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Pentecost 18
1/10/2023

Philippians 2:1-11
Psalm 25
Matthew 21:23-27

In a sentence:
We are true to our calling when our words and actions reflect our convictions

The divided self
In our gospel reading today, the elders and the chief priests demand of Jesus, By what authority do you do these things? (“these things” including the overthrowing of the temple marketplace). Rather than answering directly, Jesus poses a counter-question about the perceived authority of John the Baptist, now dead. Fearful of the consequences of answering honestly, the elders and priests are forced into a public and dishonest agnosticism: “…we do not know about John’s authority…”

The public nature of their refusal to know is critical. They know very well, of course, what they think privately but they dare not think this out loud. In this dishonest turn, the elders sever the relationship between their “internal” and “external” selves: what I am in myself and what I am in public are here two different things. My private self is created by my thoughts, experiences, emotions, desires, and so on. My public self is what I think I need to be to protect my private self. The elders and the chief priests defend themselves in their private beliefs by refusing to have a public opinion about John.

Most of us do the same. We can be different in ourselves from what we are in public. I don’t mean here to things that are properly personal and inappropriate for public spaces. I mean rather those circumstances when we find ourselves doing the kinds of calculations the chief priests and the elders do in response to Jesus: knowing what we think but sparing ourselves the grief which would come from speaking it, choosing to divide ourselves into two identities – the self I think I know and the self I show. God gives us each one face, and we divide it into two, each side looking in different directions, each ear listening for different things. Jesus’ challenge to the religious leaders (and to us) leads to a similar affirmation to what we considered a couple of weeks ago – that we are what we do in the dark. When we speak of a person as having integrity, we mean that she is in the light as she is in the dark.

Authority as integrity
The clash in our reading today is not quite about personal integrity but is about authority. The effect of Jesus’ response here is to assert that authority rises from a single voice, from both ears hearing the same thing. Jesus’ opponents – with most of us – know two authorities, while Jesus himself knows only one. Jesus’ authority is founded on the cohesion of his inner life and outer ministry.  In contrast, the priests and the elders – and we with them – are divided in themselves; they are spiritually “schizophrenic” (Greek: “divided mind”), subject to multiple voices. Our authority evaporates in our dissembling and deception, for we are shown to be divided.

Such dishonesty about myself before others arises from fear: I don’t trust the world with my true self. And perhaps this seems to be fair enough: the world is a dangerous place and a self-preserving instinct does not always deny God or our true selves.

Yet, dishonesty like this does not only arise from fear but also gives rise to fear, because no one really knows what’s lurking beneath the visible surface. We are what we do in the dark, and we have reason to fear what that is. This fear breeds dishonesty, duplicity and suspicion, and all this dissolves community.

In contrast, being the same in myself as I am in public gives rise to love and trust. This is not easy and is often dangerous. I have to put myself at risk by revealing who I am so that you can know what to expect from me when the relationship between public and private is pressed.

Now, all of this is very nice, but it’s just not how the world works. And so we suffer and find we cannot trust. The debates about the Voice at the moment, our constant preparation for war, our refusal to act decisively in relation what might be a looming climate catastrophe – these have to do with the absence of authority, the lack integrity.

The cross as authority
The touchstone in Christian confession for understanding this tension in us is the cross of Christ. The cross is Jesus subject to the effect of what is revealed in the debate about authority in today’s Gospel text. The religious leaders, divided as they are in themselves, reject the possibility that what Jesus says and does is integrated with God, and he is crucified. The cross marks the powerlessness of divine authority in the face of worldly power. And the story should simply end here – one more tragic effect of human fear and loathing. And it would, were it not for Easter – for the resurrection.

This is not to say that the resurrection is a happy ending for Jesus which promises us also that, whatever happens, we’ll end up smiling. That might be true but it’s not very interesting, because we have to live here and now, not there and then. The resurrection of Jesus is not a happy ending but the invitation to look again at the cross, now not as failure but as triumph.

The gospel sees the cross as the sign of Jesus’ authority – the sign of his integration of inner call and outer action. On the cross, Jesus remains true to his calling, which is not to be crucified but, in all circumstance, to be true to the God who sent him. This integrity with his calling, however, is not a “power”; it is authority as authentic being. Power, in the sense we usually mean, springs from the kind of division in the leaders as they avoid the truth in responding to Jesus. Our division of ourselves is an act of power – a manipulation – and this kills.

The cross is powerlessness; there are no two ways about it. In terms of worldly power, there is nothing to see in the cross but the tragic crushing – again – of the powerless. But the gospel is not about power but about authority and authenticity; on the cross, Jesus stays true despite the divided self of the world.

This hardly seems like good news. When Jesus calls us, someone said, he bids us, Come and die. Only those who lose their life will save it. Is this good news? It is only good news against the backdrop of two things we don’t often admit. The first is that we are going to die anyway, and the second is that the divided self of an inner heart hiding behind an outer façade is its own kind of premature death. In light of this, the question becomes, Where is true life to be found?

Authored by God
The gospel’s response is that true life is found in integrity. The cross is where Jesus triumphs in the face of evil by being true to the love of God. And so, for Christian confession, the cross is the authoritative event in human history. The resurrection is the evidence that true human being is possible even in a death on a cross (Philippians 2). And so it is here that true human being is authored. Here, God writes (with a “w”) what we are to be, for we are to live as if the world of duplicity and disintegration cannot keep God out.

Authority in Christian confession is anything which declares that God will be near even in death and decay.

God will be near when bombs explode and forests burn and referendums fail.

God will be near when she dies, and when the church doors close for the last time, and when the divorce papers are signed.

God will be near when the diagnosis comes, when the weight of shame threatens to crush, when  the money falls short.

By what authority does Jesus do what he does? Who “authors” him?

Jesus – rejoicing with his friends, clashing with opponents or gasping on the cross – is authored by God.

And so also for us. Our authority – our integrity – springs from being and doing what God calls us to be and to do. Our faith is true when it is matched in our actions.

This is what God honours.

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Pentecost 17
24/9/2023

Exodus 16:2-18
Psalm 105
Matthew 20:1-18

Sermon preached by Matt Julius

God, may my words be loving and true; and may those who listen discern what is not. Amen.

What is the point of the Church? The building, the ritual, the symbols, the music, the week in and week out? What are we trying to achieve with all this? And not just the weekly service, the whole apparatus of it all: the theological college, the books in the library, the Bible studies, the agencies, schools, the Synod offices? What is the Church for?

The Church exists in an intermediate space within history. The time between what some theologians call the “already” and “not-yet” of divine salvation. After the “already” of Jesus’ saving work through cross and resurrection; and before the “not-yet” of the final consummation of all things.

This eschatological horizon frames the life of the Church as it plods along through the mundane rhythms of history. By “eschatological” here I mean the grand end towards which history is ultimately aimed: the end and goal which is the reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation; the end and goal which is God’s complete dwelling all in all within and among creation itself — walking in the garden with humanity once again.

The church’s life is sustained in this intermediate space, so the story goes, by the foundation and promise established by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And the Church is carried forward by a future hope: the final enthronement of this same Lord, where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In this intermediate space the Church is perhaps a vessel which carries faithful souls from saving promise to final consummation. A vessel which seeks to add as many souls as possible to the voyage. And to make of the passengers a good crew for the journey.

To what end, then, the Church? To be the lifeboat for a world bound for destruction, and an enjoyable cruise for those aboard the ship? All these rituals, and songs, and sermons, a series of onboard entertainment for the cruise?

Our daily lives together mere small, trivial, fleeting fancies awaiting God’s making good on Jesus the divine down payment.

Is that the point of the Church?

Set in the context of grand — eschatological — history, the parables of the Kingdom can help guide the Church’s life between the times. Parables like the one we have heard in today’s Gospel reading, of day labourers working in a vineyard. These parables can be a kind of key for addressing the questions raised by the Church’s place between promise and fulfilment, between the already and the not-yet, between the foundation and future. Like all good parables, the story of the day labourers in the vineyard helps to unsettle and recast our understanding of ourselves, and our place within God’s redemptive project. It can be read as a parable of the long day of the Church’s existence in history.

The parable of the vineyard workers takes place in the context of a long, but single day. The vineyard owner goes out early to the marketplace and hires workers for the day. The practice of day labouring was fairly common in the ancient world, and indeed is fairly common around the world today. A day’s work should guarantee a day’s pay at the price of a day’s provisions.

Labourers intent on ensuring they get the work they need to survive are wise to get to the marketplace early. Ready to accept an offer of work, lest they arrive late and all the work is gone. Labourers who are late to the marketplace risk missing a full day’s work and going without. In the great reversal of this parable even those who are late to the worksite are given the full day’s wages — much to the chagrin of the diligent workers who stood ready and waiting early in the day.

In the context of the early Christian communities who first heard this text we can imagine the kinds of issues which come to mind. The tensions between the Jewish believers who stood ready for the coming Messiah early in the day, as it were; and the Gentiles, who came untimely late.

The Jews, of course, had spent their lives in hopeful anticipation for God’s vindication and arrival: the coming of the Messiah, the outpouring of the Spirit, the liberation of Israel and the wrapping up of history. Their deep devotion, recalling the stories of Exodus and Exile, kept alive the flickering hope of God’s reward. They had been eager to take their place in God’s harvest, keeping alert from the earliest dawn.

Who, then, are these Gentiles, those untimely born, who only recently came into the fold of this Jewish renewal movement — as if only at the end of the day? Not even with a requirement for circumcision, nor food laws, nor seemingly much else beyond the confession of the Risen Jesus.

The point here isn’t so much about the disjunction between law and grace: Torah observant Jews supplanted by Gentile converts — there is enough evidence of Jesus’ own Torah faithfulness throughout Matthew’s Gospel to put that idea to rest. Rather, the point is to pay attention to the basis of inclusion in the workforce. It is the needs of the vineyard and its harvest, and the generosity of its owner; not to the work or the pay of the labourers that really matters.

That new labourers are brought into the vineyard late in the day perhaps suggests that the abundant harvest demands even more work than the labourers can provide. The harvest is plenty but the labourers are few. The vineyard’s harvest has more than enough for everyone.

So too the generosity of the vineyard owner is not tied to the work of the labourers, but to their need. Regardless of whether a worker begins in the morning or at dusk, their need for wages and the provisions those wages pay for does not go away. The generosity of the vineyard owner is not simply in paying everyone what they deserve, but in returning again and again to the marketplace, seeking out new labourers so that none would be without.

The work of the church, like the work of the labourers, does not serve first and foremost our own satisfaction. The church does not exist merely as an elaborate hobby to while away the time before the miraculous return of Christ. Rather, in this parable is a vision for a community which models to the world a proactive concern that all would have enough, and their needs met. The church ought to be the community which seeks to include everyone in the generous harvest of God.

Set between the time of God’s planting the vines, and the great feast of wine and celebration, the great labour of the Church is to harvest the vines of God’s present work in the world. To align our own need as human beings, with the need of God’s kingdom flowering and fruiting in the midst of the world today.

The church’s life, in this sense, exists not simply between the “already” and “not-yet,” but as a labour which stitches together the promise and fulfilment. So that the gap between them might be revealed to be no gap at all. Not to build God’s Kingdom, which is God’s alone to build, but to be ready at the present harvest to gather in and celebrate the fruits of God’s work in the world.

The task of the church, then, is not to be the keeper of safe passage through a world bound for destruction. The task of the church is to be co-workers with God in the fruiting work of reconciliation in the world already. To be witnesses of joy, to be partners in justice, to be doers of mercy. The church’s life is caught between the times, but it is not defined by an absent past and distant future. The church’s life, and all its apparatus, serves the harvest of plenty where God calls all humanity into the present work of new life. Where there is more than enough work to do, and plenty enough to be enjoyed by all.

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Pentecost 15
17/9/2023

Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

History bears witness to the primordial human reactions to being threatened, offended or hurt – aggression, retaliation, vengeance, retribution, saving face. These are the basic instincts of our humanity, and they have terrible consequences for families, communities and nations; terrible consequences that we see throughout our world.

These basic instincts provide a context in which we hear Simon Peter seeking to clarify the leadership responsibilities given to him by Jesus. He asks: ‘Lord, how often should I forgive? Should I forgive even seven times?’ To which Jesus replies: ‘Not seven times, but I tell you seventy-seven times.’ This reflects the tradition of Psalm 130 that, with God, sins are forgotten and forgiveness is unconditional and unlimited: ‘If you, O Lord, should remember sins, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be worshipped.’ Jesus knows that keeping count is not true forgiveness, but merely the postponing of vengeance until an opportunity arises to inflict a more painful retribution.

He tells a parable about a slave who owes his master 10,000 talents. Given that a talent is more than 15 years wages, this is a debt of such magnitude that it could never be repaid. The slave falls on his knees, seeking his master’s patience and claiming that he will repay the debt, which is completely ridiculous. And yet, in an extraordinary act of mercy and forgiveness, the master cancels the slave’s debt and sets him free. The former slave swaggers off, and happens to meet a fellow slave who owes him a much smaller debt. But the forgiven slave is not forgiving. He assaults and imprisons his fellow slave. The forgiven slave has received mercy, yet he doesn’t practise it. He’s been set free, but he ignores the obligations of this unexpected and undeserved liberty. His community is so distressed by this injustice that they tell the king, who summons his former slave, and rebukes him: ‘You wicked slave, when you pleaded with me, you received mercy and forgiveness. Why haven’t you shown mercy and forgiveness to others?’ The king orders that the slave be tortured until he can repay his entire debt.

And just as we imagine that the slave has received his just deserts, we’re interrupted by Jesus offering his commentary on the parable: ‘So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’ It may sound like hyperbole, but Jesus knows that the practice of forgiveness offers liberation from the seductive power of vengeance that breeds violence and disfigures all that God has made good.

We recall that, in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus teaches his disciples a prayer that has the practise of forgiveness at its core. At first glance, this prayer seems to imply that forgiveness is transactional – that we are forgiven only if we forgive others, or that forgiveness is proportional – that we are forgiven in equal measure to our forgiveness of others. But the Lord’s Prayer actually proclaims the reign of God, whose heavenly will arrives on earth among those for whom forgiveness is the source and destination of covenant life. Jesus is not merely offering his disciples another spiritual resource; rather, he teaches them a prayer that expresses his own faithful ministry, his own trusting death, his own newness of life. Indeed, it’s a prayer in which he himself is present and active. The will of God being done on earth as in heaven is nothing less than the forgiveness and reconciliation that leads people into the life of Christ, crucified and risen.

This is the point being made by the apostle Paul when he writes to the church at Rome, to challenge disunity in this new Christian community. Paul encourages them in this way: ‘We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.’

I noticed in this week’s order of service some words by a grieving widower expressing his appreciation for the care he’s received and his ‘deep feeling of belonging in a covenant community’. Belonging to Jesus Christ is a privilege and a responsibility’; it offers much and it expects much. Indeed, it invites the surrender of our own basic instincts in order that we might participate in Christ’s disruptive insistence on forgiveness, through which we’re drawn into God’s future for all humanity. A couple of weeks ago, the Rev. Tim Costello, wrote an open letter to church leaders on the Voice, in which he recalls how the gospel is proclaimed through the church’s distinctive lifestyle. He writes: ‘From its earliest days, the church has navigated conflict and inequality. Jewish Christians insisted they would not eat with Christian Gentiles, until the apostles made it clear that transcending those divisions was at the heart of living out the gospel. They had the courage to overcome resistance, and the message of freedom in Christ and one family in Christ soon carried across the world.’ ¹

In the book of Genesis are two stories that I find particularly moving, and both are stories of unexpected forgiveness and reconciliation. Genesis 33 recalls the reunion of Jacob and his bother Esau, who’d parted years before in bitterness because Jacob had stolen his brother’s birthright and their father’s blessing. Believing that the passing years will have done little to diminish his brother’s rage, Jacob anticipates their reunion by sending numerous gifts to Esau as a peace offering. On the eve of their encounter, Jacob wrestles through the night with a shadowy figure, and is blessed by a transformed destiny as he is renamed Israel. As Jacob limps towards his brother, Esau breaks into a run, not to attack Jacob but to embrace him, and Jacob declares: ‘To see your face is like seeing the face of God, since you have received me with such favour.’ And Gensis 45 recalls how Joseph, the son of Jacob sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, is now in a position of enormous power as governor of the Egyptian Pharoah. The brothers arrive in Egypt seeking food to take home to their famine-stricken community. Joseph now has the opportunity and power to make his brothers accountable for their violence towards him, and for a while it seems like he might do precisely that. But he becomes distressed by their suffering, and ultimately embraces them in reconciling grace, later declaring to them: ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good.’

These ancient stories deeply reflect the purpose of God in Christ, crucified and risen, who forgives without limit, cancels all debts, and offers the life of reconciliation and peace. The psalmist declares: ‘If you, O Lord, should remember sins, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be worshipped.’ And Charles Wesley explains how this works in the life of community: ‘All praise to our redeeming Lord, who joins us by his grace, and bids us, each to each restored, together seek his face.’ In the midst of all that seeks to divide and conquer, may the Lord of grace give you courage to pursue his peace, as we share in his ministry of reconciliation.

And now to the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, be all glory and praise, dominion and power, now and forever. Amen.

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Pentecost 15
10/9/2023

Romans 13:8-14
Psalm 119:33-40
Matthew 18:15-20

In a sentence
The ministry of Jesus in the world’s dark places is a call to us to be, ourselves, light

As in the day
Though it is night, St Paul declares, live “as in the day”.

Clearly, he doesn’t mean, Sleep less! Rather, he takes the natural division of day and night and uses them metaphorically to develop a subtle account of the human situation after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The day-night metaphor serves Paul in two principal ways. The most obvious is the suggestion that the night is nearly over, and that it is time for sleepers to wake. Dawn – the expected return of Christ – is about to break; awaken, then, and prepare for it.

But it’s important that Paul’s call here is not built on the threat that God is about to arrive, so you’d better look busy at good works. (Although, more good works is always good! ). The possibility of living day-fully despite the night is found in the ministry of Jesus. For Paul, even Christ on the cross is night inhabited “as if in the day”. This is God in the world’s night. The resurrection of Jesus reveals not only(? ) that heaven is coming but that, in the person of Jesus right through his ministry, heaven was already present, in the world’s night. It is just this Jesus whose future is coming.

Night as day
This means that Paul’s metaphorical night and day are now not a thing which will pass or arrive but are interwoven here, in the moment within which we live. Time now no longer “flows” – second by second, hour by hour – from bad night to good day. Time is now a choice: to continue to sleep is now to acquiesce to the dark, letting it tell us what to do or to be. To awaken is to contradict the night, without wiping it away.

When Paul reminds us, then, “You know what season it is”, it is not to present the threat of the proverbial bus which might run me down tomorrow, so that I might get right with God now. He means rather: though it feels like night, life is possible here and now. The day is not so much “coming” as an addition to night, or its completion. The day is an overlay of the night, with the implication that we are what we do in the night.

Paul’s own account of what constitutes night-like activities is somewhat moralistic, although covering the kinds of things most people would think should be avoided – drunkenness, debauchery, jealousy, and the like. To these, we might add other modern immoralities operating under the cover of darkness: the anonymous internet troll hides in the dark, as does the hidden-in-plain-sight child molester and the online scammer.

But darkness is also active in more subtle ways. Consider our modern denial of death, treating it as a night we would rather pretend is not there. Or consider our next month in politics in terms of a struggle over what is night and what is day in the form of debates over the question of the Parliamentary Voice. What are we to do with the dark colonial history and its continuing effects? We cannot simply declare – as elements of the No campaign do – that the night is overcome with the passage of time, and we are now in a new day. The night continues, but the glimmer of day is possible.

And debates about global warming will themselves doubtless heat up if the coming summer here is like what it has been in the northern hemisphere this year. What does Paul’s “as in the day” look like in the deep night of an intensely carbonised economy?

Being day
Of course, living “as in the day” is not always straightforward. But Paul calls us from any refusal on our part to see, as if we had grounds to claim that we are blinded by the night. Christ on the cross is the presence of God in the dark, God’s kingdom come. It is by this strange light that the church sees. The call to discipleship is the call to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (13. 13), and be such light in darkness. Take up your cross and follow: be day in the night. Be hope calling to despair. Be forgiveness where it is not sought. Be mercy.

None of this is because “God is coming,” and we better be ready. It is because God has already come, light shining in the darkness, revealing the truth and destiny of us and all things. God’s approach in the night of the world is the only thing which will light the darkness in and around us. For God is neither afraid of the dark, nor hides in it, nor simply washes it all away. God is the possibility of day in the night.

And this is what the disciples of Christ are to be as well. We are here today because we suspect that – though it is night – day is more than a rumour.

More than a rumour, it is a revelation – in the ministry of Jesus – and a calling – live “as in the day”.

Let us live, then, as in the day, as light in the midst of darkness.

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Pentecost 14
3/9/2023

Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 105
Matthew 16:21-28

In a sentence
We cannot (re-)construct ourselves, but find wholeness in God’s construction of Godself

“Who am I?” asks Moses. Who am I to do what you have asked?

Moses was many things. He had Hebrew roots but was probably raised as something like an Egyptian prince. He was a known murderer who now hides in the hills. He was married to Zipporah, who was neither Hebrew nor Egyptian, and now watched over his father-in-law’s flock. It is this multi-fractured Moses who asks, “Who am I?” as counter God’s request.

We are all fractured like this, perhaps increasingly so in late modern society.

The fundamental fracture in our lives is natural: the knowledge and experience of death. Death tears at us and through us. If I was a child or a parent, a spouse or a friend, death forces the “Who am I?” question upon us: Who am I? What am I now that she, he is gone?

Alongside this natural fracturing of our identity are myriad social, political and historical ones. At a national level right now, we are wrestling with the re-discovery of what it means to have a colonial history. The question of how to respond to this discovery has driven a wedge between us – between the post-colonial peoples and the indigenes of the land, as well as within both of those communities themselves. If, a couple of generations ago, mainstream Australian society knew what “Australian” meant, that is now under renegotiation, whatever the outcome of the approaching referendum.

The church has experienced a massive fracturing of identity since the 1950s. If once it was the engine of much of what happened in society – or at least partner in that action – the church is now often simply overlooked or perceived to be an obstacle. “Who are we?” is a question hidden within a lot of talk in small congregations and shrinking denominations. We ourselves at MtE have something of this question in our minds as we begin to find what it means to have sold our historic property and now to be sharing this one.

And there are myriad fractures in social and economic experience which are similarly shaking our sense of human identity. The deeply anti-social possibilities of social media come to mind, or the impact of telephones and cars on the integrity of local communities, or the raging debates about race and gender.

That Moses’ question is over 3000 years old reminds us that, in fact, the fracturing of identity is scarcely new. The “times” – where we find ourselves – are less the problem than we ourselves. The looking glass is cracked, and its angled shards now fracture the image of God in our own image. But it has always been so.

We are here today, as always, seeking an answer to that irrepressible and urgent question: Who am I? Who are we? We ask this because the answer tells us “what to do”. If I am a parent, I know that I should care for the kids; if I am a consumer, I know that I should buy and consume; if I am a leader, I know that I should lead.

Moses, of course, has a working theory on who he is, something out of the mix of being Hebrew, Egyptian, murderer, fugitive, husband, son-in-law, shepherd, and the rest. Not being dead yet requires such a theory if we are to be at all – if we are to do some next thing. But the encounter with God casts his working self into question. “Who am I to do what you ask, God? How do my many parts become that one person?”

Left hanging, this question would be enough to let Moses off the hook. He could, like many of us do, just bob around on a sea of possible identities, never taking one up or living into it – just bobbing, up and down.

But Moses dares to press the matter by asking God, “And who are you? Who would I say sent me?”

God has already been identified in the story as “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. This might be heard as similar to Moses’ own fractured self-identification: I am what I have been – prince, fugitive, shepherd. But now God recasts this identity by giving the divine name: “Yahweh” (“Jehovah” in the old money). The Hebrew here is typically translated as “I am” or “I am who I am” – “Tell them, I Am sent you”. Yet this is too static. “I am” is the old God: I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel. “I am” is the God of the fractured past out of which uncertain Moses has arisen, with his “Who am I?”.

But Hebrew grammar – not to say, the very nature of how this God interacts with God’s people – requires that the translation be more open: “I will be who I will be”. This is more than grammatical correctness. The Moses who is constructed as a pastiche of unreconciled human fragments is met by the God who claims to be utterly self-determining. The Hebrew Moses whose Egyptian name was the first fracture in his identity is drawn towards wholeness as that name is spoken now by the undivided God: “Moses, Moses, come and be made whole”.

It is God’s self-determination which overcomes the divisions in Moses, God’s       open nature as “I will be what I will be,” which integrates the divided heart.

While Moses is trapped in – or trapped between – the clamour of many identity-voices, one voice addresses him as a whole and draws his many parts together. This is the God not only of the Hebrew Moses but of the Egyptian; not only of the shepherd but of the murderer, not only of who Moses was but of who Moses will be.

And so it is for us. The divided national heart, the unmoored church and congregation, the multiply-intersectioned soul, the dissipated spirit, the unresolved yesterdays that keep us from reconciliation within ourselves and with each other today and tomorrow – these are met with the call to rest in God’s own resolve: “I will be what I will be”

Moses is called to be more than the sum of his parts or, perhaps more evocatively, he is called to be less than the sum of his parts. He is no longer to be all things in competition with each other, consuming him in their contrast and conflict. He is called to be one thing – God’s “thing”. So now, though he will still burn, he will not be consumed with the work of making himself. Moses is no longer to exhaust himself in the construction of a soul out of pieces which don’t fit together, as if each piece mattered as much as the other. God’s call is to leave this drive aside, and to live. Recalling Jesus’ call to take up the cross – Moses, with each of us,  is called to lose his life in order to save it.

With me, God says, you are to be what you will become. Because I will be, says God, so will you be.

My being is the gift of your life. So live.