The God of Possibility and the Possibility of God
How would our understanding of God change if we took the season seriously and understood God not as the cause of all things, but as the possibility in all things? Repeated at the 11:15 service.
Quoting Rob Hardies:
God says to moses, a slave, “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out. And I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land into a good and spacious land. A land flowing with milk and honey.”
This is one of the most important passages in the bible I think. Testimony to a compassionate and a liberating god – a god who exercises a preferential option for the suffering and the oppressed.
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But then god throws Moses a curve ball. He says, “I can’t liberate the people on my own. The most I can do is help. So I am going to send you, Moses. You go back to the people. You organize them. You take them to Pharaoh and say to Pharaoh, ‘Let my people go.’ I’ll lend you a hand, but it is up to you.”
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Moses isn’t buying it. He says, “God at least you’ve gotta give me a sign. At least give me your name.” This is the dramatic high point of this story. Back then, you have gasped at this. You just don’t ask God his name.
People are hanging on their breath. They are saying, “Is God going to smite Moses for his impertinence?”
God answers him: God says to moses, “אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh)” (HWH / YAHWEH).
This is what you are to say to the Israelites. Ehyeh has sent me to you.
Now, the meaning of those 3 Hebrew words is one of the most contested mysteries in the entire bible. YHWH in almost every authorized translation, those words read “I AM WHO I AM.”
Ehyeh is the first person singular of the verb to be.
Asher is relative pronoun that can mean “that”, “who” or “which.”
But there is a complicating factor here. In biblical Hebrew there are only verb tenses that you can have. The perfect tense that refers to actions that are already completed, and the imperfect tense that refers to actions that have not yet been completed. It refers to actions in the future. Ehyeh is the imperfect form.
Almost everywhere else in the bible where Ahyeh is translation not “I am” but “I will be.” Which means the most plausible name for god is “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.”
It’s kind of radical for God to name God’s self in the imperfect tense. It upends all the things we were supposed to believe about God. That God was eternal and unchanging and the all-powerful cause. I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE suggests God is somehow not complete. Not fully formed. It suggests that God is still becoming, that God is a God of potential and possiblity.
God is saying to Moses don’t think of me as the all-power cause of your suffering or of your liberation, but as the ever present possilibty of your liberation, even in your darkest hour.
What if we were to see God in the world as present in the world not as the all-power cause of all things, but as the ever present possibility within all things?
The god is dwelling within us and amongst us, in this very moment, luring us, helping us imagine what is the greatest possible outcome of his moment, of this hour right now? What is the next step in our lives towards justice, or love, or truth?
http://ia601201.us.archive.org/13/items/07.12.09-The-God-Of-Possibillity-And-The-Possibility-Of-God-52vt8w/07.12.09%20The%20God%20Of%20Possibillity%20And%20The%20Possibility%20Of%20God.mp3
