I AM

Homily for Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

The story of the burning bush and Moses’ encounter with God is by no means a subtle or shadowy experience. God has approached a quiet shepherd with a surprising message. God has noticed the suffering of a particular people and has expressed a desire to intervene on their behalf.

Though the experience of being called by name from a presence within this burning and yet unconsumed bush might frighten some people, Moses feels safe enough to ask the name of the God who is speaking. Actually, in the culture of this time, it can be asserted that Moses is really asking, “to which god exactly am I speaking?” A more veiled aspect of Moses’s question is: “Are you really a powerful enough god to get this done?” Moses no doubt expects a reasonable answer such as “my name is Sargon,” or any one of the many names for a god worshiped in the vicinity of Midian. Instead, Moses discovers that he is talking to the source of all being who is beyond name, who simply is.

Just as God had sent Moses, the Gospel tells us that God has sent Jesus to help another particular people who are enslaved just as surely as the ancient Israelites were enslaved by the Egyptians. Moses freed the Israelites from bondage, slavery; Jesus liberates us from the yoke of the Law which came about through the covenant that Moses mediated on Mount Sinai. The Covenant of Sinai was called a yoke by the Jewish people. Consequently, when Jesus tells his contemporaries that he is offering a new yoke, they would have understood immediately that he was offering them a new kind of relationship with God. Rather than being bound by a conditional relationship with God, Jesus offers an unconditional love with a God of compassion. In his humility, Jesus has become human, entering human history as a tiny, vulnerable baby.

In sharing the load – in taking our burden of sin upon himself and yoking us to his strength and compassion, we are once again led from the desert – the desert of sin and death. Just as Moses felt safe in the presence of the burning bush, we can feel safe as we meet God today in the Eucharist.