The Story - Chapter 4

I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians.  — Exodus 6:7

Every time I read Exodus 6 (which is on page 48 of The Story), I think of Blake Bradford. In early 2009, a few months after I had separated from the Air Force, Kenda and I moved to Arkansas. I had begun the process of becoming a clergy person in the Arkansas Conference of the UMC. We had joined a local church, I had navigated the necessary steps within our new congregation, and I was placed on the list of candidates to meet with the Central District’s District Committee on Ministry (DCOM) — the board that determines whether one can take the next step toward licensed and ordained ministry.

Blake, now the Senior Pastor at Fort Smith UMC - at the time, he was an associate at Saint James UMC in Little Rock - was just one of the many faces around an excessively large table at the conference office. The meeting felt like standing before a judge, jury…and executioner!

The meeting went as well as possible — it was more of a “get to know you” and encouragement session. I was answering their questions confidently. Then Blake asked me a simple question:

A softball question, or so you’d think! At that moment, I didn’t have an answer, so I made one up to appease the committee (which, thankfully, it did). However, after the meeting, I was left shocked by my lack of clarity about Jesus’ place in my life and started searching for answers.

And search I did. I found answers while sharing life with marginalized people in the communities I served. I also grew spiritually through spiritual direction, allowing another Christian sojourner to journey with me so to help me reflect and deepen my relationship with the Lord. But I truly believe that Blake's question — “Where is Jesus in your life?” — sparked a fire within me. It allowed me to see how God graciously revealed Himself in tangible ways, especially in moments of weakness: once when I was half-asleep, and once when I was overwhelmed with anxiety. God’s grace — Jesus’s presence and power — took hold of my life and delivered me, even when I wasn’t seeking it. This deliverance was exactly what I had longed for!

So, you may be asking yourself, “What does any of this have to do with Exodus or Chapter 4 of The Story?” Good question! In my search for answers to Blake’s simple question, I discovered that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Moses and Israel in Exodus 6:7. In Exodus, God heard the cries of Israel while they were in bondage under Pharaoh and spoke to them: “I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.” God made a covenant with Israel to be their God, and for Israel to be His people.

This covenant, as recorded in Exodus 6:7, is relational. God promises to be Israel’s God and for Israel to be His people. God delivered Israel from slavery to freedom in the Promised Land. As we are reminded in our communion liturgy, Jesus Christ is the eternal fulfillment of that covenant relationship. Jesus is the way by which God ultimately delivers His people:

Karl Barth, one of the most profound and important Protestant theologians (certainly of the 20th century), expressed this far more precisely than I ever could:

For as in Jesus Christ there breaks out as truth the original thing about God: 'I will be your God,' so in Jesus Christ there breaks out as trust the original thing about (humanity), 'Ye shall be my people.' That was and is the distinctive mark of Israel, which at the end of the history of Israel became event in Jesus Christ, and in that event is revelation — the divine revelation of the destiny of (humanity), of all (humans), as their determination for him… Just as there is no God but the God of the covenant, there is no (human) but the man of the covenant.
(Church Dogmatics CD IV/1, pp. 42-43)

I hope and pray that you have an answer to the question Blake asked me 15 years ago. If not, I invite you to begin the journey today. Yes, this question is one God has already answered, but He is waiting for you to discover the answer for yourself alongside your church family...