The Friday Letters

5 March 2010

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures this third Sunday in Lent begins thus:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.

This is a well known Bible story if any of them are, having benefited from portrayals in numerous movies. During our Wednesday evening sessions the past two weeks we’ve been watching a video about the history of the Davidic Kingdom. Last week there was much time spent on Moses and I was impressed again (I’d seen the video before) by how emotionally powerfully they had portrayed Moses.

It’s hard for us to think of Moses as anything but the first amongst prophets, the mighty wielder of God’s own staff, the one chosen to lead God’s people out of slavery and into freedom. He is that, true, but he’s also something else, especially at the beginning. When Moses spots that famous burning bush, that flaming shrubbery, that incendiary topiary, he is not the greatest prophet Israel has ever known. Then, he is a fugitive. A murderer and escaped slave. He doesn’t even have his own sheep for crying out loud. He is the ancient world’s equivalent of a freeloading son-in-law given some menial task in his new wife’s father’s company.

Then he meets an angel of The Lord, and all changes. It is a powerful moment, not just spiritually but emotionally. Our history video also made much of another moment, some forty years later, when Moses stood overlooking the promised land that he had led his people to through much trial and tribulation. He’d spent every moment of his life since encountering the burning bush working to get to that promised land, and at the very end, with milk and honey in sight, God said no. No, you will not enter. Your people can go in, but you will die here.

Put that way, it’s hard not to shed tears for Moses. No doubt Moses did shed tears, though perhaps he was beyond them by then. The Rabbi on the video tried to make us feel a bit better about it. He said something like, “It’s true Moses never got to enter the promised land, but he’s also the only man in history who ever got to see God face to face. I guess you take what God offers.” The Rabbi makes a good point, though as far as I can tell, as soon as Moses saw that bush he was a dead man. He received a forty year stay of execution, but his life as he knew it was then and forever forward over. I think he knew it too, as he tried to get out of the job while standing next to the bush and at other times throughout his career.

Moses stands as an icon of our faith not only because of his own story but because of how his story informs our own. Have you been as low as Moses was? Convicted, guilty, and run away into shame? Have you been called by God and known that call was the end of your life as you knew it? Have you spent the precious years of your life trying to get to the promised land only to find that you weren’t going to get there? That’s OK. Sometimes, getting to the promised land isn’t as important as finding God on the journey there.

Peace,

Ben.