The 'O Adonai' antiphon reads thus:
O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
Malcolm Guite remembers becoming a Christian in college:
"When I became a Christian as an undergraduate I remember an anthropology student sneering at me, saying, 'The God of the Old Testament is just a tribal god.' In this sonnet, I finally answer back and say, 'Yes, it's just as well he dared to be, dared to come out of the invulnerable realm of ideas and into the bloody theatre of history, that he might change and redeem it from within.'" (Guite, Waiting on the Word, 72)
From Guite's 'O Adonai' sonnet:
O you who dared to be a tribal God,
to own a language, people and a place,
who chose to be exploited and betrayed,
If so you might be met with face to face.
To the anthropology student's point, Israel was not atypical from other ancient societies. Their laws and covenants were similar to those of the Code of Hammurabi. In fact, the Bible itself concedes this point: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not chosen because they were particularly godly. They didn't ascend up to God, but Scripture maintains that God came to them, the common ancient people that they were. That student thought that the Israelites just happened to make up a god who would fit their temperament and needs as a society. Guite seems to diagnose the scorn for this ancient tribe - because they were ancient, because they were this particular group of people, of course their 'god' couldn't be the real god of the universe. Some local people in a corner of the world make up a god who conveniently fits their corner of the world. As Guite points out, people who feel this way would be much more comfortable with the god who is 'sapientia' or wisdom - yesterday's word:
"'O Sapientia', taken by itself, might leave us free to agree with one another vaguely on an equally vague and amorphous religion in which something undoubtedly holy was generally everywhere, but no one need make any particular claims or have any awkward personal encounters: a high religion for the high-minded, but no earthly use." (Guite, 71)
Instead, Guite describes the Christian faith, and the Jewish faith before it, as religions that demand that we face the scandal of particularity of a God who "meets particular people in particular places, and from one small encounter builds a nation and changes everything." (Guite, 72) Who lives in tabernacles, travels with the descendants of individual people he's made covenants with, who appears in a burning bush, who engages in tribal skirmishes between Philistines and Israelites as if the story of the universe is at stake, because it is, because it is through an Israelite woman that the Lord God himself, YHWH, who appears to Moses, will be born a tiny infant. And that through Jesus, the nations will come to know the true God.
The final two lines to Guite's sonnet are:
Touch the bare branches of our unbelief
and blaze again like fire in every leaf
It is fitting that the burning bush story from Exodus 3 plays such a key role in the antiphon and in Guite's sonnet. First, that's where Moses is shown the divine name, YHWH, which Israelites protected by using the name 'Adonai'. Second, the story shows both the nearness and the strangeness of God. Moses might have easily passed by the bush, but only in noticing that the bush doesn't burn up, does he realize both aspects at once: God is here - this bush, this mountain, this country, this world. He's in this place. He's near. And then...God is here, the strange, unknowable God is here, and then Moses is removing his sandals on this holy ground. The name 'Adonai', translated "LORD" in our Bibles, also conveys this combination of strangeness and nearness. Its a word spoken constantly with fervor by Israelites who know him. He's near. But the word itself is a stand-in for the holy name of God which was not to be spoken. Strange. Unspeakable. Unknowable. Both together in one event. And it occurs again and again throughout the Bible. Mary's womb becomes something of a burning bush. It contains the Holy Lord of God, yet she is not destroyed. Jesus himself too. He is God, yet he is human. And, as Guite shows, it informs our faith too. Inseparable from the fear of realizing that God has come to my sinful soul - my "bare branches of unbelief", on this bad day, at this inconvenient hour, is the wonder and joy that God - the God who is not in the least defined by those particularities, and yet enters into them graciously - has come to us, right here, as we are.
In these ways, 'O Adonai' shows us the God of all wisdom becoming radically, and uncomfortably (for us) particular, to the point that he's born in a manger. But also, that this has been the way of God throughout the Old Testament: he draws near. As Moses put it in Deuteronomy:
"Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe." (Deut. 30:11-14)
One more thing: I walked through the 'village of Bethlehem' in the Loft with my son at church, and among other things he noticed a 'campfire' with little red flames made of shimmering paper. Before his nap at home, we read in the Jesus Storybook Bible about the burning bush (at random, his choice), after which, he thanked God for the "burning bush". Sitting down to write this post (he literally just woke up from his nap : - ), I find I'm also thankful for the burning bush. I'm thankful that the eternal God draws near to us.
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