What Is God? (Exodus 3:1-15)

More than anything else, Jesus tells us what we should do.  How we should live.  How we should act.

Following Jesus is active. It is so much more about doing than it is about believing.

“Do this in remembrance of me.”

“Love your neighbor.”

“Heal the sick.”

“Forgive others their sins.”

“Feed the hungry.”

“Release the captives.”

“Follow me.”

These are action words.  They involve our bodies.  They involve our whole lives.

Here at Bixby Knolls Christian Church, there are many opportunities to put faith in action:

Pick up litter.

Visit a homebound person.

Cook for the homeless.

March for equality.

Gather up shoes and blankets for those in need.

Let us never forget the importance of putting faith in action.  Let us never forget that faith without works is dead.

However, there are times when it is good to pause for a moment and reflect on just what it is that we do believe.  In the midst of their wandering about, Jesus did stop the disciples and ask them, “Who do you say I am?”

And Moses:  His whole life was action:  confronting Pharaoh, parting the sea, and leading God’s people on a 40-year journey of transformation to a new land and a new life.

But before all that, there was the burning bush, where Moses encountered God, and wondered:  “Who are you, God?  What are you, God?”

In Moses’s time, many gods were worshipped.  When God met Moses at the burning bush and gave Moses an important mission, to lead the Israelites to the promised land, Moses wondered how he would convince the Israelites to follow him.  Certainly one of the questions the Israelites would have for Moses was, “Which god is it who sent you to us?”

Who are you, God?  What are you, God?

God’s response:  “I am what I am.”

What does this mean?  Well, that’s one of those questions that has followed me around much of my life.  What does it mean?

“I am what I am.” 

God seems to be saying, “I am what I am; I am beyond any definition or description or name.  I am being itself.  My name is to be.  All that is, I am.”

I will never understand what that means.  A book I’ve been reading said that God, as we understand God, does not exist.  Because our understanding is limited.

You ask me what God is?  I don’t know, exactly.  I can give you some thoughts, but they will be incomplete thoughts.  Throughout my life my understanding of who and what God is has grown and deepened, and it has grown and deepened enough over the years for me to know that the understanding I have now of God is far from complete. 

When I was a child, God seemed to have a very distinct personality.  A stern yet loving Father, with a consciousness that was in a specific location, just as our human consciousness is located within our bodies.  In that respect, God was very human-like.  Sometimes I even pictured God, as many children and even some adults do, as an oldish-man, young enough to still be strong yet old enough to be wise and have a white beard.  And I pictured God as someone who punished those who did wrong things and rewarded those who did right things. 

And sometimes, when I would be walking outside by myself at twilight and the wind was just right, or if I was alone in my bedroom at night, I would be afraid of God … afraid that God might show up, speak to me… just like God spoke to young Samuel in the middle of the night… except that I would be too frightened by the encounter that I wouldn’t be able to comprehend anything God was telling me.

That God was terrifying to me.

I no longer believe in that God.

In fact, by my childhood definition of God, the person I am today could be described as an atheist.  That God, the God of my childhood, no longer exists.

At first, this was a difficult thing for me to accept.  I thought that my whole faith was falling apart.  And since I was a preacher and a pastor, I began to wonder if I was a fraud, preaching about a God I no longer believed in.

Then I realized that my faith wasn’t falling apart.  It was growing.  Deepening.  Transforming itself into something new.

And I learned that this is something that faith is always doing.  Faith is always growing, deepening, and transforming itself into something new.  For awhile, this transformation feels like a death experience.  Transformation often does feel like death.  When the caterpillar seals itself inside its cocoon, does it feel like the end?  Can it possibly know what new life awaits it?

“What are you, God?”

“I am what I am.”

We have lots of stories in scripture about God.  The Bible is an entire library, written by many different people from different times and different cultures, showing different versions of who God is.  Any one of those stories from scripture presents an image of God that is far from complete. 

These stories interact with each other, and eventually a fuller and deeper image of God emerges.  However, the image is still not complete. 

Those stories then interact with our own experiences in our own culture, our own time.  And the image of who or what God is grows even more. 

But still, it is not complete.

But as our vision of God grows fuller and deeper, we do learn some things about God:

We learn that God opposes oppression, and takes the side of the humble, the vulnerable, and the poor.

We learn that God prefers nonviolence over violence.

We learn that God refuses to support the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

We learn that God cherishes equality, and justice.

But as for God’s very nature…who and what God is…

On many of the camping trips I went on when I was a kid, I’d sleep outside, on a tarp, with nothing above me but the night sky.  In fact, I did that just a few weeks ago one night with the campers at Loch Leven.  And sometimes when I’d look up, I’d notice a very faint star just off to the side, and I’d move my eyes to look directly at it, but then that star would seem to disappear. 

I thought that was strange; I thought that perhaps there was something wrong with my eyes.  I later learned that what I experienced is true for everyone, and that it has to do with the placement of the rods and cones within the eye.  A very faint object, like a not-very-bright star in the sky, can be seen better if you don’t look directly at it, but just off to the side.

There was a time when Moses asked God if he could look directly at God and see God face-to-face.  You can read about this in Exodus, chapter 33.  God told Moses that God would pass by, and Moses would be able to see God, but not directly.  Just like the stars: you can see God, but not by looking directly.

All the stories we have in scripture, then, give us an indirect image of God.  The image of God comes to us by way of metaphor, allegory, and parable. 

Solomon built a temple for the Lord.  It would be God’s dwelling-place, where God’s glory would abide.  Yet when it came time to dedicate the temple, Solomon said, “Will God indeed dwell on the earth?  Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” 

God cannot be confined to a location … even if that location is our imagination! God is bigger than that.

Biblical scholar Marcus Borg describes God as “a radiant and luminous presence that permeates everything that is.”  The theological term for this is panentheism, which is a term that means God is in everything.  That doesn’t mean everything is God.  This rock is not God.  This sanctuary is not God.  But God is in everything, and everything is in God.

As the apostle Paul said while standing in front of the Areopagus, that great Greek temple in Athens, “God does not dwell in shrines made by human hands; God cannot be confined there… but we live in God.  In God we live and move and have our being.”

Panentheism.

“What are you, God?”

“I am what I am.”

This phrase – “I am what I am” – became the name for God in the Hebrew scriptures.  In Hebrew, it’s Yahweh.  Except the thing about ancient Hebrew is that the vowels were never written in; only the consonants.  In this case, there are four consonants in the sacred name Yahweh. 

Furthermore, the name of God was thought to be too sacred to be pronounced.  Other words, like Elohim and Adonai were used instead.  Even in our Bibles today, the word Yahweh is replaced by the word LORD written in all capital letters. 

(By the way, “I am what I am” is also written in all capital letters.)

Richard Rohr, whose books I’ve read, tells the story of a rabbi who was also a physicist, and gave a lecture on this.  The rabbi said: 

“Did you know that those consonants if correctly pronounced do not allow you to close your lips or use your tongue?”

Richard Rohr explains: “the reason the name could not be spoken is it could only be breathed, in fact the sacred name Yahweh was an attempt to imitate and replicate the sound of inhalation and exhalation.”

That’s as close as you’ll come (the ancients believed) to pronouncing the sacred name of God.

Breathe.

It’s the sound of life.

Breathe.

It’s the sound of being.

Breathe.

It’s the sound of God-in-you, and you-in-God.

Breathe…