By Richard Clifford, S.J
Most of us like to take out the family album and thumb through its pages; the pictures stir up feelings. The first and second readings from the Lectionary do the same. Both tell us about our beginnings, when Israel escaped Egyptian enslavement, and set out for Canaan having been chosen as the Lord’s own people.
St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians builds on a folkloric tradition of the Exodus (not in the Bible) that a cloud hid the Israelite people from Egyptian pursuers, and another folkloric tradition that a “spiritual rock” followed the people providing water for their journey. These metaphorical approaches leave us largely unmoved today.
More likely to stir our feelings today is the description in the Book of Exodus, which begins with Moses shepherding his flock and seeing a strange sight – a bush on fire without being consumed. The Lord calls to him (paraphrased),
Moses, Moses! . . . you are on holy ground. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry against their taskmasters, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them up from that land into a good and spacious land. . . . Now, go! I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
Moses is an unlikely choice for intermediary. A former activist for his people’s liberation, he became a wanted man and fled Pharaoh’s Egypt to avoid arrest. In an earlier intervention, he had been unable to answer a fellow Hebrew, “Who has appointed you ruler and judge over us?” The voice from the burning bush answers that question by declaring that the Lord is now sending him.
Further conversation tells him more. The Lord revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai was known by the Hebrews’ ancestors as “The God of the Fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” But in this new divine act, God is defined by a new name, a wordplay on the Hebrew verb “to be, to exist.” Originally pronounced Yahweh, later Jews out of reverence substituted another word, “The Lord.” Responding to Moses’s hesitations, the Lord explains
If I go to the Israelites and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?” God replied to Moses: I am who I am. Then he added: This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.
The name is both revealing and mysterious as befits an almighty God. Our God is defined by the exodus of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery more than by any other single act – an act of mercy, liberation, and generous love. Yet there is mystery in the enigmatic name given to us.
By Richard Clifford, S.J. former President of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and Founding Dean of the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry