1 Allen Pruitt When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses! And Moses said, Here I am. God calls, Moses responds. There s no better way to say it. If this reading sounded familiar, it s because we heard exactly this same reading last week. I asked the lectors to repeat it because there s too much in it for just one sermon. Even if I was the type to go on and on for 30 minutes, there s still just too much. Last week God erupted into the world in a blazing fire. This week God calls out of the fire to Moses, and Moses responds. God calls, Moses responds.
2 When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses! And Moses said, Here I am. Then God told Moses what he wanted, and Moses said, Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh? God answered, I will be with you. Then Moses replied, If I come to the people and say to them, The God of your ancestors 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. Here I am Who am I? I will be with you. Who are you? I AM WHO I AM Moses asks, God answers.
3 Moses asks, Who am I, to go and do this thing? God s answer is nothing about Moses; God s answer is, I will be with you. Moses asks one of the most basic questions of all, Who am I? And the answer, God is with you. Moses asks the same question we ve all been asking, for as long as we can remember. The question which defines us and paralyzes us and gives us freedom and binds us to old ways of thinking, all of those, sometimes all at once: Who am I?
4 Who am I? Who are we? We have all been trying to answer that question since we were little. We are, all of us, all sorts of things. We are strong and we are weak; we are patient and we are self consumed; we are full of kindness and we are addicted to power. We are a confusing mess and have always been. Or is it just me? What does it mean that when Moses asks the question, when Moses is trying to figure out who he is, what does it mean that God s answer is, I will be with you.?
5 Here at St. Mark s, we have beautiful baptismal services. Beautiful babies, sometimes older kids, every now and then an adult or two. But always the Easter vestments, the Paschal Candle, the congregation answering, and promising to do all in our power to help this person in their life in Christ. And the words I am privileged to say, after pouring water over their head, You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ s own forever. Most of us have had those words, or words like them, spoken over us. You are marked as Christ s own forever. Who am I? Moses asked. And God answers, I am with you. A little like our words: Christ s own forever.
6 These words are a promise, of eternal life, of eternal and unbreakable love, of all the goodness in the world bearing us up to life, even in the midst of death. These words are a promise. Who am I? I am with you. Christ s own forever. These words are a promise, but they are also an obligation, a demand laid upon us, to recognize that who we are, all we are, all we have, come from, go back to, and belong always to God. If we have love, it is of God. If we have freedom, it is of God. If we have life itself, it is of God. Moses asks, Who am I? God s answer, I am with you. God s answer, who you are, is a child of God.
7 Who we are belongs to God. Who we are What we have life, love, money, home, job, skills, gifts, hope, joy, longing, family, life itself and hope for eternal life too. All belongs to God.
8 What kind of a life might we have, if we lived that way? If we recognized that everything is gift, offered by the love of God. Nothing is earned, because you can t earn love. What might change for ourselves and the world, if we thought of ourselves, simply as children of God? When we go to the grocery store, when we order from Amazon, when we sign up to coach, or serve at church; when we go to the voting booth, when we read the news, when we meet our neighbors, in all our life what might change, if we recognized that we belong to God, that it all belongs to God? If we remembered that the answer to that question, Who am I?, the answer has always been, God is with you.