Why is the bush not burned?

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it saved Israel.

As he unwittingly proto-typed Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Moses was distracted by a curious phenomenon: “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” (Ex. 3:3) Read the rest of the story here.

Why is the bush not burned? Moses’ question is not answered, but Israel is set free from slavery.

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Even more curious is the mystery of the incarnation.

At the self-revelation of God in the birth of Jesus Christ, more onlookers repeated Moses’ sentence: “I will turn aside to see this great sight.” The One Whom the Old Testament shepherd, Moses, could not see, the New Testament shepherds could see: Israel’s God, “veiled in flesh.”

How is the sinful flesh of humanity not destroyed by the consuming fire that has made its home in it? How is the darkness of the world not sublimated by the Light that has come into it? How is this,

…blear and blinding ball

With blackness bound, [which] all

The thick stars round him roll

Flashing like flecks or coal,

Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt …

Made sweeter, not made dim?”

The wonderment of the onlookers is not answered, but humanity is set free from death in all of its forms.

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After sunset on Friday, sitting in the cold street and stretching my accursed “Franicevich hamstrings,” I looked up at the only visible thing in front of me: the tree pictured above. I asked, only half-jokingly, along with my brother Moses, “Why is the tree not burned?”

I had just finished a walk-in-nature-while-talking-on-the-phone session with a close friend. We had both been experiencing a months-long disorientation and confusion that had not become clearer on either side, despite the prayer we had put into it.

But just this week, we have both been learning to make a new movement in our prayers. Instead of asking, “Jesus, reach down into this and dispel our darkness,” we are praying more patiently and evangelically: “Jesus, Light of the world, abide with us in our darkness.”

This is a mystery of prayer: How can God sit with me, and I not be burned?

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The incarnation reminds me to hope.

Look more closely with me at the leaves which, during the day, had run between onion-skin orange and eggplant purple. At night, they were black. In the light, they were golden. That reminded me of the alchemy of the incarnation:

God became man that man might become like God.

God sits with us in our darkness. How are we not burned?

Ponder the mystery of the incarnation, the powerful and liberating life of Israel’s God in a human body. Be curious at the mystery by become like him in his suffering, that you might know the power of his resurrection.