Third Sunday of Lent
EXODUS 3:1-15
Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought,
“I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
God said, “Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”
At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am’ has sent me to you.”
God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.”
This text, which seems so distant and mythical to us, is one of the most important passages in the Book.
Moses, an Israelite raised in the court of the Pharaoh of Egypt, is forced to flee from the justice of Pharaoh because he has killed an Egyptian in defense of an Israelite. He flees to the Sinai desert and finds a clan of Midianites, the clan of Jethro, a priest, who welcomes him. He marries his daughter Zipporah and dedicates himself to tending Jethro’s livestock. It is in this context that today’s text is situated.
At Horeb, “the mountain of God” for the Midianites, Moses has a revelation of God and of his own mission. God is the one who will liberate the people from slavery, and Moses is the one sent by God for this liberation to be fulfilled. Moses will have to return to Egypt and lead the people to the Promised Land.
The central theme of the text is the Revelation of God. God “reveals his name.” For the ancients, knowing the name was like possessing, having some control. That is why, unlike all other peoples, Israel does not pronounce the name of God, and calls him “the Most High,” “the Lord,” “the God of the mountains,” “the God of our Fathers”… Now, the Lord manifests his name by saying that He is Yahweh: I am who I am. But this is a very complex revelation.
First of all, what we translate as “Yahweh” is actually an unpronounceable tetragrammaton “YHWH,” to which we have added vowels so that it can be pronounced. And “I am who I am” is more of an evasion, a reference to an unknowable ESSENCE than a comprehensible definition. Thus, the fundamental thing is that God shows himself as Liberator and as “completely Other” with respect to all the gods. For this reason the commandments will prohibit any image of God and prohibit the use of his name. All of this is what is meant by the magnificent symbols that the Book of Exodus constantly uses: The Burning Bush, the Cloud, The storm on the Mountain…
The message is, therefore: “The absolutely Other, He whose name cannot be pronounced, He who has no image or figure, He who dwells beyond all that is knowable…..THAT ONE IS THE LIBERATOR.” God is not known in himself, we do not have access to the divine essence. We know him in his activity for us, the Liberation.
This Liberation was initially understood by Israel as merely political: freed from the slavery of Egypt, led to a Land, helped against enemies to build a Homeland where they could worship God in a Temple. Gradually, all of this was revealed to be insufficient; the Prophets deeply enriched the message, until it reached Jesus who gave it its fullest meaning: freed from sin and death, through the knowledge of God.
And this is already included in the deepest message of the Book of Exodus, which is not limited to being a chronicle of the marvelous political liberation of Israel but strongly emphasizes THE LAW. On Mount Horeb itself, God will give Moses THE LAW, which is the profound instrument of Liberation, meant to free men not from political oppression, but from the oppression of sin. Thus, the message of Genesis is taken up again (God fighting against Chaos), a line that culminates in Jesus’ humble phrase to the rich young man, regarding the fulfillment of the commandments: “DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE.”
1 CORINTHIANS 10, 1-12
Brothers and sisters: I do not want you to be unaware that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies were strewn in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the Destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore, whoever thinks that he or she stands secure, be careful not to fall!
This text shows the “spiritual” dimension of what the Book of Exodus narrates and interprets. Paul insists on the spiritual nature of Liberation. It is not a matter of belonging to a people, nor of submitting to rites, nor of offering sacrifices or going to the Temple. It is about inner liberation, conversion. This is the line so often proclaimed by the Prophets, dramatically represented by Isaiah (chapter 58) and many other parallel texts, culminating in the phrase recorded by Jesus: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 12:7 – Matthew 23:23).
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.