Oct. 22 is known as Peace Sunday in the United Church, but in the light of the war in Gaza I decided to borrow from the United Church of Christ, our sister church in the U.S., who observe “Just Peace Sunday” in September.
The Hebrew Scriptures: Exodus 33:12-23 The Inclusive Bible
Moses said to YHWH, “Look, you have told me to lead this people but you have never told me who you will send with me. You have said to me, ‘I know you by name,’ and ‘You have found favor with me.’ So if I have found favour with you, teach me your ways so that I might truly know you, and I might find favour in your eyes. Remember that these people are the nation you have chosen as your own.”
YHWH replied, “My Presence will go with you. Let this set your mind at ease.”
Moses continued, “If your Presence does not come with us, do not send us from this place. How can it ever be known that we have found favour in your eyes – I, and your people – if you do not accompany us? It is your Presence alone that will mark us – I and your people – from all others of the people on this earth.”
And YHWH said to Moses, “As you have asked, I will do, for you have found favour in my eyes, and I have known you by name.”
Then Moses said, “Please, show me your glory!”
YHWH said, “I will make all of my goodness pass before your eyes, and I will pronounce my Name, I AM, in your presence: I will show my grace to whom I will show my grace, and I will show my compassion to whom I will show my compassion. But you cannot see my face,” God continued. “No human can see my face and live.”
Then YHWH said, “Look – here is a place beside me, where you can stand on a rock. When my glory passes you, I will place you I a cleft in the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. When I remove my hand you will see my back; but my face you must not see.”
Reflection: “What’s in a Name?”
You might be wondering about my preoccupation with the Hebrew scriptures right now. Last time I was here we listened to the disturbing story of Cain and Abel. Today it’s a very strange conversation between God and Moses. The simplest explanation is that I believe in the importance of the old stories of our faith, and how those stories still speak to today’s world.
But today’s reading isn’t really a story, is it? It’s a dialogue, with plenty of emotional and theological content but no action whatsoever, like the movie “My Dinner With Andre”. After all the excitement of the earlier Exodus story, this conversation between God and Moses looks like pretty tame stuff at first glance. But there’s a lot here to chew on.
Let’s start with a synopsis of the story so far: God has delivered the Israelites from slavery in Israel and appointed Moses to lead them to the promised land. God has entered into a covenant with the people of Israel and provided the rules by which they are to live. But recently, while Moses and God are seemingly absent, the people have demanded that Aaron build them a golden calf to worship. Moses again intercedes with God on their behalf and God once more tells Moses to continue to lead them on their journey to the land promised to them, but God says he will not go with them because he is still angry.
Which brings us to today’s passage. Moses, the practical pragmatist, is challenging God. He’s saying, “A little help here would be nice.”
Moses is feeling pressured and cranky. He is the mediator caught between two parties who need to work together but are working from scripts so different they don’t even seem to be in the same play. It’s not hard to see why Moses would appreciate some clear direction from God on how to get this unruly and ungrateful group of people to follow a God that no one understands. And when we look at our world right now, aren’t we all saying with Moses, “A little help here would be nice?”
Current events of the last two weeks, juxtaposed with lectionary readings from the book of Exodus, have sent me scurrying back to my introductory textbook on the Hebrew scriptures to try to place Exodus within its historical and social context, and to try to better understand the earliest history of the people of Israel. My textbook places their origins in approximately the 13th century BC, a time of huge political upheaval.
One tool used by Biblical scholars is to attempt to correlate Biblical accounts with other historical records, but in this case there are almost no correlations. The textbook authors say, “The spectacle and drama of the exodus and wilderness wandering have fired the imaginations of many through the ages. Yet few, if any, of their elements correlate with extrabiblical events, persons, or places. The voluminous Egyptian records of the time never mention Moses. The Hebrew Bible leaves unnamed the pharoah of the exodus…even the identification of Mount Sinai rests more on later pious tradition than secure historical or geographical evidence.”
Still, hidden within these stories are clues to the profound social and cultural transitions taking place: from nomadic hunters to a settled agrarian lifestyle, and from a culture where many gods are identified with individual nations or groups, to the rise of monotheistic religion.
Exodus is also a story of displaced people: a people displaced by famine who travel to Egypt, where they find food but are enslaved. They escape from slavery and travel for many years to the land of Canaan which they feel has been promised to them by their God. Later, in the book of Joshua, they conquer the land of Canaan and drive out the original inhabitants, who in turn become displaced people. When they are once again displaced by their exile to Babylon they begin to write down the traditions that tell them who they are so that they can survive as a people. Those stories and rules become the foundation of the Hebrew Bible.
But let’s leave the big picture now, the sweep of history, and focus in on this one conversation, so that we can start to figure out how it might apply to us today.
First, there are a lot of references to names.
Moses challenges God on God’s decision not to accompany the people, and reminds God that he has said “I know you by name and you have also found favor in my sight”. God reassures Moses by repeating his own words, “I will do the very thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”
When God knows Moses by name, there is more going on than simply knowing the word that identifies Moses as Moses. There is the implication of a deeper form of knowing, a sign of a very personal relationship between Moses and God. This intimate knowing echoes the statement earlier in the chapter that “YHWH used to speak to Moses face to face, as to a friend.”
And finally, when Moses asks God to show his glory, God says, “I will make all my goodness pass before your eyes, and I will pronounce my Name, “I AM” in your presence.”
In the New Revised Standard Translation, the name that God proclaims is “The Lord” while in the Inclusive Bible translation that we heard today it is “I AM”. The word used by the Hebrew writers was YHWH which was meant to be unpronounceable because early Jewish tradition avoided saying the divine name because of its great sanctity. Its meaning is unclear, but it probably comes from a root word meaning “to be”. Many traditional translations have opted to use the name “The Lord” when this word appears in Hebrew, but the translation “I AM” is closer to the root meaning. Our Song of Faith is close to that meaning when it refers to God as the ground of our being.
The power of naming or not naming is clear in this passage from Exodus, and there are certainly some things happening in our world today that also underline the importance of naming. Names are so important to our sense of who we are in the world. There is great power in names, both to root us in our identities and, unfortunately, to exert power over others.
There are two provinces in Canada where legislation is being enacted that will take away a child’s right to choose the name and pronouns they wish to go by at school unless their parents are informed. Sometimes young people feel safer coming out at school than they do at home, but many parents feel threatened by what they perceive as a loss of their parental right to control their children’s identity. Advocates fear that children who are denied control over where and how they come out will be at increased risk of mental health issues and suicide.
The other example that comes to mind is the use of the word “terrorist” in recent media coverage of the escalating violence in Gaza. Some media outlets have chosen to label the attacks of Hamas on Israel as terrorist attacks, others have declined to use the word “terrorist”, and politicians have piled on one side or the other.
The word terrorist can be used to differentiate what some see as legitimate violence from what they see as illegitimate violence. They think “those people are terrorists, their violence isn’t legitimate, so my retaliatory violence is justified”. To manipulate the fear that the word terrorist engenders in this way almost always increases the violence ten-fold.
People labelled “terrorists” tend to have a few things in common: they tend to be part of a culture or nation that is oppressed, or that has the misfortune to live in an area that has something that more powerful nations want: land, water, petroleum, access to shipping routes. They tend to be brown or black. And after living for a long time under oppression, under pressure, they may see violence as the only way out of their situation. Instead of improving their situation, they are much more likely to provide their oppressors with the excuse they are looking for to unleash a wave of uncontrollable violence and call it a “war on terror”.
There is a very different kind of naming, a very different use of power, going on in God’s conversation with Moses. Perhaps the most important thing to notice is that “I AM” is not a noun, but a verb. Moses is being encouraged to understand God not by defining who or what God IS, but by what God DOES, by seeing God’s goodness, God’s action in the world. When Moses is permitted to see God’s back but not God’s face, this is not a rejection by God. This is God’s gift and challenge to Moses: see me in what I do because what I am cannot be understood in human terms and must always be a mystery. But know that I know you as deeply as you can ever be known. I AM and I am with you.
What a gift and a challenge that also offers to us. The God of Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca and Isaac, of Leah, Rachel and Jacob, of Miriam, Moses and Aaron, is also our God. And Creator God knows us by name, knew us before we were born, understands our human and divine natures, and shows us Godself in all the goodness of our world.
We are invited to call God by many names or none, and challenged to understand that none of those names can ever encompass the great mystery of the One who created the universe and all that is in it.
Let’s remember that and let’s look for God active in the world – not limited by names, not a God of violence and fear, but the ground of our being, the God of peace, and the God of true justice. A just peace is possible when we follow the Prince of Peace.
So might it be. Amen
A Time for Silent Reflection: What are your favourite names for the Holy Mystery?
Voice of the Day: Starhawk, “The Spiral Dance”
Our tradition honors the wild and calls for service to the earth and the community. We value peace and practice nonviolence…We work for all forms of justice: environmental, social, political, racial, gender, and economic. Our feminism includes a radical analysis of power, seeing all systems of oppression as interrelated, rooted in structures of domination and control.
All living beings are worthy of respect. All are supported by the sacred elements of air, fire, water, and earth. We work to create and sustain communities and cultures that embody our values, that can help to heal the wounds of the earth and her peoples, and that can sustain us and nurture future generations.
The Good News: Matthew 5:3-9 NRSV
5 When Jesus[a] saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he began to speak and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Prayers of the People: A Prayer for Peace in Israel and Palestine
By Rose Marie Berger “Sojourners” sojo.net
God of Comfort,
send your Spirit to encompass all those whose lives
are torn apart by violence and death in Israel and Palestine.
You are the Advocate of the oppressed
and the One whose eye is on the sparrow.
Let arms reach out in healing, rather than aggression.
Let hearts mourn rather than militarize.
God of Justice,
give strength to those whose long work for a just peace
might seem fruitless now. Strengthen their resolve.
Do not let them feel alone. Show us how to support their work
and bolster their courage. Guide religious leaders to model
unity and reconciliation across lines of division.
Guide political leaders to listen with their hearts as they seek peace and pursue it.
Help all people choose the rigorous path of just peace and disavow violence.
God of Love,
we lift up Palestine and Israel — its people, its land, its creatures.
War is a monster that consumes everything in its path.
Peace is a gift shared at meals of memory with Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
Let us burn incense, not children. Let us break bread, not bodies.
Let us plant olive groves, not cemeteries.
We beg for love and compassion to prevail
on all your holy mountains.
God of Hope,
we lift up the cities of the region: Gaza City and Tel Aviv,
Ramallah and Ashkelon, Deir El Balah and Sderot,
so long divided, yet so filled with life and creativity.
Come again to breathe peace on your peoples
that all may recognize you.
God of Mercy,
even now work on the hearts of combatants
to choose life over death, reconciliation over retaliation,
restoration over destruction. All people deserve to live in peace and unafraid, with a right to determine their future together.
God of the Nations,
let not one more child or elder be sacrificed on altars of political expediency.
Keep safe all people from unjust leaders who would exploit
vulnerability for their own distorted ends.
Give wise discernment to those making decisions to pursue peace.
Provide them insight into fostering well-being, freedom, and thriving for all.
Teach all of us to resolve injustices with righteousness, not rockets.
Guard our hearts against retaliation, and give us hearts for love alone.
Strengthen our faith in you, O God of All Flesh,
even when we don’t have clear answers,
so that we may still offer ourselves nonviolently
for the cause of peace.
Amen.