3 Lent Cycle C March 24, 2019
Ex.3:1-17 Ps. 103:1-11
1 Cor. 10:1-13 Luke 13:1-9
Lectionary Link
The life of Moses can be divided into three trimesters of 40 years. He lived to the age of 120; the biblical writers liked numbers and their symbolic values and the number 40 is the symbol of the time of test and trial and ordeal and practice and preparation. Moses had successes and failures in all three of his trimesters. In his first 40 years, he had a miraculous infancy narrative; he was supposed to be killed with all the Hebrew male children in Egypt, but he was spared in his ark of bulrushes and rescued and adopted by an Egyptian princess and raised as a prince of Egypt. He did not forget his people and as he neared the age of 40 he felt it was his duty to unify the Hebrew people and help them fight their oppression. He failed and murdered two Egyptians and ran into the wilderness to escape for his life and give up his call. He attached himself to the family of his bride and became a shepherd for Jethro his father-in-law. And at the age of 80, he had his great theophany, a great encounter with God who appeared in the burning bush which was not consumed.
This encounter of Moses as it is recorded in the book of Exodus evokes a study of God, the name of God and how God has come to be regarded. Through textual analysis of Hebrew Scriptures, some scholars find at least four editions of Hebrew Scriptures. This is called the source theory, and the sources are abbreviated as JEDP. Two of these sources derive from the Hebrew words to designate God. The J stands for "Jehovah" but is called by scholars the Yahwists. The E, stands for the Elohists. The Yahwists were the editors who used "Yahweh" for the name of God. The Elohists were the editors who used Elohim as the name of God. So how do we know in English translations which Hebrew name of God is being used? The English word "Lord" is used for Yahweh or some translators use Yahweh. Yahweh entered our vocabulary because some biblical scholar believed it to be a better English transliteration and the God formerly known as "Jehovah." The extra vowel has to do with some textual version of the vowel pointing of the four consonants. So the Hebrew Scriptures result in both versions of God's name being used, as in Lord God or Yahweh Elohim. What developed in Judaism after the destruction of Solomon's Temple to begin the exile, was the reverence for the name of God. The four consonants which represent the name of God were regarded to be so holy that they could be written but not pronounced. These four letters are called the tetragrammaton, and observant Jews read the four consonants with alternate pronunciations, like HaShem, meaning "the Name," or "Adonai" meaning my Lord, or hakadosh baruch hu ("The Holy One, Blessed Be He"). In his great encounter with God, Moses was afraid about returning to Egypt where he had failed to gain the respect of his fellow Hebrew people. Moses was given the name of God to use as proof of his call to lead the people of Israel. God's name is rendered in English as "I am that I am." But scholars say that the Hebrew language did not have a present tense for the verb "to be." So some think that it should be rendered as "I will be who I will be." Moses returned to Egypt to lead a stubborn and skeptical people and he used the revealed name of God and using the name resulted in the plagues and the feats of wondered which enabled the Israelites to eventually arrive in the Promised Land.
Why is all of this relevant to the Christian tradition? St. Paul and the apostles, understood Jesus Christ to be the one who assumed and made known God as the "I am" or the "I will be who I will be." St. John's Gospel is the "I am" Gospel. Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am." This means that Christians regarded Christ to assume identity with "The Name." St. Paul acted in the name of Christ in assuming it as a manifestation of the name of God. He wrote that the Red Sea event baptized the children into Moses and many of them did not honor the name and they failed in their temptation and testing in the forty years in the wilderness. St. Paul warned the Corinthian church not to fail the time of testing. He said that God, who delivered Jesus in his time of temptation, will also provide a way of escape in our time of temptation if we will commit to speak and act in the name of Christ, into whom we have been baptized.
Our Gospel for today, indicates to us that we always already can be subject to the conditions of freedom where good things can happen to bad people; bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. Good things can happen to good people. Freedom means that tyrants can prevail and do horrendous thing. Freedom means that a tower can be structurally unsafe and fall on and kill people. Such event may leave us speculating about why things happen. Such speculation cannot change the fact that they did happen. What response did Jesus give to the conditions of freedom?
Jesus said that we should always live in the state of repentance. What does repentance mean? It means we live in order to be better in the future. How does one become better in the future?
How does a gardener make a better future yield? A gardener composts the present ground around the plant in order for a better outcome? What is compost? In human experience, compost is our dead past. The past is dead and gone. The past can be a liability seen as an albatross to determine a bad future, or using the recycling and compost metaphor, we need to learn how to use the dead past to engender a better future. Repentance is the education dynamic to learn from our past successes and failures to make a better future.
This Lent, we as a parish need to repent into our future. We need to act in faith toward hopeful outcomes. We need to apply success and failure in our past to a better future. If the name of God in Christ is, "I will be who I will be," we can act in the name of Christ into our future with the great expectancy of better outcomes and future renewal. Let us adopt repentance as a our Lenten habit toward a better personal and parish future. Amen.
The life of Moses can be divided into three trimesters of 40 years. He lived to the age of 120; the biblical writers liked numbers and their symbolic values and the number 40 is the symbol of the time of test and trial and ordeal and practice and preparation. Moses had successes and failures in all three of his trimesters. In his first 40 years, he had a miraculous infancy narrative; he was supposed to be killed with all the Hebrew male children in Egypt, but he was spared in his ark of bulrushes and rescued and adopted by an Egyptian princess and raised as a prince of Egypt. He did not forget his people and as he neared the age of 40 he felt it was his duty to unify the Hebrew people and help them fight their oppression. He failed and murdered two Egyptians and ran into the wilderness to escape for his life and give up his call. He attached himself to the family of his bride and became a shepherd for Jethro his father-in-law. And at the age of 80, he had his great theophany, a great encounter with God who appeared in the burning bush which was not consumed.
This encounter of Moses as it is recorded in the book of Exodus evokes a study of God, the name of God and how God has come to be regarded. Through textual analysis of Hebrew Scriptures, some scholars find at least four editions of Hebrew Scriptures. This is called the source theory, and the sources are abbreviated as JEDP. Two of these sources derive from the Hebrew words to designate God. The J stands for "Jehovah" but is called by scholars the Yahwists. The E, stands for the Elohists. The Yahwists were the editors who used "Yahweh" for the name of God. The Elohists were the editors who used Elohim as the name of God. So how do we know in English translations which Hebrew name of God is being used? The English word "Lord" is used for Yahweh or some translators use Yahweh. Yahweh entered our vocabulary because some biblical scholar believed it to be a better English transliteration and the God formerly known as "Jehovah." The extra vowel has to do with some textual version of the vowel pointing of the four consonants. So the Hebrew Scriptures result in both versions of God's name being used, as in Lord God or Yahweh Elohim. What developed in Judaism after the destruction of Solomon's Temple to begin the exile, was the reverence for the name of God. The four consonants which represent the name of God were regarded to be so holy that they could be written but not pronounced. These four letters are called the tetragrammaton, and observant Jews read the four consonants with alternate pronunciations, like HaShem, meaning "the Name," or "Adonai" meaning my Lord, or hakadosh baruch hu ("The Holy One, Blessed Be He"). In his great encounter with God, Moses was afraid about returning to Egypt where he had failed to gain the respect of his fellow Hebrew people. Moses was given the name of God to use as proof of his call to lead the people of Israel. God's name is rendered in English as "I am that I am." But scholars say that the Hebrew language did not have a present tense for the verb "to be." So some think that it should be rendered as "I will be who I will be." Moses returned to Egypt to lead a stubborn and skeptical people and he used the revealed name of God and using the name resulted in the plagues and the feats of wondered which enabled the Israelites to eventually arrive in the Promised Land.
Why is all of this relevant to the Christian tradition? St. Paul and the apostles, understood Jesus Christ to be the one who assumed and made known God as the "I am" or the "I will be who I will be." St. John's Gospel is the "I am" Gospel. Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am." This means that Christians regarded Christ to assume identity with "The Name." St. Paul acted in the name of Christ in assuming it as a manifestation of the name of God. He wrote that the Red Sea event baptized the children into Moses and many of them did not honor the name and they failed in their temptation and testing in the forty years in the wilderness. St. Paul warned the Corinthian church not to fail the time of testing. He said that God, who delivered Jesus in his time of temptation, will also provide a way of escape in our time of temptation if we will commit to speak and act in the name of Christ, into whom we have been baptized.
Our Gospel for today, indicates to us that we always already can be subject to the conditions of freedom where good things can happen to bad people; bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. Good things can happen to good people. Freedom means that tyrants can prevail and do horrendous thing. Freedom means that a tower can be structurally unsafe and fall on and kill people. Such event may leave us speculating about why things happen. Such speculation cannot change the fact that they did happen. What response did Jesus give to the conditions of freedom?
Jesus said that we should always live in the state of repentance. What does repentance mean? It means we live in order to be better in the future. How does one become better in the future?
How does a gardener make a better future yield? A gardener composts the present ground around the plant in order for a better outcome? What is compost? In human experience, compost is our dead past. The past is dead and gone. The past can be a liability seen as an albatross to determine a bad future, or using the recycling and compost metaphor, we need to learn how to use the dead past to engender a better future. Repentance is the education dynamic to learn from our past successes and failures to make a better future.
This Lent, we as a parish need to repent into our future. We need to act in faith toward hopeful outcomes. We need to apply success and failure in our past to a better future. If the name of God in Christ is, "I will be who I will be," we can act in the name of Christ into our future with the great expectancy of better outcomes and future renewal. Let us adopt repentance as a our Lenten habit toward a better personal and parish future. Amen.
