by Sister Gretchen Johnston, OSB
Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15 Psalm 103:1-4, 6-8, 11 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12 Luke 13:1-9
In today’s first reading, Moses was in Midian, in what is now Northwest Saudi Arabia, east of the Gulf of Aqaba. It’s a very different culture from Egypt where he grew up and, though not far from Egypt, worlds away from his upbringing in the royal palace. He was tending sheep, after all: an important work, but a smelly and dirty job.
I wonder if he felt sorry for himself. He would have been grateful to Jethro for taking him in and to Zipporah for marrying him, but did he ever think about what he left behind? The ability to do, as adopted royalty, whatever he wanted?
Regardless, it would have been a steep learning curve: learning a whole new way of life, living in a lower socioeconomic stratum, probably learning a new language, fitting into a new culture, learning a new religion – we can imagine his mind would have been alert for anything new or different.
He sees a bush. How extraordinary! Most people see bushes all the time, but they don’t register in their minds because the bushes don’t behave any differently than usual. Even if a bush is burning, we may try to put out the fire to save the bush or its environment. I wonder, since he noticed it was on fire, if he tried to put it out?
Moses had a sense of curiosity. When the bush started talking, he was told to remove his sandals. Most of us, I’m sure, would not be removing our footwear in the presence of a fire, and would question our sanity if a bush started talking to us. But we’re not told if Moses did. It’s interesting to think about. In the book Zipporah, Wife of Moses by Marek Halter, he writes of Moses having a dream or hallucination of some kind brought on by heat exhaustion. Later in the book, Zipporah helps him figure out what the dream meant, as she was the daughter of the priest Jethro and more well-versed in the religion of Midian than was Moses.
He was interested in the religion of his forebears. He knew he wasn’t Egyptian but adopted from the Hebrew people, called Chassu by the Egyptians. And then to be told by this God that God had seen the Chassu toiling in slavery and that this God was sending Moses to deliver them from the Egyptians — no wonder he resisted at first! An unfamiliar God, met during a period of heat exhaustion, actually caring about his people and sending Moses into a dangerous situation to deliver them? This would have been very different from the behavior of the Egyptian gods Moses would have known.
I am interested in the identity of the storyteller of Exodus. The storyteller conspicuously reminds the reader that this historical tale starts in the land of Midian. The Israelites had Midian as an enemy! Perhaps the storyteller was trying to remind people that God works even in and through perceived enemies.
This story has reverberations in our time and place. Who are our perceived enemies? Many people will think of the recent spates of deportations. Can we see the fact that God loves them, is working in them, and that they have played an integral part in our history? Can we see the fact that we ourselves are descended from people who would have been, under this administration, deported to their original countries? And that, for many people, this is their original country?
Pivoting to the Gospel reading: Pilate has just killed these innocent Galileans when they were worshipping. And a tower has just fallen and killed eighteen other people. Many people at the time would have said that this was evidence that these people who died were worse sinners than everyone else and were receiving their comeuppance from God.
Today people are being separated from their families and homes and either being sent back to their original countries to face the dangers there or sent to a completely different country. This is not evidence that they were any worse than other people, despite protestations of the contrary by authorities.
Going back to the parable of the tree: a landowner perceived that the fig tree wasn’t producing fruit. So most landowners or farmers throughout history have done. A tree not producing fruit as was expected and thus losing money for the landowners was a liability and to be rectified by replacing it with a better tree that would hopefully produce more fruit.
But trees or crops can only provide food if they are cared for properly. The way the gardener entreats the farmer by saying he will cultivate and fertilize it makes me think this wasn’t being done in the first place. What person plants crops and expects them to produce without any special care? It seems that humans have always wanted to take advantage and get something for nothing.
Where do we see this happening today? One place is here in the US and even in our very city of Duluth. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, known as ICE, is ‘cutting down the tree’ of recent refugees and green card holders and even some naturalized citizens and First Nations. Why not “cultivate them and fertilize them” as Jesus’ parable suggests? Who knows what contributions they could make to our nation and society if they were celebrated and welcomed? If this doesn’t change soon, I believe we lose all right to be proud of our heritage as a melting pot.
I am proudly half Dutch, but if I am not willing to be deported to the Netherlands, can I really boast about my heritage? I have never lived in the Netherlands. I don’t know the language. The culture and history would be as foreign to me as Midian was to Moses. If he was deported and removed from all he had known and survived, I suppose I can too.
My first question is this: is it necessary? What good will it serve the country by removing me? Why would it make a difference if I was half Hispanic? And my second question is this: how is this carried out by people who believe in the Christian Scriptures that say to welcome the immigrants and refugees? Because we have been refugees and immigrants in the past.
