Lent – week 3 (Year C) – Exodus 3:1-16
During Lent we travel with specific characters. In the first week we have journeyed into the wilderness with Israel as they pondered their past and looked toward their future in the promised land – and then stayed in the wilderness with Jesus as he spent 40 days facing ‘the satan.’ Last week we looked at the faith of Abraham cutting a covenant with God, and then the glory of Jesus as he was revealed (with Moses and Elijah) before the disciples on the heights of a mountain. Now, we focus on one of those witnesses and we observe Moses as he encounters the Lord in the burning bush on the side of another mountain – Horeb/Sinai. Moses has been in the wilderness for some years after fleeing the household of the Pharaoh and lived with a priest of Midian. So he was familiar with the area and with the worship of the local gods. So when he comes across this bush that is ablaze – yet not being annihilated or destroyed – he must wonder which of the gods is responsible. So he moves forward to investigate and instead encounters the one that the Rabbis will only ever refer to as the Sacred Tetragrammaton – the one who knows him by name, who knows his ancestors and has seen the affliction of his people; he has heard their cry; he knows of their suffering. So what might happen when we encounter the one who identifies himself as ‘yo he va he‘?
Recorded at St Michael’s 6pm (11’25”)