Attention! Shemot (Exodus 1:1 - 6:1)

Moses was Moses, truly great – because he had that one rare quality: vision, the ability to see what glimmers at us from afar, demanding attention, demanding action - and attend.

Was Moses an archetypal leader? Yes, obviously… and also no. Not classically so. When Moses exercises authority (properly), generally he’s just following God’s orders, or has Him blatantly at his back. Moses’s leadership is generally successful to the extent that he carries out God’s instructions to the letter – which is its own point.

Moses also occasionally goes wrong, as when hitting the rock instead of, as instructed, asking it nicely for water (Numbers 20:7-12) – and maybe also in killing the Egyptian overseer (Exodus 2: 11-12)… there may not have been another choice there, but maybe killing the bastard need not have been the first choice?

What qualifies Moses for leadership? Not special charisma; we’re told nothing of Moses’s looks or personal presence. Not speaking ability; Moses himself tries using his lack thereof, to get out of the job God has for him… and in the end God deploys Aaron to assist with the speaking part of this engagement. So why is Moses chosen?

Does it have to do with his being an adopted Egyptian prince? He seemingly enjoys very little special status when he comes to free the Israelites… except for special access to Pharaoh? Maybe a common slave would never have gotten an audience, never been able to say, ‘let my people go’?

Or maybe, it was not having grown up with a slave mentality – we see, later in the desert, just how unfit that made the Israelites for the newfound responsibilities of freedom. Overcoming that took a whole generation.

Obviously Moses cares, deeply, about injustice. He demonstrates that repeatedly – protecting one Hebrew slave from the overseer, and trying to intervene in a dispute between two more; stepping in to protect Yitro’s daughters from the harassing shepherds; and on. Is that it?

Maybe even that is but one aspect of something deeper.

The key is in the burning bush: Attention.

Actually, Moses could have ignored it all, and just gone on with his cushy life. Overseer beating a slave? Normal. Bickering slaves coming to blows? Everyday. Shepherds harassing girls? Way of the world. So what else is new?

As for the bush… So there’s a bush, and it’s on fire… maybe mildly unusual, but there’s bushes in the desert, otherwise Moses would not have been shepherding there. And they do burn regularly. Campfire not properly put out, lightning… happens. Desert’s pretty dry. But wait… the bush is not consumed (3:2-3), and Moses is intrigued.

So Moses literally steps off his beaten path to investigate. He didn’t have to, had enough keeping all those bloody goats going the right direction. Looking forward to getting back home to Zipporah. So a bush is burning? Who cares?

But no. The bush is an itch Moses just has to scratch. Something that glimmers from afar, that demands, commands, his attention.

“God saw Moses had turned aside to look. And God called to him from within the bush, saying, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he replied, ‘Here I am.’ [God] said, ‘Do not approach. Remove your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.’ [God] said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Moses hid his face, for he feared to look at God” (3:4-6). God speaks from the bush. Not the air, not Moses’s heart, not the holy ground, not even the fire (shades of Elijah?).

The bush is an almost inexhaustibly rich image. It’s been compared to the Phoenix, but isn’t like that. It’s more. Much more constant, for one: The Phoenix burns and has to be reborn. The Bush is on fire, but is not consumed. The Bush’s fire is not all-consuming, then – it’s light, heat, flame, drive, life… but it also says those things need not be destructive. Or, that some things are even deeper, more transcendent that the fire. Things that live, without dying and being reborn constantly. A bush is a small tree… modest, unremarkable, but also a hint at the Tree of Life? Branching, one and multiple, alive. And where the Phoenix is a bird, flitting about from place to place, the Bush is rooted, constant, permanent (unconsumed, again); that rootedness hints at something deeper, a connectedness to the deep layers under the ground of reality. Holy ground, for which Moses needs to take off his shoes, ground himself. To make direct contact with God’s world, with what He has decreed as holy.

Approaching the Divine glimmering, Moses needed: to understand that he is approaching the fundamental, the holy; and, humility – removing the shoes which shield us from contact with the ground, with reality, and keep us just above the world, if only by half an inch.

When gazing into, when engaging with what has captured his attention, Moses connects to the transcendent.

We do not decide what we become interested in. Try it. Doesn’t matter if it would be to your advantage. I just cannot become fascinated with stock trading or tax codes, never mind the obvious stakes. Hopefully when we’re young… but not only then… we get interested in something. Something will grab us, and we’ll want to know more. And more. If we’re lucky, that turns into a living, or at least a long-term hobby. I’m fascinated with history; there’s something there which I need to know, to understand. Some people consume literature or science, others become lawyers or podiatrists, go passionately into charity work… or politics. If they’re honest, none claims to have spontaneously decided to step off their original path and make themselves interested in something. It’s always the reverse: something glimmers from afar, beckons, demands our attention – and occasionally we turn to pursue. That doesn’t mean that every captivating profession or hobby participates of the Holy – although, if pursued in the proper spirit, almost anything might make the world just a little better, one more small bit closer to heaven, and that’s something.

It does show us the root (as it were) of Moses’s true greatness – and a chance to learn it for ourselves: Attention. The ability to overcome the normalcy bias – see what glimmers at us, demanding attention. Or what is out of place, maybe out of order, needs fixing. Needs us to notice it, to see its importance, and to attend to it. To take off our shoes and say, “hineni – here I am”.

For all we know, there could be burning bushes all around.

What do you say we take a look around?

And God help us all.