The House of God: Glory in the Darkness

 A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

26 October 2025

The Dedication of Solomon's Temple, by Jan Luyken (1700)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84726118

 

1 Kings 5.1–5; 8.1–13
John 2.19-21

 

We are, I think, a people deeply formed
            by the places we inhabit.

We mark our lives by them.
            The home we grew up in, the streets we walk daily,
            the corner of a café that feels like ours,
            the pew where we habitually sit on a Sunday morning.

Place shapes us. It tells our story.
            And over time, places take on layers of meaning
            — the echoes of prayers whispered, the resonance of song,
            the memory of laughter and grief alike.

Here in The Sanctuary at Bloomsbury, we know something of that.
            This space is not merely a room.
It’s a meeting point between heaven and earth
            — or at least, it gestures towards one.

It’s a place where we bring our full selves before God;
            a place where we remember those who have gone before us;
a place where we gather, week by week,
            hoping once more to glimpse something of glory.

So perhaps we understand, more than we realise,
            why Solomon longed to build a temple.

The reading from 1 Kings opens with Solomon at rest.

After years of warfare and instability under his father David,
            Solomon inherits a kingdom at peace.
“The Lord my God has given me rest on every side,” he says,
            “so that there is neither adversary nor misfortune.”

And out of that peace, he conceives the idea of building a house for God.

There’s something beautiful in this,
            with the instinct to build sacred space coming not in the heat of battle,
            but in the quiet that follows it.

It’s when a community has found stability
            that it can turn its energies towards worship, towards beauty,
            towards imagining something beyond survival.

We might ask ourselves:
            what do we build when the fighting stops?

This is the question of every war-torn community,
            from the cities devastated by the bombings of the second world war,
            to the communities of Ukraine and Gaza,
            right back to the post-exodus community of ancient Israel.

Because Solomon’s project wasn’t only about architecture.
            It was a theological statement.
            He was saying: we are no longer wanderers in the wilderness.

The ark that had travelled from tent to tent,
            symbol of divine presence among a nomadic people,
            would now have a resting place.

The God who had journeyed with them
            would now dwell among them, in the heart of Jerusalem.

Of course, it’s a risky claim
            — to say that God has been housed.

The moment you try to contain the infinite,
            you flirt with idolatry.

But it’s also an act of faith:
            a belief that the transcendent can be encountered in the particular,
            that the eternal can take up residence in the temporal.

Solomon builds not because he thinks he can trap God,
            but because he dares to believe that God desires to dwell among the people.

When the temple was completed,
            Solomon assembled the elders and leaders of the tribes.

The priests brought the Ark of the Covenant
            — that ancient chest that held the tablets of the law —
            and placed it in the Holy of Holies.

And then something extraordinary happened.

As the priests withdrew,
            the story says, a cloud filled the house of the Lord,
            so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud;
                        for the glory of the Lord filled the house.

It’s one of the most arresting moments in scripture.
            Everything stops. The ritual, the liturgy, the carefully choreographed ceremony
            — all of it brought to a halt by the sheer presence of God.

And Solomon, faced with the dazzling incomprehensibility of what has happened,
            utters words that deserve to be lingered over:

“The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
            I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell forever.”

Thick darkness.

It’s an extraordinary phrase.
            It upends our assumptions about what divine glory looks like.
We expect light, brightness, clarity
            — but what Solomon encounters is darkness, density, mystery.
The Hebrew word suggests a darkness that can be felt.

This is the paradox of presence:
            that God’s arrival is not always illumination, but sometimes obscurity.
The divine glory both reveals and conceals.
            It fills the temple, yet hides its source.

The same cloud that guided the Israelites through the wilderness
            — a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night —
            has now entered the temple.

It is as if the wild, untamed presence that travelled with them
            refuses to be domesticated, even by Solomon’s splendour.

God will dwell among the people, yes, but not on their terms.

What fascinates me about Solomon’s dedication speech is its ambivalence.

On one hand, he declares with confidence:
            “I have built you a lofty house, a place for you to dwell forever.”

But a few verses later — beyond our reading today — he admits,
            “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
            Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you,
            much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8.27)

Solomon knows what we must all learn:
            that every attempt to contain God is provisional.

The temple is not a prison for the divine.
            It is a sign, a sacrament, a meeting point,
            but not the limit of God’s presence.

The God of Israel will not be domesticated
            by cedar beams and golden cherubim.

And yet, paradoxically, God chooses to dwell there.

This is the mystery at the heart of faith:
            the God who cannot be contained nevertheless consents to be present.
The transcendent stoops to meet the finite.
            The holy condescends to the human.

In theological terms, we might call this the logic of incarnation,
            the same mystery that will later find its fullest expression in Jesus.

But already, in Solomon’s temple, the pattern is there:
            God makes a home among us, yet remains beyond our grasp.

For us, here in Bloomsbury,
            this passage invites a deep reflection on what our own sacred space means.

The building in which we sit — this Sanctuary —
            is also a testimony to faith across generations.

Its walls have held a century and a half of prayers,
            its floor has been trod by saints and seekers,
            its air filled by song and by silence.

When we gather here,
            we are surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses
            whose faith has sustained this community.

And yet, if we ever start to think that God lives here and nowhere else,
            we’ve missed the point entirely.

This place is holy not because God is trapped within it,
            but because God meets us here.

It is a thin place, a place where the veil between heaven and earth grows translucent.
            But the holiness does not reside in bricks and plaster
            — it resides in what happens between us and God,
            between us and one another.

When we sing together, when we pray for the world,
            when we share bread and wine, when we listen and are changed
            — that’s when the cloud of glory fills the house once again.

And sometimes, as in Solomon’s day,
            that glory may come as brightness
            — a moment of clarity, a sense of peace.

But sometimes it comes as darkness:
            when prayers go unanswered, when faith feels fragile,
            when the future of the church seems uncertain.

The thick darkness of God is not the absence of God,
            but the presence of God in forms we do not yet understand.

So as we continue the slow work of building up our congregation
            — of strengthening the community that gathers in this Sanctuary —
we do so knowing that God’s presence will not always feel luminous or predictable.

But still, God dwells among us.
            Still, the cloud fills the house.

And of course, the work of building a temple never really ends.

The stones may be set, the paint may dry,
            the scaffolding may come down,
but the deeper work, the human work, continues.

Because what makes any sanctuary sacred
            is not only what happens within its walls,
            but what is built between the people who gather there.

Solomon had artisans and architects, stonemasons and priests.

We have something different but no less holy
            — musicians, welcomers, those who make coffee, or look after the PA,
            those who pray faithfully from their homes,
            those who dare to dream new dreams for the church.

Each week, as we open these doors in the heart of London,
            we are engaged in an act of construction.

We build hospitality in a city of loneliness.
            We build courage in a world that teaches fear.
We build community in a culture that prizes the individual.

And what we build here is not for ourselves alone.
            The sanctuary becomes truly holy when its doors are open
— when people find here not exclusion but welcome,
            not certainty but hope,
            not judgement but grace.

In that sense, we are co-builders with God.
            The Spirit continues to fashion living stones into a dwelling place for the divine.

And sometimes, as with Solomon’s temple,
            the glory of God interrupts our work
            — reminding us that what we are building is always larger than we can see,
            and that its true completion lies in hands not our own.

It’s worth noticing that, in time, the temple itself did not last.

It would be destroyed by invading armies,
            rebuilt, and destroyed again.

The glory that once filled it seemed to depart.
            The people went into exile,
            and they discovered — to their astonishment —
                        that God was with them even there,
                        in Babylon, by the rivers of captivity.

The prophets began to say strange things:
            that God does not dwell only in temples made by human hands,
            that God is near to all who call.

The destruction of the temple, painful though it was,
            became the occasion for a new discovery
            — that the presence of God was never confined to one place.

Every community that loses a building learns that lesson in its own way.
            The holiness was never in the stones alone;
            it was in the people, in the promise, in the God who journeys with them.

And so by the time we reach the New Testament,
            the temple has become a symbol ripe for reinterpretation.

When Jesus, in John’s Gospel, enters the temple and drives out the merchants,
            he is not rejecting the temple’s holiness but exposing its fragility.

When he says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,”
            he is speaking of his body — the new dwelling place of God.

Here, the mystery deepens.

The divine glory that once filled the temple
            now dwells bodily in a human life.

The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us
            — literally, pitches a tent among us, echoing the tabernacle of old.

In Jesus, the place of meeting between God and humanity
            is no longer a building but a person.
The Holy of Holies now has a human face.

And when that body is crucified and raised, the veil is torn,
            the boundary dissolves,
            and the presence of God spills out into the world.

We, the church, are now called the body of Christ.

Which means we too are called to be a temple
            — a living, breathing dwelling place for the Spirit.

Every act of welcome, every prayer for justice, every moment of compassion
            — these are the stones with which God builds the new temple in our midst.

When some of us from this congregation visited Palestine,
            we went to the farm known as the Tent of Nations,
            where the Nassar family declare that they refuse to be enemies.

And Daoud Nassar said to us that the Palestinian Christans,
            bearing peaceful nonviolent witness to the way of Christ in awar-torn land,
            are the ‘living stones’ – they are the stones of the temple that is the body of Christ.

But what does this mean for us,
            on an ordinary Sunday in the heart of London?

It means that our calling as a congregation
            is not simply to preserve a building, however beautiful or historic.
It is to make of this place a living temple
            — a place where people can encounter the mystery of God,
            whether in light or in darkness.

It means that when we gather in our Sanctuary,
            we do so not to contain God,
            but to be contained by God’s love.

We come here not to show how much we understand,
            but to stand together in the cloud of unknowing,
            trusting that God is present even when hidden.

And it means that when we leave this place
            — when we go out into the streets of the West End,
                        into the offices and universities and hostels and cafés —
            we carry that presence with us.

The temple goes mobile again.
            The glory that once filled a building
            now walks the pavements of London.

Every act of kindness becomes a sanctuary.
            Every word of justice becomes a hymn.
Every life that reflects the love of Christ
            becomes a dwelling place for God.

When Solomon finished his prayer,
            the story says the glory of the Lord filled the temple
            so that the priests could not stand to minister.

Perhaps that’s a word for us, too.

There are times when our ministries, our plans,
            our carefully arranged programmes,
must fall silent before the mystery of what God is doing among us.

Because God still fills the house.
            Sometimes in light. Sometimes in darkness.
Sometimes in our certainty, sometimes in our doubt.
            But always, God is here.

And so, like Solomon, we might dare to say:
            “I have built you a house”
            — not of stone and cedar, but of community and compassion.

And we might dare to believe that God chooses to dwell among us still,
            filling this Sanctuary with glory
— even, and perhaps especially, in the thick darkness.

Amen.

The Manna Economy

 A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

Harvest Sunday, 5 October 2025

The Gathering of the Manna, a cropped image from Hours of Catherine of Cleves. 

Manuscript MS M. 917-945 ff 137v, Morgan Library & Museum New York, around 1440.

Exodus 16.1–18; John 6.51

Introduction

Harvest is a strange festival in the city:
            Most of us do not plant or reap or thresh.

We shop in supermarkets where fruit comes from Chile,
            rice from India, and bananas from the Caribbean.

We are consumers in a global market.

Yet here we are in the middle of London, shortly to gather for lunch
            with food harvested from Pret or Tesco,
and in a few minutes we will celebrate communion
            with Bread from Anne's oven
            and grape juice from the supermarket,
and yet we say that God provides.

But what on earth does this mean?
            How does ‘God provide’ in a world of international supply chains,
            tariffs, and fluctuating markets?

And what does it mean to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,”
            when we know millions go hungry
            while others have too much?

I find myself wondering if the story of manna
            that we find in our lectionary reading for today
can offer us a radical alternative vision
            — what we might call the manna economy.

It is not the free market of neoliberal economics.
            It is not the protectionism of nationalist tariffs.
It is God’s economy: an economy of enough,
            of neighbour-love, of Sabbath rest, of hospitality.

And the witness of scripture is that it is fulfilled in Christ,
            the living bread who comes down from heaven,
            given for the life of the world.

So for the next few minutes, let us walk with Israel into the wilderness,
            and listen again for God’s word of provision.

The Wilderness Complaint

The story begins with hunger.
            “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt,” the Israelites grumble,
            “where we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!” (Ex. 16:3).

It is striking that slavery can be remembered as abundance,
            and freedom as scarcity.

It is the old temptation:
            to trade liberty for security, justice for stability.
The Israelites in the wilderness
            find themselves preferring the false plenty of Pharaoh’s storehouses
            to the uncertain gifts of God in a time of scarcity.

And here we see the first echo of our own economics.
            We too are tempted to trust Pharaoh.

We imagine that security lies in the stockpiles of the powerful,
            in the wealth of corporations,
            in the supposed stability of markets.

We cling to national boundaries, tariffs, and subsidies
            as though they can guarantee us bread.

Or we put our faith in deregulated trade,
            assuming that invisible hands will feed the hungry
            as the wealth trickles down.

But the wilderness exposes the lie.
            Pharaoh’s wealth is built on the backs of slaves.

Free markets too often enrich the already rich while the poor starve;
            And tariffs defend the privileged while excluding the vulnerable.

The Israelites discover what we must learn:
            only God can provide bread that sustains life.

Manna: Bread from Heaven

And so, in the story, into the wilderness of complaint comes a strange gift:
            fine, flaky, white, like coriander seed.

The people say, “What is it?” — in Hebrew, man hu —
            and so it is named manna.

It is bread, but unlike any bread they have known.
            It comes with conditions:

• It must be gathered daily.
• Each family must take only as much as it needs.
• If hoarded, it rots.
• On the sixth day, they gather double for the Sabbath.

This is not ordinary food. This is sacrament.
            It is the visible sign of an invisible grace.
            It is God’s economy, enacted in daily practice.

And here is the heart of the manna economy:
            “those who gathered much had nothing over,
            and those who gathered little had no shortage” (Ex. 16:18).

Sufficiency, not scarcity.
            Sharing, not hoarding. Trust, not anxiety.

Against the Free Market

This manna economy from ancient Israel
            confronts our assumptions about economics.

Free-market ideology tells us
            that the pursuit of self-interest leads to prosperity for all.
            Hoard as much as you can, and somehow your neighbour will benefit.

But in the wilderness, when individuals try to hoard,
            the whole community suffers the stench of rot.

The free market glorifies accumulation. Manna forbids it.
            The free market rewards competition. Manna teaches cooperation.
The free market produces billionaires and beggars.
            Manna produces enough for each and every one.

In the manna economy, the invisible hand
            is replaced by the visible hand of God, distributing daily bread for all.

Against Nationalist Tariffs

But manna also confronts nationalist economics.

Tariffs, subsidies, and protectionist policies claim to put one nation’s people first,
            but they do so at the expense of others.

They divide the world into insiders who deserve plenty
            and outsiders who must be kept out for fear they will take their share.

Manna recognises no such boundaries.
            It is for the whole people. Nobody is excluded.

Those who gathered much shared with those who gathered little.
            The gift crossed household and tribal boundaries.

And when Jesus declares, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” (Jn 6:51),
            he widens the scope still further.

His bread is not for Israel alone, but for the world.
            It seems God’s economy knows no borders.

The harvest is for the stranger, the refugee,
            and the neighbour we have not yet met,
every bit as much as it is for us and those like us.

Participation

But notice this: God does not spoon-feed the Israelites.
            They must go out each morning to gather the manna.
God provides, but human action is required.

This is important because faith is not passive.
            Grace does not abolish effort.
The gifts of God come to us,
            but we must receive, gather, work, and share.

I’ve never been convinced by the suggestion
            that the most faithful are those who ‘live by faith’,
            trusting that money will arrive whenever it is needed
            as a divine reward for faithfulness.

The miracle of manna is not that God rains down bread into people’s mouths,
            but that God’s provision requires human participation.

The people rise early, they bend to the ground,
            they collect what they need,
            and they trust that tomorrow God will allow them to so again.

Participation in God’s gift is both grace and discipline.
            It shapes character. It forms community. It teaches trust.

The Israelites’ daily gathering became a spiritual practice:
            a liturgy of dependence, repeated every sunrise.

And so it is for us.
            God’s provision does not bypass our effort; it dignifies it.

Food does not arrive on our tables
            without someone planting, harvesting, transporting, and cooking.

Even when we pray “give us this day our daily bread,”
            we do not expect loaves to materialise.

We expect to work, and we expect others to work,
            and we expect to share in the fruits of that labour together.

This is why hoarding is such a distortion of the gift.
            When Israel tried to gather too much manna, it rotted overnight.

God was teaching them — and us —
            that the gift is not for stockpiling but for sharing.

Faithful participation means taking what we need and leaving enough for others.

In the church, this participation takes concrete form.
            We are the ones through whom God provides for others
            — through the hardship fund, through hospitality,
            through justice work and compassion and advocacy.

Manna does not simply drop into empty mouths.
            It comes through daily, faithful gathering
            and daily, faithful sharing.

Sabbath and Rest

One more feature of manna must be noticed: the gift of Sabbath.

On the sixth day the Israelites were told to gather twice as much,
            so that on the seventh day they could rest.

The manna would not rot when kept for Sabbath,
            because rest itself was part of God’s provision.

This is profound.
            The rhythm of gathering manna was not endless work,
            but work punctuated by rest.

The slaves of Egypt, who had been forced to work without pause,
            were now free to stop for a while.
Free to lay down their burdens.
            Free to discover that the world kept turning even when they did not.

We need this reminder
            because in our culture, productivity has become an idol.

Our worth is measured by how much we do,
            how efficient we are, how busy we appear.

Sabbath interrupts that lie.
            Sabbath says: you are not defined by your output.
            You are defined by God’s love.

And Sabbath, like manna, is for all.
            It is not the privilege of the wealthy who can afford a day off,
                        while the poor labour without pause.

True Sabbath justice means ensuring that all people,
            and indeed the land itself, are given rest.

The earth cannot sustain endless extraction.
            Human beings cannot sustain endless work.
Communities cannot sustain endless anxiety.
            Sabbath is God’s antidote to overwork and overconsumption.

So as we gather at harvest, we also gather on the Sabbath.
            And the invitation is for us to learn to resist
            the restless drive to hoard and produce.

Let us receive rest as manna for our souls.
            Let us build a society where everyone, not just the privileged,
            can lay down their burdens and taste God’s rest.

Creation and Climate Justice

But the manna story is not only about feeding people;
            it is also about how we live with the earth.

Manna falls like dew upon the ground,
            a reminder that creation itself is the medium of God’s gift.

The Israelites learn that the land cannot be treated as a limitless resource.
            Just as they must not hoard manna,
            so they must not exploit the earth without restraint.

This lesson is urgent for us.

Our modern economies depend on extraction:
            digging, drilling, burning, consuming without limit.

But the planet groans.
            Ice melts, seas rise, forests burn, crops fail.

We have treated the earth as Pharaoh treated Israel
            — forcing it into endless slavery,
            demanding more bricks with less straw.

The manna economy calls us to another way.

It teaches us that the earth’s abundance is enough for all
            if it is shared justly and rested regularly.

It calls us to resist the idolatry of growth without limit.
            It invites us to discover sufficiency, sustainability, Sabbath.

To live the manna economy today
            is to join the movement for climate justice:
            to reduce our waste, to change how we use energy,
            to stand with those most affected by rising seas and failing harvests.

It is to remember that creation is not ours to exploit but God’s to give.

At harvest, therefore, we do not only give thanks
            for what we receive from the earth;
we pledge to treat the earth with reverence and care.

For the manna that sustains us
            comes through soil and sun, water and air, seedtime and harvest
            — and these too are gifts entrusted to our stewardship.

Jesus the Manna

All of this comes to its climax in Christ.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus takes up the manna story and makes it his own:
            “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
            Whoever eats of this bread will live forever;
            and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6:51).

The manna economy points to Jesus.

In him, God’s provision is no longer just daily food,
            but eternal life.

In him, the bread of heaven is broken and shared for all people.
            In him, the gift is universal, abundant, inexhaustible.

And as we share Communion, we enact this manna economy.
            We come with nothing but our need, and we receive the bread of life.
            We share one loaf, and discover that there is enough for all.

We taste in advance the feast of God’s kingdom,
            where strangers become neighbours, enemies become guests,
            and none are excluded from the table.

Hospitality and the Stranger

The manna story presses us to ask: who is the bread for?

For Israel, it was for everyone —
            those who gathered much and those who gathered little.
            Nobody was left out.

And in Christ, the bread is for the whole world.

Hospitality, then, is manna lived out.
            To share food with the hungry is not just charity;
            it is participation in God’s provision.

To welcome the stranger to our table
            is to enact the gospel.

Jesus himself shows us this again and again,
            breaking bread with tax collectors, sinners,
            outcasts, disciples, and crowds.

Harvest therefore is not just thanksgiving; it is invitation.
            Who is missing from our tables?
            Who has been denied the bread God intends for them?
            Who waits for an invitation we could extend?

Bloomsbury has long sought to be a community of radical hospitality
            — welcoming those who have nowhere else to go,
            offering shelter and friendship to those society rejects.

This is not an optional extra; it is manna made visible.

Let us make our tables wide enough for strangers to become friends,
            for outsiders to become neighbours,
            for enemies even to become guests.

For this is how manna multiplies:
            in the breaking and sharing of bread.

Harvest as Practice of Trust

So what does it mean for us, in London, in 2025, to celebrate Harvest?

Surely it means more than singing harvest hymns of a lost golden Victorian agrarian age?
            Maybe it means living the manna economy.

• Maybe it means resisting the idols of nationalism and the free market,
  and living by God’s economy of enough.
• Maybe it means trusting that daily bread
  comes not from Pharaoh’s storehouses or corporate supermarkets,
  but from God, mediated through the labour of many.
• Maybe it means rejecting hoarding and choosing generosity.
• Maybe it means honouring Sabbath, and building a society where all can rest.
• Maybe it means offering hospitality to strangers,
  and breaking bread with neighbours.

Harvest is not nostalgia for a rural past.
            It is a prophetic act, a radical declaration:
            God provides.

And God provides in ways that subvert our economic assumptions
            and call us into a new way of life.

Conclusion

The Israelites asked, “What is it?” — man hu —
            when they first saw the manna.

We too may ask: what is this strange economy God calls us into?

It is not the economy of Pharaoh,
            nor the economy of global markets.

It is the manna economy: the gift of enough,
            the call to trust, the command to share, the promise of rest.

And in Christ, the manna is fulfilled.
            He is the living bread come down from heaven,
            given for the life of the world.

So let us come to his table today.
            Let us taste and see that the Lord is good.

Let us give thanks for God’s harvest,
            and let us learn to live by the manna economy
            — in trust, in generosity, in hospitality, in justice —
until all are fed, all are welcomed,
            and all are at rest in the kingdom of God.

Amen.

---

[1] https://mannagum.org.au/articles/The-Manna-Economy

God’s Name, Our Calling

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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[1] https://www.womanalive.co.uk/bible/i-am-a-palestinian-christian-and-will-be-retracing-the-steps-of-jesus-to-find-hope-this-easter/17440.article