I am not nobody

My wife is currently busy on the task of sermon preparation; the verse which provides the starting point for her exploration is taken from the book of Exodus, chapter 3 verse 11: But Moses said to God, “I am nobody. How can I go to the king and bring the Israelites out of Egypt”.


Whilst I am impressed with the amount of preparation that has gone into the draft of her sermon, I suddenly realized how differently I would tackle the same text; she prepares, I burst into a polemical rant!

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Moses was raised in the corridors of power and, duly appointed to (or at least inherited) a position of authority. This is the man who professes “I am nobody”! Perhaps he feels that life has not really been so kind to him, as he’s now working as a shepherd, having been forced to flee from his “regal” position following his act of “terrorism”.

Perhaps he has begun to question his own motivation; the slaying of the Egyptian may have stemmed from his moral outrage at the way the taskmaster had treated the Hebrew slave; on the other hand, it may simply have been that he lost his cool and so, let his temper prescribe the action rather than any sense of justice. An awareness of the injustice that surrounds one demands a response but, will we respond out of love or with hate?

Maybe this is reading too much into the situation and, his feeling of unworthiness is quite understandable when exposed to this theophanic vision. But, God is soon going to pull him up short; this is the task that God has ordained for you and, I God will be with you; how dare you call yourself a nobody. God recognizes that this man, disguised as a Shepherd, is capable of the task to which He calls him!

For God, there is no such thing as a nobody. God himself became incarnate as Jesus, the “Son of Man” and, this man did far more to transform the world than any abstract notion of God. He drew on a rich tradition of justice, from the Jewish community into which he was born and, re-vitalized it, redeemed it from the hands of the pious. Unfortunately, piety can so easily result in dehumanizing attitudes.

Jesus came and consorted with publicans and sinners, he even prevented a brutal and brutalizing death of an adulterous woman. Her life was of value to Jesus, she was a “somebody”. We are none of us perfect but, we are all worthy, worthy of love and respect and opportunity.

Jesus demonstrates to us our “worthiness” not our unworthiness. Perhaps in earlier phases of his life Moses had been consumed by his own ego, whereas now he was a broken man and, God tells this broken man “I have a task for you; the labourer is worthy of his hire”. We are all important to God and, are worthy to represent him in our struggles against corruption and injustice. It is time we all laid claim to our worthiness and forgot our self-denigratory posturing.

As we lay ourselves open to God’s call, we hear the voice of love; we are all His children!