Lent III

The Third Sunday of Lent

Exodus 3:1–8a, 13–15;  Psalm 103; 1 Corinthian 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1–9

How many of us have or are living someone else’s life – someone else’s expectations – rather than following our own life’s path? We’ve all done it at some point in our lives. A sign of this is the person who keeps playing the recorder of past events over and over in their minds and in every conversation. It is sad to encounter such a person.

Why do we live other people’s expectations? Is it not because we want to be liked and accepted – but at what cost to us?

In a similar manner, how many people try to change other people? Often creating someone in their own image. I knew a guy who never got married because every women he dated wanted to change him in some way.

If we live this way so needy for acceptance or controlling other people, can we understand why we do it with God? In other words, how many Christians give up on God, prayer and the Church because God is not experienced as we expect or want?

This was very evident to my mind on the cover of the diocesan newspaper this past week. Bold capital letters declaring: THE POWER OF PRAYER. Who’s power? Power over whom? Is prayer some power of ours over God? To my mind the word “power” and “prayer” never belong in the same phrase. Now, “humility” and “prayer” is another animal.

Consider this first encounter between Moses and God. It is most insightful for understanding our relationship with God. God appears to Moses “in fire flaming out of a bush”. God is in the fire but is not the fire and speaks as fire should with a warning: “Come no nearer”. Fire burns.

The Syriac Christian tradition is very aware of this “fire” between humanity and God which cannot be bridged – but only approached in humility. Moses had such an awareness. He removes his shoes and hides his face in fear.

Yet Moses still tries to bridge the encounter in the most natural of ways, asking, “What is your name?” And there the “fire” flares up and the chasm is affirmed, “I AM WHO AM”. It is not a name as we understand a name. So what is it?

The Hebrew is ambivalent: “I AM, I shall be there for you but only as who I AM”. And that’s where we trip up in our relationship with God. God is to be known by a promise to always be there for us. The catch? God will only be there for us as God chooses.

Though our questions of “Why God, are you not here?” “Why don’t you act?” “Why have you abandoned me?” are so human. Our humanity often blinds us to God’s promised presence already in our midst.

We want God as we want God to be. In other words, we often miss God for who God is because God acts outside of our expectations. God acts only in the truth of who God is: “I AM, I shall be there for you only as who I AM”. Here is a truth and honesty that is often missing in our own lives and human relationships with ourselves and each other.

God is therefore revealed to us not by a name but by actions: “I have witnessed the affliction of my people…I have heard their cry…I know well what they are suffering…I have come down to rescue and lead them into a good and spacious land…”

The verbs are astounding: witnessed, heard, know well, come down, rescue, lead. Our God is a God of decisive action in a grand sweep of who God is for us.

God does not “come down” as though summoned by us but by God’s free choice rooted in compassion. God does not deliver God’s self into our power but by God’s power raises us up and leads us into the future. God does not meet our needs, expectations and aspirations, but addresses our true needs as witnessed and heard by God. To be God is to come down to humanity in our misery and deliver us.

The ultimate, defining act of who God is, is experienced in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. That is why the cross is the symbol of Christianity not an empty tomb. The cross is where God meets suffering humanity in God’s own suffering.

Again I ask, how many of us have given up on God, prayer and the Church because God is not present and experienced as we expect: “I AM, I shall be there for you but only as who I AM”.

What is called from us is no less then what God offers us: fidelity. And even when we are faithless, even when the situation seems impossible, even when we are in deepest pain and abandonment, even when we absent ourselves from God, God, “I AM” is present.