A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
28 September 2025
Exodus 2.23–25; 3.1–15; 4.10–17 with John 8.58
The book of Exodus begins in
the shadow of empire.
The people of Israel are in
bondage, their labour is exploited,
their bodies are controlled,
and their children are under threat.
And then, in the midst of their
trial and torment,
comes this deceptively simple
sentence:
“The Israelites groaned under
their slavery, and cried out.
Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God.” (Exodus 2:23)
It would have been easy for
them to believe their cries were falling into silence.
That no one was listening.
That their suffering was just another statistic
in the ledger books of
Pharaoh’s wealth.
But the text tells us otherwise:
“God heard their groaning, and
God remembered his covenant…
God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”
God heard. God remembered.
God looked. God took notice.
The God of the book of Exodus
is no abstract deity
detached from the world’s
pain.
This is a God whose ears ring with the sound of the oppressed,
whose heart is moved by
covenant loyalty,
whose eyes see what empires
try to hide.
When we gather in this
sanctuary here at Bloomsbury, and pray for the world,
we are placing ourselves in
the long tradition of people
who dare to believe that God
is not deaf to our cries.
The prayers we offer for
justice, for peace, for healing,
are not acts of wishful
thinking.
They are acts of deep faith
that the same God who heard
Israel’s groans still hears ours.
Let me tell you about a meeting
I was in some years ago
with community leaders from
Citizens UK.
We were gathered in a draughty community hall in East London,
listening to the testimonies
of low-paid cleaners.
They spoke of working long hours for wages that couldn’t feed a family,
of harassment at work, of
being invisible in the buildings they cleaned.
As each one spoke, you could feel the room lean in.
We were hearing their groans.
And in that moment, I found
myself thinking:
This is Exodus. This is
God’s people crying out.
And as in Exodus, God’s hearing
doesn’t stop at sympathy
—it leads to sending.
Moses isn’t exactly volunteer
of the month.
By the time we meet him in
Exodus 3, he’s a fugitive,
tending sheep far
from Egypt.
His previously charmed and
privileged life has narrowed to the manageable.
The wilderness,
the sheep, the routines
—safe enough,
predictable enough.
And then—while doing the most
ordinary of tasks—
he sees something
extraordinary:
a bush on fire, yet not
consumed.
It’s striking that God doesn’t
first call Moses in the temple,
or in a grand palace,
or through a carefully
organised conference.
God calls him in the middle of
his workday,
in a patch of wilderness,
through something he can’t
quite explain.
The voice from the bush calls
his name:
“Moses, Moses!”
And like so many before him, he answers,
“Here I am.”
God wastes no time:
“I have observed the misery of
my people… I have heard their cry…
I know their
sufferings…
So come, I will send you to
Pharaoh to bring my people… out of Egypt.”
There’s a rhythm here worth
noticing:
God hears, God remembers, God
sees
—and then God sends.
But Moses’ reaction is instant:
“Who am I that I should go?”
He doubts his identity, his
capacity, his right to speak.
It’s the same question so many
of us ask
when we feel nudged towards
something daunting:
Who am I to step up?
Who am I to make a difference?
When God reassures him — “I
will be with you” — Moses still hesitates:
“If they ask me your name,
what shall I say?”
In other words:
I need more than your voice
in the dark.
I need to know who you are.
And God’s answer is unlike
anything in the ancient world:
“I AM WHO I AM” — or “I WILL
BE WHO I WILL BE.”
This is not a tidy label to
control or domesticate.
This is God as dynamic
presence,
God as promise in
motion,
God as the one who will be
faithfully with you in whatever comes.
In Egypt, Pharaoh’s name was
stamped on monuments,
decrees, coins, and statues.
Names were claims to power,
tools of control.
But God’s name here refuses
the imperial script.
It is not a brand. It is a verb.
It cannot be carved in stone
and made a monument;
it must be lived, enacted,
experienced.
One commentator says that God’s
name is “a promise in the form of a verb.”
And that means that God will
be known not in abstraction,
but in liberation:
- at the Red Sea, when waters part;
- in the wilderness, when bread falls from heaven;
- at Sinai, when covenant shapes community.
This is not just ancient
history.
We see it when migrant workers
win legal protection
after years of
being underpaid.
We see it when tenants in
unsafe housing
force landlords to
make repairs.
We see it when a congregation
stands alongside people seeking asylum,
and the long arc
of change begins to bend towards justice.
“I AM” is still showing up in
the acts of liberation
that bear God’s character.
Moses tries one more objection:
“I am slow of speech and slow
of tongue.”
Tradition has wondered if Moses
had a stammer,
or simply feared public
speaking.
Either way, he names a limitation.
God’s response is not to erase
that limitation, but to work with it:
“I will be with your mouth.”
And then, graciously, God appoints Aaron as his partner.
I’m reminded of a moment in one
of our Living Wage campaigns
when the person most affected
by an issue
—the person whose story could move hearts—
was too nervous to speak at
the rally.
So another member stood beside
them and told their story for them,
with their consent and
blessing.
The voice was shared, but the truth was still told.
That is how liberation work
often happens:
together, with our strengths
covering one another’s weaknesses.
In God’s economy, our perceived
weaknesses
can become spaces for
collaboration.
The mission of liberation is
not accomplished by flawless individuals
but by interdependent
communities.
This is good news for us at
Bloomsbury.
We don’t have to wait until we
feel eloquent enough, confident enough,
or strong enough to engage in
God’s work for justice.
God works through what we
bring,
and supplies what we lack
through the gifts of others.
Centuries later, in the temple
courts,
Jesus will speak words that
scandalise his hearers:
“Before Abraham was, I AM”
(John 8:58).
In claiming the divine name,
Jesus aligns himself fully
with the God of Exodus
—the God who hears the
oppressed,
who confronts
Pharaohs, who liberates captives.
And in Jesus, “I AM” becomes
flesh and walks among us:
- hearing the cries of the sick and healing them,
- seeing the hungry and feeding them,
- remembering the outcast and welcoming them,
- confronting the empires of his day with a kingdom
of peace and justice.
Grace Al-Zoughbi, part of a
Christian Palestinian family in Bethlehem,
says that for Palestinian
Christians, the promise from the book of Hebrews
that “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever”,
is at the heart of their
calling to keep the faith in their land. [1]
For that family, living under
military occupation,
those words weren’t just
theology—they are survival.
Jesus is their “I AM,” their
present-tense liberator,
walking with them in their
groans.
This is where the political and
the personal meet.
To know Jesus is to know the
God of Exodus,
and to follow Jesus is to walk
the path of liberation he walks.
There is no intimacy with God
that does not lead to action for justice.
And there is no enduring
action for justice
that does not spring from
intimacy with God.
Some want to separate
spirituality from social action,
as if they were optional
extras in the Christian life.
But the burning bush story—and
Jesus’ “I AM” declaration—
remind us they are
inseparable.
Our prayer life is not an
escape from the world’s pain;
it is the furnace in which
God’s call is forged.
And our activism is not mere
human effort;
it is the outworking of God’s
presence in us.
When we kneel in prayer, we
bring before God the cries of the world.
When we stand for justice, we
do so in the strength of the God
who says, “I will be with
you.”
Think of William Wilberforce,
whose decades-long fight
against the slave trade was fuelled by daily prayer.
Or Martin Luther King Jr.,
who spent nights on his knees
before stepping out to march.
The coin always has two sides:
contemplation and action,
prayer and protest.
And yet, friends, we must be
careful here.
There is a
temptation—particularly for those of us committed to justice—
to make God little more than
the divine sponsor of our causes.
God becomes the One who
validates our agendas,
fuels our campaigns, blesses
our activism.
But the God who speaks from the
burning bush is not our mascot.
This is the Holy One whose
presence is a fire
that burns without being
consumed
—a mystery that invites
worship before it empowers action.
Moses’ call begins not with
strategy,
but with sandals off.
Before he speaks truth to
Pharaoh,
he kneels before the I AM.
The sequence matters.
Holiness precedes mission.
Relationship precedes
revolution.
In the stillness before the
burning bush,
Moses learns that liberation
flows from the presence of God,
not from the force of human
will.
I think of the late
contemplative activist Thomas Merton,
who once wrote from his
monastery:
“Do not depend on the hope of results…
the real hope, is in the
ground of your being.”
This is what Moses learns in
the desert.
This is what Jesus embodies
when he retreats to the mountains
before returning
to the crowds.
It is in that ground—where we are met, loved, and named by God—
that our courage for justice
is forged.
Without this grounding,
activism becomes frantic,
brittle, easily burned out.
But with it, justice becomes worship in motion
—our hands and feet becoming,
in the Spirit,
living echoes of the great I
AM.
Here in central London, we are
surrounded by both beauty and brokenness.
The towers of commerce stand a
short walk from people sleeping rough.
International students study in world-class universities
while refugees wait years for
status.
Decisions made in Westminster
ripple through the lives of the vulnerable.
To bear God’s name in this
place is to hear the cries rising from our streets
—and to answer them not in our
own strength,
but in the power of the One
who is.
It means trusting that God’s
presence will accompany us
into difficult conversations,
into campaigns for change,
into acts of compassion.
It means recognising that God’s
“I AM” is not confined to church walls,
but is already out there
in council
chambers, in hospital wards,
in shelters, and in
protest lines,
calling us to join in.
Think of Desmond Tutu in
apartheid South Africa.
Tutu was fierce in confronting
the Pharaoh of his day.
But those who knew him well say his power
came from hours of prayer each
morning,
soaking himself in the
presence of the I AM.
His laughter, his joy, his
courage
were the fruits of deep roots
in God.
So how do we live this out? Let
me suggest three movements:
First, we listen.
We make space to hear the groans of our world and our neighbours.
This might mean literally
listening
—to the
testimonies of those facing injustice,
to the fears and
hopes of our community.
But it also means listening in prayer,
letting God bring
to mind those who need our intercession.
Second, we trust the presence.
Like Moses, we may feel inadequate.
The tasks may seem too big,
the Pharaohs too strong.
But the promise stands: “I will
be with you.”
And that is enough.
As we act for justice, we do
not go alone.
Third, we act in partnership.
God sends Moses with Aaron.
God sends the church as a
body, not a collection of lone heroes.
Our different gifts, even our
limitations,
become channels for God’s work
when we act together.
The God who heard the
Israelites’ groans still hears today.
The God who revealed the divine
name to Moses
has revealed that name again
in Jesus Christ.
And the Spirit of that God
breathes in us now,
empowering us to bear
witness—in word and deed—
to the One who is.
Friends, to know God’s name is
to be called into God’s mission.
To pray “hallowed be your name”
is to commit ourselves to live
so that God’s liberating
presence is known in our world.
The bush still burns. The voice
still calls.
The Name still sends.
Let us, like Moses, answer:
“Here I am.”
And let us, like Aaron, walk
alongside one another,
trusting that “I AM” goes with
us
—into Pharaoh’s courts, into our city’s struggles,
and into the very heart of our
lives.
Amen.
Prayer
Holy and gracious God,
I AM who I AM,
You are the One who hears the cries of the oppressed
and the whispered prayers of
the weary.
You call us by name,
and you invite us to realise
that we stand on holy ground.
Set our hearts ablaze with the
fire of your presence—
not to consume us, but to
sustain us.
Root our actions for justice in the deep soil of your Spirit,
so that our striving is not
from fear or anger,
but from love and worship.
Give us courage to speak truth
to the Pharaohs of our day,
and humility to listen for
Your voice in the wilderness.
Bind us together as your people,
so that we may go where you
send us,
and bear witness to your liberating love in Jesus Christ,
who is before all things,
and in whom all things hold
together.
We pray in his name,
Amen.
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