Moses was a murderer.
He was hiding, on the lamb.
He had started a new life far away where no one knew about him or his guilt.
Moses ended up being many things, the child found on the river raised in Pharaoh’s house, the shepherd who stood up to Pharaoh, the man who led the exodus, parting the Red Sea, the one who climbed the mountain to gaze upon God, the Law giver.
Moses was many things. But he was also a murderer, hiding far away, where no one knew him or his guilt.
It is interesting how scripture never really addresses this, never justifies or absolves it, it simply tells the story. Moses kills a man, he runs far away and there one night after he had started a new life, one night out in the wilderness he meets God, a blazing fire, a burning bush that was not consumed.
It was one of those ambiguous murders. He attacks and kills an Egyptian for abusing a slave. Premeditated, first degree, clear cut.
Moses thinks he gets away with it, he hides the body in the sand, no one saw it happen, or so he thought. But the next day a slave, one of his own people, accuses him saying, “Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”
And so he ran away, far away and hid just like he hid the body of the dead man in the sand.
And supposedly that is the end of the murder story.
Until he meets God, blazing out there in the wilderness with all its secrets, the wild places of hiding, out there in the sand that buries what we want no one else to know.
Until God tells Moses to go back and confront Pharaoh.
Moses is hiding, he thinks he got away with it, and God tells Moses to go back.
The murder is never mentioned again.
It doesn’t have to be.
Moses is told to go back to where his secrets and shame were buried, to put his life on the line, so that a whole people could be free and live.
Notice that the only promise God gives is not that Moses will succeed, or live to tell the tale, God simply promises to be with him.
We all know the story, the exodus was scary, and dangerous and it took decades, a whole generation died off before finding their new home, and Moses died as well.
He never made it out of the wilderness alive. He was buried there in the sand with God knowing his secrets.
This could be a sermon about the holiness of human life, the image of God, and the ways we defile and destroy and murder that image.
It could be a sermon about secrets and sin and how they haunt us.
But it has to be more than that.
Because this is about much more than Moses, this about the God who blazes out in the darkness of our hidden and secret places.
It is about the God who is present.
And ultimately it is about the God who sets us free from all that enslaves, setting the captives free, emptying the house of bondage.
Who invites us with all our secrets and shame to take our shoes off and to walk on holy ground.
And then amazing things start to happen, a grand adventure from which we’ll never return.