“I AM” – 8.30.26

8.30.26

1INTRO

We are continuing to follow the people of Israel through the book of Exodus. Our reading today comes after Moses was taken into the Pharaoh’s home, raised in power, and then, witnessing one of his people being beaten by an Egyptian, Moses killed the Egyptian. Fearing he’d be caught, he fled to Midian, where he got married and had a son. That is where we pick up the story:

 Exodus 3:1-15

3 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.”4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then God said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 God said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 God said, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is God’s name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” God said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.’”

I want us to start in a rather peculiar place today. Yes, we’ll explore this story, but for context, I’m going to jump ahead in history almost 2,000 years, after Jesus and into what is often referred to as the early church. Hopefully, by doing so, we will discover why we find ourselves in our current predicament and how we can slowly make our way out. 

4EARLY CHURCH

We will explore Christian history more over our time together, but for now, it is important to note that after Jesus, Christianity was viewed negatively by the empire. Christians were actively and legally persecuted for their beliefs.

That all changed with Emperor Costantine. There is so much history around Constantine but let me give just one important detail here. During his reign, he moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople, a city named after him. As you can imagine, that had enormous political consequences, but equally as important, it had immense consequences for the future church of Rome.

For today, though, Constantine’s conversion and subsequent new laws are most relevant. Around 312 CE, Constantine had a vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge. In his vision, he reportedly saw the Chi-Rho symbol, which I put at the top of the bulletin, in the sky. He claims to have heard a voice, presumably God, saying, “In this sign, conquer.” He ordered his soldiers to paint the Chi (Kai)-Rho (Row) symbol on their shields, and as promised, Constantine won the battle, completing his conversion to Christianity.

The following year, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which ended state-sponsored Christian persecution. He gave Christian church and clergy tax breaks, which we continue to this day, and he gave them land to build churches on. Constantinople, founded in 330 CE, was meant to be a Christian city for the empire.

It wasn’t until 380 CE, however, that Theodosius I, through the Edict of Thessalonica, made Christianity the mandatory official religion of the empire. More specifically, Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity – which was the “official” Christianity birthed out of church councils – the official religion. All other Christianities were considered heresy and thus removed.

This was a brilliant political move, forcing everyone to conform to one particular form of religion, with very specific rules and expectations. Prior, what was called “paganism” was prevalent; unfortunately, in polytheism, there were simply too many gods to manage. Even multiple Christianities allowed for too much diversity for an empire. Consequently, only offering one religion with one God forces compliancy.

3GOD

This becomes all the more relevant as Christian history in the “West” unfolds. Clearly, the Bible did not come to us in its current form. Indeed, we’ve had innumerable translations and interpretations. And as one might guess, whoever gets to translate the Bible has a lot of influence in how it is then read and lived. 

There’s an old Bible translation from 1631 that is often called the “Wicked Bible” or the “Sinner’s Bible.” During a reprint of the King James version, the compositor made two mistakes that really change the overall message of the Bible. The most famous one is from Exodus 20:14, where the 10 Commandments are being delineated. Good ole #7 had a small omission. Rather than saying, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” whether a Freudian slip or not, the compositor neglected to include the word “not,” rendering the text, “Thou shalt commit adultery,” an unexpected law from God.

I actually find the second mistake funnier and do forgive my language. In Deuteronomy 5:24, the text should read, “Behold, the Lord our God hath shewed us his glory and his greatness.” Somehow, the compositor messed up the final word, giving us, “Behold, the Lord our God hath shewed us his glory and his great-asse.” In this instance, they meant great donkey, which is still funny. And please do search this for yourself to see that I am not making it up!

Why, Joel, have we gone here?!?! Well, this is so important because it wasn’t until the 6th century that our Bibles started using the word “God” for the divine. The word “God” appears to have a Proto-Indo-European root, meaning either “to call,” “to pour a libation,” or “the one who is sacrificed to.” It is not difficult to hear how this description would benefit an empire, especially one that controlled Christianity.

Moreover, the original Germanic noun for God was neuter, but after Christianity’s influence on society, the noun became masculine. Even the Greek word “theos,” which is where we get the word theology, can be translated as “to set apart.”

In short, these names for the Divine are meant to separate, divide, and restrict. No wonder our Christianity does the same today. Our “God” is set apart, and we are meant to set apart the righteous from the unrighteous. Where did that thinking come from? The empire bent on separation and conquest. As Constantine claims to have heard, “In this sign, conquer.” Not, in this sign, love. Not, in this sign, serve. Not, in this sign, show mercy. No, what has shaped our “western” Christianity is Constantine’s desire to use “God,” the separator, the subjugator, the conqueror. Oh, how history has a way of repeating itself.

4YHWH

If you are willing, I ask that we all drop into the mystical, into the deeper Truth of Love. Let’s take a deep inhale and exhale.

The Divine doesn’t tell Moses in our story that the Divine’s name is “God.” No, the Divine says, “I am who I am,” which is the meaning of the word Yahweh. Although the term is used before in scripture, most scholars believe this story represents the first time the word Yahweh was given, which was then written back into the previous stories.

The Hebrew here can also be translated as, “I will be what I will be,” adding more depth to the mystical words. So, what is the Divine? Well, the Divine is is-ness.

This is what our mystics have always told us, even spanning different religions and spiritualities. In Hinduism’s Advaita Vedanta, the Divine, which is often called Brahman or Ultimate, is described as an infinite ocean. All of reality is movement on the ocean. Every-thing we observe is a wave that rises and falls, never leaving the ocean and yet being a unique representation of the ocean.

Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh gives one of my favorite analogies about the Divine or what he calls Interbeing. Using a similar idea of Advaita Vedanta, he says that we all get so excited to discover the shape of water. So, we create different containers of different sizes and shapes, scooping water into the jars. We then exclaim, with pride and arrogance, that the water is the exact size of our own particular container! Yay, we did it!

But the Divine is uncontainable, and one of the famous ways to describe this in Buddhism is to say that all our words and ideas are merely fingers pointing at the moon. If we aren’t careful, we’ll just stare at the finger, missing that the finger is pointing far beyond itself and was never meant to be the focal point.

Our Christian mystics have been on this same path, referring to the Divine through verbs and movement, using words like breath, wind, ground of being, creativity, infinity, ineffable, and no-thingness. I actually published a paper on God as no-thingness. Because God is not-one-thing, God is part of every-thing, unconfined by “thingness.”

This brings us to one of my favorite mystic quotes: “we are not God, and we are not other than God.” Which is it? Yes.

Meister Eckhart is a great source for this discussion. He refers to God as the Ground of Reality and as Existence itself. Eckhart knows that everything he says is just a finger pointing, so he keeps trying to offer new pointing devices.

Eckhart dislikes how much we all claim to know, especially about God. How he imagines Reality is that God is the infinite giver and all Reality is the infinite receiver. In short, we don’t offer God any-thing. That is an incredibly radical and important statement, one that I affirm too. Our goal is not to give back to God, as if that were possible, but rather to position ourselves to be the most receptive to what is already fully and infinitely given, which then transforms our lives, enabling us to be more Loving to ourselves and others.

We don’t offer God anything because God isn’t a thing and thus can’t be added to! God is is-ness. What does “thingness” offer Being? Every-thing is only because of Being.

And this is key for all of us. We are not a “thing.” We are made in “I AM’s” image or being. We are Being, and it is only because of a world that worships things and thingness that we lose sight of what True.

You aren’t any-thing. You are fundamentally, infinitely more than every-thing. In fact, there are no things whatsoever. There is only change and becoming. No-thing stays the same because no-thing exists independently. We were told that here in Exodus – the Ultimate Truth of Reality is “I AM.” Am what? No-thing, which is the same as saying every-thing.

This is paradigm shifting, and I think this Truth alone is enough to change the world. Am I foolish and naïve? Yes. And what we need more of right now in this world of things and differentiation and borders and divisions are fools willing to Love recklessly. We need people willing to look at the impossible and foolishly say there is hope. We need naïve people who believe the movement of compassion is the only Truth, and that it will transform our lives, our families, our community, and all of Reality.

In Matthew 19:26, Jesus says, “With people, everything seems impossible, but with God, all things are possible.” In other words, when we let go of thingness – when we let go of differentiation, division, and border-drawing – we flow in True Being, where all things are possible.

So, may we Be, untethered to the “things” of this world, foolish and naïve enough to believe that change in ourselves, in our city, and in the world is possible. Amen.