Morning Prayer: Tom Lyda Choral Amen Hymn of Presence *Holy Spirit, Truth Divine* Witness of Scripture: Exodus 3: 1-15 Anthem *Song of Triumph* Dale Grotenhuis. FCC Chancel Choir Sermon *Holy Ground* David Spain
Recorded on 9/3/2023
Last week, worship began as it always does with our acolytes coming forward to light the candles on the Communion Table. What was slightly unusual about last week was that one of the acolytes was barefooted. While the reason for a lack of shoes might have been tied more to comfort than theology, the posture was exactly right. Anticipating today’s story we just heard from Exodus, the acolyte approached the altar, approached holy ground sans shoes, which was God’s instruction to Moses in this wondrous story that is mysterious, sobering, revealing, and even humorous, these four words descriptive of what seems to be part of any sacred encounter.
The reading from Exodus is often referred to as the call of Moses which it certainly is; and the story is much more than that because wherever the Holy is present, there is always more happening than we can ever comprehend. To better appreciate this story of Moses near Mount Horeb, we remember some of the events prior to this one that are also holy ground moments. We recall that thanks to Joseph, our Hebrew ancestors found Egypt to be sanctuary during the 7-year drought. As Exodus opens, Joseph has died, and the Hebrew people are more than surviving; they are thriving. But, a new Pharaoh is on the throne whose demeanor is ruled by fear rather than compassion. With the Hebrew population increasing and no way to limit their growth, Pharaoh initiates a program that like all such moves is horrifying on two fronts. First, the Hebrews are enslaved, Pharaoh’s brick quotas ever-increasing to solidify the Egyptian economy at the expense of forced labor—production valued more than people made easier when such people are labeled and objectified as foreigners. The second front moves from program to pogrom, as Pharaoh orders the deaths of all Hebrew infant boys. However, not everyone obeyed Pharoah’s dictum. There were midwives who refused to do as Pharoah commanded. God’s power—holy ground—was in the compassion of midwives going against the royal decree.Undeterred, Pharoah shifted methods although the madness was still the same—the Hebrew boys were to be done away with in the Nile. What a bitter irony—the river of life transformed into a watershed of tears by the power of fearful arrogance.
Yet here again, and at no small risk to themselves, there were those who would not be part of Pharaoh’s fear and profiteering. When Moses is born, his mother keeps him hidden as long as she can until one day she weaves a little ark of a basket and places the child among the bulrushes at the river’s edge. Miriam, Moses’ sister, keeps watch from a distance as Pharaoh’s daughter comes to the river and fishes out Moses for her own. Miriam appears and offers to find a nurse-maid for the baby.Miriam is one smart sister, for when Pharaoh’s daughter approves of that plan, she gets their mother to be the nursemaid and attend to Moses. Holy ground, the courageous workings of these women to thwart paranoid hatred. So, Moses with his own mother’s nourishment coursing through his life, grew up in the palace, well-educated, even in the lap of luxury.
Moses could have forgotten his origins—privilege can be powerful, privilege can shape perspective so profoundly that compassion becomes an afterthought rather than a way of being. But Moses remembered, and Egyptian power did not distort sacred power.Moses went out to see the enslaved Hebrews, and his heart went out to them, so much so that one day he reacted decisively when witnessing an Egyptian taskmaster punishing a Hebrew slave.With the taskmaster dispatched, Moses had to flee for his own life which landed him in the far country of Midian where, one day while at a well Moses intervened when some ruffians were harassing Jethro’s 7 daughters, one of whom took a shine to Moses and married him. For all the luxury he grew up in, the dye had been cast—Moses’ heart is holy ground for those who are hurting, whether it is the enslaved who are his own people or 7 daughters from a foreign country who are being bullied. Moses stands in the long line of those who have stood up in the face of oppression or sat down at a lunch counter or refused to give up their seat on a bus.It would be in the wilderness beyond Midian where Moses discovers where God stands.
As the third chapter of Exodus opens, our story says Moses now employed by his father-in-law as a shepherd, takes his flock beyond the wilderness to a place called Horeb, the mountain of God. It is a critical piece of theology more than geography. What, do we imagine, is beyond the wilderness? God is there, says Exodus and we remember the poetry of the Psalmist who wrote, “where can I go from your Spirit, where can I flee from Your Presence?” Again, this is more than location, this is God’s work of vocation—this God who calls a man on the most wanted list running from the most powerful nation in the world.It is good news for those who think they are too far gone for God’s good purposes to work through their lives; but it may be bad news for those who want God to leave them alone. God, as the story tells, sees and hears differently from Pharaoh who would like everyone to believe he has ultimate power, which of course the clever midwives back in Egypt know is a bogus claim. Holy ground, not in the thrones of power but in the throes of compassion, including even Moses out there beyond the wilderness.
There are so many wondrous possibilities with this story, which like the parables Jesus would tell, are meant to loosen the ground for the Holy rather than ground in a certain belief about the Holy. We note that God initiates the whole conversation. Moses is doing nothing more than caring for the sheep; Moses is not looking for God. Yet God comes calling to Moses. It might seem odd that God, who needed no help getting the whole creation going, now asks for help in creation’s ongoing. But that seems to be the design, for to be made in the image of God is to be given power with the freedom to embody God’s ways, and the freedom to ignore God’s ways.God comes to Moses—it was not the first time, nor would it be the last time God comes to creation. It happened in the Garden; it happened to Abraham and Sarah; it happened to David; it happened to Mary; it happens to the whole blessed world that God makes holy by coming wherever and however God comes, even if it is beyond the wilderness.
In the comedy that is this story, there is a spirited dialogue between God and Moses, who puts forth most every logical explanation for why he is a bad choice to do God’s bidding. God calls Moses to speak truth to power (which is holy ground by the way), and Moses reminds God that when it comes to public speaking, the local Toastmaster’s club rejected his membership. Moses also reminds God that his credibility with Pharaoh is not held in high esteem; and that when it comes to theology, he has barely cracked the binding on any reading about God. Moses tries to pass the job to Aaron, but God will have none of it. Moses is the man, and to all his objections God essentially says, “I will be with you,” which may be the least detailed, yet the most important of all promises God could have made to Moses. This is a deeply human part of the story, because everyone at some point along the way feels insufficient to the task, whatever the task is.Moses discovers that his real limits are not limiting God. This deep and wondrous truth played itself out years later when Jesus called his band of helpers—people who were marginalized, ostracized, villainized who are given a new name, disciples.
The story reveals something critical about God. In a scrawny little scrub bush, God comes to Moses to speak up for a people Pharaoh is making scrawny and trying to brush off the face of the earth. It is a reminder that there is nothing so insignificant that God does not notice; no one so diminished for whom God does not care.Exodus makes clear that God does not listen to the pontifications of a bombastic Pharaoh; instead, God hears the cries of the hurting. God hears their misery, their suffering, and God does something about it by enlisting Moses as an ally. Moses learned that as he had been cared for in his vulnerability and as he cared for those who were vulnerable, so it is with God. Stephen Shoemaker says it this way—“There is no secret in the Bible whose side God is on in the historical equation of tyrant/captive, oppressor/ oppressed, master/ slave, dominator/dominated. God is freedom to the bound, comfort to the bruised, reproof to the tyrant, strength to the weak. The question is not whose side God is on but whose side are we on?” (GodStories, p. 80-81)
And then there is this, and it is a subtle but essential part of the story. Exodus says Moses noticed and stepped aside to look, to pay attention. To be sure we could argue who wouldn’t pay attention to a bush that burns but does not burn up, especially when it starts talking to us! And yet, we can’t help but ponder how much glory we miss in the living of our days, how many times we don’t step aside for the Holy, being hard pressed by all that commands our attention. Barbara Brown Taylor has written, “Most of us move so quickly that our surroundings become no more than the blurred scenery we fly past on our way to somewhere else. We pay attention to the speedometer, the wristwatch, the cell phone, the list of things to do…The bush required Moses to take a timeout, at least if he wanted to do more than glance at it.” (An Altar in the World, p. 24)
What did Moses learn when he took the time, when he attended to the Holy in his midst? First and foremost, exactly that—that God is not some distant Deity but a compassionate Presence who by coming to this earth hallows every last grain of sand and calls us to do the same. God is not some distant Deity but a compassionate Presence who cares that every single person who walks on God’s good earth honors and cares for the neighbor and the stranger. If we are ever going to be well—and we certainly can be—we will learn that holy ground is not confined to some particular place but is present in the altar that is God’s world, which is to say that there is no place absent the gracious Presence of God. And that of course is why our barefooted acolyte got it exactly right.