God is on your team

Homily
3rd Sunday of Lent C
sede vacante
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
3 March 2013
Daily Readings


Videbo visionem hanc magnam quare non comburatur rubus.  I will see this great vision in which the bush does not burn.  Guess where this inscription, and the corresponding depiction of Moses kneeling before the burning bush, appears?  That's right, on the seal of the University of Kansas.  Not at Notre Dame or Rockhurst.  At KU.  On the seal is not a Jayhawk or a field of wheat or Allen Fieldhouse.  On the seal is a religious symbol and an inscription that is markedly supernatural.  The goal of the education at the University of Kansas, if you take your clue from the seal, is a heavenly goal, one that goes beyond science or mere human knowledge.  Those are the words and that is the image that will be on your diploma someday, if you get one.

It's safe to say that the seal is not a centerpiece of the university now.  Nobody talks about it.  The seal is not discussed in class.  Theology is not the highest department at KU, nor Smith Hall for religious studies, with its statue of Moses and the stained glass window of the burning bush, a prominent building.  The seal seems to be a vestige of the past, something the ACLU hasn't gotten around to protesting yet, because no one pays any mind.  On the KU website, there is the shortest description of the seal, a reference only to fire as knowledge and Moses as depicting a humble student who knows the pursuit of knowledge and truth is unquenchable.

There's nothing on the KU website about the bush however.  And the bush is the problem, isn't it?  If there were a bush on campus that was noncompetitive with fire for matter and energy, you better believe the whole science departments from KU would be running experiments on that bush.  The part of the scene that is most remarkable, the reason that Moses went over in the first place, is the part that KU ignores on its own website.  There seems to be no understanding or curiosity about the bush.  Yet there's nothing unusual about a man watching fire.  We've all done that.  What is interesting about this scene is the bush.  There's a bush that is not consumed by fire.

In the story we heard, God tells Moses that his is a unique category of being. I am who am - when God says this, it is not a tautology of meaninglessness but tells us that God is not a part of the world, that God does not have being but ISbeing.  Therefore, the burning bush tells us something about the interplay between man and God.  The two are non-competitive.  Because God is not part of the world, he can visit the world without displacing man, without obliterating man.  Moses is afraid, like we all would be, because our assumption is that when the bigger appears the smaller disappears.  Yet the burning bush shows the uniqueness of the God of Israel.  Moses needs to respect God, but not fear his being competitive.  This is new in the history of the religions of the world.  The relationship between man and God is not a either/or, zero sum game.

A key way to understand the debate between Christianity and atheism is to notice what happens when God visits people, when fire visits the bush.  For Christianity, the bush becomes more alive, more fully itself, when it welcomes God, when it surrenders to the fire.  For atheism, when God visits man is diminished, he is bullied, he is displaced and discarded.  For the atheist, a no to God is a yes for man.  For the Christian, as St. Irenaeus would say, the glory of God is man fully alive.  For the Christian, a yes to God is a yes for man, and vice versa.

Now, I don't want to oversimplify this.  God's being noncompetitive does not mean that he loses his power.  There are times when God's visitation to his people is less like his visit to the bush and more like the visit of the orchard owner to his fig tree.  God for our own good visits us not to destroy us but to admonish us and give us a deadline for bearing fruit.  In this way God is still non-competitive - he does not want to bully us but to serve us and share life with us.  Yet this love of God in some instances must take the stance of tough love, of not allowing us to make ourselves selfish and unhappy and unfruitful.  What is more, if we do not bear fruit at some point we must be cut down, so that we do not make others unhappy.  It is more merciful to cut a tree down than to let it be eternally unfruitful.

That is why we have the season of Lent, and this time is so important to us.  There is for each one of us personall a kind of spiritual physics, a point of no return, when our habits and attitudes get to the point where our nature is stable and the chance for conversion passes us by.  Lent is the time of radical pruning, of detaching from unhelpful things, through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving, so that the chance to be set on fire by the love of God remains real for us.  The fire of the burning bush should allow us to see today through the resurrection of Easter all the way to the fire of Pentecost, for to be set on fire by God for sanctity and to bear fruit that will last forever, is our highest mission and destiny in life.  Amen.