I’m going to jump right into it because we’ve got a lot of the Word to cover this morning—enough for you to experience a good bit of friction and enough friction to generate a good bit of heat.

The Gospel reading this morning comes right after Jesus has asked the disciples who other people think he is. He follows up by asking who they—meaning the disciples—think he is. Peter, aka “Rocky,” puts together both what he has learned about the Messiah and what he has experienced of Jesus, and says, “You (Jesus) are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus praises Peter and assures him that the ecclesia, the Church to come would be founded upon a Peter kind of faith—faith with the power to connect the dots, the power to recognize Jesus as the Way and our way of knowing God.

But moments later, Jesus moves from congratulating Peter to tumbling “The Rock.” Just when the disciples probably are thinking that everything is going to be good from now on because they know who Jesus is and have had the privilege of being his followers, Jesus unfolds the map of his journey from that point onward—a journey that will include his suffering at the hands of the of the religious establishment—the elders, chief priests, and scribes; his death as the result of the religious establishment in collusion with Rome; and his return from the dead. Peter responds out of shock and confusion and denies that this could ever happen to the One he has just identified as the Messiah, the Son of the living God, when Jesus’ temper flares. “Get behind me, Satan!” Here he implies the literal definition of satan which is “adversary.” He doesn’t expect Peter to sprout horns and a pointy tail at any moment. “You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

So we’ve got Moses and the burning bush, the heated response of Jesus to Peter, and Paul’s reference to heaping burning coals on the head of an adversary. “There’ll be a hot time in the old time tonight!” Let’s pray.

O God, it’s all about figuring out who you are, how you have been revealed to us, and what is expected of us. All of that can generate a considerable amount of heat. Don’t cool us off just yet, but let us dare to stand barefoot in the presence of your fire, and find ourselves both changed and called. We pray in the fiery name of Jesus. Amen.

Pharaoh, the Egyptian king, had apparently been absent the day his middle school history class studied the period when a previous king appointed an immigrant—an Israelite slave and dream-interpreter named Joseph—to take charge of preparing Egypt to weather a seven-year famine as predicted in Pharaoh’s dream and interpreted by Joseph. All the current pharaoh sees is an immigration problem. He’s worried about all these aliens taking Egyptian jobs, sucking up Egyptian resources, marrying into Egyptian families, requiring that Egyptians have to become bilingual and teach Hebrew in their schools, and possibly siding with Egypt’s enemies in the event that war is threatened. That whole piece about the family of Jacob, also known as Israel, being threatened with starvation if they stay in their own land, was all forgotten.

Pharaoh’s paranoid but creative method for dealing with his fears included ordering the Hebrews to drown their male babies by tossing them into the Nile. The females were no threat to him. Well, maybe a couple of them: a mother and daughter who followed instructions to the letter. The infant son would go into the Nile, as Pharaoh ordered, but the creativity of these women rivaled that of Pharaoh himself. They waterproofed the basket in which they placed the baby before placing him in the water. Pharaoh never said anything about baskets or waterproofing! And I’m thinking that this mother had already scoped out the favorite bathing place of the Pharaoh’s daughter, and figured that with one glimpse of the baby’s face she’d be in love with the little guy. Well, it worked like a charm. There’s something ironic about one of the boys on whom Pharaoh had pronounced a death sentence, growing up and doing the same for the son of Pharaoh. For now he’s scampering around the legs of Pharaoh’s throne and drooling all over his royal scepter.

That baby, named “Moses” by Pharaoh’s daughter, is treated as a son, but he knows full well that he is a Hebrew. As an adult, Moses comes to the defense of a Hebrew slave who is being beaten by an Egyptian soldier and ends up killing the soldier. One of his own people witnesses the murder, and believing him to be an Egyptian prince, has no reason to trust Moses, so he threatens to blow the whistle on him. Moses runs off to Midian where he becomes a shepherd and marries into a Midianite family—the family of a priest named Jethro.

Cue the blazing but unconsumed angel/bush with a very audible voice being witnessed by a very curious Moses.

“Moses! Moses!”

“Here I am,” he answers, moving in for a closer look.

“Close enough!” says the bush. “Now look down.” Moses looks but doesn’t see anything unusual. “Your feet, Moses!” Moses looks at his feet. They weren’t moving. He had stopped as he had been instructed. “What do you see?”

“Um, feet?”

“Uh huh. And what else?”

“Sandals?”

“Good. And where are they?”

“Um, on my feet?”

“And where should they be?”

They were nice sandals. Well-made sandals. Not everyone had such nice sandals. In fact, not many people had sandals at all. They were a sign of wealth—or a sign that someone worked in rough terrain where rocks would be hard on the feet. Whether he had accumulated some personal wealth or was being protected from the rocks, Moses felt pretty good about those sandals, about himself, and about the life he had made for himself in Midian. He was in trouble when he left Egypt. In Midian he managed to completely reinvent himself. He wasn’t particularly interested in losing those sandals now.

“Sandals off, Moses. You’re standing on holy ground.” Only one thing could make ground holy, and that was the presence of….God? “I AM the God of your father…”
“Oh geez—I’m in for it now!”

“…and the God of your ancestor Abraham.”

“I’m really in for it now!”

“…and the God of Isaac and Israel.”

“The shoes are coming off, Lord—just give me a minute to unfasten the ties.” And Moses looked down at his feet as he untied his sandals and figured he was most likely never looking up again. Surely this God knew he was a murderer. The jig was up and he expected to hear, “I saw you kill that Egyptian soldier. Time to go back to Egypt and face the music;” but what he actually heard was, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters.” An evil taskmaster! That’s who he killed! Maybe he’s getting off for good behavior! Moses is doing this little victory dance when God says, “I want you to go back to Egypt.”

“Say what? I’m a wanted man back there!”

“The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So I’m sending you to bring them out of slavery.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“Bounty on my head and everything.”

“Yep.”

“All by myself?

“Of course not. I’ll be with you.”

“Uh-huh. And when they ask—as I’m sure they will—who has called me to march off with all of Egypt’s slave labor, whom shall I say is calling?”

“I AM WHO I AM. Let’s leave it at that. Anything else would be metaphor—you know, Rock, Fortress, Shield—that sort of thing. Keep it simple. Just say, ‘I AM has sent me to you.” You know, for a burning bush, this one has a lot to say—lots more than “snap, crackle, pop!”

As the descendent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you are the offspring of I AM WHO I AM. I’m not asking you to do anything more than be who you are!

Centuries later, Paul is doing a reality check with Christians in Rome. He’s writing to them about who they are. He opts for a letter over a bush, but he knows how to make those letters of his burn when they’re read.

“Let love be genuine.” Let it be the real deal, not something faked so you can get what you want. “Have nothing to do with what is evil, have everything to do with what is good.” Really go for it when it comes to expressing love. Be ardent. That means being passionate, fervent, zealous, enthusiastic, dedicated, and hot as you serve God. Rejoice in hope. It ain’t over until God says it’s over. There is no such thing as an exercise in futility, even when there’s suffering involved. Persevere in prayer. Stay intimate with God. Contribute to the needs of the saints—other Christians. Extend hospitality to strangers—non-Christians. Treat them as you would your Christian brothers and sisters. No matter where they’re coming from. No matter how many of them there are. This is your identity—your “I AM WHO I AM.” This is not optional!

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” Don’t you wish Paul would have minded his own business? Live in harmony, do not be haughty—that is, don’t think you are better than anyone else, which would include your gay next door neighbor or your Muslim co-worker. My commentary, not Paul’s. No repaying evil for evil, no revenge. That’s up to God. If you have anything to say about it, live in peace with all—and all means all. Feeding hungry enemies and giving them something to drink will “heap burning coals on their heads.” Paul is quoting Proverbs there. Some would say the point is to embarrass a person into changing his or her ways. Others say that it refers to when a family’s fire has burned out and they’ve got to go to a neighbor’s house with a clay pot for the neighbor to fill with burning coals, which would then be carried home on the head, as everything was carried. When an enemy’s passion for the good has burned out, it is our responsibility to help restart it.

That’s who we are. That’s our “I AM THAT I AM.” That is our spiritual DNA, straight from God, and the message it brings is the same message that Moses heard before the burning bush. Whatever it is that has people enslaved, it is our calling to lead them out of slavery and into freedom. Moses learned it straight from God—I AM. Peter learned it from Jesus. The Roman Church learned it from Paul. Now we’ve learned it from all three! “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!” Amen!