Exodus 3:1-15
At my service of installation last February, the friend I asked to give the Charge to the Pastor revealed one of my secrets to those in attendance that day. OK, so it isn’t a very well-kept secret, since it’s on display most Sundays from September through March. But here it is: I love boots.
I actually love shoes in general, and boots in particular. I came by it naturally—my mother loves shoes, too. She says it’s because no matter how much weight she gains or loses, in shoes she always wears an 8 Narrow. But it’s more than that for me. My shoe selections are connected to both my plans for the day and my mood. If I’m wearing sneakers—or in the language of the Midwest and South, tennis shoes—then I feel more playful. If I’m wearing my Teva sandals, I feel free. But if I’m wearing my cowboy boots? Watch out! But my favorites are dress boots, especially with at least a little heel. I walk differently in them. I stand firm and steady. My posture is even better. I feel strong and confident when I’m wearing boots.
Is it any wonder I wear them most Sundays, Autumn through Spring? Of course, other considerations do come into play, such as weather conditions and the blinding paleness of my winter legs! But I will admit that I like to preach in boots because I feel steady on my feet, on solid ground.
As much as I love to preach, the pulpit can be a rather daunting place. To stand before a congregation each week, knowing that one sermon can’t possibly meet all the different needs people bring, to believe that you have something worthwhile to say . . . all the while knowing that the person who may need to hear this message the most is the one speaking it . . . well, some mornings I can use any lift I can get, even if it’s from my boots.
But sometimes I wonder. . . . This space (the pulpit) is holy ground to me. So shouldn’t I be taking off my shoes? That’s what God told Moses to do: “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
I have several theories for why God called it holy, but first let’s back-track and remind ourselves of Moses’ story. Moses was an Israelite, but was adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter. These dual histories provided a very difficult dichotomy . . . to be part of both the oppressors and the oppressed, to stand, emotionally, at both ends of the whip. One day the cognitive dissonance grew too great, and when Moses saw an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave, he killed the Egyptian in a fit of rage and buried him in the sand. When he learned that others knew what he had done, he fled for his life. Moses found his way to Midian, where, in time, he married the priest’s daughter and tended his father-in-law’s sheep.
This is where we pick up the story in our text for today. Moses is out tending the sheep, minding his own business, when he sees an angel in a flame of fire in the middle of a bush. We don’t know much about the angel–the angel isn’t mentioned again–but we’re told that the bush was burning but not being consumed. Moses says, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” Personally, I would have turned aside to see why an angel was in the fire, but Moses seemed more interested in the burning bush. So Moses turns aside from his work, from the focus of his day, and then God speaks.
I find it interesting that God did not speak until after Moses turned aside. It makes me wonder how many times God has tried to get my attention, and would have spoken to me if I had just slowed down and “turned aside.”
This brings me to my first theory of why the place is holy ground. Perhaps it is holy because Moses does what many of us do not–he stops in the middle of his busyness and listens to the voice of God. If this is true, holy ground can be the middle of our office, when we take the time to pray. Holy ground can be on the factory line, when we notice another worker in pain. Holy ground can be the classroom, when we stop the test preparation long enough to notice an unloved child. All of these are holy ground.
God’s next words provide another clue. The text actually has a beautiful sequence of verbs. God says: I have seen the misery of my people; I have heard their cries; I know their suffering; and I have come down to deliver them. These words mark the first (or at least the most significant) record of God hearing the cries of the oppressed and God’s promise to act on their behalf. I like to think this is why the ground was holy: because here God promises to act on behalf of the captives.
If this is true, holy ground can be the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. Holy ground can be the courtroom where sentences are given unequally. Holy ground can be the homeless shelter, the hospital room, the prison cell.
The ground may have been holy because Moses turned aside to see and hear. The ground may have been holy because God heard the cries of the oppressed. Or the ground may have been holy simply because that’s where God and Human met. In the coming years, the holy places for the children of Israel would be Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai, the temple, and the ark of the covenant. They were not simply the places where God was, but the places they encountered God. It was the encounter between human and divine that made the place holy. Wherever we encounter God is holy ground: a quiet mountaintop or a crashing sea, a sanctuary with walls or a sanctuary with trees, while standing and serving those who have no home, or lying with the one who shares our home. Wherever we encounter God is holy ground.
So how should we respond? How should we act when we discover that we are on holy ground? We’re supposed to take off our shoes. We’re supposed to remove what separates us from touching the divine. But, as I said earlier, I’m rather attached to my footwear. They help me feel strong, confident, on solid ground . . . which is exactly why I need to take them off. I need to remove anything that separates me from the holy, anything that protects me from an encounter that just might change me.
This morning when I arrived at church, I walked across the parking lot and suddenly—the heel of my shoe broke off! I think God (or Anne Klein) was trying to tell me something! So although Jackie brought me another pair to wear before worship, I am preaching barefooted this morning.
One person I read this week has this to say about taking off our shoes: “Draw away the covering that has protected you. Clear away the barrier between yourself and the earth so that your bare feet may touch and sink and take root in this holy ground. Let this living soil coat your skin. Dig in, feel your way, and find your balance here upon this mountain, so that its life becomes your life, its fire your fire, its sacred sand and loam and rock the ground of your seeing, speaking, and calling.”[1]
What kind of shoes do you wear? What kind of protection do you have against the searing sand of God’s truth? What separates you from experiencing the holy ground of intimacy?
Shoes do protect us, but sometimes they do more. In the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amon [King Tut] they found sandals that “bore the image of foreign captives upon the insole, proclaiming with the king’s every step Egyptian power over the peoples and nations his armies had subdued.”[2]
Can you imagine? Every time you put on your shoes, you see the images of your captives, those you oppress. I’m sure it was meant as a boast, as royal pride. But for us today, surely it would do the opposite. What if our shoes bore the images of those we stepped on to get to the top? or those we ignored and walked on by? or maybe even those whose shoes we have no desire to walk in, so we don’t try.
The entire world is holy ground, for the entire world is where we can encounter God. We need to take off our shoes so that we can see where we stand.
Artist and writer Jan Richardson wrote this beautiful poem called “Blessing at the Burning Bush”
You will have to decide if you want this— want the blessing that comes to you on an ordinary day when you are minding your own path, bent on the task before you that you have done a hundred times, a thousand.
You will have to choose for yourself whether you will attend to the signs, whether you will open your eyes to the searing light, the heat, whether you will open your ears, your heart to the voice that knows your name, that tells you this place where you stand— this ground so familiar and therefore unregarded— is, in fact, holy.
[You also will have to choose for yourself whether to remove your shoes, and all that separates you from all that is holy and profane. You will have to choose whether to touch, unprotected, the peaceful searing of God’s presence.]
No path from here could ever be ordinary again, could ever become unstrange to you whose seeing has been scorched beyond all salving.
You will know your path not by how it shines before you but by how it burns within you, leaving you whole as you go from here blazing with your inarticulate, your inescapable yes.[3]
May we all blaze as we go, with a “yes” that may be inarticulate, but is undeniably true. And may we be unafraid to stand on holy ground, barefoot with God.
[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2136
[2] Ibid.
[3] © Jan Richardson, www.janrichardson.com.