HOLY GROUND

BYZANTINE MOSAIC: MOSES AND THE BURNING BUSH
Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There and angel of the Lord appeared to him in the fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So, Moses decided, “I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned.”

When the Lord saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.: God said, “Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”
Ex 3, 1-5

This story is so familiar that Moses seeing a burning bush does not surprise. He is Moses, after all, and those kinds of things happened to him. A close reading of the verses paint a different picture. Moses was doing a very ordinary thing: Leading his father-in-law’s flock of sheep across the desert. This is like your driving to work, filling out reports, teaching students, doing laundry, going to the grocery store. Moses was doing what he always did.

He was not in a special place. Not doing something unusual. Not expecting to find God around the corner, or in this case, hiding in a bush. Moses was not so different from us getting up every day, making a living and taking care of family. So why did I Am Who Am talk to him from a miraculously flaming shrub?

God had something to say to Moses. I Am Who Am had something for him to do and decided that a a burning bush would get his attention. It did, and when Moses walked over to investigate, the Lord instructed him to take off his sandals because he was on holy ground. This was the same ground Moses walked over day after day. There was nothing special about it except that Moses recognized the Lord’s Presence there. And wherever the Lord is is surely holy.

Like Moses, we often need something extraordinary to catch our attention, to remind us that we are on holy ground because God is present in every place and in every moment. We don’t get a burning bush. Perhaps it is the birth of a child, or the love of a spouse or special friend. A magnificent sunrise of night sky can remind us that God is with us.

Often, though, we are too busy to notice some of these signs of God-With-Us, and if we miss the big signs, how easy is it to miss Divine Presence in the ordinary routines of life? Because we may not be aware of that Presence does not change the fact that God is, indeed, with us in countless ways, and that we are walking on holy ground all the time.

In his play, “Our Town,” Thorton Wilder noted our ability to walk through the world unaware in the famous line spoken by Emily near the end of the play: Emily: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every,every minute? Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some

The poet, Elizabeth Barrett’s, wrote about the same thing in her narrative poem, Aurora Leigh” :
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries…

Recognizing the Sacred in our midst takes practice, but even though we will most likely never see a burning bush, we can learn to be aware that we are on holy ground and take off our shoes.