I tend by nature not to be an alarmist, but boy, what a challenge to maintain equanimity in this moment. Even in these early days of the new administration, I feel such dread about the people in my life who might be deported or scapegoated or made to suffer or fear in some way. I feel dread about who will be emboldened and what they will be emboldened to do. I have a lifelong visceral fear of bullies, and I find myself now getting smaller, feeling like the kid I was, keeping my eye out for bullies in every shadowed corner.
I know there are ways to respond — important words and acts ahead for me and for other clergy. But it’s hard to overcome my sense of aloneness and helplessness. Who am I to be able to have an impact on any of this?
A couple weeks ago, when we were reading the beginning of Shemot, the book of Exodus, I was reminded that whatever I am feeling in my kishkes today, I can find that feeling expressed in Torah. As Exodus began, we meet the new Pharaoh. We see his scapegoating and enslavement of the Hebrews. We witness the birth of Moshe and his escape in a basket downriver, into the arms of Pharaoh’s daughter. We see his upbringing as a bicultural child raised by two mothers. We see him as a young man, both privileged as Egyptian nobility and holding a secret identity as a Hebrew. We see his spirit break, as he kills a taskmaster who was abusing an enslaved Hebrew. We witness his flight to Midian, and his attempt at anonymity as a householder and shepherd.
But then, just when Moshe has gotten used to his quiet life in exile, he sees a bush famously aflame but not consumed, and this far-away land where he had hoped to be out of the action turns out to be the very Holy Ground demanding his reverence and his bare feet.
God gives Moshe his deployment: to free the Children of Israel from slavery. To bring an end to the great crisis of his people. To oppose tyranny. To uproot his family. To stare down Pharaoh, the most powerful human in Moshe’s known world. To oversee a migration of hundreds of thousands of people who would all have to eat and be sheltered. Moshe hears the assignment and asks the obvious question:
“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?”
Moshe’s sense of inadequacy is understandable; who would be equal to this unprecedented task? At this point in the text, we want the pep talk. We want God to answer the question. Moshe, you are the chosen one. The prophet. Destined. Special. The shepherd of sheep and people. The palace insider. The code switcher. You are the perfect person for the job.
We want there to be a reason Moshe is chosen. But God doesn’t give one.
Instead, what God says is: Ki ehyeh imakh. “I will be with you.”
God does not give the reasons why Moshe is the right person. God doesn’t even say that Moshe is the right person. Maybe Moshe is chosen because he is the most available person in that moment. The only one who got out.
We, too, might not be exactly the right people to handle the situation we are in and the time ahead. We might not have quite the right toolboxes. We might be, in this moment, operating with only a half tank of hope. But circumstance put us here, like Moshe at the bush.
Ki ehyeh imakh. “I will be with you.”
That might be the best we can do right now. To feel Divine support. It might be the best we could ever do in response to the challenges of the moment because there is no right resume for this. How am I to respond to any of it? To the work of liberation? The work of consolation? The work of preservation, of rebuilding, of peacemaking? The work of protecting immigrant neighbors and transgender kids? All of this is ahead –– no, all of this is already here.
Who knows what will be demanded of any of us? Who knows the ways we will be invited or required to serve? … Who am I? It doesn’t matter. … We just need to know that we are on Holy Ground and that we are not alone.
At my age, I feel fatigued. Haven’t I done enough? Can’t I just rest? But, alas, the flow of time is not for our benefit, not to give us the reward of well-deserved rest. Time brings new and more complex challenges to our doorsteps. The time we are in is the time we are in, regardless of our age or experience or skill set. We are definitionally inadequate to meet the moment. Who are we — who am I — to do any of it?
So I try to breathe in the promise that God gave Moshe. Ki ehyeh imakh. “I will be with you.”
Who knows what will be demanded of any of us? Who knows the ways we will be invited or required to serve? But in none of this are we alone. Mi anokhi? Who am I? It doesn’t matter. We don’t have to have a life story like Moshe’s. We just need to know that we are on Holy Ground and that we are not alone.
Last week, returning from the Ohalah Conference in Colorado, I drove many hours on Nevada Highway 50, dubbed “America’s Loneliest Road.” No trees, no wildlife, no other traffic in sight. You could stop in the middle of the roadway and get out of your car, as I did once just to prove I could. But I wasn’t lonely. I was accompanied by sky and brush and distant mountains. The Divine was with me — obvious, once you slow down and notice.
We have a hard road ahead but not a lonely one. We have each other. We have the voice of this beautiful planet. We have many creative people whose leadership or poetry or art will inspire us. And we have the Divine at our side, at our back and within us.
Ki ehyeh imakh. I will be with you.
