Sunday Readings Commentary
Father Andrew Wadsworth offers a short commentary on this week's Sunday Lectionary readings.
To read the relevant Bible passage just click on the reference.
Before reading and reflecting on God's word you might like to use the following prayer:
O Lord,
who hast given us thy word
for a light to shine upon our path:
Grant us so to meditate upon that word
and follow its teaching,
that we may find in it the light that shineth
more and more unto the perfect day:
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Third Sunday of Lent
In those days: Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.’ When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ And he said, ‘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. Then the LORD said, ‘I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.’
Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you”, and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God 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.” ’ God 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 for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.’
In our Lenten progress through the story of God’s people we come to the crucial moment of the revelation of God’s name to Moses. This is a decisive moment, because to give your name is a sign of trust and friendship. Someone who has your name has power over you in all kinds of ways, so you give it only to those you trust. The Hebrews, descendants of Abraham, are at a low point, a mere oppressed rabble of immigrants, lacking land or security, marked out for extermination by a powerful bureaucratic state. It is as though God had waited for this moment to raise them up, to create them as a coherent group with a leader who could stand up for them in God’s name. God does not yet give the meaning of the name; perhaps ‘I am who I am’ even means ‘You mind your own business’. It is something to do with Being, and the Greek translation of the Bible understands it as ‘Pure Being’, ‘the One who Is’. In the Hebrew Bible the meaning of the name is given later on Sinai, after Israel’s worship of the Golden Bull, when God passes before Moses crying out the name, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God of mercy and forgiveness’. This is the meaning which will echo down the Bible in passage after passage.
I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.
As in the previous two Sundays, the second reading moves the first reading into a higher gear. God revealed his name to Moses in the desert, led the Israelites across the sea and cared for them in the desert with manna for food and water from the rock to drink. Now Paul explains to us that the real meaning of the rock is Christ who nourishes us. How ‘the rock that followed them’? Paul uses the current rabbinic explanation of the two accounts of Moses striking the rock for water: it is not two accounts of the same incident, but they are separate incidents. The same rock accompanied the Israelites on their journey through the desert. However, Paul is writing to chide the Corinthians on their undisciplined behaviour, especially at the Eucharist. Despite the wonders that accompanied the Israelites, the desert wanderings were a time of infidelity and rebellion which even the God of mercy and forgiveness was compelled to correct. Let the Corinthians learn their lesson! Even though their Christian life was marked by plentiful gifts of the Spirit, they must repent of their wild behaviour.
There were some present at that very time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.’
And he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine dresser, “Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?” And he answered him, “Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig round it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’
The events mentioned in the earlier part of the reading, Pilate’s slaughter of worshippers and the collapse of a tower at Siloam (where the gigantic stones of the ancient wall of Jerusalem can still be seen), are not mentioned elsewhere in history. To make the latter case worse, the Galileans could well have been staying in Jerusalem to celebrate a festival. They serve as useful examples of unexpected death and so of the need to be prepared. People can be sagacious about little things in life and blind to more important aspects. Luke has been repeatedly conveying this message by less specific and more general exhortations in this section of the Gospel.
The need for conversion, and above all the persevering patience of God, are lessons which have been stressed throughout Luke’s Gospel from the preaching of John the Baptist onwards. Especially stressed is the joyful welcome offered to the repentant sinner by God (in the story of the Prodigal Son, the lost sheep and lost coin) and by Jesus (the welcome to Zacchaeus and to the ‘Good Thief’). After this it is neat that Luke omits the story of the cursing of the barren fig-tree (Mark 11.12; Matthew 21.28); for him the fig-tree is a symbol of hope, not of disaster.