Our Lenten journey has taken us from the wilderness with Jesus after his Baptism and then to the top of the mountain of the Transfiguration and the encounter with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. This third week of Lent provides us with the view from a high mountain in the wilderness.
The Sinai wilderness is rugged and stark. Moses is tending to his father-in-law’s flocks when he sees a bush that is aflame. Given the arid conditions and the intensity of the heat in the summer, this would not be a terribly unusual sight, so at first Moses takes it as an ordinary occurrence. It is only when he realizes that the bush continues to burn but is not being consumed by the fire, that it piques his curiosity. His life, the history of Israel, and the course of the encounter between God and humanity would never be the same. This is, until the Incarnation, the seminal moment of God’s relationship with humanity.
Moses had been living in the wilderness for a very long time and was unaware of the struggle of the Hebrew people in Egypt. Although himself a Hebrew, Moses never lived under the yoke of forced labor as he had been raised in the royal household. Having fled Egypt after murdering an Egyptian foreman for beating a Hebrew slave, Moses had settled into a comfortable semi-nomadic life among the Midianite sheepherders there. Little did he know what God had in store for him.
Although Moses was a Hebrew by race, he was not a Hebrew either by culture or religious practice. His encounter with God was then, much like Abraham before him, completely outside of his experience.
As Jesus took 40 days in the wilderness to prepare for his public ministry, Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness being prepared for his ministry. Unlike Jesus who went intentionally into the wilderness, Moses was in a self-imposed exile, living among the Midianites who, though descendants of Abraham were not descendants of Jacob as were the Hebrews.
Abraham is a man who is always a stranger. He is a Hebrew raised as an Egyptian, but he is not an Egyptian. When he flees to Midian they think him an Egyptian due to his dress, and he lives among them and is even married to a Midianite woman, but he is always an outsider. Later, when he returns to Egypt to rescue the Hebrews they do not recognize him as one of them for he never lived among them, never suffered their plight, and shares nothing of their struggles.
It is this encounter with the Lord in the burning bush that even further separates Moses from the rest of humanity. God called Moses and set him apart from everyone else, and yet he is a man whose entire life experience to that point had already prepared him for this role.
Moses comes down from Horeb transformed as a person and transfixed by his mission. He will return to this mountain again where he will encounter the living God again as he receives the law from the very hand of God.
Among the tasks given by God to Moses was to form this people into one nation. He will lead them from the rich foods and abundant waters of Egypt to the wilderness. Sadly, the same people who cried out to the Lord for release from their slavery also kvetch about their lives in the desert. It is then that the Lord turns his back, causing them to remain in the wilderness for 40 years.
Lent is our time of preparation. Jesus prepared for his mission; Moses was prepared for his mission. The Israelites were prepared to become a nation. The parable of the fig tree that Jesus uses in today’s Gospel reminds us also of our time of preparation, and the demand on all of us to be patient with the growth and development of others.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.