Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 3 March 2013

Burning Bush Russian icon

Sunday Lent 3

Despite the rather grim tone of Paul’s warnings to the Corinthians not to fall into sin ….or else, we should also note how the deeper refrain of compassion beats strongly in the first reading and the gospel. In the account of the burning bush we meet one of the most significant hierophanies in scripture, God heralded by the fire in the midst of the bush, Moses realising that this was indeed holy ground, so holy he had to take off his shoes and veil his face from the presence, but instead of chastisement for sins and a reckoning of faults, God gives two significant gifts to Israel through Moses, the first is access through God’s name of I Am who I Am and secondly in the promise that God has heard and will answer their prayer.

We need to hang on to those two gifts because they concern us too. The trouble is many of us find it rather easier to chastise and correct, to blame and ask others to take responsibility for wrong doing, when it is actually our own fault and anyway we need to be reminded that what happens to the least of our sisters and brothers is our concern.

Jesus in the gospel warns us about reading wrath and judgment into situations, that is not our right nor should we try to include God in that image. Our calling is to help others repent and forgive. If there is any warning to be done it is not ours to give, instead we must help people know that to God is aware of the worlds needs and means to deliver us from all that binds us. In return we are not to judge others and certainly not to cast the first stone, for in truth the Lord is compassion and love and forgives all our guilt.

I don’t know if you, like me find that freeing and humbling and part of the great mystery of God’s love. When we really begin to accept the amazing compassion of God, who time and time again gives us another chance like the fig tree in Luke’s story, and believe it as a truth in our own lives, only then do we begin to see that any moment, any encounter of love with others, any situation when we help, lift up or have compassion for others becomes a moment of our burning bush. The holy ground of our lives is when we meet the Christ in those situations.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.