Do you remember Gershom? He was Moses’ oldest son. When Gershom was born, Moses was a fugitive. He had killed an Egyptian for mistreating one of Moses’ fellow Hebrews and had fled the country to escape prosecution. Moses ended up in Midian and settled there for forty years. He married a Midianite girl named Zipporah, and they had a son. Moses chose the name for the boy and called him Gershom, which sounds like the Hebrew phrase “a stranger here.” The explanation for the name that Moses gave was that he called him Gershom because “I have become an alien in a foreign land.” (Exodus 2:22) All of his life, Gershom carried the reminder of his father’s alien status. Moses had grown up in the Egyptian palace, adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, yet he was not Egyptian. He was Hebrew, a descendant of Abraham, of the lineage of Israel. He, along with his people, belonged in Canaan, not in Egypt, yet they had come to live in Egypt in slaves. Moses could have lived life as an Egyptian, a comfortable life. He could have denied his alien status and made himself at home in what was, at that time, the most powerful nation in the region.

Yet he chose a different path. Hebrews 11 tells us: “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” (Hebrews 11:24-26) It must have been a hard choice. The path grew harder when Moses chose to defend his fellow countryman and had to leave Egypt because of it. Living in Midian, he named his son Gershom to reflect his alien status. A quick reading of Exodus might make you think that Moses was thinking of Egypt when he made that statement. Yet he had already chosen to reject the comforts of Egypt, “the pleasures of sin,” as Hebrews puts it. He couldn’t return to Egypt and be an Egyptian. That choice had been made. Moses had chosen the life of an alien, and he would never again have a land to call his own here on this earth. He was looking ahead, not looking backward. That’s why he called his son Gershom.

I can’t help but guess that Gershom must have lived his life the same way. He may have crossed Jordan with Joshua and the tribes of Israel, may have joined in the conquest of the Promised Land. But I doubt that he ever forgot that he was never really home until he rejoined his father Moses. His name would have reminded him that he was a stranger in a strange land, an alien in foreign territory all the days of his life.

Maybe Christians should be called Gershom. Maybe it would help us to remember who we are.