5th Sunday of Easter - Year C

Exodus is the second book of the Bible; it is based on and around the story of slaves escaping from their oppression in Egypt and travelling through the hostile desert under the leadership of Moses; and it was in this process that a relationship was built up between them and the one God who would be theirs from then on forever; it was the God with the mysterious name of Yahweh, meaning something like ‘I am who is.’ This basic oral account over time gained a great number of elaborations and additions before it settled into the written form in the Bible that has now been more or less unaltered for about two and a half thousand years. In our extract for today’s first reading we hear of this aloof and even fearful God condescending to meet with Moses the people’s leader on the heights of the sacred Mount Sinai. This God then announces himself (always referred to in this personal way) as kind and forgiving, despite the unfaithfulness of the people whose God He is. Moses is encouraged by this revelation and feels enabled to respond on behalf of the people he leads, with worship and prayer for blessing and forgiveness. It is this threefold pattern in this section of the Exodus story that is seen by Christians to suit this day’s Feast of the Trinity – the threefold pattern of God the aloof, the one who shows Himself and the one who enables an appropriate response.