Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Sunday, March 3, 2013.

First Reading: Exodus 3:1-15
Scripture offers scores of images and metaphors to help us visualize the idea of a God who is beyond our imagining. Still, the idea of God appearing to Moses in a burning bush might seem a little strange to our modern ears. But hear God’s message to Moses, foreshadowing God’s covenant with the people: God brought us out of slavery. God will be with us. God’s assertion to Moses, “I am who I am,” may also be translated from ancient Hebrew as “I will be what I will be,” a promise that carries down through the ages.

Psalm 63
We began the penitential season of Lent by recalling the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert, defying temptation and preparing for his ministry on earth. Today’s Psalm finds the Psalmist in a similar place, seeking God with thirsty soul in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Through prayer, the poet’s hunger is satisfied. Upheld by God’s strong hand, he sings for joy under the shadow of God’s wings.

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Paul, teaching the people of Corinth in a time when early Christians were still working out their relationship with Judaism, recalls Old Testament stories in which Israelites were struck down for failing to keep God’s ways. Paul holds up the Israelites as bad examples for the early Christians, who may have felt that God was testing them through hard times. Be faithful, Paul urges, and know that when hard times test us, God will provide us strength through our faith.

Gospel: Luke 13:1-9
Do bad things happen to people because they sin? No, responds Jesus. Bad things can happen to anyone. That is the way of the world. As God taught Job, so speaks Jesus: God does not punish sin with suffering. The world is more complicated than that. But, Jesus goes on, repentance brings forgiveness and eternal life. And, like the gardener who defers cutting down the barren fig tree in favor of nurturing it a little more, we have hope for forgiveness and another chance.