"I AM"
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27)
November 10, 2019
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers 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." And He said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I Am has sent me to you.'"
Exodus 3:13, 14 (ESV)
Even in this impersonal world in which we live, names are still important. And even though the overwhelming majority of us had nothing at all to do with choosing our name, we nevertheless value it, take a certain amount of pride in it, and do everything possible to make sure that the good reputation of our name remains intact. Growing up I always thought that my name was strange. I didn't have the confusing problems of some of you (with names like John or Paul or Gary). In elementary school none of my teachers ever had to specify that they were talking about "Arthur L." because there was never any other Arthur in the class. As a matter of fact, I was already a pastor before I ever personally met another person named Arthur. In the years since then I have met so many Arthurs that now the name seems almost commonplace to me. It may have lost some of its uniqueness in my mind, but it's still a very special name to me for no other reason than that it is my name.
Most people don't think about it all that much, but God has a name too. I'm not talking about a title. We hear and use His titles all the time: God, the Lord, the Father, the Almighty, and so on. But I'm talking about His own personal name. In this morning's Old Testament Reading He revealed His name to His servant Moses after He called Moses to lead the children of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt and into the land that God had promised to give them as their very own. Moses was understandably timid about this tremendous assignment. He was fearful that the people of Israel would not believe that he was really called by their God. He was worried that they might require some verification, demanding to know more details about this call, including the name of the God who had called him. The name that God revealed to Moses--"I Am"--is at the same time both simple and majestic. It is a name that tells us that our God is personal and that our God is One.
The God who we worship is a personal God. He is not some vague "Nameless One of a hundred names," as some have called Him, nor is He some detached and impersonal Deity who sits in His heaven oblivious to what goes on among His creatures on earth. He is instead the Creator of heaven and earth and everything in them--the Eternal God, who lives neither in the distant past nor in the obscure future. With Him it is not "I was" or "I will be." It is always "I Am," because He is always present with us--yesterday and today and tomorrow and forever. He is so close to us, in fact, that He has chosen in love to make Himself known to us. We see His handwriting in nature and His presence in His mighty acts throughout human history. He has developed a living relationship with His people, even to the point of allowing us to know Him and to call on Him by name.
So clearly has our personal God revealed Himself to us that He has chosen in love to identify with us in the most intimate way possible by becoming One of us, taking on human flesh in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ. He stooped so low as to enter human history as a Man and to live life as we must live it, with all of its hardships, disappointments, and failures. He submitted Himself to our humanity and as a Man He endured His own judgment against our sin, so that we might be to Him not the vile offenders that we are, but the loving children that He created us to be. In Christ we know God personally, as we know each other. This is not a God "out there somewhere," but a God who by becoming Man has permanently united Himself with us in love.
The name by which God revealed Himself to Moses also indicates that He is One. We may take this for granted, but the people of Israel were in a distinct minority among the peoples of the ancient world in that they were monotheists (that is, they were worshipers of only one God). In Old Testament times, as in the days of the Greeks and Romans, mythological deities flourished. How religious a person was considered to be was determined not by how devoted that individual was to his or her god, but by how many gods and goddesses he or she sacrificed to. The more deities that a person worshiped, the more religious that person was considered to be. That's one of the reasons why the early Christians were accused by their enemies of being atheists--because they refused to worship the traditional gods of the empire. The ancient Jews and the early Christians alike were tempted in many ways to be swayed from their worship of the One true God.
This is something that we need to be particularly mindful of even today, because we also are tempted in many ways to wander away from our worship of our One God and Savior, revealed in Jesus Christ. We may not have Baal, Asherah, Chemosh, Zeus, Apollo, and Aphrodite to contend with but, believe me, we are surrounded by all kinds of false gods that Satan uses to try to separate us from our one and only Savior. The false gods of wealth, entertainment, sexual gratification, alcohol, selfishness, irresponsibility and a host of other things beckon us to sacrifice at their altars, promising us all kinds of attractive things. And the fact of the matter is that whoever or whatever we submit to and allow to control us--whoever or whatever is the number one priority in our lives--is, in fact, our god. But the great I Am says: "I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:5) and He also says: "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). There can be no divided loyalty when it comes to the worship of God. The Christian religion is an exclusive religion. Its God cannot be just one among many. If He is not everything to us, then He is nothing to us.
The world of impersonal confusion in which we live is full of spiritual confusion also. In the midst of all the noise and uncertainty that surrounds us, it is comforting for us to know that there is one God who we can and do know intimately. He has revealed Himself to us, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, "in many and various ways" (Hebrews 1:1 RSV), the most profound of all by becoming human like us in the Person of His Son. We come to know Him in His revealed Word, the Holy Scriptures, and to call upon His name, confident of His love, His wisdom, and His power. And we take great comfort in the knowledge that He has redeemed us from sin and death with His own innocent blood and in Baptism given us a name also--the people of God in Jesus Christ.
Amen.
May the One who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, making us kings and priests before His God and Father, lead you to a life of repentance and trust. May He also be glorified in the lives of you, His people. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.