Barefoot on Holy Ground

July 13, 2008

Rev. Judy Currier

Exodus 3:1-15: "Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked and the bush was blazing, yet it was not being consumed. Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burnt up." When the Lord saw he had turned aside to see, God called him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am" Then God said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

God is in the details, or so they say. And what wonderful details there are in this Old Testament story of Exodus: Moses a wandering shepherd with sheep that don’t belong to him; a bush that burns without making ashes; Moses in his bare feet

I can tell you something interesting about bare feet in the Old Testament. I was doing some research on the book: of Ruth when I discovered it. There were no courtrooms in the rude and unsophisticated agricultural societies of the Old Testament. If you had a dispute with your neighbor, you and he went down to the town gate where the old men of the town hung out. Once there, you argued your case and your neighbor argued his. And then a quorum - eleven old men - discussed it among themselves and rendered a verdict. And while this was going on, the neighbor with whom you were in disagreement held your shoes in his hands and you held his. That way, if the verdict went against you, you were unable to run away; who would want to run through the hot desert on bare feet? Pretty clever and very practical.

"Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet. For the place on which you are standing is holy ground." {Exodus 3: 1-5 } Moses’ soul is pierced by the Word of God, and the soles of his feet are pierced by thistles and thorns. The big question is which piercing gets our attention? Most of us are paying attention to our feet -- to the annoying distractions that come with being alive on this earth.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner¹ says that the miracle is not that the bush was burning. The miracle is that Moses paid attention long enough to notice that the bush was not being consumed. But remember, he was in his bare feet. He had to stick around and pay attention! "Come No closer! Remover the sandals from your feet. For the place on which you are standing is holy ground." {Exodus 3: 1-5 }

I have a story for you this morning about Moses. President Bush was being whisked through an airport by the secret service. The President sees an old man in a robe with a long grey beard. The President stops and asks, "Hey, aren’t you Moses?" The old man looks out the window. So the President asks a bit louder, "Hey, aren’t you Moses?" The old man stares at the ceiling. Finally, a secret service agent steps up and says to the old man, "Hey! The President of the United States is trying to talk to you!" The old man looks at the secret service agent and says, "Yes, I hear him, but, the last time I talked with a bush I had to wander in the desert for forty years!"

Anne Lamott, a Mill Valley novelist, says, "living on the earth has always been a dangerous way to spend our time." Moses would say "Amen to that."

Through the years I have been profoundly moved by the writings of Annie Dillard. In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, her Pulitzer Prize winning book of essays about nature and time, she says, "God has not so much absconded, as spread."^²

God has not so much absconded, as spread. That’s why we don’t see burning bushes anymore. One place is as holy as the next. Holiness has spread to occupy all places and spaces. if we choose to notice.

Annie Dillard says, " I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some erroneous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell."

You don’t have to be a mystic. But you do have to pay attention. "Take off your shoes…"

After his career as a professional basketball player, Phil Jackson became an even more successful basketball coach. His Chicago Bulls won the NBA Championship. As coach he got to coax Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman and ten other millionaires to play together as a team. Like so many other sports personalities, Phil Jackson published a book. Unlike the others, he had something to say. His book is about spirituality. And it’s a winner of a book.³

Jackson came from a Pentecostal Christian Church home. Both his parents were ministers. As a child he memorized Bible verses and as a youth he prayed for the baptism of the Holy Spirit so that he might speak in tongues or receive some sign of God’s holy presence. He prayed and he prayed, and nothing happened.

He says, "I felt like a failure, and yet. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Was it my sinful nature? If so, I didn’t feel like a sinner. Was it my lack of faith? Perhaps but I was no less committed than my brothers. So rather that reject the faith outright, I dodged services and started working on my jump shot."

That parallels the experiences of a lot of us. It comes time to graduate from our childhood faith into something more mature and that something doesn’t materialize. So we work on our Jump Shot, or our MBA, or our chicken cacciatore recipe. A child looks at a bush and sees it burning. A child spends an afternoon poking at the miracle of an anthill, a child pays attention. Then we grow up.

Education robs us of wonder and we can only wonder where God and the burning bush went. We don’t take off our shoes any more; we don’t take the time. We are too busy to notice. And late at night or sitting through a sermon, we wonder if God has absconded, disappeared, withdrawn, gone away.

Consider Annie Dillard's insight. God has not absconded. God has spread. God is in the details of a. thousand things, not just the bush that Moses confronted. Holiness confronts us in our moments of happiness, but in grief as well. Holiness is before us in beauty, and sometimes in tragedy. Every bush is burning now!

Profane is the opposite of sacred. For years, above our kitchen sink, we kept a small prayer card which read: Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) I really believe that. I don’t know what happened to the little card. It got lost, I guess, in one of our moves. But I try to keep it written on my heart. Not just the words, but the power - the power of that knowledge.

Does that mean everything is good? No. Does that mean there is beauty to be found in everything? No. Sometimes when you stop to smell the roses you are going to get stung by a bee! Some things are ugly. Pain and suffering are very, very real. But they are not profane. And the opposite of profane is sacred. The bush is burning. It is burning with God.

Publishing books about the Church is a major industry. What the Church is, what the Church isn’t, what the Church ought to be. There is an academic discipline known as Church History. But in his book, Stories of God, John Shea says there are only three things the Church is called to do: gather the folks, break the bread, and tell the stories. I like that.

Why do we do those three things? Why should they be so important? Because we are learning to see burning bushes. We are learning to notice the presence of holiness in all that surrounds us. We are slowing down, and taking the time to notice that the bush is on fire and God is nearby.

"Come No closer! Remove the sandals from your feet. For the place on which you are standing is holy ground." {Exodus 3: 1-5 }

¹ Thanks to Rev. Anne Marie Dilenschneider, Crystal Springs UMC, San Mateo, CA
² Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Harper Magazine Press, New York, 1974.
³ Phil Jackson, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior, Hyperion, 1996
⁴ Thanks to the Rev. V. James Jeffery , Trinity Episcopal Church, Reno, NV.

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