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Burning Bush, Holy Name
A Lentem Reflection For
The Church of Jesus Christ Incarcerated
March 11, 2007
By Philip D. Ropp
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Moses
was merely minding his own business and that of his father-in-law,
Jethro. Tending sheep, leading the flock
across the
desert, he comes to Mount Horeb, the “mountain of God,”
which would later take on the name of the entire surrounding region:
Sinai. There was a bush and it was on
fire; and, though on fire, it was not consumed. As
if that was not strange enough, God spoke to Moses from
the midst of
the burning bush.
It
is fitting that it is here that God chooses to reveal himself to Moses;
in this
very place. It is the place where the
Ten Commandments would be handed down in an even more dramatic
encounter with
the Lord. It is here that the newly
formed, called and delivered nation of Israel would first offer
itself up
to pagan idolatry in the form of the golden calf. It is the same place
from
which the children of Israel
would one day begin their long trek through the wilderness to the
Promised
Land, and, it might be said, it is with this strange incident that this
journey
really begins. <>Most
significantly, it is in this place, at this time, that Moses becomes
acquainted
with the God of his fathers; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the
God that
had become lost to the Israelites during their sojourn in Egypt; the
God that
they had forsaken for the easy ways of the Egyptian world.
Easy ways that began as the dream of
unbridled prosperity in the time of Joseph, and ended in the nightmare
of
slavery and brutal oppression in the time before the infant Moses
drifted in
among the bulrushes and was rescued by pharaoh’s daughter; rescued so
that he
might fulfill the destiny he now assumes as deliverer of his people.
In
Genesis 4: 26, during the days when Seth, the son of Adam, had begotten
a son
named Enosh, we are told that it was: “At that time men began to invoke
the
LORD by name.” Yet in the days in Egypt,
the name
of God had been forgotten and the ways of the Lord had been forsaken. But God did not forget his people, and so
appears to Moses from the midst of the burning bush to tell him that he
has
witnessed the oppression of his people and has chosen to rescue them
out of
their affliction. Moses, then, asks the
fair and rightfully self conscious question, “But when I go to the
Israelites and
say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask
me,
‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” God replies, “I am who
am.” Then
he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to
you.”
In
the Hebrew, the expression “I am who am,” is read as YHWH. It is
called the “Tetragrammaton” which means
“four letters” in Greek, and refers to the four Hebrew consonants, י
(yodh) ה (heh) ו (waw) ה (heh), of which the
word is
comprised. Since Hebrew is a language without vowels, scholars during
the Middle
Ages began inserting the vowels from the generic Hebrew word for lord,
“adonai”
into these consonants and produced the word “Jehovah.” Today’s
linguists mostly
agree that “Yahweh” is closer to the intention of the original
language. Truth be known, we have little actual
knowledge of the nuances that make up the pronunciation of Classical
Hebrew. In the time of Jesus, Hebrew had
already been a dead language for nearly 500 years, and the Jewish
rabbis had
accepted the practice of substituting generic terms in place of the
Holy Name
for fear of offending God and committing blasphemy by mispronouncing
it.
This
brings into sharper focus the difficulty Jesus encounters in John 8:58
when he
says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” It
is his
uttering of the Holy Name that infuriated the Jews present and, “So
they picked
up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the Temple area.”
The point to this is that while
the name of God is still known by the time that Jesus walked the earth,
it is
evident that, once again, the remnant children of Israel, now subjected
to a
Roman occupation that was, in many ways, as oppressive as the slavery
of the
Egyptians, have, again, forgotten who he
is. This is clearly the symbolic meaning
of the fact that, by now, God has a name that no one can say, and so
has become
merely an impersonal concept reduced to a collection of laws that no
one can
follow. In the Greek it is evident that
John has chosen his words very carefully for this passage. The word
used for
“came to be” is the one used in the Gospel’s powerful prologue, while
the word
for “AM” is reserved exclusively for the Logos, the Holy “Word” of God. And so we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word
was God. All things came to be
through him and without him nothing came to be.” John has deftly
showed us, through a superior command of language, that God does indeed
have a
name that we can pronounce. It is Jesus
Christ, and it is by this name and in this name that we are saved.
In
the Hebrew,
the name “Jesus” is Yeshua and it means, literally,
“Yahweh’s
deliverer.” The word “Christ,” a Greek
word, is usually considered to be the equivalent of the Hebrew word messiah, which means “God’s anointed;”
but it is more than this. The word is
derived from the Sanscrit word Krishna,
in Hindu culture an “Avatar of Vishnu” – a
son of God; a savior of humankind. And so the name Jesus Christ
encapsulates
the Name of God and his promise of salvation, as well as the Son of God
as the
agent of this redemption. And so we
rejoice, for God has revealed himself to us again as surely as he did
to Moses
within that burning bush. Further, in
Jesus, he has revealed himself as both creator God and delivering
savior. In Jesus he is both Yahweh and
Moses. Our kinsman redeemer who, as John
points out
in chapter 1 verse 14 of his Gospel, “…made his dwelling among us…” or,
in a
more literal translation of the Greek, “pitched his tent among us.” He has, in fact, become one of us and become
one with us, that we might make our encampment together forever.
As
we move on down the road towards Easter, let us make camp with him and
enjoy
the sweet savor of the meal he prepares for us on the way to eternity. Let us rejoice in the knowledge that our God
is still the tent dwelling God Israel
encountered in the wilderness and worshipped at the tabernacle. And
more, let
us experience together the awesome reality that no longer is this tent
dwelling
God a cloud above the Ark of the Covenant and a voice that speaks from
between
the cherubim, but has indeed become flesh of our flesh, and offered
himself up
in unquestioning and unfathomable love for us, that we might be saved. Let us make camp with him and make this
journey to the Cross together. And let
us do so in the full realization that when he bows his head, and
commends his
spirit, the veil that separates us from the Holy of Holies is rent
asunder to
reveal the Mercy Seat with our savior – the True Ark of the Covenant –
upon it;
reaching out to us with the hands that were pierced for our iniquities.
Today,
Jesus has issued to us a call to repentance. He
has told us truthfully that our suffering in this life
is not the
result of our sin, but that, ultimately, our sin will cause us to
perish and
prevent us from the joy that is to be ours in the life to come. We have been likened to a barren fig tree
that has been given one more chance to bear fruit before it is cut down. As we make our way with Jesus along the road
to Calvary, let us offer up our sins
to him in
repentance and confession and cultivate and fertilize our spiritual
life with
prayer and penance that we might bear much fruit in both this life, and
that
which is to come.
In
this Communion meal that we share, God chooses to reveal himself to us
yet
again. It is the miracle that we share
as the new Israel
that he has called to walk behind him in the desert and through the
wilderness
towards the Promised Land. Our Lord has
pitched his tent with us to stay, and his Real Presence with us in the
elements
of the Eucharist is every bit the miracle that was the bush that burned
and was
not consumed. He is that sweet rose of
Sharon, he is that bright morning star; he is that great rock of ages. He is King of Kings; he is Lord of
Lords. His name is Jesus, and never
shall we forget it.
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