Can you tell the difference if you are turning the pages of a biography or the pages of a blueprint? The difference matters when it comes to reading the Bible, because Bible stories are not biographies, but blueprints. Take today's episode from Exodus. If we read it as a chapter in Moses' biography, which we tend to do, then it's simply information. How does it move us ahead in our spiritual journey to know that? We call the Bible holy, and actually experience it that way, because it is not history, not biography, not even information primarily, but a blueprint for building a spiritual life. Now that does snap me up in my seat. A blueprint not only helps me know how to build my spiritual life, but it helps me see life's hidden structure. For example, look at Moses' encounter with the burning bush.

Right away the passage throws us into a quandray. It says that Moses led the flock “beyond the wilderness.” What could be beyond wilderness? We get a hint: it goes on to say that Moses came to the mountain of God. In other words, Mystery lies beyond wilderness. That is a territory that many of us shy away from. We treat Mystery as if it were a fly and we hold the fly swatter. We try to reduce it to minutes or inches or ounces; and if we cannot measure it, we turn away and hurry back to business-as-usual.

Let me step aside for a moment and speak about what I am calling business-as-usual. By this I mean our normal, daily preoccupations. Business-as-usual means all of the ways we are woven into the web of this world – my work, my family and friendships, my plans, dreams, interests.... This is not bad nor is it meant to sound selfish. Think of our charities! In fact, what I am calling business-as-usual is necessary and can be quite unselfish. Business-as-usual only becomes a problem when it is all we know of life.

Moses came face to face with Mystery when he saw a fire raging in a bush and observed that the bush was not burning up. Many people would turn on the spot and run back to the flock and the safety of business-as-usual. Not Moses. Instead, he was drawn toward the Mystery, and that was when God took notice of him. That triggered God's interest. If Moses had identified Mystery with darkness and danger, he might not have turned aside, and God might not have spoken. But Mystery is light itself to the spiritual life, and Moses either knew or intuited that this is so. Whenever the eternal meets the temporal we encounter Mystery.

This meeting was the turning point in Moses'life. But what made it a turning point? The revelation! God gave Moses a revelation in the burning bush, a blueprint of a fundamental spiritual truth. It takes an image, such as the burning bush, to penetrate with the power necessary for revelation. The burning bush revealed two lives, so to speak: the life of the bush and the life of the fire. The life of the bush, though not consumed by the fire, would, in the course of years, turn to dust and compost. The life of the fire, however, would not die. The life of the fire did not depend on wood. Why did God show Moses this mystery? To entertain him? Hardly. In showing Moses this mystery, God was showing Moses something about himself. Yes, Moses, you have a mortal life – your physical body, your body of knowledge and wisdom, your business-as-usual body. But do you realize that within that mortal life, like a fire blazing within twigs and branches, another life burns in you, an immortal life?

A second revelation follows this; and this second revelation is another fundamental spiritual truth. God says to Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters.” Both of those verbs, I have observed and I have heard, translate the same Hebrew word, ra'ah. That word can also be translated experience, or take to heart. In other words, God is revealing Godself to Moses as a God of justice, a God who takes to heart the suffering of oppression, and sides with the sufferer. This introduces a shocking truth; for a God of justice cannot be a tribal God, but only a universal God. To this day we struggle against this revelation. Some say God bless America as if we in the United States have some special claim on God, regardless of what we do. Or we can think that as Christians we can count on God to favor us above others. Yet this revelation to Moses shows God identifying, not with the powerful – no matter how scrupulous their prayers – nor with the establishment – no matter how meticulous their worship – but with those who suffer, with the victims of injustice, whoever they may be. If God plays favorites, these are the favored ones.

This puts us in a position to understand Jesus' teaching in today's Gospel. His followers tell him about some people in Galilee whom Pilate slaughtered. Jesus knows what they are thinking – that those people were slaughtered in punishment for some serious sins. Not so, he says. “But unless you repent, you will perish as they did.” What does Jesus mean? First, he sees that they are trying to draw a distinction between themselves and other, less fortunate people – trying to set themselves apart in a separate moral gene pool, so to speak. Right there he sees a need for them to repent. And remember, to repent means not only to acknowledge the wrong one has done, but even more, to resolve to turn one's thoughts and actions in a new direction. So if they are intent on somehow setting themselves apart from the general run of humanity, they need to change direction.

But Jesus is telling them to do more than that. When he says, “perish as they did” he does not mean be slaughtered or be crushed in an accident; he is speaking of a different kind of perishing. He meant perish, as we do, if we are limited solely to a business-as-usual world. In effect, Jesus is saying to his disciples, “Repent, that is, turn in a new direction, turn toward the burning bush. Seek to experience the life in you that will never die, the life that does not depend on your mortal flesh, the life that links you to all of creation, the life that lights up your conscience, the life that brings you the joy of heaven here and now.”

Jesus follows this counsel with another cautionary tale, the parable of the fig tree. The fig tree, of course, represents a disciple of Jesus. God, the owner of the tree, is looking for figs from us, that is, looking for evidence that we have seen the burning bush; looking for evidence that we have found the truth of it in ourselves; that we are beginning to live in the light of that Mystery. What, then, would such fruit look like? A fig is simply a turn, an act of turning aside from business-as-usual. We turn aside from our world of business-as-usual when we worship; and when we reach out with our time and our money, for example, to the people in Haiti; and when we set aside our own agenda and listen to a spouse or partner or friend or stranger – even an enemy – with our full attention. Above all, we turn aside, or bear fruit, when we stand up against injustice, no matter who may be the perpetrator. Actually, we bear fruit any time we turn aside from what we are doing – something as simple as changing a tire, picking up a tennis ball, or seasoning a soup – turn aside and simply be aware. Be aware: right here and now I am standing on holy ground. I am a burning bush. All such acts are juicy morsels in the mouth of God.

I'll close with a reassurance for those of us who think we have never seen a burning bush, or doubt that holy fire burning within ourselves. We do not need to feel it; we can trust that it does burn within us. Only this matters, that, like Moses, we are open to the Mystery. We are willing not to turn back to business-as-usual when we encounter it. A friend of mine, a nun, who has her PhD from Julliard, has met the burning bush in the music of Bach. Others seek it with meditative practices. Some find it in what we call coincidences. Sometimes out at night under the sky full of stars you can be swept by the awareness: I am one with all that is. The Bible has served as a burning bush for countless people through the ages. In fact, some have such a powerful encounter with the divine fire in the Bible that they refuse to allow that the Bible is also a bush, that is, an artfact of culture and history. For Christians probably the most immediate encounter with the burning bush takes place in the intimacy of the Eucharist, that great Mystery where the eternal and the temporal intersect.

The summary of what I have said, and the lesson in today's readings, can be put simply. This life is not all we have, with its “sham, drudgery and broken dreams.” Another life burns within us, infinitely larger and full of purpose. Because God loves us, God does all in God's power to draw us to this Mystery. May it be happening in us even now.