"To Boldly Go"

Moses looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.

Exodus 3:2b

“A disruption in the space-time continuum.”

The observation that never fails to quicken the pulse of sci-fi aficionados everywhere, gifted ─ or cursed ─ with a Star Trek: Next Generation obsession.

That means ─ caught in a ‘Groundhog Day’ time loop … or frozen in time … or sent back in time ─ the crew of the Federation Starship Enterprise has encountered an anomaly: an astrophysics-defying phenomenon that their minds and the ship's computer say shouldn’t or simply can’t exist, but their data sensors say, “Yes, indeed, it does!”

An anomaly. Something that just doesn’t fit, belong, make sense. A contradiction, like a disruption in the space-time continuum ─ also known to the sci-fi fastidious as a “sub-space anomaly.”

Now, encountering a sub-space anomaly inevitably leads to complications, otherwise the Star Trek producers wouldn’t have a show. Result? The Enterprise crew just has to check it out. Curiosity resides in their DNA and probably somewhere in the Prime Directive. And once drawn in, the crew can’t get free by doing what they’ve always done … because they’ve never encountered anything like this before. Goes with anomaly territory.

The good news is: the anomaly pulls the action forward as it draws us all into the drama by compelling us to ask, “Why?” Meaning: the anomaly presents an opportunity for the Enterprise crew ─ and us ─ anyone caught in the web of “why?” to learn, experiment, and ultimately get sent back to the predictable world ─ only smarter and wiser.

Now, I doubt that Moses ─ having never graduated from Starfleet Academy ─ is even remotely fluent in Trekkie-speak. And yet, a sub-space anomaly is exactly what disrupts an otherwise ho-hum day as he’s working well below his pay grade on smoke-and-cloud-shrouded Mount Horeb (aka Mount Sinai).

Factoid: Morning, noon, and night Mount Horeb is veiled sufficiently in mystery by meteorology and mythology to incubate anomalies far beyond the reach of human imagination.

Cue special effects.

The anomaly Moses encounters? Like a star going supernova, a bush engulfed in gaseous swirls of perpetual flame, but whose integrity ─ branches, leaves, buds, bark, and roots ─ remains utterly intact. A burning-unburned bush. Now, that’s an anomaly! Just ask Neil deGrasse Tyson.

But why Moses? Why now? Why a burning-unburned bush?

Picture this:

To the casual observer, Moses himself is a glaring anomaly. Long before his seemingly time-out-of-time detour on Mount Horeb, back in Egypt he’s a Hebrew (the ethnic designation used in Exodus). He knows he’s a Hebrew ─ and yet a Prince of Egypt, having been adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. Problem is: Even among the Egyptians, he’s “out.” That is, everyone knows he’s a Hebrew, but ─ as will become obvious ─ the Hebrews disown him and the Egyptians are reluctant to embrace him.

That’s because Hebrews ─ not just the lone headliner Hebrew-Moses in the Court of Pharaoh ─ but Hebrews as a class ─ having achieved critical mass ─ make the Egyptians jumpy. They’re prolific. They’re trapped. And ─ seething under the heel of the jackbooted Egyptians ─ they’re one flash mob away from plundering the entire Upper and Lower Nile.

It’s an unsustainable situation for both the Egyptians and the Hebrews. And even more unsustainable for Moses, his two identities ─ Egyptian and Hebrew ─ at war within himself … until he witnesses an Egyptian construction supervisor beating a Hebrew worker to a bloody pulp. But this isn’t just any Hebrew worker. He’s a cousin of Moses. So, the Egyptians’ systemic discrimination against the Hebrews ─ a system Moses has heretofore supported and benefited from ─ finally hits too close to home, prompting Moses to act.

He waits for the moment when ─ he thinks ─ he’s alone with the Egyptian, except for the unconscious victim. Then checking once more to make sure there are no witnesses, he kills the Egyptian on the spot and buries his body in a shallow grave.

That should be the end of it, right? Wrong! Maybe the victim wasn’t as unconscious as Moses thought. Maybe Moses got sloppy. But the very next day, an outbreak of Hebrew-on-Hebrew violence catches Moses’ eye. And, in an effusion of Hebrew pride or just plain common-sense strategy (“How are you people ever going to take on the Egyptians if you continue to fight among yourselves?”), Moses berates the aggressor: “Why are you beating on your Hebrew brother?” The attacker’s retort? “Who appointed you ruler and judge over us? Are you going to silence me the way you silenced the Egyptian?”

To quote Rick Perry, “Oops.”

Read: Even his own people see Moses as an anomaly, an Egyptian exploiter gone-rogue.

And with news of the murder out there, it’s no time at all before Pharaoh marks Moses as a wanted man.

Now, Pharaoh’s lightning-swift condemnation of Moses, as recorded in Exodus, strikes some as unusual, given what would likely be immunity-from-prosecution extended to Moses as a member of Pharaoh’s inner circle. So, imaginative folks concocted an oral tradition that has Pharaoh gunning for Moses for a long, long time. It’s just that now, Moses provides him with a smoking gun.

As the story goes, Moses is three and old enough to be trotted out as a princeling at court. One day, bouncing on his adoptive-mother’s lap ─ next to his adoptive-grandfather Pharaoh ─ boy-Moses reaches for Pharaoh’s crown and ─ to everyone’s shock ─ seizes it and proceeds to balance it somewhat improbably on his own diminutive head. Proof ─ as the virulently anti-Hebrew faction then trumpets ─ that Moses fancies himself, even at that tender age, the Hebrew usurper of Pharaoh’s throne. “Treason!” they howl. “Off with his head!”

But in the uproar, the Angel Gabriel appears, disguised as one of the cadre of advisors to Pharaoh. Gabriel floats an idea: “Okay, people. Everyone take a deep breath. Let’s put the child to a test.”

The test? Place before Moses two objects: a mega-carat, multi-faceted onyx and a white-hot glowing coal. “If Moses reaches for the gem,” Gabriel suggests, “that will be proof positive he knew exactly what he was doing when he made a grab for Pharaoh’s crown. If he reaches for the charcoal, we’ll know he’s not old enough to entertain dreams of insurrection.”

So, the courtiers conduct the test. Of the two temptations, what does Moses go for? The onyx! Or, at least he goes to reach for it, almost certainly sealing his fate. But ─ telepathically ─ wide-eyed Gabriel guides Moses’ rapacious hand to the hot coal. And just as telepathically, the angel-in-disguise induces Moses to pick up the glowing object and thrust it to his mouth, irreparably searing his tongue!

Horrifying, yes. But there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is: Moses’ life is spared. The bad news: he’s left with a speech impediment. And that, of course, comes up later in Exodus when Moses objects to God’s appointing him spokesperson for Hebrew liberation: “Disqualified. I’ve got a speech impediment!”

Now, my hunch is that Moses ─ contrary to the story ─ had a stutter. More on that in a moment. But I’m telling you, these stories are just wild! And as disturbing as they are wild. God engineering a child’s painful and lasting disfigurement? Now, that’s an anomaly!

But back to Moses, the fugitive. He goes on the lam. And before you know it, lambs are his business as he goes to work for Jethro (not Clampett), his future father-in-law.

And chasing a lamb, as another apocryphal story goes, is how Moses ─ curiosity tattooed on his DNA ─ ends up face-to-face with the burning-unburned bush followed by an ambitious-and-yet-alarming conversation with God.

Imagine, on the one hand, Moses, an alien thrice-over: a quasi-Egyptian among the Hebrews … a Hebrew among the Egyptians … and now a fugitive from Pharaoh in foreign Midian.  Moses, who finds no home until he finds his home in God on Mount Horeb.

On the other hand, God, who values Moses’ displacement: his inability to feel at home in neither the Hebrew gulag nor the echelons of Egyptian privilege and refuge in Midian. God, who regards Moses’ displacement not as a liability, but as an asset.

Read: God positions Moses as an anomaly above and outside cultures, choosing Moses as the perfect candidate to pry oppressed from oppressor.

But Moses isn’t so sure. He comes up with all sorts of excuses why he shouldn’t be God’s bridge of emancipation. The most outstanding is: “I’m stuck on the name you’ve offered so far. If you’re suggesting I tell my Hebrew people, ‘The God-of-Your-Ancestors has sent me to spring you from my other people, the Egyptians,’ I’ve got to tell you, it isn’t going to fly. Can you come up with something more catchy?”

The name God then provides is in itself the most intriguing of the story’s many anomalies: “I Am Who I Am.” Where do you even begin to unpack that? But that’s the point. Or, as the name can also be rendered, “I Can Be Whatever I Can Be.”

God says, then, “Tell the people ‘I Can Be Whatever I Can Be’ sent you!” It’s a mouthful. And breathtaking.

That name ─ the name God provides to Moses (“I Can Be Whatever I Can Be”) ─ is the name God shares with each of us this very moment as persons made in the image and likeness of God. Not “whatever we want to be,” but the raw, gift-based “whatever we can be.”

As with Moses, that name itself is an invitation to be at home with God, no matter how displaced, alienated, isolated we may feel by impossible situations, the messes we ourselves have made, illness, anxiety, or faced with no way out. It’s an invitation to step into the future we can’t quite see now. An invitation to make the “possible” then out of the impossibilities we only see now.

Add it all up, and God is calling each of us ─ just as God called Moses ─ to be an anomaly: to not make sense when people see us sacrificing our own best interests ─ our own security ─ our own privilege ─ for the interests, the security, the remedial privilege of our disadvantaged neighbors.

Because, as the rest of Moses’ story shows ─ despite his own misgivings, his excuses, his self-messages that sell himself short ─ through the power of the “I Can Be Whatever I Can Be” God, Moses does become whatever he could be: liberator, law-giver, leader, and simple-and-yet complex follower of God, as we all can be.

And the truth of that evolution-revolution is in another story extrapolated from Exodus. Remember Moses’ excuse for not plunging into the work God had given him to do? The speech impediment that I think was a stutter? Well, consider this:

According to tradition, the person chosen by God to lead the Hebrew people out of bondage in Egypt would arrive on the scene announcing, “Pakod pokaditi.” Yes, I know. Sounds like Klingon. But to the Hebrew people, it signals: “You will be free indeed!”

Now, when Moses returns to Egypt to engineer the Hebrews’ liberation, they’re skeptical that he’s the real deal. It’s not just their suspicion of where his true allegiances may lie, but they’re well aware of his reputation as a stutterer: “Let’s watch him botch the magic words. P-p-p-p-p-p-p!”

Undeterred, Moses stands before the people. And what are the first words out of his mouth? Contrary to expectations, an anomaly: “Pakod pokaditi!” No hesitation. No anxiety. No stutter. “You will be free indeed!”

And the rest is history.

Proving that in God’s universe, we are each and all called to be an anomaly. Contrary to expectations, through the power of God’s Spirit within us, we can be whatever we can be.

“Pakod pokaditi!”

Indeed, we can all be free!

Amen.