To Be a Burning Bush

I have mentioned before that as Christians who worship as Episcopalians we follow the calendar of the church. In our worship together we commemorate the seasons and holy days of the church year. The calendar is a blessing to us, a tool to help deepen our relationship with God, both as individuals and as a community. Lent is a blessing… an opportunity to strengthen our focus and enrich our faith.

One aspect of being a liturgical church that follows a set calendar is that the Scripture lessons for any given day are prescribed for us. On this Third Sunday in Lent in lectionary year C, we are required to read certain lessons. I cannot pick just my favorite passages from the Bible and offer them to you whenever I please. We cannot, in our worship, use just the lessons we like. We must read and hear those appointed for the Third Sunday in Lent, lectionary year C.

Among those readings appointed for the Third Sunday in Lent, there are several that I do not like. Those from the New Testament—the epistle and the Gospel. Did you really listen to them? I don’t even want to hear those lessons today, much less try to preach them to you… to explain them, to justify them, to interpret them.

Both the epistle and the Gospel address a question that certainly faces us: Why do bad things happen in this world of God’s? Why do really terrible things happen to God’s people? And even more pointedly: If something really bad happens to someone does that mean that person is a bad person? Do terrible things happen because people are bad or unholy? In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul answers that question "yes." And, he continues, let that be a lesson to you. Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, answering the very same question says, "no". The particular Galileans murdered by Pilate were not killed because they were particularly evil. No, the people crushed by the falling tower of Siloam did not die because they did something wrong. But, Jesus continues, unless you do the right thing now and repent, something equally terrible will happen to you.

What do we do with passages like these, that don’t proclaim a message I like or understand? One thing all of us tend to do with difficult passages like these is to massage them… reorient them… retell them from our own perspective… change the focus… modify the words of Scripture until they do fit our own idea of what they should say. We rework them until they describe or speak in the voice of our God.

I don’t have the energy this week to massage or rewrite these Scripture passages until they fit my own personal gospel. Even if that were an appropriate practice, it takes a lot of energy to make the Word of the Lord say what we think it should say, and it’s been a very long week. I don’t hear the living God in these passages today and I can’t force my own God into them.

So what do we do with them? I think we just put them down. Right in the middle of the room. In a big, awkward heap. We do not deny them, ignore them, erase them. We leave them right there so we have to stumble over them on our way to communion. We pile them in the middle of the living room so that we have to climb over them to get to the TV… we have to shove past them to get to the kitchen. They are literally the 500 pound gorilla in the room. And that’s OK. At the very least they will still be there three years from now when it is again the Third Sunday of Lent in year C, and we will read them and hear them again.

Fortunately, on this Third Sunday in Lent we also have the wonderful passage from Exodus. The Word of God has not left me comfortless. It’s the glorious, vivid story of Moses and the burning bush. Do you find the living God in this passage? Does the brightness and glory of God shine through? Can you, for example, put yourself in Moses’ shoes… or sandals? Can you perhaps imagine yourself in the presence of God’s glory and hear God’s voice speaking to you?

This passage assures us that ours is a God who will do anything to save his people. Who loves his people and grieves when they are enslaved. Who acts to liberate and support them. And who empowers Moses well beyond Moses’ wildest dreams to be a participant in God’s plan of salvation. Can you place yourselves in Moses’ sandals, standing on holy ground, hearing the voice of God sending you on a mission to help liberate God’s people in need? I do pray that there are some Moseses here now this morning. God needs you.

But I am also aware that the voice of God that speaks to us from the pages of Holy Scripture does not speak just one message that is always the same for every person every day. The word of the Lord comes in many voices, spoken to different people on different days. So there is hope that some day I personally will hear the voice of God speak from that heap of Scripture I left in the middle of the floor earlier.

It is also possible that more than one voice speaks from this Old Testament story. If you cannot image yourself as Moses, how about the bush? An ordinary scrubby dessert bush. Can you put yourself in this story as the bush?

Why is the bush even in this story? Why didn’t a voice boom from heaven to get Moses’ attention? Or why didn’t he climb a mountain? Why is the bush in this story if not to give us an image to ponder?

The bush was the bearer of God’s glory, the vessel for God’s presence. A scraggly dessert shrub located somewhere beyond the wilderness. Ordinary, unremarkable, everyday. Just a bush. I could be a bush. You could be a bush. But this completely unremarkable bush burns with the glory of God. A flame of God’s light and glory burning right within my own heart and soul. Not to trivialize the event, but it’s like having your own personal campfire alight with the fire of heaven.

It’s a comforting image. The fire that brings warmth into the cold, dancing light into the dark. Comfort in all the interior places that are cold, dark or lonely. And a fire brings safety and security, too. Do you remember this morning’s collect where we prayed that God would protect us from the dangers that assault the body and the evil that threatens the soul? Especially in the dark, a fire provides protection from wild beasts and other dangers of the night. Warmth, comfort and security… without being consumed. That’s what it is to be a burning bush.

There’s another aspect of this image of being a burning bush that we can explore. A Lenten quality. Fire also purifies. In Lent we are challenged to examine our souls and purify ourselves of sin. And in today’s Gospel Jesus does call us to repent. Fire burns away impurities. Consider this Lenten discipline. Sometime before worship sit down with a piece of paper and write out your specific sins against God and your neighbor from the past week. Write down everything that burdens your soul. You don’t have to show it to anybody. Then in our corporate worship in the silence between the invitation to confession and the saying of the general confession, silently bring those sins to mind. You will be absolved. Burn the paper. Let the fire consume your sins. This is a common exercise on retreats. There is no reason we can’t do it individually during Lent.

One more facet of being a burning bush… We can be a light to others. We can bring the light and glory of love of God to others. At the same time you look back on the past week to examine your sins, look forward to the week ahead. What faces will you see, what individuals will you encounter? Are there any who really need the light of God in their lives, who need to know that God loves them? You can bring that light, that love. By acts of kindness, by showing compassion or patience, or even more, by speaking in the voice of the burning bush. The voice in the bush said to Moses, "I will be with you." Who in your life needs to be assured that God is with them? You can be that voice. A small insignificant shrub, but aflame with the glory and love of God. Think of the power if all of us walk out of here today a bunch of little individual burning bushes, walking out into the world alight with the glory and love of God.

I like to think that when those Galileans were murdered by Pilate for absolutely no reason or those people died for no reason in the accident at Siloam… that they saw nearby a burning bush. Maybe even in the midst of those terrible things the fire of God burned in their own hearts or maybe they saw a burning bush aflame with the love and glory of God in the person standing right next to them.

Image yourself a burning bush and be comforted. Be comforted by the light and warmth and love of God’s presence. And be cleansed by God’s purifying fire. And remember that, by God’s grace, you may be the vessel that shines with the light of God into another’s darkness. Anybody can be a burning bush.