June 7, 2026 · Rev. Rick Spalding · Exodus 3:1-15; Matthew 16:13-17, 21-25
Before Moses asks God's name at the burning bush, Moses asks a question of his own: 'Who am I?' Rev. Rick Spalding suggests that's where every journey toward freedom begins, and invites a church in transition to become a question to itself: who are we, what do we value, and what holds us captive?
Transcript
I've never been to the North Pole, but I've heard that if you stand precisely at Magnetic North and take out your compass, the needle will spin helplessly around the whole dial, because from there all directions are south. The magnetism of nature may have landed you at the pole, but now it's restless for you to move, and every direction is onward. Well, I have a little bit of sense that something like that happens to Moses in the wilderness of Midian, when he suddenly finds himself at a pole so charged with holiness that all directions from there lead toward the will of God.
Not many biblical images are as indelible as that bush that was burning but was not consumed. It may be that none of us has ever seen such a sight or heard such a voice. And yet there it is, in our imaginations, blazing away as soon as we hear the story. How else would God speak to someone minding their own business in the wilderness? And what would you do? Pinned in the dueling marvel and terror of it. But take off your shoes. To let your soul and your souls absorb the moment.
Well, you might remember that Moses, the great hero of the Hebrew people, first enters the biblical story a couple of chapters before Sue began reading as a baby born into slavery among the Israelites with his people in bondage in Egypt under the Pharaoh, an infant who only escaped state mandated extermination because some clever Hebrew midwives floated him in a basket among the bulrushes and managed to get him secretly adopted into the royal household of Pharaoh. But by the time the Hebrew Moses was a young adult raised in an Egyptian household, Moses wasn't finding it easy to keep his true identity under wraps. One day, when he came upon an Egyptian overlord beating an enslaved Hebrew, Moses's solidarity roared to life. He killed the Egyptian and then had to flee into the wilderness of Midian for cover. The wilderness is where our story this morning picks him up. Tending a borrowed flock that was, we can assume, much easier to manage than the flock he was about to take on.
Whatever else you may have forgotten from Sunday School, odds are you remember some of that conversation we just eavesdropped. Eavesdropped on again at the burning bush, where Moses asks God for an authoritative name that he can lean on when he goes back to his people in slavery and starts trying to build a movement for freedom. What God says in that conversation, we think is something like, I am who I am. Three almost untranslatable Hebrew words that might also mean I will be what I choose. Or I like this one especially, I am who I will be. Many of Moses's descendants to this day Stay. Consider that name so holy that they don't say it out loud at all.
So here at the bush that burns but is not burned. The God who has a name but cannot be named, speaks to a hero who is chosen but not willing, commissioning him to take on a tyrant who says he will relent but does not relent in order to free a people who, once they finally escape, are farther from home than they've ever been. The compass needle is definitely spinning. We are on holy ground for sure.
The voice from within the flames begins not with an expression of vengeance against an oppressor, which you might expect, but with an expression of compassion. I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt. I have indeed heard their cry. I know their sufferings, and I have come to deliver them, to bring them up out of the land into a good and broad land, flowing with milk and honey. So come, God says to Moses, come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt.
Now already, as I read the story again, I'm remembering that Moses is going to ask God for a name and get back a handful of holy, unpronounceable syllables as his souvenir from the burning bush. But this time, through the story and under the influence of your story as a congregation, this time through the story, I've noticed something I never paid attention to before. Moses has a question that comes first who am I? He says, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? Who am I? Before Moses gets that glimpse into the mystery of who God is, there's a moment when he stands there with his needle spinning, suddenly magnetized by the mystery of who he is himself. Yes, wherever the journey is going that begins from that magnetic place in the wilderness where all directions lead deep down into the future, the journey will unfold in the company of a God whose name is full of being and doing and causing.
But before that journey can begin, this is a word to us. Before that journey can begin, Moses has to ask, who am I? He has to start paying attention to what he hasn't yet understood about himself. And I think the moment that that question finds its way to Moses's lips is the moment that his story begins, really his story and ours.
For Moses, the question who am I? Comes out of a deepening sense of alarm that God has chosen too small a person for too big a task. What Sue read for us just now was only the beginning of the exchange between God and Moses. As the bush flames on it burns through several more rounds of protestation from Moses before he finally says, O Lord, please send someone else. The bush may have not been consumed by the fire of God, but Moses's defenses get consumed layer by layer in the relentless, liberating intention of a God called I will be, I will do, I will cause I am, I am.
There's a place in the Confessions of Saint Augustine, the great pre medieval Christian disciple and monk and mystic. A place in his writings, his confessions where Augustine, perhaps having stumbled very near a poll of his own, writes an earthquake of a sentence, I have become a question to myself. He says at the beginning of his spiritual journey at the bush, suddenly Moses becomes a question to himself, and all the directions that lead from there begin with that I and with the we that will follow very shortly who am I?
The bush that flamed. Got his attention and pulled him aside. And now, standing there in his bare feet comes the first step. Getting grounded in the truth and possibility of himself.
For instance, Moses can notice the truth that the suffering and the danger that he fled into the wilderness to escape are nonetheless part of who he is as an alien, as an immigrant, as a victim of the same system that he saw beating up his kinsmen. And Moses can notice the possibilities that go along with his sort of accidental standing as an adopted member of Pharaoh's household. Thanks to that business in the bulrushes. As a baby, Moses has some safety that others don't have some access to Pharaoh, and maybe even a little bit of power to say things and even do things that he himself hasn't discovered yet. Hasn't yet admitted to himself.
Hasn't used God, said Moses, take off your shoes and make yourself at home in my project, for we have work to do. And Moses, drenched in holiness, took off his shoes, maybe hoping that it would keep him from bursting into flames himself, at least for a little while. But now Moses has caught the fire of the question that he must become to himself, and that question will burn bright enough to light his people's way all the way into the future. Soon enough, they'll all have to become questions to themselves, to all of them, as they pick their long way through the wilderness, wondering, as we'll hear next week and the week after that. Who are we anyway as a people? What are we about? What do we value? What matters?
Okay, but for now, Moses, put your shoes back on. For the ground is sharp and the years are long. And all directions lead from here into God's future. And the work of freedom and justice before you is holy work, good trouble. And the first piece of it, the first piece of it, always is to figure out who you are.
So maybe now it's time for us to put our shoes back on. To maybe now, if we're going to get to the place of promise that we've set our sights on that you are looking forward to as a church when that time finally comes. When this transition is over, we need to become a question to ourselves as a church. Who are we? What can we do? What do we have at our disposal to wield for the purposes of God's love and justice in the world?
Now we'll have to be a little careful about how we look for ourselves in this story. I mean, we're not enslaved, though there are surely struggles and anguish among us and the Holy One who will be, what will be and who will do, what will do has surely heard our cries along the way. We may not ourselves be system. Be victims of systems designed to crush us the way being enslaved and impoverished does.
But there is fire around us right now, isn't there? In this sometimes wilderness of a world that we're living in right now, the fire of violence and hatred and warfare. The fire of a ravaged planet and even just the fire of intense disagreement. The flames are vivid and they're calling out for our attention as a church. Who am I in the midst of everything that's going on? Who are we? What matters to us? What are our values? What don't we yet understand that we need to understand about the human race in which we hold citizenship? It's a question that we're going to need to have worked on together. By the time we get to where we hope we're going.
And before we dismiss the language of slavery as over the top for us, we might also ask, well, what does hold us prisoner? What are we In bondage to. How, for instance, are we in this society at the mercy of an obsession with accumulating personal wealth? How do the things we own retaliate by owning us? Why does the economy always rank first among our concerns in election years? Instead of accumulating social justice, amassing equitable access to education and opportunity and health care and food? How do our New England habits of rugged individualism hold us back from reaching out to each other, taking stands for each other, and as our nation's birthday approaches? Who am I to think that my personal liberty matters more than the tyranny being experienced by others around me? Who are we to think we're free if we haven't taken off our shoes? To feel how sharp the ground is across which others must walk?
Who am I? Who are we? We can't begin the journey that is before us now without carrying those questions mindfully. I think that with Moses's help, that's the first thing that we learn along the way of this journey that may yet see us to the place of promise that we hope for as a church, as a community, as a nation, as a planet.
The name by which God introduced God's self in the flame of the burning bush, came to have such resonance in the culture of ancient Israel that when you come across that name in the New Testament, it always raises eyebrows. So when Jesus says, for instance, I am the good shepherd and I am the bread of life, those I ams set the compass needle spinning. Even in the conversation that we heard that Jesus has with his closest friends on the road to Caesarea Philippi. We're meant to feel the rumble, I think, when Jesus asks, who do you say that I am? It seems that the fishermen, Simon Peter, got closest to the right answer when he says, not quite in so many words, well, you are who you are. You will be what you will be. You will cause to do what you will cause to do.
But of course, the question Jesus asks is only incidentally, about himself as much or more. It's about the rest of them. It's about the rest of us. Who do you say that I am? Who are you in relation to? This project of justice and mercy and beauty and all directions lead from that question deeper down into the project of God.
Take up the cross, Jesus says. Gather the flock and make your way together into the future, toward the place of promise, knowing that it will ask everything of you just as it did of Moses. But make your life about things that matter in the company of Jesus, and that will be your compass on the way to the place of promise. Who am I to undertake such a journey? Who are we as a church? How can we put who we are to work for the sake of everyone's liberation from bondage.
Are my friends. Some of you already today have said to me that your project now is to find more sheep, to swell this flock and strengthen its reach into the world. Well, how magnetic a church is when they know who they are, who they want to be, and what God is calling them to. This is a holy time for you. You can take off your shoes if you want. The needle is spinning and the way from here leads deeper into the meaning of who you are, each and all. And God bless you on that journey. Amen.