Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Midian
A Levite woman conceived and bore a son. She placed him in a basket among the reeds on the river bank where Pharaoh’s daughter, at the river to bathe, found the baby and was moved with pity. The baby’s sister, watching closely, asked, “Shall I go and call one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child?” Yes, please.
When the child grew Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him as her son and named him Moses.
Till he was 20, Moses lived in Pharaoh’s court. Everyone saw that he looked different – in fact, like a Hebrew. But the Hebrews were slaves. What was Moses thinking while he watched his fellow countrymen from his privileged position?
The story moves quickly.
On a walk one day Moses saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew. Looking about and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
But he was seen and fled to the land of Midian, where Abraham and Keturah’s son had settled long before. Mercifully, the Torah keeps the story simple. In Midian Moses marries and becomes a man of the land. In due time a burning bush will change his life again and send him back to Egypt, not as a fugitive but as a liberator.
Psalm 69 is paired with this reading from Exodus. The psalm exudes all the despair and emotional desperation absent in the story.
I am sunk in the abysmal swamp where there is no foothold.
I am afflicted and in pain. Protect my O God, for I have reached the watery depths.
Perhaps Moses’ dreams kept him awake at night. He had murdered a man and fled. How could he reconcile that with his desire to be a fine husband, father, farmer, son? No wonder his surprise when the burning bush chose him to liberate his fellow Hebrews. But looking back and looking forward, it’s evident that God has different criteria in mind when selecting his chosen ones.
I think he chose men and women who were long-suffering and thus able to look beyond anguish to celebration. Neither will last very long.
Richard Rohr has this to say about our response to the light and darkness which are always present:
Few Christians have been taught to hold the paschal mystery of both death and resurrection. In many ways, the struggle with darkness has been the church’s constant dilemma. It wants to exist in perfect light, where God alone lives (see James 1:17). It does not like the shadowland of our human reality. It seems that all of us are trying to find ways to avoid the mystery of human life—that we are all a mixture of darkness and light—instead of learning how to carry it patiently through to resurrection, as Jesus did.
Jesus says, “Your patient endurance will win you your lives” (Luke 21:19). He shows us the way of redemptive suffering instead of redemptive violence. Patience comes from our attempts to hold together an always-mixed reality. Perfectionism only makes us resentful and judgmental. Grateful people emerge in a world rightly defined, where even darkness is no surprise but an opportunity.Â
In Midian Moses cared for sheep and his family, not in that order I hope. He grew old and then older, approaching 80. He was, as Rohr says, “emerging in a world rightly defined,” ready, although he didn’t know it yet, to encounter the fire of God.
(Exodus 2, Psalm 69, Psalm 95, Matthew 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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