The Moses I always pictured is the Charlton Heston Moses, the one who leads his people out of Egypt, who parts the Red Sea, gives commands. But the Moses we hear and see in today's scripture reading is different, not the heroic, bigger-than-life character. He's tending sheep, but to see how he got there we must look back to Exodus 2:11-15.

A nutshell summary goes like this. Moses is standing around, observes a fight, and kills an Egyptian. We can't just write that Egyptian off as somebody who doesn't count. Fact is, Moses has killed someone. So we have a Moses we don't often think about: a murderer who covers his crime by stuffing the body in the sand so nobody will find out. He tries to hide his sin, cover the fact that he's a murderer.

Moses is a fugitive. He leaves Egypt, flees to Midian.…