A Burning Bush
In a recent movie review written by
Alissa Wilkinson, she reminded us that no two people ever saw the same movie.
While it is true that the film is the same film everyone sees, each of us
experiences the film uniquely from each other. The same is true when we
consider a Bible story. We are each impacted differently according to our life
experiences, our accumulated theologies, and sometimes something as trivial as
the mood I am in when I read or study or hear the story being told. During this
season of Epiphany I have often found myself thinking about God’s manifestation
of Himself to Moses in the burning bush. My thoughts might be different from your
thoughts. I don’t think that means one of us is a failure when it comes to
understanding the Scriptures.
It seems to me that the stories of
the Bible, and the Bible itself, have been given for consideration by an entire
faith community. The Spirit of God seems to be saying to us, come to the
Scriptures with your inquisitiveness, with your questions, with a sense of
empathy for people in differing walks and circumstances of life from that of
your own, come and engage both asking questions and listening for wisdom. Come
to these Scriptures with others and thinking of the others for whom you might
be listening who are not yet ready to listen. We want to listen and read the
stories of the Bible as individuals, who are part of communities. Our communities
are not only those who are in formal communion with us, but are also open ended
with the hope that others might join us and that we might be hospitable in our
being of service to others. This is the spirit in which I would like to offer a
few thoughts on Moses, as he one day experienced seeing a bush on fire, but the
fire was not burning or consuming the bush. Moses wanted to draw near to that
bush.
While we can agree to a few
characteristics told in the story, our perceptions of Moses as he draws near to
the phenomenon might be quite different. How do you view Moses when he draws
near to the bush? I can think in two different ways of him.
One way of perceiving him is that he
was a faithful man in the midst of trials. He had been a child of Hebrew
parents who had to be given to the waters of the Nile as the rulers of Egypt
were taking children of the Hebrews and putting them to death. So Moses’
parents placed him in a basket and let the basket float down the Nile River. Downstream,
a princess of Egypt, part of the same ruling class trying to slaughter the
children of the Hebrews, rescues the child. She expresses thanks to her gods
for the child. He is reared knowing the love of his Hebrew family and the
privilege of his being a loved child in the Egyptian royal household.
We can imagine what each side of his
upbringing might have thought and expected of him. His Hebrew family might have
hoped that in his privileged place the day might come when Moses would speak
truth and reason to the oppressive Egyptian rulers. His Egyptian family might
have thought how Moses would be ever grateful for having been rescued from the
ordinary lot of a Hebrew. Perhaps Moses could show other Hebrews how given some
of the education and privileges of Egyptians, they could be lifted up from
their less than Egyptian backgrounds. I can expect Moses expecting his special
position as connected both to the Egyptian royal family and to His Hebrew
relatives, to provide the way he would minister to the two cultures. Instead
Moses one day killed an Egyptian guard abusing a Hebrew. The intervention was
seen by others. Moses became an outlaw who fled Egypt and lost his ability to
influence the situation.
He went to the desert wilderness of
Arabia. He married a Midianite woman, and shepherded the sheep of the family
into which he married. The years, and even decades passed. A child was born and
he gave the child a name which was associated with his being a stranger in a
strange land. We can perhaps see in Moses the faithfulness of a man who lives
life out despite its hardships. He has seemingly lost everything but is content
to carry on as a stranger in a strange land.
Or is his demeanor almost the
opposite? He grieves over the fact that he is a stranger in a strange land. He
perhaps grieves over what could have been if he hadn’t grown angry and ruined
his opportunities to someday plead for the Hebrew cause, with those members of
royal family household.
For me, it is the second possibility
that I have dwelt on as I have thought about Moses perhaps in the morning of
the day when he would experience interaction with a burning bush. I have
thought this, partly because I made a choice in my earlier life that moved my
path from one that might have been more academic in nature, to one where my
life has been mostly that of a laborer. I have known the questions of what
might have been if only I had not chosen this or done that. Perhaps Moses thought
about such questions, perhaps he didn’t. If he did, he might have come to the
conclusion that his life was to be something of a waste in this nearly forsaken
desert. He was a stranger in a strange land. He would never really be one of
those people. That had been true for much of his life really. He was a Hebrew
but most Hebrews saw him as a privileged Egyptian. He had grown up in the royal
household, but there were those who knew the truth that he was one of those
Hebrew kids who didn’t really belong in the palace, but the princess had mercy
on him like she would if she had found a stray kitten. Moses had reason all of
his life to feel as if he were the stranger in a strange land. He must have
felt especially connected to God’s law that was expressed through him when it
expressed how Israel was to be a people who honored those who were strangers in
their midst. They were to remember that they had been strangers in Egypt. But
all that was in the hidden unknown future. On the morning when Moses would see
a burning bush, he only had a shattered history behind him and the place of
being a stranger in a stranger in a strange land.
I can imagine him cursing the desert
sand beneath his feet during his bad mood days in his experience. I can think
of many people whose stories I know only slightly. They grew up in a household
of faith where they discovered faith in a child’s way that didn’t well prepare
for them for the struggles of life in a world where they grew up and found the
easy cliché answers they had trusted as children didn’t fit so well the pain
filled realities of adult life. Or they started the faith well, and then
personal failures and troubles left them believing they had missed it. Their
sins, their lack of wisdom, their weakness of character had brought them to
miss the mark. They looked upon others with a bit of jealousy, but for
themselves they could only conclude that they were the ones who had failed. For
some it is difficult to believe that God exists. For many though, the thought
that he exists lives alongside a sense that they had begun the faith once and
had failed. God was distant. They were more distant from him than he from them.
It no longer mattered. One day of anger had turned a potentially wonderful life
into a life of exile and emptiness. It was this sense of the life of Moses and
I think of many others in my day that led me to think about Moses and the
burning bush.
He drew near to the burning bush to
get a closer look. But the burning bush revealed the God who had come into the
desert to reach Moses in his lowly exile. We think of places where God is. We
think of places of abundance. Life in Egypt had its abundances, fed by the
glorious Nile. Life in the lands of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had their
abundances where the rains fell in due season, and the grains and the wine grew
in abundance. But the desert seemed like the place of failure, of poverty, of
emptiness. The dry parched soil seemed to be especially cursed. But before the
day ended, God’s manifestation of himself to Moses through the burning bush
would transform Moses’ understanding of place. The burning bush was a
manifestation that God was present in this very place. As God had seen Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and even Ishmael and Hagar, he now saw Moses, the stranger in the
strange land. He brought his mercy and grace and presence to a table in the
wilderness. Moses, who might have recently cursed this desert ground heard now
to remove his sandals for he stood on sacred holy ground. What had been the place
of exile, of separation, and of failure was now the place of grace, of mercy,
of deliverance, and redemption. No longer was the desert sand something
seemingly cursed, but something peculiarly holy. It had become sanctified by
God’s presence. The life of suffering and trial that had been endured by Moses
in years of seeming emptiness was now transformed by what had always been true.
God had always seen him. God had always watched over him. God had always loved
him.
This seems to me a lesson of the
season of Epiphany, the lesson of signs and wonders. We are weak and are
consumed by unbelief unless we sense God’s care and love for us. We perhaps
shouldn’t need signs and wonders, but in our weakness we need assured that our
cause is part of God’s cause. God called Moses through the burning bush,
answering multitudes of prayers for an oppressed people that were praying for
deliverance. We can never fully grasp the ways of God. The season of Epiphany
fits perfectly between the incarnation celebrated at Christmas and the call by
Christ to follow him even though it means sharing his sufferings during the
season of Lent. Who would venture to follow Christ into the Wilderness of his
sufferings without having the manifestations of Epiphany showing us that God
was present and delighted in us because he has loved us and has loved the world
with a perfect and enduring love. My prayer is that for those who seem
troubled, discouraged, distressed, believing that they have lost the faith,
lost their way, weren’t faithful enough, or whatever might plague them that you
would see in Moses experience of the burning bush your own soul being spoken to
by a God who travels the distance necessary find a single lost lamb. The most
barren desert soil becomes holy ground when you discover God is present.
