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Exodus 3:1-15

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.

By: The Rev. Victor Lee Austin

God tells Moses His name: I Am Who I Am. He is “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” As the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He has a history and narrative identity. But when He, upon request, gives His name to Moses, He is telling Moses, in the deepest sense, who He is.

The name points to the profound mystery of God, that He simply is. This is true of nothing else except God. My own existence is not the same thing as me; you can know my name, you can grasp my being (at least to some extent), and yet you can also imagine me going out of existence. What I am and that I am are different things.

They are the same for God. And thus God is the source of being of everything that exists. God holds everything that exists in his arms of love-the very arms that Jesus stretched out on the cross to embrace the world.

So the earth is precious to God, and we should treat it accordingly. Plant life is precious to God, as is animal life, as is human life, as is everything. We are permitted to eat plants and fruits and (although with increasing biblical ambiguity) fish and animals, but in all
cases we must receive their life into ours with humble gratitude, recognizing that they do not exist only for us.

The God who revealed His name to Moses had a great longing that, some centuries later, was consummated in the womb of Mary. He longed not only to be I Am Who I Am, but to become God With Us. By virtue of His Incarnation, every human life has a unique sacredness. This is how human life gets its dignity and why human life is precious. God, He Who Is, has placed himself in solidarity with every member of the human race.