I AM

The reading from Exodus in the lectionary this week from Exodus (Ex 3:1-15) contains the revelation of the full divine name: I AM WHO I AM. or I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE. or I AM BECOMING WHAT I AM BECOMING. Hebrew verb tenses can be tricky to translate into English. I tend to go with scholarly consensus and stick to “I am who I am.”

It is a strange scene in the Torah. Moses turns aside from following his father-in-law’s sheep to see a bush that is burning but not consumed. Then God drops on him that he is going to return Egypt and free the Israelites. Moses then asks a straightforward question: “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God gives this ouroboros-esque answer “I am who I am.” What are we to do with such an enigmatic name for God? Why would God use this tautological name for the divine self?

Last week, as Jesus was talking with his disciples, we heard him ask, “Who do you say I am?” He asks, how do you experience me and how do you tell others about me. This week, as God reveals the divine Name, I think God’s use of “I am” as the name is an invitation to us to find ourselves and our identity in God. It seems that the tables are being turned from last week. The question is not “Who do you say that I am?”, the question is “Who do you say you are?”

God also answers this question, or at least gives us a foundation to think about who we are. God made us in the beginning in God’s own image: “blessed … with memory, reason, and skill,” (BCP 370), “free to make choices” and “to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation…” (BCP 845). In short, God, the Great I AM, has given each of us a piece of that I AM, making us each a little i am.

As this i am, how is God calling me to live and move through this world? What work has God given me to help heal the broken places in the world? What does it mean for how I am to love myself? or my neighbor? the whole of creation? What does the world need from my unique i am-ness? How do I honor the i am-ness in others?

These are tough questions that I think each one of us spends a lifetime answering, but I love that God asks us these questions. I love that God invites us into the divine life and gives each of us a little spark of that i am-ness. What can we do with that today?