Exodus 3:1-5 .....
Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the west end of the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, Horeb. The angel of God appeared to him in flames of fire blazing out of the middle of a bush. He looked. The bush was blazing away but it didn’t burn up.
Moses said, “What’s going on here? I can’t believe this! Amazing! Why doesn’t the bush burn up?”
God saw that he had stopped to look. God called to him from out of the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
He said, “Yes? I’m right here!”
God said, “Don’t come any closer. Remove your sandals from your feet. You’re standing on holy ground.”
We all know the story of Moses. Born in Egypt as a next-best-thing-to-a-slave at a time when male Hebrew babies were being killed to keep their population down, Moses survived when his desperate mother placed him in God’s hands and tossed him into the Nile in a floating basket. He was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in the royal court, as part of the family. We then skip a number of years until he is a grown man who, witnessing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew to death, intervened and then beat the Egyptian to death himself.
Later, when he was threatened with “outing” by a fellow Hebrew who had witnessed his act of violence, Moses fled from the royal court into the wilderness, somewhere on the far side of the Red Sea, met Jethro, the “priest of Midian,” married one of his daughters, and became part of the family there, as well.
It’s easy to skip over this part of the story in order to get to the “good stuff,” but this part has some interesting points to it. First, it doesn’t appear to have been any secret in Egypt, at least among the Hebrews, just who Moses really was. Second, when Moses ran into trouble it wasn’t the Egyptians who threatened him - that was his own people. When he tried to break up a fight among Hebrews, the combatants basically told him to bug off because they didn’t need to listen to him, they had watched him murder a man. That was why he fled Egypt.
This was a first of the many times the Hebrews would reject Moses’ right to lead them. It would be the Midians – strangers – who would take him in and make him one of their own. Most likely these people didn’t even worship the same god as Moses, but they made him part of the family. Rejected by his own people – the people he would be sent to save – Moses was welcomed and accepted by non-Jews – a story line that would be repeated about 1500 years later by another Hebrew leader named Jesus.
The third point of interest here is that Moses’ encounter with God took place on “holy ground” and that patch of holy ground was not in a temple precinct or within royal walls. There was no gold, no cedarwood, no pews, no organ. It was just a random someplace out in the middle of pretty much nowhere, where the sheep and goats grazed. And that leads us around to the point I originally chose to talk about...
Holy ground – what makes a space holy and how do we recognize it?
As I said, I got into an on-line conversation occasioned when a fellow pastor commented that she often hears people talk about how the "church is dying" but that she doesn't believe it is the church itself that is dying, but instead, the way we view and use church - specifically addressing old single-use church buildings. She then went on to articulate her vision for a multi-purpose setting for church -- one where the hungry would be fed and the homeless cared for. What she described didn't sound much like our traditional image of the church of the past, but it was an appealing (to me) image of what the church could be.
Another pastor then chimed in with a question concerning "sacred space" and many people's need for a "set-aside" ambiance for worship, and asked where we find a balance between service and sacred worship. [I did not ever get around to asking any other these pastors if I could quote them here and so am not including their names -- if you recognize yourself in here, thank you so much for your thoughtful contributions...]
Others then came in with descriptions of the churches they serve...and they were the most wonderful mixed lot of descriptions! One church meets each week in a parking lot and shares a full service with all the usual parts, followed by a potluck lunch -- all with no building at all! Another described a traditional large church building, but one that serves as a community center -- being used all week by many different groups. I offered a description of our church setting, where we look like an ordinary strip-mall office, but where we gather to feed the hungry and clothe the naked -- and come together to share our lives and worship God.
Each and every "church" described in this conversation was "sacred ground" because in every one the people come together in love and service to the One who gives us life and hope. Our churches are many -- and they are varied -- and it doesn't seem to matter so much what they look like -- it's the hearts of the people of God that make any place and every place holy ground.
The "church" is alive and well -- we just need to open our vision to what we are really seeing when we look at them. Thanks be to God.