WHO IS THIS 'I AM'?

Several years ago a friend of mine and I were taking a summer road trip through the western United States and one day we stopped for a meal at a dive bar in the little town of Glasgow, Montana, near the Canadian border.  Glasgow is at least as far away from any ocean as we are here, so we were surprised to see written in chalk on the blackboard behind the bar what was their specialty of the day: fresh mussels.  And we were even more surprised that that menu item was spelled M-U-S-C-L-E-S. I don’t really know what counts for mussels in that place, and it made me think that maybe they didn’t either.  So we got burgers and fries served in plastic baskets instead.  Not the special, but at least we knew what food – or at least what species – we were getting ourselves into. 

It’s surely not the first or only time that I have passed over something on a menu because I didn’t know what the food was, and in some cases I was too hesitant to ask.  This tends to happen more frequently in places where less English is spoken, though not exclusively.  I will never order, for example, “plin of rabbit” or “orange-jaggery gastrique” or “gravlax” or “quinciale.” But even those that I would order, I would order only if I knew what those things are and that they wouldn’t put me off by their mysterious name.  There are other things that I would steer clear of, including something called “rabbit’s food” – which is actually nothing more than a mixed green salad in some places of the world; or “sickly slurps” – which is simply chicken noodle soup; or “red wheels” – which are seasoned tomato slices; or “thimbles” – which are red raspberries. 

It may be that I know just exactly what these things are, but don’t realize it.  Or it may be that I really don’t know at all and am too hesitant to ask.  Regardless, I don’t choose to eat things without first having some vague idea that they will be remotely pleasurable or familiar to my taste.  You can, for example, tell me all day long that cooked alligator tastes like chicken and is delicious, but I’m not buying that. 

In today’s somewhat prolonged exchange between God and Moses at Mount Horeb, there at the burning bush, Moses is really in search of nothing other than God’s name; by what is He addressed, and by what is He known and recognized?  As it turns out at the end of it all, neither Moses nor the rest of us got a very satisfying answer to such a basic and important question: How do we know Him?  What shall we call Him?  What is He like?  What shall we expect when we attempt to describe something as being “of God” or, on the other hand, as being something other than God or even opposed to God?  And all we get is an order to remove our shoes, to keep appropriately quiet, and to refrain from presuming to know too many answers to those questions. 

Finally, Moses gets God to concede that his name is “I AM,” but that very response seems to demand something more for us to understand: “I am what? I am whom? I am how? I am where?”  Where does “I AM” live?  How is he to be discovered?  How does “I AM” behave?  Is “I AM” a judge?  Apparently sometimes.  Is “I AM” forgiving?  So it would seem – sometimes.  Is “I AM” on our side?  Fighting with us in this world?  Or is he the one against whom we are doing the fighting, the one with whom we are in conflict?  It seems to depend in great part on who and how we are with him.  Is “I AM” like us, or is “I AM” alien to us?  Is “I AM” to be loved or is “I AM” to be feared?  The answer seems to be “yes.”  

So what exactly are we signing on to in giving our “yes” to His wish to be our partner in covenant?  He won’t exactly tell us much about that.  We already know Him well by other names or specific memories – maybe.  Or “I AM” may be unlike anyone or anything we have ever encountered. 

The only promise of “I AM” is that he will always be present to us – though not nearly always in the ways we imagine.  And the only promise he requires of us is that we can trust him to be our God. That’s the only promise and that’s the only demand, but by that very fact it can be so hard to understand, and believe, and live in to, and conform our hearts to.  What “I AM” summons us to be/do may not just be the same thing now as it was last week or 10 years ago or when our lives become so different in the future.  And it may not be the same call to everyone at the same time – although we are all in service to the same mysterious one, “I AM,” who is our God with his desire to keep us together in community.

Lent calls all of us to an appropriate humility before the one who is “I AM,” however baffling it can sometimes be.  Let us pray for that kind of trust in him and a firm resolve in our response…. for a barefoot silence in the presence of the One who Is.