Last week I was at a theological convocation in Austin talking about a topic called the Two Kinds of Righteousness. I won’t go into all the details of that, though maybe I could post a couple of posts on the topic from the two presenters. Roughly speaking, this theological concept says that we have a vertical relationship with God in which we’re passive. We receive gifts from God. He establishes the relationship.
At the same time, God calls us to horizontal relationships with others and the world. In this realm we’re quite active. As I was preparing for a devotion at the convcation the image and story that came to my mind was Moses at the burning bush.
Why?
Becuase for Moses that bush was the intersection of the horizontal and the vertical.
Look at this image by Chagall of Moses at the bush. The biggest thing in the picture is the bush. It stand over Moses who is down on his knees, feet uncovered, on this holy ground. His hand is on his chest. He is in awe as God establishes a relationship with him. And it’s all God. God calls him to the bush. God reveals his name (notice above the bush are the Hebrew letters for God’s name, “Yahweh”). This is all God.
But God doesn’t leave people just in the vertical. They need to go out into the horizontal realm. And so God gives him a task. He will lead the Jewish people out of Egypt. Perhaps one could even say that task is represented by the flock in the background. I conjectured that Moses’ hand on chest can be not just awe at God, but also Moses being taken aback by this daunting task. He objects. But God places him into those horizontal roles anyway.
And soon they fill up Moses’ life. In some ways that’s good. We should be serious about our work of caring for other people. We should take seriously the jobs God gives us- jobs as mothers, fathers, children, students, workers, husbands, wives, and yes as members of a church as well. Take that all seriously. The problem for Moses is that in some ways he gets so swept up in the horizontal work, and especially in the fact that in his relationships he’s trying to bring people to God, that he forgets who really does the vertical work. And he even forgets that God needs to keep working on the vertical relationship with Moses himself as well.
So time after time when God speaks to Moses he repeats the words he spoke to Moses at the burning bush. And he likes to emphasize his name as well, “Yahweh”, the name associated with that great phrase, “I Am Who I Am”. Essentially, God is the actor. He accomplishes what he will. That’s what Moses needs to remember. He needs to “go back to the bush”. That’s what I kept repeating to the pastors at the convocation. And that’s what I hope you remember from this image as well.
“Go back to the bush”. It’s important that we take this world seriously, but as your life fills up with important jobs, don’t forget who’s at the center of it all, who gives you those jobs, and who needs to keep establishing his relationship with you. So “go back to the bush”; go back to worship, to devotions, to your bush-like experiences where you can let God work on you.
