Homily for Thursday, 20 July 2017– Ferial

Thursday of the 15th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 3:13-20; Psalm 105:1, 5, 8-9, 24-25, 26-27; Matthew 11:28-30

Imagine somebody standing before us here now and saying, “God has sent me to you.” Would we not at least want to know the name of the person who would dare to stand before us and introduce him or herself to us in this way? Might we also want to know the name; the identity of this God who supposedly had sent this person to us?

In the reading we hear today from Exodus, Moses has a keen sense that this is exactly how the people of Israel will respond if he were to stand before them, as God asks him to do, and say, “The God of our ancestors has sent me to you.” Moses says to God that, if he stands before the Israelites and says this to them, they will ask what the name of this “God of [their] ancestors” is.

And God replies to Moses that, if they ask who this “God of our ancestors” is who has given Moses the authority to address them in this way; the authority to lead them eventually out of Egypt and back to their homeland, Moses is to reveal this as God’s name to the people of Israel: “I AM WHO I AM.”

What kind of name is this? I do not want to sift through the volumes and history of scholarly analysis of this and other divine names in our Scriptures. If I did this, we could be here all day and, as much as we enjoy the Mass, otherwise I do not think we would be here on this or any other ordinary weekday, many of us work or have lives to carry on outside this place. Besides, for some scholars of our Eucharistic celebration (and I think, in a way, they are right), the most important part of the Mass is its last: “Go, the Mass is ended.”

But what, in basic terms, do we make of this curious name God gives to Moses to give to the people of Israel; the name God reveals to us: “I AM WHO I AM”?

At the heart of God’s revelation of his identity to the people, to us, is “I AM.” Maybe we have heard this said: God is not “I was,” the God who set creation in motion and then left us to our own devices. God is not “I will be,” although we believe in the future fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation of the created universe at the end of time. No, God reveals himself to us as “I AM WHO I AM.” God reveals himself to us as always, eternally, present.

This is the name God asks us, as God asked Moses, to reveal to our world somehow by the way we live as Christians, with love above all, or what we call “charity” or what Scripture calls (loosely translated) “loving kindness.” This is how we make God present in our world now: “I AM WHO I AM,” from our worship here to our sending forth from here, “Go, the Mass is ended.” Go and live in such a way that reveals God eternally present among us as “I AM.”