Turn Aside: Sur, the Burning Bush, and the God Who Waits

Moses is at work when it happens. That's the part I keep coming back to. He isn't on a retreat and he isn't praying. He's on the clock, watching somebody else's sheep out past the edge of everything, and a bush catches fire.

Bushes catch fire in the desert. Dry brush, hot sun, that happens. The strange part is that it doesn't burn up.

But what stopped me this week wasn't the fire. It was the order of the sentences. "Then Moses said, I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up." And one verse later: "When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush."

Read that order again. God doesn't speak until Moses walks over. The bush is already burning. The voice is already in it. But nothing gets said until a man leaves the path he was on.

Sur: the Hebrew word for leaving the road

The phrase "I must turn aside" is a form of the verb sur. It rhymes with "sure." It's a travel word, and it's almost always a physical one. It shows up when somebody steps off a path to go into a house, and when a king turns his chariot out of a battle line. And it shows up at the worst moment in the whole book, Israel at the bottom of Sinai, when God says they have turned aside from the way I commanded them and made a calf.

Same verb. Moses turned aside and found God. They turned aside and built a substitute. That's the range. Sur can be the best thing you ever did or the worst, and the word itself won't tell you which. It only tells you one thing: you were headed somewhere, and you stopped heading there.

What Moses actually says is asurah-na. The -na on the end is the little softener, the "please," the "let me." He's talking to himself. Let me just go over there a second. Which is such an ordinary way to enter the most important conversation in the Hebrew Bible.

God waited for the detour

I think most of us have this story backwards in our heads. We picture the burning bush as an interruption. God busts in, Moses is minding his business and gets grabbed by the collar.

What actually happens is that God puts something strange at the edge of a man's peripheral vision and then waits to see whether he'll spend the walk. And the walk is the cost. That's the whole test. Whatever a shepherd was supposed to be doing that afternoon, he wasn't going to be doing it while he stood there staring at a shrub.

I don't think God was testing Moses' courage. I think God was testing whether he still had any curiosity left after forty years of sheep. Because here's what's true about a detour: it never comes at a good time. That's structurally what a detour is. If it were on your way, it wouldn't be one.

Then Moses gets over there and God talks, and every verb moves in the same direction. I have observed the misery of my people. I have heard their cry. I know their sufferings. I have come down to deliver them. Observed, heard, know, come down. Every one of them closes distance.

That third one is worth stopping on. The Hebrew behind "know" is yada, the deepest kind of knowing a person can do. It's the word the Bible uses for a husband and wife. It means known from the inside. God is saying, I know what it feels like in there. So the God who rewards a man for turning aside is a God who has just turned aside himself. "I have come down" is a sur of a kind. He left the road.

Who am I, and the answer that misses the question

Then Moses does the thing all of us do. Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?

It's a fair question. Look at what's behind him. Years back he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, looked both ways, killed the man and buried him in the sand. The next day two Hebrews threw it in his face, and he ran. He's been in Midian ever since, working for his wife's father, and he named his first son Gershom, a stranger there, because that's what he is. Wanted for murder in the country he's being sent back to. Already rejected once by the people he's being sent to rescue. Who am I is an accurate summary of all of that.

And God doesn't answer it. Go look. He never says here's who you are, Moses, here's why you're the guy. He says, "I will be with you." Wrong answer to the question asked. Exactly right answer to the fear underneath it.

The name works the same way. Ehyeh asher ehyeh. And ehyeh, "I am," "I will be," is the same word God used two verses earlier when he said ehyeh immak, I will be with you. One word doing both jobs. What God is, and whether he'll be there, come out as the same answer. There isn't a version of God's identity that stands off to the side of showing up.

Romans 12 is a list of trips you didn't plan

Paul's list in Romans 12 is, top to bottom, a list of detours. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Extend hospitality to strangers. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Look at what that costs. You have to go where they are and feel what they're feeling on their schedule, not yours. Weeping with somebody shows up when it shows up. It doesn't check your calendar and it ruins an evening. And rejoicing is somehow the harder one, at least for me. Weeping with a friend makes you feel like a good person. Rejoicing with a friend who just got the thing you wanted, that one you have to actually leave the road for.

Then it gets worse. Bless those who persecute you. If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Feeding somebody is logistics. You have to know what's in the fridge, and you have to walk it over. Every single item on Paul's list requires physical movement toward a specific person you weren't already headed toward.

Matthew 16, where somebody tries to cancel the detour

This is the week right after Peter's big moment. You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus hands him the keys, the whole thing. Peter has never been higher. And then Jesus starts telling them he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed, and Peter takes him aside and says, God forbid it, Lord. This must never happen to you.

Peter is being a friend. That's what makes it hard to read. He's trying to route his teacher around the worst thing.

Get behind me, Jesus says. That phrase is worth a second. Behind me is the follower's position. It's where a disciple stands. He's telling Peter to get back in line. You were walking in front of me telling me where the road goes, and that is not your job.

And then the line everybody knows. Take up your cross. I've heard that used to mean put up with things. Bad knee, difficult coworker, that's my cross. To a person standing in a Roman province it meant something else entirely. A cross was something you carried through town, in public, off your route, on the worst day of your life. Take up your cross means go the way that costs you something, on purpose.

What I'd do with this before Sunday

Three readings, one direction. Toward. And the enemy of all of it is efficiency. It's a life so tightly routed that there's no slack in it for a burning bush.

Almost nobody decides against God on purpose. We miss him the way you miss an exit. You saw the sign. You were moving well. Stopping felt like losing something, and there'd be another one. Making good time is the most respectable way to lose your life, and nobody will ever criticize you for it.

So look for the bush. Something has been flickering at the edge of your week. A name that surfaces when the house is quiet. You already know what it is, and you've been driving past it.

Asurah-na. Let me just go over there a second. You don't have to know what it means, and Moses didn't either. He walked over to look at a fire and came back with a name for God and a job that ate the rest of his life. He just had to be willing to be late.