God speaks from the fire in the burning bush, but Moses knows that God is not in the fire. God speaks to Elijah after the fire on Carmel, and the text tells us explicitly that God is not in the fire. Yet fire as a Divine medium recurs, and we associate fire with the Divine because of its ungovernable force, sweeping away everything before it.
These past two weeks, my home city of Los Angeles has learned yet again the power of fire to devastate homes and lives. Like Moses, we do not see God’s self in the fire, but it is possible to hear God’s message through it.
Through the fire, we are reminded of the fragility of everything we hold dear, the possibility that the cataclysm of a moment will overwhelm the patient accumulation of a lifetime, and that ultimately, we are deeply reliant on one another, on community, on kindness, and on love. Calling clearly through the flames is the enormous devotion and sacrifice of the front line fighters who seek to contain the fire, working day and night, the benefit of whose efforts we can never fully appreciate. The fire called many to sacrifice and to reach beyond themselves to save others.
Moses had to turn aside to notice the bush that was on fire. Even dramatic events can be ignored or forgotten if we do not, like our teacher Moses, pay attention to what the world is teaching us. In the aftermath of such tragedy, it is possible to be indolent, to be heedless, and return to the same protocols and assumptions that will lay the groundwork for future disasters.
Isaiah promises the Jewish people that God will exchange ashes for beauty (Is. 61:3). Moses turned from the burning bush recognizing that the work ahead of him was both enormous and epochal. If Los Angeles, the “City of Angels,” can hear God speaking from the fire, if we can discern the same messages of solidarity and tzedakah and inspiration as our ancestors, then we will turn destruction into esh kodesh, a holy flame, one that builds a future on the ashes of the past.
