Good morning, on this third Sunday in Lent. I’ll do something this morning I’ve done a handful of times in my priesthood: preach to you a sermon that came to me last night, when the other one had been entirely written. I’ve only done this before because I had to: like in 2005 when Pope John Paul II died and I was set to give the principal sermon at Grace Church in downtown Manhattan. I was newly a priest, 28, and I can’t believe that rector didn’t step in and give his own sermon. But I did it, and it worked out.
Last night’s last-minute change wasn’t as important as that, but more just about my fondness for this passage from Exodus, and the fact that I’ve never preached on it. It also speaks to us more (I believe) than the Gospel does, this week, with its falling towers and ill-fated fig trees.
We all probably know this story: Moses encounters God for the first time as a burning bush, and God reveals to him, Moses, his mission in Egypt to free God’s people. God also reveals his divine name: Yahweh, or “I am”-- one who cannot be named, or defined, or pinned down. My favorite translation of this mysterious name for God in the Hebrew is “I will be what I will be.” That isn’t your business.
What struck me suddenly last night was the incredible fact that something so huge, so historically world-changing as the revelation for the very first time of the God of Israel to Moses and eventually the entire Hebrew people, and the mission of Moses to free the Hebrew slaves after 400 years of captivity which will eventually lead them to the Promised Land of Canaan … all this hinges on one thing, one fragile, simple thing: that Moses would turn aside from what he was doing that day, and notice, that bush.
The act of turning aside is so important that the story makes mention of it twice: “Moses said, I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” And then, next: “When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush.”
Now you could say, well the burning bush was so exceptional that he couldn’t but have turned aside. Like the version of it in Cecil B. DeMille’s movie The Ten Commandments where it’s a gigantic talking efflorescent tree.
Or you could say that, had the bush not gotten Moses’ attention, then surely God would have tried something else; a sort of Mel Brooks scenario with ever-more dramatic stunts on God’s part until something finally gets through to Moses. Lightning strikes, boulders rolling down the hill.
Most likely what we have here is a bush that just grows in that area, which becomes dazzlingly red at a certain time of year; these bushes still grow there. And by this scenario, the course of history rests on whether Moses was in such a frame of mind that day tending to his sheep that he would take a moment from the work he was doing and notice something, off to the side--something possibly quite ordinary at first. The miracle is that he turned, and he noticed.
Our ability to pay attention to things, to hear God’s voice and see God in the things around us may not make such a huge difference in the world, but it certainly can in our own lives and the lives of those around us. You could say that God getting Moses’ attention, is the same in kind if not in degree as the ways God still tries to get our attention.
Annie Dillard speaks about this in her book, For the Time Being. She writes:
There is no holier age than ours, and never a less. There is no less holiness, at this time, as you are reading this, than there was the day the Red Sea parted. Or that day in the 30th year on the 4th month on the 5th day of the month as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Kebar and the heavens opened and he saw visions of God. There is no less Enlightenment in the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha’s bow tree…
And where does this leave us as we approach (this week) the mid-way point of Lent?
Lent is a time to really examine our lives for clutter, or single-minded focus that might have us walking by things that we should turn aside for. We are too distracted. We’re too busy. We are probably, every single person here (I know I am) missing things we should be paying attention to. The quality of our lives, and those around us, extending maybe further than we can imagine, depends on our paying attention. And God doesn’t always make things screamingly obvious. That’s often not God’s way, perhaps to put a little bit of the burden on us.
And so take a moment this week to see what you can do to make yourself more open to “turning aside” like Moses did that day in the desert, when he had plenty else to do, too. It begins with clearing out things that keep our gazes pointed straight ahead, desperate to accomplish the next thing, and then the next, which just feeds itself and leaves us always rushing forward. Make use of your Lent. Slow down. Look around. See where God might be already there just waiting for you to notice. Amen.