I AM who I AM

Homily for Thursday, July 18^th, 2013: Exodus 3:13-20.

          “When I go to the children of Israel,” Moses asks God, “and they ask,  ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” To know someone’s name is to have power over the person. If someone calls out in a public place, “Hey, you!” I won’t pay much attention. If they call, “Father,” I’ll take notice. If I hear someone say, “Hello Jay,” I’ll know it is a friend.

          Every dog lover knows the power of the dog’s name. Unlike most animals, dogs know and respond to their names. Say a dog’s name, and the animal is alert at once. That is why smart dog owners may put their own names on the animal’s collar, never that of the animal. A thief who knows the dog’s name has a power over the animal which someone ignorant the name does not.

          How natural, then, for Moses to want to know the name of the God who is sending Moses, now a washed up old man of 80, back to Egypt to do what he had miserably failed to do 40 years before: liberate his people from Egyptian slavery.

          Whole books have been written about the answer that Moses receives: “I AM who I AM.” There is agreement on one point only: the answer is mysterious. How fitting! We can never have power over God. He is never at our disposal. We are at His disposal. God, and everything to do with God, is a mystery: not in the sense that we can understand nothing of God; but that what we can know about Him is always less than what will remain ever unknown.

          How wonderful, therefore, that God has come to us in his Son. His name we do know: Jesus. That holy name is a perfect prayer: repeated with each step, or with each breath or heartbeat or breath as we sit or kneel in prayer, the holy name of Jesus goes straight to the heart of the loving heavenly Father who told Moses, when he called him to become liberator of his people: “I am with you always.”oH