3rd Sunday of Lent – Year C
Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15 1st Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12 Luke 13:1-9
A further mystical experience is recounted from the collective ancient Jewish memory in today’s first lesson. This time, Moses was the theological guest of honor who met the God who would intervene in human history on the part of a people cruelly treated. They were not just any people; they were God’s Chosen People. In the setting of Pharonic Egypt, servile conditions, and the harshness of the Sinai desert, in the mid-second millennium BC, a theophany was again the vehicle of revelation. Remember, a theophany is a miraculous experience in which God’s mysterious reality is somehow experienced in unforgettable, human, audio-visual terms. Merely the sight of “the burning bush” told Moses that something out of the ordinary was happening. His curiosity was engaged. He went to see why the bush was not consumed by the flames. How very human! This was a dimension of divine revelation we might call discovery, much akin to good scientific curiosity and resultant insight. Note that the text described it as “an angel of the Lord” which “appeared in fire.” The detail of a bush burning but undamaged ought not distract us from the purposes of the story: vocation, revelation, and hope for salvation. The story describes an event which no one else witnessed. In this way, it paralleled many other vocation stories in sacred scripture: Abraham (see Genesis 15:1); Isaiah (see Isaiah 6:1); Jeremiah (see Jeremiah 1:4); John the Baptist (see Luke 1:8) and Mary the Mother of Jesus (see Luke 1:26). It was yet another milestone in a constantly renewing and maturing relationship between God and humanity.
The dialogue which carries this story is crucial. This was a revelatory conversation between God and a mortal in which directions were given, and questions were posed and answered, and a covenant was deepened. Moses was not only called; he was allowed to understand, and hence, to know God rather well. When Moses asked for God’s name, the story asserts a remarkably bold, yet intimate, moment. The value placed on an individual’s name in ancient times was at once great and delicate. One’s name was known only to and spoken by those who were allowed to know it and allowed to speak it. No one spoke a name unless either a peer or a superior to the named individual. One’s name was thought to contain a part of the essence of the individual’s meaning. For Moses to hear the Divine Name uttered (a word which translates into English not very clearly!) was a profound sign of God’s tremendous trust in him, possibly akin to friendship. That God’s people were to eventually hear God’s spoken name was likewise a sign that they were dear to and intimate with the God who saved them. [By the way, this prohibition against uttering the Divine Name (sometimes transliterated into English as YHWH) was concretized in the 2nd Commandment of the Decalogue. That commandment does not prohibit oaths or the uttering of impolite phrases like “God damn...” and the like. Cultural rules and customs of civil politeness govern and/or prohibit such speech in polite company. The 2nd Commandment prohibited Hebrew speakers from uttering the Divine Name itself as an acknowledgment of God’s superiority to all humanity.]
Moses’ theophanic mystical experiences (he had many) changed him. Remember he had fled to the desert in the first place because he had killed a man in Egypt. The burning bush experience moved him to return and risk not only prosecution, but untold complications by assuming leadership over the enslaved Israelites, including resistence from Pharaoh himself, his adoptive grand-father. His meeting with God’s presence had changed him indeed.
The Gospel text has no clear harmonious connection with the first lesson. Jesus reacted to information provided him about how the Roman official, Pilate, had punished some Galileans. His reaction was likely unexpected for its lack of sympathy and its provocative caution that his audience members themselves repent or suffer a similar unhappy end. The parable Jesus provided probably left the audience in wonderment and confusion. What could Jesus have meant by this? The literary setting for this conversation was a series of engagements between Jesus and the crowds some of which was encouraging, and some of which was provocative. Perhaps his tone of voice and threatening words served parallel purposes to that of the burning bush theophany for Moses. Immediately after this passage, the scene shifted to that of a synagogue in which Jesus had been teaching and where he would perform a healing miracle. This whole series of encounters – a mix of preaching, teaching, exhortation and healing – was certainly meant to engage the attention of his disciples, and to leave them changed. Change for the believer must be on-going, dynamic, profound and constructive. The true disciple never stops changing, growing or learning.
Paul was wrestling with his Corinthian Christians who had been disciples long enough to encounter the temptations of complacency and infighting. His image of the ancient Israelites moving through the desert under a cloud and followed by a metaphorical rock is not elegant. Likely a reference to the rock which Moses struck with his staff and from which water flowed to quench the Israelites’ thirst, Paul used it as a metaphor for Christ who provides true spiritual food and drink. Yes, it really is a poor image to the 21st Century imagination. Paul was trying to instil further confidence and a bit of awe. The image is hardly effective today.
All in all, we find ourselves nearly three weeks into Lent, a season of approximately “forty days” and contrived for us baptized disciples to resemble a festival pilgrimage of remembrance, reflection, re-evaluation and renewal. How do you describe your growth and change in the Gospel? Does the possibility of change engage you as it did Moses?