Sunday Scripture Readings

Submitted on May 24, 2007

Fr. Francis X. Cleary, SJ

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT, MARCH 14 Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15; Psalm 103; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9 OUR GOOD NEWS: What is God like? The value of the narrative in our first reading lies in what it reveals about God: what He is like, what He does and does not expect of us. The young Moses had fled for his life from Egypt and married into a family of semi-nomadic shepherds. "Horeb" — Mount Sinai — appears for the first time in the Bible. Moses will later return and there mediate a covenant between liberated Israelites and their deliverer God. Here, the "angel of the Lord" is not a created angelic being, but God himself dealing directly with creatures. This distinction preserves divine transcendence while allowing for genuine divine-human encounter. (Note the shift from "angel" to "The Lord saw ... God called out.") The burning bush that was not consumed served to encourage Moses’ curiosity rather than overawe him. God expects our personal involvement and free commitment! Nonetheless, proper reverence is demanded — sandals must be removed in acknowledgment of divine holiness. Nor is God to be directly looked at. Moses chose to "hide his face" out of instinct for self-preservation. God is the all-holy, the "wholly other." Revelation here combines old and new. The Lord is the same God of ancient tradition ("the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob"). And yet He is about to do something unheard of, what no god had ever done. He will rescue an entire people from foreign slavery and personally lead them into their own "good and spacious land." Equally astonishing is the motivation for this divine in-breaking into human history. God had not been stirred to action by fervent prayers or sacrificial offerings. The sole reason was that He cared, He has sympathy and empathy for their grievous affliction. "I have witnessed ... I have heard: I know well what they are suffering." God is thus revealed as a profoundly moral being who chose to right wrong and side with the powerless and oppressed. This self-revelation is summed up in His personal name, here communicated for the first time (according to one tradition) in order to validate Moses’ mission to the Israelites. "Yahweh" (paraphrased in most modern translations as "Lord") probably means "He who is." The meaning of this expression is not God as pure and uncreated being. Such philosophical thinking was alien to the Hebrew world, while at home among ancient Greeks. Rather, it sums up the nature of God as "He who is present to help." This is reflected in our liturgical greeting, "The Lord be with you," a wish that is also a statement of marvelous fact. Here then we have a profound secret revealed. The real God is "He who is present," always with us, caring and helping, accepting and forgiving, delivering us from hopelessness into joy. We respond with proper reverence, but also with a certain familiarity, addressing the awesome Divinity by His personal name. Today’s psalm begins by a summons to praise and thank ("bless") the Lord. Our boast is not in a God of raw power and unyielding will but the One who is "merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in kindness."