This week I’d like us to take a look at the Old Testament story of Moses and the Burning Bush. This is such a classic story, a Sunday School favorite, that we are particularly susceptible to missing it’s subtleties. When you think you know a story really well is actually when it has the most power to surprise you. So let’s dig in and see what we find.
As the curtain rises, we see Moses shepherding the flock of his father-in-law. For a brief recap, let’s recall that Moses after being raised by Pharoah’s daughter and growing up in the palace, went on to kill an Egyptian who was beating up a Hebrew and subsequently fled Egypt. Now, he is living a far more mundane existence, looking after sheep. He wanders beyond the wilderness, though, and comes perhaps unwittingly to the mountain of God. There he sees the most peculiar thing: a bush that is burning, but nevertheless remains intact. Flames are surrounding it, but not one twig disappears. Nor does it seem to be spreading to other plants and wildlife, with the typically destructive force of fire. It is blazing, but not consumed or consuming. Notice what Moses does--he turns aside to get a closer look. You might be thinking, “well YEAH. If I saw a bush that was burning without being burned up, I’d stop to look at it too!” But DO we? My hunch is that we are surrounded by burning bushes if we have eyes to see them. All of creation is alive with the glory of God, but often we are too busy, too distracted, and maybe too cynical to see the flames licking the edges of our everyday experiences. But the text says, “When God saw that Moses had turned aside, God called to him, ‘Moses! Moses!’” What might Moses have lost had he hurried past that bush? Slow down and pay attention to the moments, the events, and the people in your life who seem to shimmer with a strange light. Turn aside and listen for what they have to tell you. Nothing less than freedom from slavery and suffering is at stake!
So God speaks to Moses and says, “I have seen the pain of my people, I have heard their cry, I know their suffering.” This is the language of intimacy. The Hebrew word for knowing, yada, is the same word used in Hebrew for lovemaking. This is not academic knowing, this is soul knowing. God is intimately connected with God’s people and longs to lead them out of suffering into a place of abundance and peace, a land of milk and honey. The strange part in all of this, shocking really, is that God needs Moses to accomplish this. Sure, with 3,000 years of retrospect, Moses looks like a great guy and I don’t think any of us would argue that God made a bad choice. But at the moment of the Burning Bush, there wasn’t a whole lot of evidence in his favor. I mean this is the guy that blew a virtually un-blowable insider position in the Egyptian political system because he got hot-headed and killed somebody. Then he runs to save his own skin and now he’s puttering around the desert working for his father-in-law. Let’s just say that his resume isn’t looking so hot at this particular moment in the story. And, to be fair, no-one is more aware of this than Moses, whose first response to this exciting job offer hand-delivered by the creator of the Universe is, Who me? Who am I to go to Pharoah and bring the people out of Israel? In fact this seems to be the standard response in all the prophetic call stories and I think it is one with which we can resonate. Today we might actually respond to such a call by saying, Who am I? I’m no Moses. But ironically enough that’s exactly what Moses thought. I am reminded of Teresa of Avila’s claim that God has no hands but ours. And that includes you, whoever you are, no matter how insignificant or incapable you might feel.
God speaks compassionately to Moses’ fear promising, I will be with you. That leads Moses to the next logical question, and who, precisely, are you? He’s smart enough to put this question in the mouths of the people he is going to rescue. Not that I have any concerns, here, but uh…what if they want to know your name? Moses turns out to be gutsier than he looks, asking God for some credentials, a character reference in the form of a name. God’s response, in Hebrew, is EHYEH ASHER EHYEH. Often translated, I am who I am it is probably more like I will be who I will be. This is the Divine Name revealed for the first time, and it does, in fact, tell us about the character of this Deity who promises to be with us. If you listen to it in Hebrew it sounds like wind, like spirit? Or maybe like breathing. God self-identifies with being, with what is at the deepest level of reality—beyond our illusions and our fears and our projections, God is the being that simply is, the Truth of reality with a capital T. It is always unfolding, always becoming and always being at the one and the same time.
None of us will ever grasp this AM-ness, this what is-ness completely. We’re not meant to, in that we are finite human beings. What we can do—no, what we are called to do, is to manifest it in our very partial, very incomplete human lives. When we do not manifest the unique expression of the Divine that wants to be revealed through us, we live in slavery. When we deny or prevent that manifestation of Divinity in others, we act as Pharoah. Each of us participates both in being slaves and in the enslavement of others. And all the while, God is calling for the liberation of God’s people. That’s us and it’s those we oppress, both by the evil that we do and the evil that is done our behalf. Who are we? We are the Israelites when we suffer the denial, the dismissal and the rejection of our unique expression in the world. We are Pharoah when we participate in and support systems that exploit and oppress other persons or groups as they seek to express their own full humanity. And we are Moses, in that God comes to each and every one of us, asking us to live into the fullness of God’s image imprinted uniquely onto our very souls, and beyond that to speak the Truth to power, standing up for the fullness of that image as it finds expression in our brothers and sisters.
At the heart of the story of the Burning Bush is nothing less than a revelation of the nature of God. But even more spectacular perhaps, is its revelation of the intimate connection between God and us piddly—or not so piddly—humans. This story points us toward a startling truth that each of us, together with all of creation, is called to manifest a particular aspect of God’s being-ness. It invites us to imagine a co-creative relationship with God that would turn us into something very much like the Burning Bush. We would blaze with the very fire of God, while still maintaining our identity in all of its wholeness and respecting the identities of others. Blazing, but not consumed and not consuming. If stepping into such a vision of your life feels impossible, don’t worry. You’re not alone…God will be with you.
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