18 March 2008

I can't help being struck this week as we move towards a celebration of Easter with the parallels between Moses and the Exodus on the one hand and Jesus and the work of the cross on the other. It was clearly something Paul saw and reflected on often as he returned to the image of slavery and bondage so many times in his writings to the churches.

Moses' first question is "Who am I?" He wants to know what God delivering the people has to do with him personally and how can he be a part of this whole plan, it seems silly that the man who has been a shepherd now for forty years will go to Pharaoh on behalf of anyone. There was a time, now long ago, that he thought he could make a difference, thought that his birth and preservation from the edict of Pharaoh to kill all the Hebrew male babies and taking into Pharaoh's own household had all been part of a divine plan. Surely over these forty years tending sheep for his father in law he had often thought how foolish he had been to believe anything at all, that all of that was simply some cosmic accident not a divine plan.

Don't we all want to know "Who am I?" when we pray to God? I know I want to understand why there have been times in my life when I thought I knew what God was up to and stepped out in faith and gotten burned badly. It makes you "turtle", afraid to stick your head back out of the shell. I have gone through periods when I just couldn't pray because of things like this, the questions I was asking of God weren't being answered (at least to my satisfaction) and I needed answers. I think Moses' question actually contained all those questions about the past, it reflected on forty years of "What the **** happened" back there in Exodus 2.14 when he was asked "Who made you prince or judge over us?" He wants the answer to that question, the last words he heard before fleeing Egypt.

God's answer is a non-answer but it seems to work for Moses. All God says is, "But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain." It seems that this was the same promise Jesus had, the promise of presence, and the same one He left with his disciples if they would continue the work (Matt. 28.20). Jesus went through all the pain of the Passion because of us and God was with Him, sustaining Him and then comes that horrible cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I wish I could be so sensitive to God's presence that my sin caused me to cry out in such anguish of separation.