Burning Bush, Holy Name

Radio New Jerusalem

Burning Bush, Holy Name

A Lentem Reflection For
The Church of Jesus Christ Incarcerated

March 11, 2007

By Philip D. Ropp

       Moses was merely minding his own business and that of his father-in-law, Jethro. Tending sheep, leading the flock across the desert, he comes to Mount Horeb, the “mountain of God,” which would later take on the name of the entire surrounding region: Sinai. There was a bush and it was on fire; and, though on fire, it was not consumed. As if that was not strange enough, God spoke to Moses from the midst of the burning bush.

        It is fitting that it is here that God chooses to reveal himself to Moses; in this very place. It is the place where the Ten Commandments would be handed down in an even more dramatic encounter with the Lord. It is here that the newly formed, called and delivered nation of Israel would first offer itself up to pagan idolatry in the form of the golden calf. It is the same place from which the children of Israel would one day begin their long trek through the wilderness to the Promised Land, and, it might be said, it is with this strange incident that this journey really begins. Most significantly, it is in this place, at this time, that Moses becomes acquainted with the God of his fathers; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God that had become lost to the Israelites during their sojourn in Egypt; the God that they had forsaken for the easy ways of the Egyptian world. Easy ways that began as the dream of unbridled prosperity in the time of Joseph, and ended in the nightmare of slavery and brutal oppression in the time before the infant Moses drifted in among the bulrushes and was rescued by pharaoh’s daughter; rescued so that he might fulfill the destiny he now assumes as deliverer of his people.

        In Genesis 4: 26, during the days when Seth, the son of Adam, had begotten a son named Enosh, we are told that it was: “At that time men began to invoke the LORD by name.” Yet in the days in Egypt, the name of God had been forgotten and the ways of the Lord had been forsaken. But God did not forget his people, and so appears to Moses from the midst of the burning bush to tell him that he has witnessed the oppression of his people and has chosen to rescue them out of their affliction. Moses, then, asks the fair and rightfully self conscious question, “But when I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” God replies, “I am who am.” Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you.”

        In the Hebrew, the expression “I am who am,” is read as YHWH. It is called the “Tetragrammaton” which means “four letters” in Greek, and refers to the four Hebrew consonants, י‎ (yodh) ה‎ (heh) ו‎ (waw) ה‎ (heh), of which the word is comprised. Since Hebrew is a language without vowels, scholars during the Middle Ages began inserting the vowels from the generic Hebrew word for lord, “adonai” into these consonants and produced the word “Jehovah.” Today’s linguists mostly agree that “Yahweh” is closer to the intention of the original language. Truth be known, we have little actual knowledge of the nuances that make up the pronunciation of Classical Hebrew. In the time of Jesus, Hebrew had already been a dead language for nearly 500 years, and the Jewish rabbis had accepted the practice of substituting generic terms in place of the Holy Name for fear of offending God and committing blasphemy by mispronouncing it.

        This brings into sharper focus the difficulty Jesus encounters in John 8:58 when he says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” It is his uttering of the Holy Name that infuriated the Jews present and, “So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the Temple area.” The point to this is that while the name of God is still known by the time that Jesus walked the earth, it is evident that, once again, the remnant children of Israel, now subjected to a Roman occupation that was, in many ways, as oppressive as the slavery of the Egyptians, have, again, forgotten who he is. This is clearly the symbolic meaning of the fact that, by now, God has a name that no one can say, and so has become merely an impersonal concept reduced to a collection of laws that no one can follow. In the Greek it is evident that John has chosen his words very carefully for this passage. The word used for “came to be” is the one used in the Gospel’s powerful prologue, while the word for “AM” is reserved exclusively for the Logos, the Holy “Word” of God. And so we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be.” John has deftly showed us, through a superior command of language, that God does indeed have a name that we can pronounce. It is Jesus Christ, and it is by this name and in this name that we are saved.

        In the Hebrew, the name “Jesus” is Yeshua and it means, literally, “Yahweh’s deliverer.” The word “Christ,” a Greek word, is usually considered to be the equivalent of the Hebrew word messiah, which means “God’s anointed;” but it is more than this. The word is derived from the Sanscrit word Krishna, in Hindu culture an “Avatar of Vishnu” – a son of God; a savior of humankind. And so the name Jesus Christ encapsulates the Name of God and his promise of salvation, as well as the Son of God as the agent of this redemption. And so we rejoice, for God has revealed himself to us again as surely as he did to Moses within that burning bush. Further, in Jesus, he has revealed himself as both creator God and delivering savior. In Jesus he is both Yahweh and Moses. Our kinsman redeemer who, as John points out in chapter 1 verse 14 of his Gospel, “…made his dwelling among us…” or, in a more literal translation of the Greek, “pitched his tent among us.” He has, in fact, become one of us and become one with us, that we might make our encampment together forever.

        As we move on down the road towards Easter, let us make camp with him and enjoy the sweet savor of the meal he prepares for us on the way to eternity. Let us rejoice in the knowledge that our God is still the tent dwelling God Israel encountered in the wilderness and worshipped at the tabernacle. And more, let us experience together the awesome reality that no longer is this tent dwelling God a cloud above the Ark of the Covenant and a voice that speaks from between the cherubim, but has indeed become flesh of our flesh, and offered himself up in unquestioning and unfathomable love for us, that we might be saved. Let us make camp with him and make this journey to the Cross together. And let us do so in the full realization that when he bows his head, and commends his spirit, the veil that separates us from the Holy of Holies is rent asunder to reveal the Mercy Seat with our savior – the True Ark of the Covenant – upon it; reaching out to us with the hands that were pierced for our iniquities.

        Today, Jesus has issued to us a call to repentance. He has told us truthfully that our suffering in this life is not the result of our sin, but that, ultimately, our sin will cause us to perish and prevent us from the joy that is to be ours in the life to come. We have been likened to a barren fig tree that has been given one more chance to bear fruit before it is cut down. As we make our way with Jesus along the road to Calvary, let us offer up our sins to him in repentance and confession and cultivate and fertilize our spiritual life with prayer and penance that we might bear much fruit in both this life, and that which is to come.

        In this Communion meal that we share, God chooses to reveal himself to us yet again. It is the miracle that we share as the new Israel that he has called to walk behind him in the desert and through the wilderness towards the Promised Land. Our Lord has pitched his tent with us to stay, and his Real Presence with us in the elements of the Eucharist is every bit the miracle that was the bush that burned and was not consumed.

        Our Lord is called the sweet rose of Sharon, he is called the bright morning star; he is called the great rock of ages. He is called King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But his name is Jesus, and never shall we forget it.

March 11, 2007

Third Sunday of Lent

Psalm: Sunday 9

Reading 1
Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15

Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro,
the priest of Midian.
Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb,
the mountain of God.
There an angel of the LORD appeared to Moses in fire
flaming out of a bush.
As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush,
though on fire, was not consumed.
So Moses decided,
“I must go over to look at this remarkable sight,
and see why the bush is not burned.”

When the LORD saw him coming over to look at it more closely,
God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
He answered, “Here I am.”
God said, “Come no nearer!
Remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place where you stand is holy ground.
I am the God of your fathers,” he continued,
“the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”
Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
But the LORD said,
“I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt
and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers,
so I know well what they are suffering.
Therefore I have come down to rescue them
from the hands of the Egyptians
and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land,
a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Moses said to God, “But when I go to the Israelites
and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’
if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?”
God replied, “I am who am.”
Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites:
I AM sent me to you.”

God spoke further to Moses, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites:
The LORD, the God of your fathers,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,
has sent me to you.

“This is my name forever;
thus am I to be remembered through all generations.”

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 103: 1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 11

R. (8a) The Lord is kind and merciful.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
He pardons all your iniquities,
heals all your ills,
He redeems your life from destruction,
crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
The LORD secures justice
and the rights of all the oppressed.
He has made known his ways to Moses,
and his deeds to the children of Israel.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

Reading II
1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
that our ancestors were all under the cloud
and all passed through the sea,
and all of them were baptized into Moses
in the cloud and in the sea.
All ate the same spiritual food,
and all drank the same spiritual drink,
for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them,
and the rock was the Christ.
Yet God was not pleased with most of them,
for they were struck down in the desert.

These things happened as examples for us,
so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.
Do not grumble as some of them did,
and suffered death by the destroyer.
These things happened to them as an example,
and they have been written down as a warning to us,
upon whom the end of the ages has come.
Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure
should take care not to fall.

Gospel
Lk 13:1-9

Some people told Jesus about the Galileans
whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way
they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?
By no means!
But I tell you, if you do not repent,
you will all perish as they did!
Or those eighteen people who were killed
when the tower at Siloam fell on them—
do you think they were more guilty
than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
By no means!
But I tell you, if you do not repent,
you will all perish as they did!”

And he told them this parable:
“There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard,
and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none,
he said to the gardener,
‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree
but have found none.
So cut it down.
Why should it exhaust the soil?’
He said to him in reply,
‘Sir, leave it for this year also,
and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it;
it may bear fruit in the future.
If not you can cut it down.’”

Lectionary for Mass, Copyright © 1970, 1986, 1992, 1998, 2001 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.