Journey Through Exodus: Chapter 3:1-12

I am splitting chapter 3 into 2 parts…

Exodus 3:1:12

Moses leads his flock “beyond the wilderness” where he comes to the “mountain of God.”   The word “beyond” is misleading.  A more literal translation would read:  Moses led his flock to the backside of the wilderness where he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

There is a sense where I want the word “beyond” to mean “circumvent.”   In other words, I would love nothing more than to go around, over, under and “beyond” any wilderness to reach the mountain top.    Much of my life I have been going “beyond” the pain or suffering, hoping for a quick fix, a band aid, a short cut.    But that is not the case here.   To get to the “backside” of the wilderness requires one journey from the front…through the middle…to the back.

This is to say, when we find ourselves in a wilderness; when we look around and see desert; when we feel parched and hungry ; when the wild animals seem to be biting our heels from all sides – we may be closer to God than those who have chosen the path of least resistance – those who would rather go “beyond.”

We may be at the foot of the mountain of God.

On the mountain Moses sees a burning bush.   It is “blazing” yet “not consumed.”   I have read this story a thousand times and never saw until today that Moses must convince himself to look at this bush.   The text reads:   Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”

Turn aside to look at this great sight?  Why is he looking away in the first place?

Fire is used throughout Scripture as a purifying agent.  While painful, fire is necessary in the same way as going to the backside of the wilderness is necessary.   Though the fire blazes, it does not consume.   Though the wilderness seems, and feels like, we are walking through the  ”shadow of the valley of death,” God is near.

Moses looks away because the hardest thing for any of us to do is to face our fires.  There are things in my life that burn like a raging furnace.

Shame.  Guilt. Pain.  Suffering. Heartache.  Lonliness.  Fear.  Anger.  Selfishness.

Sin.

I don’t want to look at them.   It is easier to pretend they are not there.   It is easier to not acknowledge that they burn like white heat within me.

We all have a burning bush within us.   What is yours?

And yet, here is grace:   It burns but does not consume. It will not have the last word.

And the moment Moses looks, the moment he musters the courage to look into the face of the burning blaze, God calls out of the fire and says, Moses!  HERE I AM!

God is in the fire.  God says, “I am here!  I am in this mess!  Though it burns it will not consume you!”   And God reminds us that in our looking into the midst of this blaze we are standing on holy ground.   We are on holy ground in those moments when we look into the fire and name it.

And God’s plan for those who look?   God takes those who have the courage to stop looking aside – when we stop looking aside at the pain not just in ourselves but in God’s world; when we stop looking aside at the “least of these” in our midst; when we stop looking aside at the ravages of war, the plight of the orphan or widow, the homeless on the street corner, the woman in the nursing home, the thirsty, the hungry, the oppressed and marginalized, the hurting marriage – those who will stop and look will be taken by God and not only be freed themselves but sent to free others.

And the sign that this has been God’s doing will be our return to this mountain, a return to this bush that no longer burns.    We will worship together, free from the pain, the anguish, the suffering, the chains that once burned within us.

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