Burning Bush

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
March 20, 2022

3 Lent C 

          The other morning, I was out for my walk a little later than usual.  The sun was shining and the day was just gorgeous.  Our little neighborhood was quiet.  The school buses had finished their work.  Most people had already headed out to the office.  Trash day was earlier in the week so there were no trash trucks.  The streets were empty.  My walk is about 45 minutes and I prefer to walk in silence without listening to podcasts or even country music.  My walk that morning was stunningly peaceful, beautiful, and quiet.  For those few moments, all seemed right with the world and I felt briefly like I was beyond the wilderness of Covid, war, social injustice, or anything else dry or barren.  On a morning like that, my walk is admittedly a brief escape to a place beyond the wilderness.

          Moses has led his father-in-law’s flock beyond the wilderness this morning.  The Hebrew people are in slavery in Egypt, where Moses, a Hebrew, had been raised in the house of Pharoah.  As a child, Moses had been isolated from the treatment of his own people.  As an adult, when Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, he killed the Egyptian and hid the body.  Moses has now fled for his own life.  In his exile, he meets the priest of Midian, marries one of the priest’s daughters, Zipporah, and is now working for his father-in-law tending his flock.

          Moses is out beyond a wilderness this morning that is largely geographical.  However, I cannot help but think that he feels a sense of being out beyond the wilderness of his own life where he knows that his own people are in slavery, and he is on the run for killing an Egyptian.  I wonder if he was experiencing a sense of peace, and just trying to be present in the quiet moment, when God finds him.  Just when Moses thinks he is safe from his past, God says “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt.  I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters.  I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians….so come, I will send you to Pharoah to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”  Now, many years have passed since Moses fled Egypt, and the Pharoah who wanted Moses’ life has died.  But God is asking Moses to go back to the scene of his crime and ask Pharoah to let the Israelites go.  God cannot possibly think that Moses will jump at this opportunity.  But God has heard the sufferings of God’s people and God has a plan.

          With this story in mind, we hear the gospel reading in which Jesus asks if the Galileans who suffered did so because they were worse sinners than all the other Galileans.  Or were those who died when the tower of Siloam fell worse sinners than everyone else in Jerusalem?  No, Jesus says, but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.  At first glance, and maybe second glance, Jesus makes no sense here.  On the one hand, Jesus is clear that the people did not suffer because they were worse sinners than everyone else.  On the other hand, Jesus tells the people that unless they repent-turn from their sin-they will perish just as the others did.  So….is suffering evidence of sin not???

          This is an important question as we look at the world around us.  Some people get Covid and others don’t.  Some recover and others die.  Some don’t die but don’t recover either.  Are those who suffer worse sinners than the rest of us?  Or some of us live in a place where we do not fear that a bomb will be dropped on us.  We are not fleeing violence and disaster.  Others live in constant fear and are fleeing for their lives leaving everything behind.  Are those who suffer worse sinners than the rest of us?

          Jesus is clear that the answer is “no.”  Suffering is not a measure of sin.  But Jesus is also clear that sin has consequences when he says “But unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”  Then Jesus tells a parable about a man who had a fig tree that bore no fruit for three years.  He wanted to cut down the tree because it was wasting good soil.  But the gardener wants to nurture the tree for one more year and see if the tree will bear fruit before cutting it down.  The parable tells us of God’s patience and love, nurturing us and calling us again and again to repent before allowing us the consequences of our poor choices. 

          God calls Moses from out beyond the wilderness because God has heard the cries of God’s people. God knows their suffering.  That is the same God who heard the cries of the Galileans who suffered and the people of Siloam on whom the tower fell.  The same God hears the cries of those who are sick or dying, the people of Ukraine and other war-torn places, those who do not know where the next meal comes from or how they will care for their children, or who live with injustice because of their skin color, sexual orientation, or anything else that society uses to mark a person as less than equal.  And even out beyond the wilderness, where we, like Moses, may flee for a moment of peace, God calls to us.  God hears the cries of God’s people.  God sees their suffering, and God calls us to engage that suffering and do something about it.  God may not speak to us out of a burning bush with exact instructions.  I have not had an angel of the Lord appear to me on the streets of Connecticut Colony and tell me how to make things better for the Ukrainian people, or those impacted by Covid, or those suffering injustice and cruelty.  But that is no excuse because I and we have made promises in baptism.  Our baptismal covenant, the covenant God makes with us in baptism and that we renew at every baptism, calls us to work for justice and peace, to respect the dignity of every human being, and to seek and serve Christ in all people.  We can do that.  We can give to causes that are supporting Ukrainians.  There is information in the announcements about one way to do that.  We can welcome refugees when they arrive in Northeast Ohio and help them settle here.  Our Outreach Committee is working on ways to do just that.  We can listen to the stories of those different from ourselves and seek to understand.  We are doing that in our Lenten series.  Those stories will move us to work for justice and peace. Perhaps the baptismal covenant is our burning bush that will never stop burning, that shows us the misery of God’s people, and challenges us to make a real difference.  We would do well to say with Moses “I must turn aside and look at this great sight,” and with Moses, to allow that burning bush to change our lives.

                                                Amen