Lent 3 – Burning Bush Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church podcast

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Lent 3 – Burning Bush

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Moses at the Burning Bush by Marc Chagall (1966)

Lent 3, 2025 – Turning toward God
Rev. Doug Floyd
Exodus 3:1-15, Psalm 103, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9

Last week Fr. Les invited us into the story of Abram, God’s promise of offspring, and Abram’s lack of offspring. As he struggles, God reassures him and makes a one-sided covenant with Abram where God stands as surety for his own promise. This story invites us into the pattern of trusting the Lord when all seems lost.

Today, we return to the story of Moses. In the story of Abram and Moses, we see the Lord forming his people by His Spirit and in the middle of their challenges. Moses has become a sojourner in a foreign land: far from his people, far from his God. Years of shepherding have worn away the man he was. It seems he has been forgotten.

He leads the sheep on the west side of Mt Horeb. Suddenly, a blaze of fire bursts forth from a nearby bush and the angel of the Lord is in the fire. “I will turn aside to see this great sight,” responds Moses. “Why is the bush not burned?”^[1] He turns aside to see.

“Moses, Moses.” God addresses him. “Take off your sandals. The place where you stand is holy ground.” A moment ago, Moses was wandering with the sheep. The Lord draws near. Then ground becomes holy. Moses stands in the surprise of God’s appearing.

“ ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” ^[2] Moses hid his face. God will lead him to the place where he beholds God face to face.

In this story, we see how the kingdom of God is often slow and sudden. After the long wait, God breaks into Moses’ world and everything changes. He sends Moses to Pharoah, back home to His people, and on a pilgrimage that will change the history of the world.

In the story of Moses, we see the turning. Metanoia. Turning around. Moses turns aside and then turns around. Soon his people will turn. And soon after the world will turn.

The people come to Jesus, wondering why do bad things happen to good people? Pilate has just executed a group of pilgrims bringing sacrifice to the Temple and now their blood is mixed with the blood of sacrifice. Why? What did they do that deserved such a horrible judgment? Jesus answers, “What about the eighteen people who died when the tower of Siloam fell on the them?” Don’t think these who suffered are somehow worse than you. “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” ^[3]

Repentance. Metanoia. Turning around.

When I was in college, the church gave out a little sheet that could help us reflect on our hearts and God’s call to repent. Though not the same, in some ways, it was like “The Great Litany” we handed out two weeks ago. I sat with this sheet each day. I asked God to search me and know me. This season of repentance prepared me to encounter the Holy One in a way I had never grasped. This was the beginning of complete transformation of my prayer and study time.

God was present. God is present. God is presence.

Because of this encounter I would eventually turn. I abandoned my dream of making films and turned toward a life of serving the Lord in ministry. For months afterward, I started every time of prayer with an extended time of repentance: confessing every sin I could imagine. At some point, it occurred to me, I was no longer turning toward the Lord but toward my own ability to repent.

Repentance is a gift of God, and he leads us through seasons of abandoning practices, patterns, wounds, and sins. Repentance is not a tool to force my way into the Presence. Jesus leads me. Jesus leads us into the Presence. He makes a way, not us.

And yet, all of life is a turning. Sometimes this turning towards God involves confession of specific sins (not simply our general confession on Sundays). Other times this turning is a turning in thanksgiving, in awe, in wonder before the goodness of God.

We sit down to eat a meal. We pray. We are giving thanks for the blessing of God before us. This simple act is part of a larger pattern of turning toward our Lord. The Christian Celts cultivated a way of turning throughout each moment of the day. Much like our habit of praying before and sometimes after the meal, Celts would pray during the various activities of the day.

Upon waking, a woman kindles the fire to freshly warm the home. She prays,

God, kindle Thou in my heart within,
flame of love to my neighbour,
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all,
To the brave, to the knave, to the thrall,
O Son of the loveliest Mary,
From the lowliest thing that liveth,
To the Name that is highest of all.
O Son of the loveliest Mary,
From the lowliest thing that liveth,
To the Name that is highest of all.[4]

She is turning. Turning toward God and through God, turning toward those around her. She washes her face,

The palmful of the God of Life,
The palmful of the Christ of Love,
The palmful of the Spirit of Peace,
Triune
Of grace[5]

By simply washing her face, she rehearses her baptism into the Triune God. There are prayers for walking, milking the cows, making the bed, going to sleep and more. Instead of thinking of these prayers as a magic ritual to make God present, thinking of them as a way of turning to the God who is already present.

Back to Moses. When God calls Moses, Moses asks for a name.

¹⁴God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” ¹⁵God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. ^[6]

God is. Or as Martin Buber has said, “I Am and Remain Present.” God Is Present. Thus Moses, the Celtic Woman, and the Christian at prayer are not summoning God, but turning toward the Present One. He is present and we turn and worship him.

The Celts turned toward God and through God to the world in prayer but also in poetry. They sing songs of praise through God to horses, birds, fields, harvest, and more. Bobi Jones, the 20^th century Welsh poet turns toward the world through God. He writes praise poems to a pregnant woman, a laborer, a weed in the pavement, and even a bus driver who he struggles to like.

He begins,

There’s no mystery in him: I put my hand
In his heart,—knock: I saw how sickly
Living was. Black-framed glasses, jaunty, shallow,
As grey-faced as a shop’s passion.[7]

As he looks at the Bus Driver and even interacts with him, he sees such emptiness. Think of times when you’ve been at a checkout or a customer service counter or some other place where the person barely seems present to you. Finally, Bobi looks again and declares,

Oh God: bus, pools, food, pint, boys, cash, grave.
What shall we love in him? Unless love the lack.
The lack that anchors everyone. Since we all give loaves
And fishes to Christ, and He turns them into an immense creation.[8]

Back to Moses. He starts out trying to get out of the call. Eventually, he submits. During the journey across the wilderness, Moses gets angry, curses the people and at the rock, gets weary and needs elders to assist him, fights off several rebellions. He also sees God and is transformed in the Presence. Eventually, he prays a prayer of Jesus on behalf of the people.

“So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. ³²But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.”^[9]

He has been transformed by the Presence of the Most High and long before Jesus we hear echoes of Jesus’ life and prayer in the cry of Moses.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus turns from the word of judgment and call for repentance to the parable of the fig tree. The tree has had three years to produce fruit and still nothing. These trees drain the soil, so the landlord tells the vinedresser to cut it down. But the vinedresser intercedes. He says, “Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. ⁹Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ” ^[10]

He cries out for mercy. From the cross, Jesus cries out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”^[11] Mercy.

We’ve been talking about repentance as a life of turning toward God. Turning away from sin, from self, from the seductions of a world without God, to beholding a God who sustains all things by His Word alone. As we turn to God, we learn to see other people, even our foes, through Christ. Mercy.

There is another way to think of repentance. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy used to say that repentance has to do with the movement of the stars and the heavens. I could never find a link with repentance and the words associated with repentance. Then one day, I considered the word conversion. Or “conversio” in Latin. This word speaks of turning as well. The church has often thought of this word in two ways. First, an initial turning to the Lord: a conversion. Secondly, as a life of being transformed by the grace of God: conversion.

This word means revolution and does speak of the movement of the heavens. The seed is planted in the ground. The seasons come and go. The world turns. The heavens turn. The seed become a plant. The plant becomes a tree. Eventually, the tree bears fruit. Conversion.

We are being converted from seeds to fruit. We don’t fully grasp this conversion. But we look forward in hope. As John writes in his first letter,

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ²Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.^[12]

Amen.

^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ex 3:3.

^[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ex 3:6.

^[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 13:5–6.

[4] De Waal, Esther. The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination (p. 31). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[5] De Waal, Esther. The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination (p. 77). (Function). Kindle Edition.

^[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ex 3:13–15.

[7] Bobi Jones, Collected Poems.

[8] Ibid.

^[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ex 32:31–32.

^[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 13:8–9.

^[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 23:34.

^[12] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 3:1–2.

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