“I AM…Here”
Preached Sunday, August 13, 2023
Allow me this morning to activate our Biblical imaginations and tell some stories. If you have heard them a hundred times, may they speak to you anew. If this is your first time, may you be blessed by the hearing.
And so…
In the beginning, God walked on the fresh ground of the newly formed Earth. And God, one with God’s new creation, got down on their hands and feet, and said “Let us make humankind in our image.” And God took the saliva of their mouth, spit into the dust until it was wet enough to be like clay and with the hands of an expert potter, shaped the first human out of the ground, lovingly and carefully molding the earth, until God had the first human called Adam, meaning, “Man of Dirt” or “Earth human.” And God, their eyes filled with love like a parent looking at their newborn baby for the first time, took a deep breath, leaned over Adam’s face, as if to give him a kiss and breathed life into his nostrils. And Adam’s lungs expanded and Adam was filled with life - life that came directly from the breath of God, the Spirit of God. And as Adam breathed that first breath, gasping, coming to life, the first thing he saw was God. In fact, the very first breath that the very first human breathed was the Spirit of God, the breath of God. And Adam may have turned to God and said, “Who are you?”
And that is a question that Moses asked God. Moses had been on the run from God and the run from who he was for a long time. A Hebrew man who was supposed to be murdered the moment he left his mother’s womb. And through the miraculous courage and audacity of midwives who lied to Pharaoh that Hebrew women gave birth before they could get there; through the reckless hope of his mother and sister to put him in a basket and send him down the river; through the kindness and nerve of Pharaoh's daughter to rescue him, in opposition of her father’s wishes…Moses was able to grow up, having nursed at his own mother’s breast while enjoying the privileges of being a member of Pharaoh's house. God had a purpose for Moses - and yet, Moses wandered far from that purpose. Killing a man and running away, exiling himself. He lived many years in the desert, away from all who knew him, who saved him, who had expectations for him. But while Moses may have been running from God, God was pursuing Moses, doing all he could to get his attention. And one of those days, God finally did, in the form of a burning bush. And in an encounter that Moses could hardly make sense of he asked God, he asked the burning bush, who ARE you? To which God replies: “I am who I am.” Or, in Hebrew, Yahweh.
Yahweh. Clergy and scholars have talked about how Yahweh, the name of God we call Yahweh is actually the - you read for this this world - the “tet·ra·gram·ma·ton” - the imprononcable name of God, the Hebrew letters YHWH, we have filled in the vowels to be able to say it, pronounce it, talk about it. But what it could have sounded like was this: *Breath in* *yah* “breath out” *weh* Yah - weh. Yah - weh. I AM…the God who is. The God who breathed life into the first human, the God of the burning bush, the God whose name we say…when we breathe.
And as long as we live, God is *with us* as inseparable from us as our breath, our very life. David marveled at this in Psalm 139, that there was no where he could go where God was not with him, from The Message paraphrase, hear this Psalm, and actually as you hear it, I’d invite you to shut your eyes and focus on your breath, God-with-you, present in every inhale and exhale:
“I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!
Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.
Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.”
God, you are breath-taking. And breath giving. Open your eyes if you shut them.
Paul echoes this sentiment in Romans, we heard it read here today:
“But the righteousness that comes from faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Hear it like this: Can we go and get the presence of God and wrangle it down here? Or up here? We can go to the farthest corners of the sky and the deepest parts of earth, the mountain tops or caves, heaven or hell, and can we get Christ and bring him back here? It’s actually an absurd question because, yes, God is there! There is no where we can go where Christ is not…but we do not need to go get Christ. We do not need to bring Christ to anywhere or anyone. Because Christ is already there. On our lips, in our hearts, and in our very breath. God is with us, wherever we are.
Okay, so far, thank you for indulging me in retelling and sharing these Scriptures with you, none of which are listed in the bulletin as the sermon text for today. And, for us to fully grasp today’s Gospel Lesson, the Good News that is being proclaimed today, I wanted to build this foundation, this understanding of the God who first lovingly breathed the breath of life into us, the God who is the great I AM. Yahweh. The God who knit us together in our mothers’ wombs, the God who is with us wherever we are, the God who is on our lips, in our hearts, and in our breath. And so, with that foundation, allow me to tell one more story of our faith.
The disciples and Jesus had just healed many people, preached and taught, fed the 5,000 plus. And it was time to get in the boat, cross the water, knowing that there were more people on the other side who needed the Good News of Jesus. But Jesus, man, he was a little tired and people-d out. So he said to the disciples, “I’ll meet up with you later - I gotta go take care of me and my soul first. I need to spend some time in prayer - I'll catch up with you.” And so he went and prayed - and as he went and prayed, the disciples went out on the boat and the waves and winds were stronger than they expected - and many of them were experienced fishermen after all so they must have been fairly strong. The waves kept pushing the boat further out than they meant to be. And so Jesus, instead of waiting, decided to go out to where the disciples were, meeting them where they were, walking on the water. But the disciples saw the shape of a man walking toward them, through the winds and the waves, a dark shape coming toward them and they were terrified and screamed, “It’s a ghost! We’re all going to die!!!! AHH!” Or, some version of that at least. But no sooner than the words had left their mouth, Jesus was immediately there with them, calling out to them, telling them to not be afraid. He said, “Take heart - it is I.” It is I. I want to interrupt my telling of the story for a moment to talk to you about the declaration, “It is I.” This is our common English translation of the Greek but a direct Greek translation of what Jesus says is not, “It is I.” But it is “I AM.” Take heart, do not be afraid…I AM. Now he was speaking Greek but the disciples, even amongst their fear and confusion in this moment, the waves and the winds, literal and metaphorical, even amidst the translation of Greek and Hebrew, or whatever language Jesus was speaking to them, would have heard the echo to the name of God. I AM. The name God gave to Moses at the burning bush. Yahweh. Yah-weh. And so, hearing this declaration of Divinity from who they now recognize to be Jesus, they take deep breaths, their fears calmed. And then Peter, bold yet bumbling, faithful but oh-so-human, Peter says, “Jesus, if that’s really YOU, if YOU are really I AM…then call me out on the water to you.” And Jesus says, “Come.” And Peter, he steps out and he is doing it, he is walking on water, his eyes are fixed on Jesus and he is DOING it…and then, a particularly nasty gust of wind, the spray from the waves hitting him in the face, and he takes his eyes off Jesus, he becomes afraid, and begins to sink. “HELP ME, Jesus!” He cries out. And IMMEDIATELY, before Peter has even drawn another breath, Jesus is there.
I want to state explicitly now what I have tried to imply through telling these stories together:
Our God is always as close to us as our next breath. The God who first breathed life into us. The God who is The Great I Am. That God who knows and loves us intimately, who fills us with life and breath and the God who there is no where we can go where God is not. Up to heaven or down to hell, God is there. And God is HERE. Wherever you are and whenever you are but breathing - God is there. And that nearness of our God extends to the God who is quick to come to our aid, who comes to us amidst our fears and the turbulence of this world, like Jesus came through the wind and the waves, and immediately reaches out a hand, always extending it towards us, our lifeline.
Now - I want to point out a paradox. Jesus is ALWAYS with us. Jesus comes to us, making us aware of his presence with us. *And* as Jesus told Peter to COME to him…we too are called to go where Jesus is.
But wait…how does that make sense? If Jesus is always with us - how can we go to where Jesus is? Yes, Jesus is always with us, as near as our next breath, and we are called to be brave and bold like Peter, even when we are bumbling and oh so human like Peter - called to keep our eyes on Jesus, and step out of the comfort of our boat, to come to Jesus, in a turbulent, and waved-battered world. To step out of the church building into our communities. To step out of our comfort zone into the unknown. And when we do so, we are not bringing Christ with us - cause Christ is already there…Have you ever heard of a place referred to as God-forsaken? Yeah, of course. That actually really grinds my gears cause it’s not God who has given up on those places, on those people who may be described in that way - it’s us, the followers of Christ who have gotten too scared by the waves and the winds of this world and instead of going bravely to those places, our eyes fixed on Jesus who is already there, we have gone back to the boat where it is comfortable.
God is ALWAYS with us, as close as our next breath. AND, that Spirit of God that is within us says to us “Come.” Come to where Jesus is. Out in the world. Out on the turbulent seas. Out where we can share the Love of God, the Love of I AM, the Love of God that is on our lips and in our hearts. There are so many people in our world who don’t know how close to them God already is. They need to be shown the love of God. They need to feel God’s Love, to take deep breaths, to realize they are cared for by the Great I Am…And how do they do that? They are shown by those who represent the Great I Am: and that’s us. As Paul says in Romans, “For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’”
Take a deep breath.
In. Yah.
Out. Weh.
In. Yah.
Out. Weh.
God is with you. Now, get out of the boat. And go to where God is.
Amen.
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