Seeing the fire within

We can't even scratch the theological surface of Sunday's first reading (Ex 3:1-8, 13-15) with just one homily or one short reflection. Its significance and usefulness go far beyond Judaism. Even Jesus fell back on this passage in His own major Gospel confrontation with the Sadducees (the "religious right" of that time), to prove His belief in an afterlife.

The reading both contains the call of Moses, the greatest Jewish liberator and law-giver, and gives the explanation of God's proper name: Yahweh. But in the process of narrating these two major events, the Sacred Author also passes on some of the deepest insights of biblical theology.

Yahweh's call of Moses, for instance, comes from the middle of a common wilderness bush, a bush which, according to the late Scripture scholar Carroll Stuhlmueller, daily had been passed by other Sinai shepherds and herdsmen who never noticed the fire burning within it. Only Moses, Yahweh's servant, is observant enough of his everyday surroundings to notice God's presence, recognizing that even his humdrum, sterile path through life is actually a journey "on holy ground."

Seeing inside

It is this everyday, painful life that God not only notices but also takes steps to save, using a person who doesn't think he's capable of anything except following the rear ends of sheep around the Sinai for 15 miles every day. Yahweh sees something in Moses which goes far beyond what he sees in himself.

Only when Moses is called to step into God's work of salvation does he begin to understand who God is. That's when God tells him God's name. We must always remember that in Semitic thought, a person's name represents the person in the deepest way possible. The person and the person's name are interchangeable.

A name isn't just a bunch of arbitrary syllables thrown together and employed as a more civilized way to refer to someone than by using his or her social security number. The name is the person. That's why we're not to use it "in vain" and also why a later generation of Jews refused even to pronounce the name of Yahweh. They felt that such a use gave them blasphemous power over God.

Yet here in this very primitive Jewish narrative, God not only trusts Moses enough to share God's name with him, but He also explains what it means. "I am who am," Yahweh proclaims. "This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you."

Though most Scripture scholars today believe that the name Yahweh probably means, "I am who cause to be," instead of just "I am who am," the concept is still the same. No other individual in the universe can make either statement. We who are once weren't, and our existence automatically doesn't cause others to exist. Only God brings the element of true "otherness" into our lives.

Continuing story

We have to be grateful to Paul for passing on his understanding that what happens to Moses and the Exodus Israelites isn't just the stuff of history books (I Cor 1);1-6, 10-12). The Apostle believes identical things are happening in our lives today.

"The things that happened to them," he writes, "serve as an example. They have been written as a warning to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come." Though Paul is zeroing in here on a comparison between the Chosen People's lack of faith and the lack of faith in the Corinthian community, his basic principle of biblical interpretation is clear: What God did, God does.

And we also have to be grateful to Jesus for pointing out a parallel truth: "Often, God's seeming "inaction" in our lives is actually a sign of God's loving, patient concern (Lk 13:1-9). In His parable of the fig tree, the vinedresser saves the fig tree from destruction by promising to "hoe around it and manure it," hoping that next year, "it will bear fruit."

In the same way, God, who works "in the pits" of our daily lives, never seems to give up on us. God's always there, hoeing and manuring, trusting that next year we'll finally notice the fire which God has put in each of us.

This exodus passage is a terrific text, if we just let ourselves be drawn into it.

(03-12-98) [[In-content Ad]]