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“The Hidden I Am”
Exodus 3:1-15
August 31, 2008
A Hidden God
I want to begin with a question. I want you to be bold and if you have an answer, I invite you to shout it out. Here’s the question. Have you ever seen or heard God? This is not a trick question. I want you to think of a moment recently, or ever, when you believe that you saw or heard God. Take a moment. Where were you? Were you alone or with others? Where you doing something or resting? Did something unusual happen?
Some of us may not know for sure how answer those kinds of pointed questions, and that’s ok. If we are honest, then like many other Christians, we might be thinking, “Well God has never really spoken or appeared to me. And how can I be sure whether God is doing anything in the events of my life. Maybe I’m just not a real Christian. Maybe God’s self-revelation happened only long ago in biblical times. Or maybe God still speaks and acts in the lives of some people, but I’ve been left out.” (Christian Doctrine 57).
As people of faith, we talk a lot about seeing and hearing God. In prayer. In song. We tell about what God has done in our lives. And that’s what we should be doing. But today I want to spend a few moments clarifying together what most of us mean when we say we See or Hear God. Let me share some words from one Presbyterian minister and author, Shirley Guthrie, who was a great teacher and mentor to me. Guthrie writes…
“Let us put it bluntly:
God is never directly present with us in self-revelation,
and no one (with one exception) has ever had a direct personal relationship with God.
God comes to us, and we can know God only indirectly.”
(Christian Doctrine 57-58).
Indirectly. There is, for the people of the Bible, a certain hiddeness about God. They experience God, and tell stories of God, and writes book about the God who has effected their lives so dramatically. But when we actually read the Bible we find that those people, other than Jesus, are just like us. They do see God and hear God and experience God…but always indirectly. We find one such story in Exodus 3.
Moses and a Burning Bush
Moses, years ago been swept along the ripples of the Nile in his basket into the arms of Pharaoh’s daughter. That Moses has now grown up and recognized his birth identity as an Israelite, a son born of the slave people of Egypt. Having fled from Pharaoh, he settles in the Land of Midian where he married Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro the Midianite priest. Our story begins with Moses tending Jethro’s sheep which he led far into the wilderness, all the way to Horeb, the Mountain of God. We don’t know for sure why Moses went there or what he was doing. All the Bible tells us is that something incredible happened while he was there.
For while he was there, Moses saw God. It was one of those mountain-top, life-changing, life-transforming events for Moses because he saw GOD. He SAW God…but indirectly. God came to Moses, but not face to face. God came to him indirectly, hidden in a bush. Now a bush in and of itself wouldn’t mean much. Perhaps under the hot sun, even a bush in flames wasn’t totally unheard of. This bush was burning, blazing on the mountainside… yet this bush was not consumed. It was burning, but not burning up!
And Moses, being an educated man of Pharaoh’s palace, knew the moment he spotted this bush in his peripheral vision that something was different, unusual. Just glimpsing the blazing bush, Moses got a hunch he was glimpsing pure miracle.
For those of us who question whether we have much in common with biblical characters, do you remember the first thing Moses did? In the corner of his eye he saw something great and terrifying and impossible, and what did he do? He turned his head to get a closer look. If that’s a detail you didn’t notice, that’s because it’s common sense—it’s human nature! Moses said to himself, “I must turn to LOOK at this great sight and SEE WHY the bush is not burned up.” I must LOOK. I must SEE WHY.
Last week I was reminiscing with another mother at Sedona’s preschool. We were remembering what it was like having a young toddler in the house. The way they seemed daily determined to turn our tidy homes into pits of chaos every day: emptying drawers and cabinets, pulling food from the fridge; re-arranging pictures and toys and anything they could reach.. We remembering that toddlers wants to hold everything, to touch it, smell it, listen to it, try to eat it. Small children wants to know it inside and out. Babies are just born that way! Like Moses on his mountain, we want to Look and See Why. Like a little kid, Moses wants to run over to the bush and touch it, and smell it, and listen to it. Like a budding scientist, he wants to experiment, test it until he can understand it, and understanding it, Control it. What could be more human than that?
But, just as Moses turns to do so, we find that this Bush will not be understood, will not be controlled. For this Bush is God, Yahweh. God calls out, “’Moses! Moses!’ He answered, ‘Here I am.’ And God said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”
What a memory that must have been, burned into his memory forever, the moment Moses heard a voice coming from the bush, and recognized the voice as God’s voice. We might wonder how he knew it was God’s voice. He had not heard the voice of Yahweh before. In fact, until recently he hadn’t even considered himself an Israelite. But something about it all: the Bush, the Flames, the voice. Moses knew in his head, felt in his gut that he was in the presence of the divine. A hidden and indirect God, but God nonetheless. He was standing before the Creator, the Holy One who had chosen his people to be God’s people. The ground beneath him was indeed holy, and so according to the custom Moses removed his sandals quickly and hid his face. For he was afraid to see God. Even God hidden was overpowering.
We See and Hear God
God comes to us, and reveals God’s self to us in so many ways: In music, in coincidences, in Silence, in Nature, in Scripture, in Sermon, in Church Family, in Memories, in Seasons of Sickness and Death, in New Life, in Moments of Doubt, in the Face of Strangers, in Apology and Forgiveness, in Relationships, and so many others. God comes to us, speaks to us in as many ways as there are people in this room. Even more so, because God continues, on and on, revealing God’s self to God’s people. People like Moses. People like us.
But never directly. Always hidden. We see God’s glory, but only from around the corner. We hear God’s voice, but only whispers in the wind. We discover miracles of science with God’s handprints all over it. We listen in silence and feel strange stirrings in our hearts. Hidden, indirect.
To be honest, sometimes it just doesn’t feel like enough. If you’re impatient like me, sometimes you want a little more. In prayer I tend to joke with God, explaining that what I really want from God is an email: simple, clear, concise, explaining all the mysteries I don’t quite understand. But God as yet hasn’t sent one, and I don’t guess that’s God’s style.
For God is a Hidden God, an Indirect God, coming to us in shadows and dreams and hunches, always shrouded in mystery. But Human Nature, as always, as with Moses and little kids and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is to Look and See, Touch and Feel and Question, to understand and to control.
Was that really God’s voice I heard in prayer this morning, or just my stomach grumbling? Was that homeless dirty man on the street really speaking to me from God, or was he just crazy? What if that burning bush is only a bush?
Those are important questions, some of the most important we’ll find ourselves asking in this life. And each time we ask them, we become a bit more like Moses. Turning to get a better look at the bush. Turning aside to see, face to face, the One whom we can’t yet see face to face. Left to our own devices we will turn, with the eager curiosity of toddlers and the rational minds of westerners. With our scalpels and microscopes we will dissect that bush—or that prayer, that memory, that strange feeling in our gut— until we think we understand God.
But after walking with Moses this week, I’ve been reminded that we cannot. We can’t figure out God any more than we can name God. God said to Moses, (Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh), “I Am Who I Am.” Later God says in Isaiah, “Your ways are not my ways, nor are your thoughts my Thoughts.” I AM WHO I AM. How difficult it is for us to hear that. God is not limited to what we manage to see or hear of God. God is in the burning bush, but the bush is not God. I Am What I Am. I will be What I will Be.
And I think there’s a warning in this text. When we try to look directly into the fire, when we do as Moses did, we may just hear what Moses heard: “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground!”
Holy Ground.
It is Holy. We have all of us walked on Holy Ground, for we have been in the presence of God. That is one of the promises we share in baptism: Emmanuel: God is with us. Sometimes we recognize glimpses of God, other days we’re oblivious. Some moments we hear whispers that sound like God’s voice to us. Usually, we’re too noisy to hear.
I asked you a question earlier: Have you ever seen or heard God? Whether you spoke out or were silent, I suspect that many of us have had moments when we knew deep in our gut that God was with us. The same God we find in Exodus, the same God we seek Sunday after Sunday in these pews, the God we come closest to knowing in Jesus Christ.
May that God give us the Courage to question our Faith and our Selves from time to time. But just as importantly, may that God grant us the Wisdom to see and hear God hidden: indirect, always there but never in focus, ever moving, always present in our midst. May it be so. Amen.
Copyright 2008 Rev. Shelaine R. Bird