Texts: Exodus 3:1-14; Matthew 13:33
Speaker: Joel Miller
What if I told you I’ve seen the burning bush. Not a burning bush, but as Ohio State fans can surely appreciate, THE burning bush. In person, on location, with my own eyes. The one our Bibles say Moses saw so many years ago. I’ve seen that burning bush.
I was 22 years old. It was my senior year of college. It was a study abroad semester, in Cairo, Egypt. Over one extended weekend, we made a trip into the Sinai Peninsula to climb THE Mt. Sinai, or A Mt. Sinai. No one’s quite sure. At the base of this Mt. Sinai is the world’s oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery, also containing the world’s oldest continuously operating library – St. Catherines Monastery. And inside the walls of St. Catherines, in an open air space is the burning bush.
In case you’re wondering, it’s pretty big – over ten feet wide. It’s a species of bramble – Rubus sanctus. It is claimed that it won’t grow in any other area of the Sinai Peninsula. You do, like Moses, need to take off your shoes when you’re near it to honor holy ground. And it is not, as you may have guessed, on fire. It’s green. It’s a bush. And it may, or may not, be the very bush in the very location that changed the life of Moses, the Jewish people, and the world. It did not, especially, change my life.
The story of the burning bush is pivotal in the biblical narrative. Remember that at this point Moses is not a young man. He was a baby in the Nile River when Pharaoh’s daughter found and adopted him and raised him in the palace. He was a grown man when he saw an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. Moses killed the taskmaster, and fled for his life. He met a holy man from another tribe, married his daughter, had children, and grew his flock, which he shepherded in the wilderness. That’s what he was doing, on a day like any other, when he looked and saw a bush blazing with fire but not consumed. Moses “turned aside” the text says, to see this wonder, and is instructed by the Divine voice to take off his shoes to honor the holy ground. A few chapters later we learn that Moses was about 80 years old. It’s the perfect age to really get started with your calling in life.
There’s a Jewish midrash, a creative teaching, that says Moses had visited the bush many times and God had tried and failed to speak with him each time. So God finally decided to light the bush on fire to get Moses’ attention.
God says, more or less: Moses, now that I have your attention, now that you feel this good earth beneath your feet, I need your help. I’ve seen the suffering of my people, Moses. They’re crying out under their oppression. I want to relieve their suffering. And I’d like to do that through you.
Famously, Moses hesitates, even resists. He feels small, insignificant, incapable. And besides, what’s he supposed to tell the people? That he had a talk with a plant claiming to be God? What’s your name, anyways? Moses asks God.
Famously, God gives God’s name in intentionally ambiguous Hebrew: אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה It could be translated as “I Am Who I Am,” or “I Am What I Am,” or “I Will Be What I Will Be,” or, a slightly looser translation: “I am the unnamable, untamable fire within every atom of this world. I am the light behind every conscious thought in your mind. I am the urge behind every longing for justice and liberation.” Now go, embody me in your small, significant life, your aging frame, made capable by a power beyond your knowing.
One of the remarkable things about this story is that it flips the script on who is seeking who between humanity and God. There is no indication whatsoever that Moses woke up that morning thinking: Today is the day I learn the name of God. Rather, everything points to God who is in search of Moses, and finds him, and repeatedly invites him into deeper communion and courage.
The great 20th century rabbi and scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel highlights this very thing in his book God In Search of Man. Heschel notes that the first question in the Bible is not one that humanity poses to God. Rather, God poses a question to humanity. In the garden, after the man and the woman have eaten from the tree of knowledge, they hide themselves. And it is God who comes looking for them. God asks, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:9. That’s the question, Heschel writes, God continually poses to us. Where are you? When we’re able to hear that question, we’re also better able to hear where God would have us be – embodying compassion and justice in the world, relieving the suffering of ourselves and others, standing, always, on holy ground.
If you’re keeping track, so far we have heard from the Hebrew Bible, Jewish midrash, and a modern rabbi as we prepare for Lawrence’s baptism, a Jewish man drawn to Christian faith through this Mennonite congregation. My intention is to honor that tremendously rich tradition, and to celebrate that one can be a Jewish Mennonite Christian with, as Lawrence will soon share – a layer of Buddhism, and a healthy dose of scientific inquiry tossed in for good measure.
If you want to know what a Mennonite interpretation of the burning bush looks like, I think the first half of today’s service is a perfect example. Today the benches of this sanctuary are aflame with the presence of God through these colorful and lovingly made comforters. Burning bushes all around us. Rather than just one Moses hearing the call to relieve the suffering of God’s people, many hands have contributed to this work. Some of them are even over 80 years old. These comforters embody our love and presence of God for refugees around the world.
Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as being like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. It’s a one sentence parable. Three measures was like 50 pounds of flour. And the word “mixed” is literally translated as “hid.” “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman hid in a ridiculously large amount of flour, until all of it was leavened.” Sometimes God gets our attention through a flaming bush, and sometimes the goodness of God is so hidden you can’t tell the difference between it and the sustenance of bread, the warmth and beauty of cloth, the smallness and wondrous significance a single human life.
If any of you would have met Lawrence on the street just a couple years ago and told him he would soon become a baptized Mennonite, he would have had to restrain himself from laughing in your face, possibly recommending a few clinician friends who can help you work through your delusions. But here he is today, ready to take this step. How does one go from not being able to imagine this possibility, to embracing it?
Well, what if I told you that Lawrence has seen the burning bush? Not the one that didn’t change my life in St. Catherines, although maybe you have?! Much to his own surprise, Lawrence has seen the burning bush of Divine presence that was hidden, like yeast working its way through a batch dough, somehow made visible like flame. He is no longer a young man, but a perfect age to go deeper into his life purpose. He has heard that he, like Moses, like you, like all of us, like Jesus, has a calling, from God, to relieve suffering, to speak truth as best he understands it. To be, like Moses, both humble and bold.
Lawrence – you have been a seeker your whole life, although not necessarily of God. And in this last short while, you have found yourself sought: God in search of Lawrence. You have, I know, had a lot of fun being surprised in this way. It is with great pleasure, and humility of standing on holy ground together, that we baptize you today.