Recently in our Wednesday night Bible study, we came across
the famous story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3). Moses is herding
sheep on a desert mountain when he sees something strange: a bush suffused with
flame, but with the branches and leaves left unconsumed. It turns out that this
unusual manifestation is the presence of God himself, there to speak with Moses
and to commission him to lead the people of Israel out of slavery.
If you’ve ever spent time in church or Sunday school, you’ve
probably known this story for a long time. In fact, you may have heard it so
often that it ceased to seem odd to you. But the truth is, this is a very
strange story. It leads one to ask the question, Why would God show up in this
form, rather than in one of the more common ways he interacts with other
biblical characters, either through angelic messengers or simply as a voice
from heaven? We also need to ask the question of why it’s symbolically
important that the bush itself doesn’t burn up—that point is clearly important
to the writer of the Exodus account, because he remarks on it twice. But why?
Couldn’t God just as easily have spoken from a pillar of flame, with no bush at
all?
Christians in the early centuries of our faith thought long
and hard about biblical symbolism like this. They saw in the Exodus story a
symbol of the Gospel itself—of God, in his mercy, acting to save his people out
of their slavery to sin and brokenness and death. And, in fact, many of the
events of the Exodus story do match up with the Christian Gospel—the Passover
foreshadowing the sacrifice of Christ, the journey through the Red Sea
foreshadowing baptism, and so on. As such, the early church looked at the story
of the burning bush and saw there a symbol of the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ.
What is said about the bush parallels the core doctrines that we hold about
Christ’s nature: that he is fully divine and fully human, and that those two
natures are inseparable from one another in his personhood, but at the same
time unmixed. In the words of the old Chalcedonian Creed, Christ is “acknowledged
in two natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the
difference of the natures being in no way removed because of the union, but
rather the properties of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person.”
This union of two natures was foreshadowed in the burning bush nearly a
millennium and a half before the moment when the divine Son of God became incarnate—the flame representing
the divine nature, the bush representing the flesh of Jesus’ human nature, but
both existing in complete harmony together in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
The early church even went a little further, and taught that
the burning bush was also a foreshadowing of us, of redeemed humanity in
Christ. There’s an old story from the time of the desert fathers (Christian
heroes who had gone out into the wilderness to live solitary lives of prayer): A
man named Lot went to visit a desert father named Abba Joseph. “Abba,” said
Lot, “I can I do my devotions, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, and as far
as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up
and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of
fire, and he said, “If you will, you can become all flame.” This story speaks
to one of the greatest truths of Christianity: that we poor mortals of flesh
and blood can, through the work of the Holy Spirit and the practice of prayer,
become suffused with the radiance and joy of the divine life, just like the
burning bush. I would challenge you to take this year to develop the habit of
persistent prayer, and let the flame of the Holy Spirit be fanned into fire in
your heart.