Here I Am

A burning bush? Parting the sea? Plagues? Moses’ story is made for Hollywood, isn’t it? (The only thing it is missing is zombies. Zombies would have made it perfect). 

Back when we got TV signals on huge antennae and only had 3 channels, a yearly, 2-night showing of “The Ten Commandments” was a big event. When Moses (played by the late Charlton Heston) took his staff and it turned into a snake and ate all the other snakes it freaked me out. I was terrified when the angel of death drifted through ancient Egypt in the form of a fog. My favorite part, though, was the talking, burning bush. Even at age 8, I thought it was kind of funny and littlegoofy that God almighty came to visit Moses as a piece of shrubbery that was on fire. 

Rabbis  say that what was most remarkable about the burning bush was not that God spoke through it but  that Moses stopped at all. A bush on fire would not have been an unusual thing the desert. Something made Moses go and look. Even more remarkable is that fact that when a voice says to him, “Moses!” he doesn’t run away in terror (like I probably would). He responds with “Here I am!” 

 “Here I am” (in Hebrew it is pronounced “hey-na-knee”) shows up over and over in some of the big stories and scenes of the Torah. People like David, Solomon, Jessie, and others are called out to by God and every time they answer, “Here I am!” God calls out, and they respond. Our story with God, then, is that God has constantly been calling out to humanity. The “heroes” of scripture also did stuff like part seas, kill giants and build temples, but what was most heroic about them was that they stopped answered God’s call with a “hey-na-knee.”  

Like Moses and our Fathers and Mothers who came before us, we too are invited to answer God’s call in our lives with a “Here I am”  and a life of spent pursuing and working for what is of ultimate worth.  In Jesus, though, we also see God’s desire to be a part of us by becoming one of us and continuing to live among us and within us. Our story with God continues, and even in stories of burning bushes and parting seas we can see that God finds us of ultimate worth and is saying to us at all times and all places, “Here I am.”