“Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” When I was a child at Camp Farthest Out we would gather on a lush grassy field in the late summer sun for devotions in motion – a time of prayer combined with music and movement – The woman who led us in those days, Anne Allen, would always quote this verse as we gathered. A few moments latter, after a wonderfully relaxing spine stretching exercise, Anne would instruct us to walk very tall, milling about with each other and greeting each other by name. “Good morning St. Sarah, Good morning St. Anne, Good morning St. Jean, Good morning St. Paul…. Other times at camp I would hear about the miracles God had done in some people’s lives, and witness others being deeply touched and healed through the power of God’s Spirit. All of this together gave me the impression that when I was at camp I was in a holy place, surrounded by saints and angles. It was a powerful feeling. “Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” I gladly kicked them off, and planted my bare feet on God’s good earth, and felt the power of holiness all around me.
When we experience the holiness of God, standing in his presence on holy ground, it is thrilling, amazing, and wonderful. This is what Moses experienced at the burning bush. He was witnessing a miracle – the bush was blazing, but was not turning to ash and soot. The angel of the Lord appeared to him – he saw the angel in the bush and had to stop what he was doing and take a closer look. He was drawn to the place that had become holy with God’s presence. Some people are attracted to such a holy experience because it is thrilling, it make your heart beat a little faster – makes you feel alive. But the thrill of standing in God’s holy presence is not all we are meant to learn from Exodus chapter three.
Moses also heard God speak to him directly, call him by name. Moses! Moses! And God told Moses that he had come to Moses’ people, the Israelites to be with them in their suffering and help them out of their troubles. Do you remember the old popular tv show, Touched by an Angel and the inevitable moment in every episode when the music changes and Roma Downey begins to glow, her hair gently blowing and the character in front of her display their wonder and amazement when she proclaims “I am and angel, sent from God.” Students of the Bible know that the Hebrew and Greek words for angel simply mean messenger. And in the tv show, the message is always the same, “God loves you.” It’s a wonderful thing to stand in God’s holy presence and know that God loves us and will help us out of trouble. But I don’t think this is all this passage of Exodus is trying to say to us today.
Another aspect of standing on holy ground is becoming aware of the power of God. The first instruction the Lord gave to Moses was “Come no closer!” In Old Testament days it was thought that if humans were too close to God, or looked directly at God the power would overwhelm and destroy them. God’s holiness is truly AWE-SOME in that when we become aware of it we are both attracted, and a little afraid. In the Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis depicts Christ as a Lion, Aslan. The children in the story were so attracted to him - that soft, warm mane and beautiful face – but they were also always keenly aware of his powerful muscles rippling under the fur, and his very sharp claws and teeth. It was the power of God that caused Moses to hide his face.
But it’s also tempting for humans to try to harness divine power for our own purposes. We want the holy power of God to rub off on us. In the 70s there was a children’s show I used to watch called Shazam. Every Saturday when young Billy Batson got into trouble he would call on to the godlike elders Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury – Shazam! - and they would send their power to him, transforming him into Captain Marvel, able to meet any challenge and defeat any enemy. Some Bible scholars speculate that Moses, like Billy, might have gone intentionally to the Mountain of God and had the desire to know God’s name so that he could tap into God’s holy power and use it. Sometimes humans fall into this same mindset when only turn to God in prayer, or make our way to certain holy places when we want something from God. But I don’t think Exodus three means to encourage us in such a one sided relationship with our God.
I think Exodus three become much more clear when we notice everything God is doing in this passage. God is the active one in the story. Moses was just shuffling along with his sheep when all of a sudden the angel of the Lord appeared. Then God called to Moses, gave him instructions and made an introduction “I am the God of your ancestors. I have observed the misery of my people. I have heard their cry. I know their sufferings and I have come down to bring them up out of Egypt and bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey.” God is the active one here, not Moses.
There are two really important aspects of Moses encounter with God. First God teaches Moses who God is. Yes, God is holy, and powerful. God is too awesome for any human to take full strength. But this God is a particular God, not Mercury, or Atlas or Zeus. Our God’s name (show card). When Christians try to say this Hebrew name for God they usually pronounce it Yahweh, or Jehovah. But the Israelites and even Jews today never actually pronounce this name, in respect for God’s holiness. Instead, when they see these letters in they say Adonai, which means Lord. This is why so many of our bibles us the word Lord – all in capitals, for the name of God. In Hebrew these letters for God’s name look like the verb “he is”. And so when Moses asks God, what his name is, God replies. “I AM who I AM or I Will Be who I Will Be. Tell the people, “I AM has sent me to you.” But God doesn’t just give Moses his name. The Lord makes sure Moses knows that he is the same God who chose a particular family, a certain people and made a covenant with them. “I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah. This is also my name, the title you shall know be by for all generations.” Furthermore the Lord is not just a God of long ago and far away, a God of faded memories and old stories. The Lord is alive and is acting today. As we just noted, the Lord is a God who acts. He appears before us, he calls to us, he gives us instructions, he teaches us his name. He also watches us, hears our cries, knows our sufferings and comes down to bring us up out of our troubles and lead us to a better place, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
But the second very important thing God wants us to know today is that our holy encounters with God are not just meant to give us a thrill, or to assure us we are loved, or we will be saved. When we become aware that we are standing in God’s presence, on holy ground, we can be sure that God is also giving us a vocation. God appeared before Moses and called him by name because God had a plan for Moses’ life. And this plan was not just for Moses to find a job, get a wife, settle down and live happily ever after. No, just like last week when God called Shiphrah and Puah, Moses’ mother, sister Miriam and the Pharaoh’s daughter, the plan God had for Moses involved using Moses himself as an instrument of salvation.
The experience of standing on holy ground, in the presence of the Almighty God is the preparation stage for our vocation. It is a time to experience God’s power, God’s love for us and God’s assurance that God is and always will be with us, just as God was with our ancestors. It is a powerful way for us to gain trust in God, and God’s promise to stand by us. I think all human beings need such a time before we can ever dare to accept God’s mission. Like Moses most of us resist the call of God on our lives when we first hear it. We don’t feel worthy, we think we are inadequate for such an important task. For that matter it takes time to get used to the fact that God is calling us. Such a calling is usually an intrusion, disrupting our plans, making us redefine whom we are and what our lives are about.
If I am completely honest, I can remember God’s call on my life going way back. God blessed me greatly, gave me wonderful Christian parents and teachers along the way and probably gave me more than a normal share of holy experiences. Yet I still resisted God’s call on my life. I was ready to serve God’s people and after college took jobs as a preschool teacher, a nanny and a houseparent at a boarding school. But I resisted the call to ordained ministry. I kept telling God that I wanted him to let me settle down and be wife and mother before I started thinking about seminary and ordained ministry. For four years after college I hung around Amherst and Northampton, doing everything I felt I could morally do to find a husband, in an area full of young single people. But God was not answering my prayers. When, in desperation I turned to my pastor Gregory for counsel, he actually was angry with me, accusing me of waiting around for God to act like a fairy godmother and make all my dreams come true.
But it took an especially holy experience, the experience of keeping watch a couple of years latter, as Gregory died before I said yes to my vocation – God’s call on my life. The holiness of God is mysterious, very hard to put into words. The time we spent in the parsonage during Gregory’s last days were holy. I could palpably feel the presence of saints and angels, more clearly than ever before, every time I walked through the parsonage door. Our friend Lisbeth matter-of-factly stated that she sensed the presence of Gregory’s beloved grandmother in the corner, near his bed. It was a time of waiting, and watching, of prayer and singing and though I was sad, I also felt extremely peaceful – the peace that passes understanding. I still have trouble describing just how that holy experience led me to finally accept my call and tell my church, my family and my friends that I was going to seminary. Perhaps it was the reassurance of experiencing God’s abiding presence even in death. Perhaps it was my slow realization of how God had worked in Gregory’s life, even though he was not perfect, to spread good news of salvation to God’s people. Perhaps it was the experience of ministering to the other members of my church during the early weeks of our grief together. I still can’t quite explain it, but I am sure that this experience of standing in the holy presence of God was key to my ability to say “Here I Am, Lord.”
And now, after allowing God to use me to spread his good news of salvation through my ministry and through my studies, and has caused me to grow even stronger in my faith, God has also granted my prayer for a husband. Neither Joseph nor I would have been ready for marriage 20 years ago. God had to work on both of us to prepare us for each other, and for our vocation as husband and wife. When we were ready, God answered our prayers and put us together. Our vocation now is to travel through life together, even when the destination is as unclear to us as it was to Abraham and Sarah, trusting that God will guide us.
After a period of resistance to God’s call on his life, Moses also returned to his initial response to God, “Here I Am, ready to obey, to submit my own plans and will to God’s perfect plan and will for his life and serve as God asks. Here I Am is the common response of many people in the Bible who, after standing in God’s holy presence are empowered to take the risks. As God’s beloved, chosen people, the Lord has given each of us a vocation to serve him and our neighbors in our own unique ways and be instruments of his plan of salvation. The experience of standing on holy ground in God’s presence is given by God to empower us to say yes! Here I am Lord. Let us pray,
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