1st Reading – Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15
The story of the salvation of God’s peoples continues during this Lenten season. Today we hear of Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush.
Moses (Hebrew: Moshe) was born into a Hebrew family who lived in Egypt. As the story goes, the Egyptians had issued an order to kill all male Jewish infants (commentators have suggested that this was to weaken the Jewish tribal bond by eliminating male heirs, thus forcing intermarriage and abolishing the priesthood). Moses escaped this fate by being cast adrift in a basket on the Nile (at the age of 3 months) and rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter who immediately recognized him as a Hebrew (no doubt because Jews circumcised at 8 days and Egyptians at 13 years). Moses, as he was named by Pharaoh’s daughter, was raised as her son. One day in 1486 B.C. when Moses was forty (Acts 7:23), he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew and had to flee. He went to Midian [so named for Midian, a descendent of Abraham through Keturah (a wife of lower rank through whom the Hebrews established their connection with the Arabian tribes (Genesis 25:1-4; 1 Chronicles 1:32)]. Midian was located on the eastern shore of the Red Sea in the area of present Saudi Arabia and probably included the Sinai Peninsula.
He married a priest’s daughter and settled down to be a shepherd, which brings us to the time of today’s reading, about 40 years after his arrival in Midian.
2nd Reading – 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
Our epistle reading for today mentions the wilderness struggle of the Israelites, so it ties into the story of Moses and the people.
Gospel – Luke 13:1-9
Our Gospel reading is a mid-Lenten call for repentance that provides a continuing balance to the Old Testament stories of covenant-making between God and His people. God called Moses and the Israelites. He demanded that the people of the covenant live a life of repentance and turn back to the Lord. The people of the covenant are expected to bear fruit. Our relationship with God cannot be taken for granted any more than a marriage relationship can. Husband and wife must constantly make decisions of love for each other. Priorities have to be set in which the marriage relationship comes first; otherwise the
marriage falters, dries up, and often dies. The covenant must be renewed day after day after day with decisions for the covenant of marriage. This is the kind of constant decision making that is essential if we are to live in our covenant relationship with God.
