For further reading: Exodus 3.1−6
It all started when he turned aside. Moses, it appeared, had been contentedly looking after his father-in-law’s sheep since he fled Egypt years before. His extraordinary existence in the Pharaoh’s palace had been replaced with an ordinary existence, shaped by little more remarkable than finding the next grazing patch for his father-in-law’s sheep. But when he turned aside, his life turned upside down. Of course, we can’t help wondering whether he arrived by accident at Mount Horeb, the mountain of God, or whether he had set his path towards Mount Horeb in the hope that he might encounter God. As with so many of the biblical stories, we are left with as many questions as answers, but whatever he intended when he brought his flock close to Mount Horeb, it was Moses’ willingness to turn aside when he saw the bush burning which transformed his life.
The Hebrew word, translated ‘turn aside’, even more than its English translation has the sense of stepping off a pre-determined path and it is this that seems so important in this story. It was Moses’ willingness to change his plan and to step off the path that he was following for this whole event to happen. In this instance, Moses’ predetermined path was finding the next patch of grass for his father-in-law’s sheep. In our high-octane, high-performance culture this may seem a benign, gently pastoral way of life. In reality it was the opposite. Grazing sheep in what is effectively desert territory is a desperate task, with no guarantees of success. Add to this the wild animals who would stalk the flock ready to pluck off a sheep should the shepherd’s attention be caught for a moment and Moses’ life begins to feel much more pressured and urgent. For him turning aside could have meant the loss of one or more of his father-in-law’s sheep.
In comparison our inability to turn aside may feel a little feeble, though nonetheless real. We spend such a lot of our lives trying to keep ‘on track’ whatever we mean by this. So often my own life involves running constantly from one thing to the to next with my eye so fixed on the next task (for which I’m often late) that I wonder whether I would notice if the equivalent of a burning bush lit up in my life. And if I did notice, would I allow myself the time to turn aside and investigate, or would I, instead mark it down on my to-do list as something to come back and explore more deeply when I’ve got a minute?
Turning aside seems to require at least two key characteristics: curiosity and the willingness to take time to explore. Curiosity is not often held up as a spiritual virtue. As a child, I was encouraged to mind my own business and instructed not to fiddle. Now I am a parent myself I understand this instruction all too well, but a child’s curiosity seems to me to be a vital part of a healthy spirituality. Good answers are, of course, very important for Christian faith but at least as important, if not more so, is the ability to ask good questions. The problem is that many of us, as adults, are simply not curious enough. We’ve learnt the childhood lesson well and mind our own business – or is that busyness? As a result we no longer explore with either our fingers or our minds.
Moses’ inner conversation with himself (which is again more vivid in Hebrew than can be expressed in English and is something along the lines of ‘Let me turn aside and …’) suggests a lively curiosity that led him to want to know more. He was intrigued and followed his instinct to see more.
This, of course, is closely connected to the second characteristic needed for turning aside: the willingness to take time to explore. Busyness can so often prevent us from doing something only on the off chance that it might produce something. Before we begin, we want to be assured of results, to be confident that the time we take out will produce fruit and be worth the time we spend on it. The problem is that God isn’t like that. God doesn’t sign on the dotted line to give guaranteed satisfaction at a pre-selected and pre-determined time before engaging with the world. Instead God gives a hint here, a suggestion there or a glimmer on the horizon. Busy people are all too likely to miss God’s presence because we do not have the leisure to follow up the hints, suggestions and glimmers on the off chance that occasionally, like Moses, we might encounter the living God.
Sometimes it all begins when we turn aside – the question is whether we have the curiosity and are prepared to take the time out to do so.
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2. And then living with the consequences
Exodus 3.7−11 Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ But Moses said …
For further reading: Exodus 3.7—4.13
Any encounter with God should come with a health warning. Encounters with God are accompanied with life-changing consequences. Moses certainly seemed to regret the consequences of his encounter with God – if not the encounter itself – almost immediately. This is because, as is so often the case with encounters with God, God did not reveal himself to Moses simply so that Moses could enjoy the encounter, or so that he could feel better about his spiritual journey, but so that Moses could do what God asked him to.
One of the features that interests me about modern discussions about spirituality and mysticism is that sometimes – often even – what we might call religious experiences are perceived as being for their own sake: to help us along in our spiritual journey or to teach us more about God. It is hard, however, to think of any encounter with God in the Old or New Testaments that is not accompanied with the command to do something: Elijah’s encounter with ‘the still small voice’ on Mount Horeb sent him to anoint new kings; Isaiah’s great vision in the temple in Isaiah 6 comes with the command to proclaim God’s word to a people who would not listen; Ezekiel’s vision of God’s chariot in Ezekiel 1 set the scene for Ezekiel being sent as prophet to the people in Exile. For many people today the purpose of encountering God is their own spiritual journey; for the biblical writers the purpose of encountering God is mission, by which I mean being sent out to do God’s will in the world. People who have a lively spiritual life should expect to have a correspondingly lively life of mission in the world; you can’t have one without the other. Moses discovered this to his cost. What began as turning aside out of curiosity, ended as being sent on the most challenging mission conceivable: to free God’s people from slavery.
It is easy to believe that great biblical heroes are somehow more prepared for God’s call than we are; that where we stumble, hesitate and procrastinate, they leap in with guts and enthusiasm. In all honesty we can only believe this if we don’t read the texts too carefully. The biblical heroes are easily as reluctant as we are to be involved with God’s mission in the world and none more so than Moses. The opening of verse 11, ‘But Moses said …’, opens up a section in which Moses objects to God’s call. He begins by asking who he is to be called to this: ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ Exodus 3.11; moving swiftly on to who he should say God is: ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ 3.13. From there Moses looks at worst case scenarios: ‘But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me’ 4.1; and his own inabilities: ‘O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue’ 4.10. Finally he gets to his real point: ‘O my Lord, please send someone else’ 4.13.
The point is that although to us Moses is a great leader, to him he was simply an ordinary person about his ordinary life who was suddenly called to something so extraordinary that he found it hard to comprehend it.
