Father Tim Lemlin
I have noticed through the years (usually in hind-sight) that when I feel ashamed I have done something wrong, or when I am angry with another person I find it very difficult to keep the other person's gaze. I'll look at the person's forehead, or I'll look past them, or I'll look down, but rarely into the person's eyes. The English word respect means to "look again." When respect is absent we have difficulty looking.
The story of Moses is one of respect. It is a respect that is - as always - initiated by God. Today's reading from Exodus begins this story. Moses is attracted to what he describes as "fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed." As he draws near to this "remarkable sight" he hears God speaking to him and he "hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God." He was ashamed.
Moses is a fugitive from justice. He has killed a man. He is filled with guilt because he was raised as a privileged Egyptian rather than an enslaved Hebrew, which is his true heritage. He is accosted by fear that he will be found out. His life spirals down until he becomes a shepherd in a nomadic tribe - a nobody in a nonentity. It is then that God initiates the gaze, and though intrigued at first, "Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God." He has to be slowly taught how to look back. He must learn, like so many of us, how to live with respect rather than shame. He must be slowly convinced by God of God's respect for him.
It seems easier for us to live in shame, guilt and anger. It seems easier for us to be cynical and judgmental. It seems easier to blame others - to blame God - for negative events such as we hear in today's gospel story from Luke. Jesus balances these events with a story about a fig tree that is not bearing fruit. The owner of the garden quickly determines that the tree is useless. It needs to be cut down.
The owner of the garden is much like life. Unless we are seen as useful - bearing fruit - we are quickly discarded. This is the fear that many of us carry. It is the shame that comes from being imperfect. It is the pain of knowing my limitations and feeling like more is being demanded of me than I can give.
The gardener is much like God. God respects us - holds our gaze. God initiates the necessary effort to bring us to a place where we can bear fruit. It is only in the presence of another who respects us that we grow. And as we grow we learn how to respect - to "look again" - at others.
The story of Moses continues. Seemingly without even noticing Moses hiding his face, God sends him on a political mission. God has "witnessed (seen) the affliction" of the Hebrews in Egypt and "have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering," God says." God, at this moment, connects spirituality and social engagement, prayer and politics, contemplation and action. The freedom that God has to respect Moses must be lived out in the physical world for Moses (and us) to come to that same freedom.
These words are not even out of God's mouth when Moses poses five reasons why he is not the one that God wants. He asks God, "Who am I?" Next he asks, "Who are you?" Then he asks, "What if they don't believe me?" Frantic, he makes the excuse that "I stutter." Finally, exasperated he questions, "Why not send someone else?" God never gets angry at Moses and respectfully, even intimately, answers each of his objections and offers something that Moses at the time doesn't appreciate. God offers a promise of personal Presence. God also offers Moses a glimpse into who God is - Being Itself, Existence Itself, a liberator who is utterly liberated and wants to share this freedom with us.
We are each busy, but let us make time each day to become aware of God looking at us. We will feel ashamed, guilty, and afraid. We will see how we have failed. We will know our faults. We will cover our faces. But if we are faithful daily to allowing ourselves to know that God is looking at us we will slowly also become aware of our growth. We will experience greater freedom, and our inner freedom will become an outer freedom to respect others. This is when spirituality and social engagement combines and we begin to appreciate the incarnation - God becoming flesh, and the inner and the outer no longer are separate but one.
