Toward a Drier Place
THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
Exodus 3:1-15
Almost twenty years ago now, I caught an incredible sunrise in the Annapurna mountain range of the Himalayas. I’d been told that the thing to do was to wake up well before dawn, climb a big hill in total darkness for almost an hour, and watch the horizon from the hilltop for sunrise to start.
Not a single photo on the internet captures what that sunrise looked like in person. It started when the light of the sun caught the tip of the tallest mountain peak. That peak was almost like a star—a sparkly point of light as the snow reflected the rising sun like fire. As the sun continued to rise, it looked like a very defined bar between light and darkness was lowering itself down the panorama of the mountain range. As this bar lowered, more of the mountains themselves came into view. The mountain peaks at lower elevations each popped into view, one by one. Eventually, the bar sunk so low that the whole mountain range was visible, and the day had officially begun.
Remembering that sunrise has helped me picture much more clearly a scene from the end of the Flood story in the book of Genesis. According to the story, the flood waters rose so high, that “all the high mountains . . . were covered.” So, Mount Everest may be tall, but these waters were taller—at least fifteen cubits taller, whatever that amounts to. The ark—or boat—with Noah and the other human and animal survivors was floating above all the mountain peaks of the earth. After 150 days of floating like that, the Lord sent a “wind” to nudge the waters to recede, “little by little,” over another 150 days. Slowly, we’re told, “the mountaintops appeared,” and “the ark came to rest . . . on the mountains of Ararat” (Gen 8:1-5).
Watching those flood waters recede would be a lot like watching the sun rise over the Annapurna mountains. The water-level lowered gradually, in a clear line, as the dry mountain peaks popped above the receding flood waters and the range came more fully into view. (I also really enjoy picturing a huge boat stranded in a mountain range and people wondering, “Now how did that get there?”).
At this point you may be wondering: did the preacher get the memo about which Scriptures we’d be reading this Sunday?? I’m getting there.
Having a clearer picture of the flood water lowering slowly, and of the dry mountain peaks and ranges appearing gradually above the surface, helps me grasp the significance of the dry mountain to Moses in our first reading.
Up to that point in the book of Exodus, Moses was acquainted with the dangers of water. Moses was born in Egypt, just as Pharaoh was trying to reduce the Israelite population by ordering Egyptians to “fling” newborn Israelite boys into the Nile river (Exo 1:22). Moses’s mother managed to hide her infant son for three months. Then, she built a wicker “ark” for him (tevah Exo 2:3). (Most English translations of the Bible call Noah’s boat an “ark” and Moses’s ark a “basket,” but the same Hebrew word describes them both as arks.)
Moses’s mother waterproofed the basket-ark with resin and pitch and placed her baby in the basket in the reeds along the bank of the Nile. Pharaoh’s daughter found the boy and named him “Moses” because, she said, “from the water I drew him out.” (The name “Moses” sounds like a Hebrew word that means “to draw out from water.”)
Moses survives another risky encounter with water when he’s on the run from Pharaoh as an adult. Moses has killed an Egyptian man for striking an enslaved Israelite. Moses runs for his life to a land called Midian and sits down by a well. The local priest’s seven daughters come to water their sheep, but some shepherds come and try to fight off the women to get the water for themselves. Moses, though—ever my hero!—gets up, fights off the shepherds, and waters the women’s flock. As a thank-you, their dad the local priest invites Moses to dinner and arranges for Moses to marry one of his daughters.
So, after surviving the dangers of watery places, Moses has landed somewhere safely high and dry in today’s first reading. He’s tending the flock of his father-in-law, and he leads the animals into a desert, to a mountain called “Horeb.” The name “Horeb” is drawn from a Hebrew word for dryness. There’s more than one Hebrew word for “dry land”—words translated as “desert,” “wilderness,” “wasteland,” and “shore”—but “Horeb” is from one of the drier terms. The dry ground suggested by “Horeb” is like a parched desert, not just a safe shore.
And this mountain isn’t just dry; it’s so dry it’s flammable. Just like the mountaintops “appeared” (נִרְא֖וּ) to Noah’s family as the flood waters subsided (Gen 8:6), so an angel of the Lord “appeared” (וַ֠יֵּרָא) to Moses on a dry mountain in a bush that was up in flames (Exo 3:1).
For a man whose life had been so imperiled by water, a dry mountain with a burning bush must have been a powerful sign. It can be difficult for us to recognize what this dryness meant to Moses, since dryness is so often a symbol of lack or desperation. For example, our Psalmist today cries out to God, “my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, / as in a barren and dry land where there is no water” (Ps 63:1). In our second reading today, Paul recalls how Moses famously drew water from a rock while the Israelites wandered in the wilderness.
But in Moses’s life, it was more typically dryness that signified the saving power of God. In today’s reading, the man whose name means “drawn from water” encounters God on “Dry Mountain.” After this reading, Moses returns to Egypt to lead his people to freedom. At first, they make it only as far as the edge of the Sea of Reeds. But there, a wind blows all night long—like the wind that drove back the Flood waters—until the sea turns into “dry ground” (Exo 14:21). Here, the word for that dry ground is the one connected to “Horeb.” In other words, the wind from the Lord doesn’t just expose a saturated seabed that’s safe to walk on; the wind from the Lord goes so far as to suck up all the moisture from that ground. I imagine that most Israelites in the story would run across the exposed sea floor without noticing how soggy or not the ground was. But I imagine that Moses would see just how dry that ground was, and that he would place hope and find comfort there.
In today’s reading, the Lord promises Moses a sign for completing this mission. The Lord tells Moses, “when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” Perhaps this sounded to Moses like reassurance that his feet would return to high and dry ground again.
This episode from Exodus is about a very dry place that Moses wandered into, and to which he returned. To understand what this place meant to Moses, we have to appreciate the roles of water and dryness in the whole of his life, and in the larger biblical story of creation, flood, recreation, and liberation. This story shows us that the Lord pops up in dry places, to assure and embolden his people, to lead them from death into life. Whether we search and turn aside to discover these places, or watch and wait for them to appear, the Lord promises—wherever we are now, we’ll have our moments in a drier place.
© 2022 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas