Holy Ground, just one step ahead ... or to the side

 Reading:  Exodus 3:1-15 

In Exodus 3 we are just getting to know Moses.  He’s an Israelite, a child of enslaved parents in the Egyptian Empire.  Miraculously, he is raised as an Egyptian in the home of the ruling pharaoh.  But as a young man rising in the Egyptian aristocracy, he blows his cover when he murders an Egyptian military commander whom he sees cruelly beating an Israelite slave. 

Moses gets out and puts Egypt as far behind him as he can.  He escapes to the Sinai where he moves in with his Israelite father-in-law Jethro, and works for him as a sheep-herder out in the desert.  It seems he’s reached the best possible end to his story … until one day he sees something burning – but not burning up – and the rest is history, at least the beginning of the history of the people of God.

One day while Moses was taking care of the sheep and goats of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, he led the flock across the desert and came to Sinai, the holy mountain. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him as a flame coming from the middle of a bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire but that it was not burning up. “This is strange,” he thought. “Why isn't the bush burning up? I will go closer and see.”

When the Lord saw that Moses was coming closer, he called to him from the middle of the bush and said, “Moses! Moses!"

 He answered, “Yes, here I am.”

God said, “Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, because you are standing on holy ground. I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” So Moses covered his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

Then the Lord said, “I [like you] have seen how cruelly my people are being treated in Egypt; I have heard them cry out to be rescued from their slave drivers. I know all about their sufferings, and so I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of Egypt to a spacious land, one which is rich and fertile and in which the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites now live. I have indeed heard the cry of my people, and I see how the Egyptians are oppressing them. Now I am sending you to the king of Egypt so that you can lead my people out of his country.”

But Moses said to God, “I am nobody. How can I go to the king and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

God answered, “I will be with you, and when you bring the people out of Egypt, you will worship me on this mountain. That will be the proof that I have sent you.”

But Moses replied, “When I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ So what can I tell them?”

God said, “I am who I am. [Or … I will be who or what I will be … Or something like that; it’s really hard to tell … it’s almost like God is saying, “don’t even think you’ll ever really know my name, and be able to control or predict me.”] You must tell them: ‘The one who is called I Am has sent me to you.’ Tell the Israelites that I, the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have sent you to them. This is my name forever; this is what all future generations are to call me.”

Meditation

Whenever I read this story, I immediately imagine the desolation and extreme loneliness of the meeting-place of Moses and God when God commissions Moses to go and set his people free.  But I wonder if that emphasis on the extreme geographical isolation is largely a reflection of my own inner predisposition towards reclusiveness and solitude.

Recently I’ve read that the Sinai did not feel as empty to the people of the time as we think it must have.  Many, if not most, who lived there were sheep-herders, and leading their herds around the desert on a regular route of short-term feeding patches was simply what they did.  It was their economy and livelihood, and “the wilderness” was no more remote and unknown to the people of that day as the orchards and vineyards of Winona used to be to the people of Toronto.

I’ve also learned that some rabbinic traditions suggest the real miracle of the story and what sets Moses apart from others as a candidate for God’s liberating purpose, is not that God sets the bush on fire and Moses sees it.  Rather, it’s that unlike all the other sheep-herders  who saw the burning bush and just passed by thinking there is really nothing special about a bush burning up in the heat, only Moses, when he sees it, actually stops what he is doing and goes over to it, and stands and looks at it long enough to see it actually isn’t burning up. 

Is this what makes the ground and the story told upon it holy?  Is it Moses’ extreme curiosity, his patience, and his willingness and openness to see through the appearance of a thing to the heart of it, and to the presence of holiness afire in the ordinary – even in what seems to be ordinary destruction and loss?  In the midst of the commerce of the day, the constant search for a livelihood, the routine back-and-forth across the hard, dry face of the earth to see the fire of God’s love at the heart of it all, and hear the call to live a transforming, liberated and liberating life?

This summer because of the pandemic, the Winona Peach Festival is cancelled for the first time since its beginning in 1967.  It’s a huge loss to the community because of the spirit it generates and the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised for a whole host of community organizations and projects.  Here at Fifty we’ll really miss the tens of thousands we usually make every summer from the sale of peach pies.

To their credit, though, the Women of Fifty – alone among the participating organizations of the Festival, I’m told – sat down and took a good hard look at the situation, and in short order came to see that not all need be lost.  That the Festival is cancelled – up in smoke, but the call and opportunity to raise money for all the good work it supports, is not. 

So, with the fire of holy purpose within them, this weekend – the usual weekend of Peach Festival, they’ve organized a stand-alone sale in the church parking pot of 1,000 pies and whatever peach jam and jelly they have available.  And as this weekend approached their concern quickly became not whether without the Festival as the draw they’d be able to sell the 1,000 pies they’ve arranged for, but how on earth they were going to manage the traffic flow through our parking lot and on the highway in front of our building with the overwhelming response they’ve had with all the pies sold out more than a week ago through online and phone pre-orders.

It seems people are hungry for Fifty United Peach Pies.  And jam and jelly. 

And reaching out to satisfy that hunger has taken curiosity, patience, openness to see the possibilities that emerge when what we’re used to doing is taken away, and courage to do something new about it instead.

It makes me wonder what else the people around us, in the community around our church building, may be hungry for.  And may be even more aware of, because of the pandemic and all the other crises, and slow-downs and break-downs of our time.

For friendship maybe.  For comfort and hope.  For a helping hand.  For forgiveness and freedom from some shame they’ve carried far too long?  For help in helping their children know and believe in a God of love?  Or help in knowing God’s love themselves?

Maybe for a chance to be involved in something that makes a difference for good in the world?  To connect with other people of faith – any faith, for some good purpose? 

It makes me hope that as a church we’ll bring to all our planning in mission and worship and Christian education, in pastoral care and our ways of fellowship the same kind of curiosity, patience, openness, creativity and courage that we bring to our fund-raising.

We know we can do it.  In this time of pandemic with our normal ways of gathering for worship taken from us, we’ve learned to do this – something we knew others did, but we told ourselves we weren’t up to doing, for whatever reason.  Yet here we are, and we don’t intend to stop, even when we gather again in-person.

And before the pandemic, we tried a new kind of study-and-discussion group built around a really neat video series exploring “Gratefulness” as a life style and a moral choice.  It was a little different than we were used to, and we expected the usual 5-8 people.  But because it caught the attention of one of our members, and she shared her excitement about it with friends, colleagues and clients, the first week of the series we had 25 people crammed into our meeting space – at least half of whom had never been in, or even heard of Fifty church before.

As a church, one of the questions to ask is “what are people around us hungry for?” 

To find the answer we may need to stop at least some of what we are used to doing, take time to go over and look at something off to the side, and look long enough at it to see what and where and how the heart of the community really is, and where the fire of God is.

And in our own lives – in your life, “what are you hungry for?  Where and how is the fire of God in you?” 

People have come to Fifty this weekend because they’re hungry for peach pies. 

What else are they hungry for in the wilderness of our time? 

What else are you hungry for at the heart of your bright burning life?