September 28, 2025 - A Burning Bush and God's Holy Name

Reading:  Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; 4:10-17 

Sermon 

Pastor Emillie informed us that what we read during the beginning of the Narrative Lectionary year 4 supports the Gospel of John, which starts being read in January. Genesis connected the upcoming John readings to themes like creation, Word, light, covenant, temple, Passover, manna, water, and Spirit.

Exodus connects us to Jesus as the bread of life, living water, and the lamb of God. We start on this reading where Israel groans under oppression. Their cries rise, and the text tells us God “heard,” “remembered,” “looked,” and “took notice.” These verbs matter. Before God calls Moses, God listens. Today, we can sometimes feel that God is silent. The God we encounter in Exodus is not distant or indifferent; God is responsive and is moved by human suffering. This God is stirred into action by lament.

When Moses encounters God at the burning bush, the first revelation is not a theological treatise but presence: fire that does not consume, holiness that interrupts the ordinary. Moses is told to take off his shoes to recognize that the ground is already sacred.

A single bush should be fragile, easily consumed by fire. Yet here it blazes without being destroyed. This image resists the idea of one person “burning out” to accomplish God’s work. Instead, it points to a source of energy and presence beyond the self. Liberation does not depend on Moses’ strength alone. What results is sustained by God’s presence and by community.

Clearly, holiness is in the ordinary. The bush is not grand, not a cedar or an oak, just a scrubby desert bush. God chooses the ordinary to carry the extraordinary. Likewise, liberation does not rise from one heroic figure but from ordinary people, places, and shared struggles. It decentralizes heroism. Moses is not portrayed as extraordinary here.

Moses’ call begins with an interruption, not an achievement. Moses also isn’t seeking greatness; he’s tending sheep. God interrupts the everyday and calls him not as a solitary savior but as part of a larger story: God hears the cries of the people, and Moses is one voice among many who will act. Later, Aaron, Miriam, and the whole community join in the work. 

Finally, the fire symbolizes God’s sustaining presence. Fire can consume, but here it empowers. Moses’s role isn’t to be the heroic fire himself but to carry the message of the One whose fire sustains a whole people through their journey to freedom. 

Liberation begins in the awareness that God is present where we stand, even in the wilderness of exile and oppression. I also hear an echo here of what came to Jacob in his dream or when he finally meets Esau face-to-face, Jacob does not hide behind masks anymore. He takes action, recognizing his past mistakes, not because he has suddenly become heroic, but because he is finally facing the one he wronged and rises to a true call and relationship. 

At the heart of this story: Moses asks for God’s name. In the ancient world, knowing a name meant having a relationship, a point of trust. God does not give a fixed, controllable label. Instead, God offers mystery: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, translated as “I Am Who I Am,” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be.” God’s identity cannot be pinned down, yet is revealed in relationship, in action, in promise. This is not a God to be owned or wielded, but a God who will be faithfully present in unfolding history.

Moses resists the call. He names his inadequacies, his stammering tongue, his fear of leadership. God does not deny his weakness but answers it: “I will be with your mouth.” Still, when Moses cannot imagine himself as enough, God provides Aaron. To summarize, two primary truths are consistently revealed:

• God’s calling is not about solitary heroism, but about shared vocation and
• God hears the cries of the oppressed and acts, oftentimes through us.  

To know God’s name is to be drawn into liberation work, even when we individually feel unqualified. Our inadequacies do not disqualify us; they become the space where God’s presence and community sustain us.

In Jesus, there is the resonance of I Am. We live lives that embody God’s liberating presence among the poor, the excluded, and the broken. To know God’s name, then, is not to solve a riddle but to join a story: the story of a God who hears, remembers, and comes alongside us, calling us into the work of justice and freedom.