For all intents and purposes, Moses does not seem to be expecting this encounter, nor does he come with an idea already in mind about who ore what this is. So it is God who clarifies, according to our text, who God is. God of the ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I have to imagine in the mind of Moses, this at least lights up a little bulb of memory and inheritance, but certainly doesn’t provide much clarity…yet.

Now, this God speaks. Note, the next sentence begins with “then the Lord said.” The Lord is YHWH in the Hebrew. Not el or elohim (which is used in the sentences before).

Exodus 3:1–15 NRSV

Then 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, 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, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 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.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He 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.” 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?” 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.’ ” God 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.

I AM. I am who I am.

Other ways this is translated include, I will be who I will be OR I am He who endures. ‘Ehyeh-’Asher-’Ehyeh. Yihyeh…yhwh.

We seek a name for God. Moses needs a name to back him up as he goes to help his people. Otherwise, he’s just a crazy shepherd from the wilderness who has very little to stand on.

Back to my early twenties: In those days, I really wanted to have some firm ground to stand upon when I thought of and talked about God. I knew God was in my heart, I knew that the Scriptures were good news, but I was so tired of singing Our God Is An Awesome God, because the God of evangelical circles just felt like an in-house, cultural God that we were trying to control. As I said a few weeks ago, it was true back then: I want the wild.

Here’s what I hope you take away from this today: God is immense, all knowing, surrounding. God is close, intimate, and knows the matters of our hearts. When we come to hold a view or a name for God that is too small, I pray that God will rid us of that god, so that we might encounter a burning bush of wonder and wildness that sets our eyes and hearts on fire in newness, truth, and awe. That our God is not one that can be placed in a box or set on a shelf. God is I am, I will be who I will be. YHWH.

May we seek this kind of encounter and knowledge of God, where we are struck to take off our sandles and stand in awe on holy ground.

Amen.

Now,

In keeping the story going, today I’m going to close with a little bit of an epilogue. Moses is sent by YHWH to speak on behalf of the people of Israel. To go before the king of Egypt, the pharoah, as an ambassador from I AM who I AM. He’s rightly nervous about this. Hear this part of the story.

Exodus 4:10–17 NRSV

But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.” But he said, “O my Lord, please send someone else.” Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “What of your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can speak fluently; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do. He indeed shall speak for you to the people; he shall serve as a mouth for you, and you shall serve as God for him. Take in your hand this staff, with which you shall perform the signs.”

In closing, we have this part of the story where Moses and Aaron are established as leaders over the people of Israel. They will go on to be the priests, the guides, of the people in the wilderness.

What I find intriguing here is that Moses must have some kind of inner understanding of the inadequecy of language to articulate who God is. Let’s go back to Meister Eckhart — God, rid me of God. In Moses’ case, I don’t think it’s quite that complex. The authors of this story, likely scribes of Israel during or after the exile in Babylon, are trying to articulate this awe and fear that Moses and Aaron felt. No one wants to try to name the unnameable, especially in front of the ruler of the empire that subjugates your people.

So who will speak for God? Can anyone speak for God? Can anyone truly articulate the ways of God or nail down who God is or what God is like? Many try. And many of us, yes, I’ll throw myself in here, many of us, attempt to speak of God like we know what we’re doing, like we have it sort of figured out. I deeply appreciate Moses’ apprehension here: How could I do this? I’m not good with words.

I feel this way, a lot. I don’t have the words to adequately describe God. But, as philosopher and theologian Peter Rollins, who is echoing Meister Eckhart, says, it is this very unnameable God that we are compelled to keep attempting to name. We speak of that which we are unable to speak of. How can we not? Because in the burning bush, in the raging winds, in the silence, the complete and utter absence of God echoes so loudly of God’s presence that we must continue speaking of it, telling the story.

And God goes before us, as with Moses. God’s words speak when we cannot speak. God reveals to us God’s loving, immense, presence because this is no distant, beyond God, but rather the God who is immanent, near, around, abiding with us. God is grand and God is here.

May we be a people compelled to speak of the God we can never truly name, but who names us, knows us, and blesses us as we attempt to follow.