“Holy ground, Moses. It’s holy ground. Be careful where you step. The bush is on fire. Don’t get burned. This is a dangerous place, Moses, because I am here,” says the Lord.
Let’s reread those sentences from the first lesson again,
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; …. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; …. God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!"…Come no closer! …Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
I’m not sure I would necessarily equate my experience with that of Moses but this reference reminded me of the last night of camp when I was a boy. (This was the good old days when camp was two months.) Parents loved it, although I hope they missed us, but the truth is at least for me that camp was really a summer home, a really important summer community, and the last night was especially important because all the awards and the winning team were announced. And so this huge bonfire was constructed with terrific care that somehow it would be even bigger and more impressive year after year. I cringe to think of what might have happened in a particularly dry summer, but miraculously it never seemed to get out of hand. However, when it was lit I had this visceral sense of anticipation and excitement as it rose to a tremendous height creating a vision of unbelievable energy, and no one said a word.
The flip side, of course, is that terrible picture of a fire in the Bronx in which a family from Mali lost a mother, a 4-year-old, and 7-month-old twins, in addition to six other children. That picture evokes something like Dante’s Inferno, fire as destruction, fire as the Devil’s doing.
In either instance you and I, and Moses, can understand that we are in the presence of something much more powerful than ourselves, something that can be overwhelming, something that can envelop us but nonetheless that speaks to us of ultimate things.
That was certainly the experience of Moses, and to this day Muslims remove their shoes before entering a mosque remembering God’s advice to Moses to remove his sandals because it was holy ground.
About 400 or 500 years after that experience of Moses, a priest/poet went to the Temple in Jerusalem and had an equally overwhelming sense of God’s presence, and he wrote these words,
O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; *
my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you,
as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.
Therefore I have gazed upon you in your holy place,*
that I might behold your power and your glory.
We would want to remember that the Temple was the greatest structure built to the glory of God up to that time in human history. So when this poet/priest we call the psalmist wrote those words that we recited earlier, it was as if he were Moses again with God speaking to him in this place of such solemn beauty. Many of you may recall words in our Prayer Book that often accompanied our daily prayer, “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” We sense in all those references an ache in the soul that only the knowledge of God can soothe, a fundamental desire to know God and for God to know us.
This priest/poet goes on to say that God’s love is better than life itself, and so we will always be praising God,
So will I bless you as long as I live *
and lift up my hands in your Name.
That looks suspiciously like this priest—or like any priest for that matter—when we come to this holy temple and hands are lifted in prayer and in praise on behalf of souls thirsty for God. There is no burning bush this morning, but candles are lit to remind us of the living presence of the Word made flesh in this temple, in this holy ground. Perhaps during Lent our worship can remind us that without God our hearts and minds and souls are barren places, but places nonetheless that God yearns to fill with God’s self in the person of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit. With that knowledge you and I can do nothing else but praise and give thanks.
I have included in your bulletins an insert containing words of praise by two other priest-poets, George Herbert and Charles Wesley. Take them home with you as well as the first lesson and the psalm. Find a moment to read them all, two or three times. If you will (and if you can find a reasonably private space) close your eyes and open your hands and simply wait to feel how God might be present in the holiness of the temple that is you.
Amen.
Poetry: download PDF
