Abstract
God Calls Moses
One of the most famous episodes in the Bible is the one where Moses encounters God (Exod 3). This story is full of wonder and mystique. God appears to Moses in a flame of fire out of a bush. Because of its mysterious, dangerous, and numinous quality, fire is one of the features most frequently associated with the manifestation of deity. For example, when God made a covenant with Abraham, a ‘flaming torch’ passed between the animals cut in half (Gen 15); a ‘pillar of fire’ led the people of Israel at night out of the wilderness (Exod 13; Num 14); moreover, when Elijah confronted the priests of Baal at Mount Carmel, the ‘fire of the Lord’ fell and consumed everything on the altar. God is a mysterious and transcendent being like fire.
This episode offers another clue into God’s transcendence: the name of God. There is a famous poem called Flower by a Korean poet, Chun-Soo Kim. The poem starts like this: Before I called his name, he was just a gesture. When I called his name, he came to me and became a flower.
A name represents the nature and character of its bearer. It is therefore impossible to have existential relations with others without knowing and calling their name. It is for this reason that we ask the name of the person when we first meet someone, remember it, and call him or her by that name. The name is the beginning and the key to forming a relationship.
God grants Moses a relationship with Him by revealing His name. The name God revealed to Moses is ‘I am who I am.’ This name is basically a pun on the name of Yahweh, which is known as the name of the god of Israel (cf. Exod 6:2). However, understanding the exact meaning of the name God reveals to Moses—‘I am who I am’—is not an easy task. This name defies human recognition. It is impossible for a finite man to fully grasp the transcendent nature of God. ‘I am who I am.’ God is just God. Any explanation beyond that is unfit for God as it places a limitation on who God is. God’s name given in such a vague form rather shows God’s free, infinite, and transcendent character.
However, this transcendent being, God, has decided to intervene in the human world. The story wherein God calls Moses is very important for religious history. This is because the scene introduces the appearance of a new type of god, who is different from the ones previously known to humans. Most of the deities of the ancient world were authoritarian and feared ones that punished men who did not serve them well, or were indifferent to the human world altogether. However, this new god revealed to Moses is a god who is both compassionate and intervenes in the works of this world. These characteristics of God are evident through a series of anthropomorphic verbs that appear in His words to Moses: ‘I have observed… I have heard… I know… I have come down to deliver… and to bring them…’ (Exod 3:7–8).
The God we believe in is not someone who just watches the world after having created it. God intervenes in the workings of this world, especially for the suffering weak. He is not indifferent to human suffering. God stands on the side of the weak, rescues the oppressed from their suffering, and punishes the oppressor. By doing so, He reveals that a just and compassionate God is the true owner of the workings in this world.
God first orders Moses to take off his shoes, for Moses was standing on holy ground. This does not mean that the area was always a sacred place. As historians of religion like Eliade have argued, an ordinary place is transformed into a holy space by the theophany of the holy God. 1 Therefore, any place God is can be a holy space. Sometimes it can be a church, our homes, or even our own bodies (1 Cor 3:16–17).
However, shoes made by human hands stained with the grime of the secular world are unfit to step in this holy realm of God. Rather, bare feet, the natural state of humans created by God, are better suited to the holy space than shoes. It may be that this concept also applies to the use of natural, unpolished stone in the making of the altar (Exod 20:25; Deut 27:6). Moreover, taking off one’s shoes is an act of displaying humility and respect in front of god. Interestingly, in ancient Israel and the surrounding world, it appears that priests did not wear their shoes when officiating (Exod 28). This preparation and courtesy is the least that sinful humans can do in order to stand before God.
God fully reveals Himself only when Moses takes off his shoes and is ready to meet Him. This is the same for us today. If we are spiritually awake and ready to meet God, God meets us as He met Moses and reveals Himself to us. And God sends us into the world just as He sent Moses to Pharaoh. Perhaps today’s Pharaoh, which we must confront, is a huge force that we must onerously deal with, namely, the wave of secularism and materialism, the social flows dominated by money and power, and Satan, who, through Peter, had tried to stand in the way of Jesus who was trying to accomplish God’s will (Matt 16:23).
But when God sent Moses to Pharaoh, He did not drive him into danger without any protection. God makes a promise to Moses, who is afraid and hesitant to respond to God’s sudden call—it is the promise that God will be with Moses. What can Moses fear when with him is an all-powerful God who created the world? Likewise, God will be with us when He sends us into the world. God is with us when we face the power, threat, injustice, and suffering of the world.
This story of God calling Moses has many questions for us today. Do we have the experience of a personal encounter with God? How does God appear to us? Do we have the right attitude toward meeting God, just as Moses had when he removed his shoes? But the most important question is this: Are we ready to answer God’s call? When God intervenes in the workings of this world, He chooses people, sends them, and works through them. We should be able to offer ourselves at any time as a tool for the construction of such a kingdom of God. When we do so, God who sent Moses to the Pharaoh, God who saved Israel from Egypt, the same God who performed wonderful works and miracles (Ps 105:5), will be with us today.
Footnotes
1
Mircea Eliade and Lawrence Sullivan, ‘Hierophany’, EncRel 6: 3970-74.