TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Sermon preached in Shepton Mallet, Somerset on 3/6/07

Exodus 3, v.1-15 & John 3, v.1-17

To say that Moses is widely known and revered as one of the most important leaders of all time of the Hebrew people, is nothing new. As well as bringing them out of captivity in Egypt, he brought them the Ten Commandments – both achievements having had an enduring influence on world affairs.

But have you ever considered how strange it is that someone with a name like Moses should be such a prominent Hebrew? Names were very important to the Hebrews. But the name Moses probably isn’t Hebrew at all but Egyptian. The ending in –ses is familiar from the name ‘Ramases’. Apparently, the ‘mose’ bit could mean ‘child’, and one theory is that his name is actually a shortened form of the name Ramases – which means a child of the Egyptian god Ra – and that’s a very strange name for a Hebrew leader. We are told he was named by Pharaoh’s daughter, when she drew him out of the Nile. So, another idea is that his name is a combination of two ancient Egyptian words: “mo” meaning “water” and “sa” meaning “son” – so Moses could be “son of water”. You can easily explore all these fascinating ideas on the Internet.

Moses’s upbringing and early experiences must have been pretty unique, too. After being rescued and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, he was returned to his family home, where he had his 3-year-old brother Aaron and his 10-year-old sister Miriam for company, and where he was nursed by his own mother. And then, when the child grew older (presumably when he had been weaned), he was presented back to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘he became her son’, and no doubt grew up in the lap of Egyptian luxury – a very privileged Hebrew amongst his enslaved countrymen.

Was he aware of his Hebrew origins, do you think? I expect he was. After all he was only the great-grandson of Levi – one of the twelve original sons of Jacob, forming one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and I am sure he was taught about his ancestry from a very early age. We are told that after he ‘had grown up, he went out to where his own people were’. And that, and what he did when he saw them, suggests that he had a very strong sense of whom he belonged to, in spite of his Egyptian upbringing.

And what he did was to kill an Egyptian whom he saw beating a Hebrew. Now it must have been a common occurrence for Hebrew slaves to be beaten by their Egyptian overlords. As we are told, they were worked ruthlessly and their lives were made bitter. So why didn’t they do something about this situation themselves? Well, the trouble with any form of social injustice is that it tends to perpetuate itself: people brought up to slavery and ill-treatment have a tendency to put up with it as if it were their fate or perhaps even partly their fault. What made Moses different was that he had seen both sides. He was so accustomed to the best life could offer that he could see his own people’s suffering from a different perspective, and he knew it was wrong. And he not only knew it was wrong, he did something about it, with all the hot-headed moral integrity that you might expect of a young man: he killed the oppressor. [Fast forward a few years to the Ten Commandments: No.5 “You shall not murder.”] Do we not have a wonderful image of the guilt already in Moses’s heart in the description of how he commits this murder? ‘Glancing this way and that and seeing no-one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.’ What a moral dilemma for the poor guy!

And then next day, the screw tightens even more, as he sees two Hebrews fighting, one of whom appears to be in the wrong. This is perhaps even more galling to Moses, as to him this shows how the bitterness of their lives under the Egyptians is making them take it out on each other. It’s not just oppression that he sees, but also the whole fabric of his society threatened with collapse. He asks, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” and the reply he gets must have bitten deep inside him: “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” You can hear him thinking, “Well, who did? What authority do I have? I certainly feel I can judge and promote justice amongst my people, but to them who on earth am I? What respect can I possibly have – an outsider with an Egyptian name, brought up as the plaything of the slave drivers?”

And the next words fill him with an immediate fear: “Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” And Moses thinks, “What I did must have become known.” So suddenly he has a reputation with both the Egyptians and the Hebrews as a danger, and naturally that means his life is in danger. So he runs away. Here we are, folks, I present to you Israel’s greatest leader! A runaway murderer.

So he escapes to the territory of the Midianites, perhaps in the Sinai peninsula, and the first thing he does there, resting by a well, is to intervene, in the cause of justice again, to drive off some bullying shepherds who were preventing some girls from getting water for their father’s flock. This earned their undying gratitude, and he was adopted by the father, a priest of Midian by the name of Jethro, given one of the seven daughters in marriage, and lived there as shepherd to Jethro’s flocks. So it appears that for forty years he passes away his time in comparative solitude, away from the Egyptians, and away from the Hebrews, leading the animals that were his present concern across the desert to find good pasture and water.

Just think of this man, with so much on his conscience, with such unfulfilled longings for the well-being of his own people, leading flocks across the desert. What do you think was on his mind? … Now I don’t pretend to understand the burning bush; it must be one of those unusual miracles that really can’t be explained in any other way. Whatever Moses saw, I think he must also have been burning up inside, and as he hears the voice of God calling him, rousing him to a sense of his true destiny, he must have felt that here at last was the answer to that question of long ago: “What authority do I have?” And he has appropriate signs that he is in the presence of the true God. He isn’t to come too close; he is to remove his sandals. God identifies himself. And Moses hides his face in fear.

And then, in what God says to Moses, comes one of those ordinary words that mean so little but suggest so much. It’s the word “indeed”. “The Lord said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.” What that word “indeed” suggests is that these words of God are an answer to something. It’s as if Moses has brought up the subject from his own heart, and God is replying, “Yes, I have seen the misery of my people.” And that means that Moses has dared to question God’s concern for his people. “O God, have you seen the misery of your people? I have. Have you heard them crying? I have. Are you concerned about their suffering? I am. Then, O God, why don’t you do something about it?”

It was a crisis of faith. Moses was accustomed to worship in Egypt, he must have been tolerant of his father-in-law’s activities as a priest of Midian, and he no doubt knew of other religions where the gods were the sort that needed placating. His God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was supposed to be a loving God. Well, he didn’t see much evidence of it. Why should he remain faithful to the God he worshipped if he turned out to be no better than any of the others? And it was out of this ferment of doubt that he heard the voice of the living God: “I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians…” Moses must have thought, “Oh good, God is going to act at last.”

How short that sigh of relief must have been cut, when he heard God’s final words, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” But when you think about it, what other fulfilment could there be for that deep concern that Moses had endured day after day in the desert? Clearly he wanted to do something himself. His killing of the Egyptian proved that. But it hadn’t achieved anything. It wasn’t what God wanted. What God wanted was to go to the heart of the problem, namely the exile and subjugation of the Hebrews in the alien land of Egypt. That’s what had to be changed. But Moses clearly felt inadequate for that task. Moses might very well feel that God ought to do this job himself. If he had the concern, surely he had the power?! So, why doesn’t he just do it?

And that raises something very interesting: the question of God’s activity in the world. It’s easy to read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, compare it with our own experiences, and conclude that God seems to have been a lot more active in olden times than nowadays. And it’s because I believe that’s wrong, that I have tried to present this story from the perspective of Moses’s own psychology: trying to see what was inside him, driving him to think and behave in the way he did.

I think it is true to say that God was much more bound up with the whole of people’s outlook on life than nowadays. We have sifted God out of so much of our thought and knowledge – out of astronomy, out of science, health, music, you name it, we think of them all as separate – that we have lost the habit of assuming that He is there all the time in all these things, and relating with Him on that basis. But we have many of the same psychological drives, and just because we don’t see God, doesn’t mean He isn’t there. When all’s said and done, we are all God’s got to work with, the same as that runaway murderer was then. And what’s so interesting is that, even though we believe he has the power and the concern, he chooses to go on immensely long detours to achieve his purposes through what you might call ‘the available resources’. I believe he does that now, and he certainly did so with Moses.

Take the trivial point of the sandals. Remember how Moses is told, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Now, you tell me why God would need anyone to do anything so apparently meaningless for his own sake? No, it was for Moses’s sake that the sandals had to be removed. It came into Moses’s heart that he needed to demonstrate respect, just as he would entering someone’s house. How you say it came into his heart, it seems to me, is all a matter of how you look at things.

Moses knew he was inadequate. “Who am I?” he asks. And notice how God doesn’t give Moses any undeserved compliments. There’s no flattery. He doesn’t say, “No, you mustn’t say that. You are very special. Look how you were brought up. You are educated, intelligent and moral. I couldn’t ask for a better person.” He just says, “I will be with you.” Moses then asks for God’s name. This is an outrageous request. To know someone’s name was always thought of as a way of gaining power over them. But God says, “I am who I am.” – in other words, I exist and live. From the psychological perspective, it still rings true. What does Moses need for this task? – to know that the source of his determination is real, and is with him. But do read on for yourselves how this inner dialogue continues. I must say I can’t help a smile of sympathy when at one point he says, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”

A further example of how God is concerned to win over hearts and minds, and doesn’t just zap into things with a burst of supernatural power, is the long story of how Pharaoh was gradually changed from obstinacy to the point where he would beg them to leave.

By this encounter, Moses has become transformed from the runaway murderer into a man with a mission. He is now God’s servant, in God’s kingdom, and in a sense, he is no longer the man he used to be. At this point of spiritual crisis, Moses has been reborn. He will now go where the Spirit leads him.

This, of course, is the language that Jesus uses in his conversation with Nicodemus, a prominent Pharisee and teacher. Nicodemus doesn’t seem to understand the concept of spiritual rebirth, and for that Jesus gently reprimands him. He is in a position where he should be able to help ordinary Jews understand such things. And Jesus specifically refers to the experience of Moses in the desert which we have been thinking about. Surely he can appreciate that that is what happened to him there? For the exodus is the pivotal event in the entire Jewish experience, the one that Jews celebrate above all others. Because this is the event that proves beyond all doubt that the living God is concerned about his people. Jesus adds that now we have further proof of God’s love: the sending of his only son into the world. And again we see how God chooses to act through those who faithfully seek his will, and how he empowers them appropriately. In other words, he is alive, real, and with us – which you might say is quite a suitable thought to end with this Trinity Sunday. Alive, real, and with us…