Standing on Holy Ground
Exodus 3:1-17
February 6, 2011
In preparation for this high holy day of Super Bowl Sunday it occurred to me to Google the phrase “Lambeau Field” AND “Holy Ground.” I got 1,100 hits, about the same as for “Wrigley Field” AND “Holy Ground” and “Fenway Park” AND “Holy Ground.” Yankees fans take heart: “Yankee Stadium” AND “Holy Ground” turned up more than 3,000 web pages.
“Burning bush” AND “holy ground,” on the other hand, turned up more than 60,000 pages.
Not at all sure what to make of that little excursion into the untamed worlds of the web, but nothing I ran across along the way dissuades me from considering as essential to understanding ourselves and our faith the following questions:
Have you ever seen a burning bush? Ever heard the voice of God? Have you ever stood upon holy ground?
Setting aside the pyrotechnics and stage craft, the flames and the disembodied voice, I think this, for us, is an essential question of our faith: what makes ground holy?
Think about the places you have set your feet, the places that felt holy beneath the soles of your feet. What made them feel that way? What makes ground holy?
Thinking about this over the past few days I started a list of places where I’ve stood that felt like holy ground. So I want to begin this morning asking simply what places feel like holy ground to you?
* * *
Given the Google search I mentioned a moment ago, naturally enough, I began my list of “holy ground on which I’ve stood” with Yankee Stadium. Well, I’m almost serious about that. I did get to see Greg Maddux throw a complete game, three-hit shutout at Yankee Stadium once, and that was pretty darn close to a holy moment.
Completely seriously, there is nothing wrong with finding deep appreciation and even holiness in the beauty of the games we play.
As Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Perry wrote last week, “Let’s take some breaks, pace ourselves and allow some joy despite the persistence of social problems, because movements are not sustainable if those who do the work are exhausted. Let’s laugh at ourselves and at the comic madness of our circumstances, recognizing that humor does not diminish the gravity of our moment but simply lightens the load as we bear it.”
Or, as Mother Jones put it, “if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
I believe God made us for joyousness as well as for justice, for pleasure as well as for peacemaking. I think of the great line from Chariots of Fire, when the young Eric Liddell says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.”
While I don’t feel much of anybody’s pleasure when I run, when playing basketball I have felt what Liddell describes, and I’m certain soccer players and hockey players and baseball players and skiers and figure skaters and dancers and swimmers and football players and anyone else who has played games with complete abandon have felt it as well.
Our fields of play can surely be holy ground.
Just plain, old, ordinary fields can be as well. I’ve watched the amber waves of grain as breezes blew across the Great Plains and felt that surely God was in that place, holy ground indeed.
Or watching the blue waves of the ocean crashing into the rocky coast of Maine or gently lapping the wide beaches of North Carolina, I have know that the earth belongs to God, and it is holy ground, even if it is almost wholly water.
Or standing on the top of a mountain in Colorado looking out at a crystal clear lake under a cobalt blue early winter sky. A Rocky Mountain high, to be sure, standing on holy ground a couple of miles above sea level.
The earth belongs to God, the psalmist sings. Moreover, scripture reminds us throughout, God created it. It is holy; all of it. Perhaps we should never wear shoes.
And while the sheer, incredible, and awe-inspiring beauty of our little blue planet can often fill me with the sensation of standing on holy ground, when I reflect on my own experience refracted through the lens of the Moses story I focus on the second part of the psalmist’s phrase: the earth belongs to God, yes, the earth, and all its people. The earth: holy, yes, but even more holy: all its people.
As I think about other holy ground upon which I have stood I realize that I consider certain places holy because of what happened there, and who else stood there before me. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery where God spoke through a young preacher named Martin, the modern Civil Rights Movement launched, and ground was hallowed.
This sanctuary is holy ground, and not just for me of course. But for me it is holy not because someone long ago set it aside for worship, it is holy because I got to baptize Lenka and Jackson here, I got to join David and Travis in holy union here, I got to memorialize Woody here, I got to ordain Amber and Suzanne and Carol here, I got to serve you bread and cup here. In each of those moments, God’s love was spoken here. This is holy ground for me because of you, and because of what God has done and is doing in and through you here. Whenever God speaks a word of love ground is hallowed.
That leads me to wonder what was particularly holy about the ground that Moses was standing on. Was it just that God was present? I’d say, in principle, that could be true of all places at all times, so I think there was something more at stake in that moment and place than the simple presence of God.
I believe God called “holy” the ground that Moses stood upon because of what God would say there, what God would invoke there, what voices would be heard there, and what God would do in and through Moses.
The most obvious voice heard in the burning bush story is the voice of God, and God invokes God’s own name – reveals it, in truth – at that moment. But the more telling voice, the voice that invokes God, as it were, is the voice of the people crying out from the weight of their oppression.
What does God say of the people?
“I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come to deliver them.”
In that moment, God calls forth justice, and it is this call for justice that makes the ground upon which Moses stands holy ground. Whenever God speaks a word of justice ground is hallowed.
It’s timely that we should have this story in front of us this week, when the land of Egypt is once again the location from which voices are crying out for justice. Did you happen to see the photograph from last week of Egyptian Christians encircling a group of Egyptian Moslems to offer a protecting circle of bodies while the Moslems knelt for prayer? Surely God was in that place. Holy ground, indeed.
Faithful people heard God’s voice, God’s words of love and of justice, and in their response – responding with their very bodies – in their response, ground was hallowed.
From fields of play, to fields of beauty, to fields of dreams of liberation and justice, God makes holy the ground upon which we stand.
Most of us will not live through revolutionary situations that capture the attention of the entire world. Few of us will be called upon to put our bodies on the line to protect our sisters and brothers in such dramatic fashion. Fewer still will hear God speaking from a burning bush. But God still speaks, and each and every one of us has the opportunity at every moment in every place to listen for God speaking a word of love, a word of justice, on behalf of the powerless, the hungry, the outcast, the poor, the marginalized, the voiceless. When God speaks a word of love and justice, and we respond with faithful acts of service, of doing justice, of making peace, of faithful worship, the ground on which we stand is hallowed. So kick off your shoes! You are standing on holy ground! Amen.
February 6, 2011
In preparation for this high holy day of Super Bowl Sunday it occurred to me to Google the phrase “Lambeau Field” AND “Holy Ground.” I got 1,100 hits, about the same as for “Wrigley Field” AND “Holy Ground” and “Fenway Park” AND “Holy Ground.” Yankees fans take heart: “Yankee Stadium” AND “Holy Ground” turned up more than 3,000 web pages.
“Burning bush” AND “holy ground,” on the other hand, turned up more than 60,000 pages.
Not at all sure what to make of that little excursion into the untamed worlds of the web, but nothing I ran across along the way dissuades me from considering as essential to understanding ourselves and our faith the following questions:
Have you ever seen a burning bush? Ever heard the voice of God? Have you ever stood upon holy ground?
Setting aside the pyrotechnics and stage craft, the flames and the disembodied voice, I think this, for us, is an essential question of our faith: what makes ground holy?
Think about the places you have set your feet, the places that felt holy beneath the soles of your feet. What made them feel that way? What makes ground holy?
Thinking about this over the past few days I started a list of places where I’ve stood that felt like holy ground. So I want to begin this morning asking simply what places feel like holy ground to you?
* * *
Given the Google search I mentioned a moment ago, naturally enough, I began my list of “holy ground on which I’ve stood” with Yankee Stadium. Well, I’m almost serious about that. I did get to see Greg Maddux throw a complete game, three-hit shutout at Yankee Stadium once, and that was pretty darn close to a holy moment.
Completely seriously, there is nothing wrong with finding deep appreciation and even holiness in the beauty of the games we play.
As Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Perry wrote last week, “Let’s take some breaks, pace ourselves and allow some joy despite the persistence of social problems, because movements are not sustainable if those who do the work are exhausted. Let’s laugh at ourselves and at the comic madness of our circumstances, recognizing that humor does not diminish the gravity of our moment but simply lightens the load as we bear it.”
Or, as Mother Jones put it, “if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
I believe God made us for joyousness as well as for justice, for pleasure as well as for peacemaking. I think of the great line from Chariots of Fire, when the young Eric Liddell says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.”
While I don’t feel much of anybody’s pleasure when I run, when playing basketball I have felt what Liddell describes, and I’m certain soccer players and hockey players and baseball players and skiers and figure skaters and dancers and swimmers and football players and anyone else who has played games with complete abandon have felt it as well.
Our fields of play can surely be holy ground.
Just plain, old, ordinary fields can be as well. I’ve watched the amber waves of grain as breezes blew across the Great Plains and felt that surely God was in that place, holy ground indeed.
Or watching the blue waves of the ocean crashing into the rocky coast of Maine or gently lapping the wide beaches of North Carolina, I have know that the earth belongs to God, and it is holy ground, even if it is almost wholly water.
Or standing on the top of a mountain in Colorado looking out at a crystal clear lake under a cobalt blue early winter sky. A Rocky Mountain high, to be sure, standing on holy ground a couple of miles above sea level.
The earth belongs to God, the psalmist sings. Moreover, scripture reminds us throughout, God created it. It is holy; all of it. Perhaps we should never wear shoes.
And while the sheer, incredible, and awe-inspiring beauty of our little blue planet can often fill me with the sensation of standing on holy ground, when I reflect on my own experience refracted through the lens of the Moses story I focus on the second part of the psalmist’s phrase: the earth belongs to God, yes, the earth, and all its people. The earth: holy, yes, but even more holy: all its people.
As I think about other holy ground upon which I have stood I realize that I consider certain places holy because of what happened there, and who else stood there before me. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery where God spoke through a young preacher named Martin, the modern Civil Rights Movement launched, and ground was hallowed.
This sanctuary is holy ground, and not just for me of course. But for me it is holy not because someone long ago set it aside for worship, it is holy because I got to baptize Lenka and Jackson here, I got to join David and Travis in holy union here, I got to memorialize Woody here, I got to ordain Amber and Suzanne and Carol here, I got to serve you bread and cup here. In each of those moments, God’s love was spoken here. This is holy ground for me because of you, and because of what God has done and is doing in and through you here. Whenever God speaks a word of love ground is hallowed.
That leads me to wonder what was particularly holy about the ground that Moses was standing on. Was it just that God was present? I’d say, in principle, that could be true of all places at all times, so I think there was something more at stake in that moment and place than the simple presence of God.
I believe God called “holy” the ground that Moses stood upon because of what God would say there, what God would invoke there, what voices would be heard there, and what God would do in and through Moses.
The most obvious voice heard in the burning bush story is the voice of God, and God invokes God’s own name – reveals it, in truth – at that moment. But the more telling voice, the voice that invokes God, as it were, is the voice of the people crying out from the weight of their oppression.
What does God say of the people?
“I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come to deliver them.”
In that moment, God calls forth justice, and it is this call for justice that makes the ground upon which Moses stands holy ground. Whenever God speaks a word of justice ground is hallowed.
It’s timely that we should have this story in front of us this week, when the land of Egypt is once again the location from which voices are crying out for justice. Did you happen to see the photograph from last week of Egyptian Christians encircling a group of Egyptian Moslems to offer a protecting circle of bodies while the Moslems knelt for prayer? Surely God was in that place. Holy ground, indeed.
Faithful people heard God’s voice, God’s words of love and of justice, and in their response – responding with their very bodies – in their response, ground was hallowed.
From fields of play, to fields of beauty, to fields of dreams of liberation and justice, God makes holy the ground upon which we stand.
Most of us will not live through revolutionary situations that capture the attention of the entire world. Few of us will be called upon to put our bodies on the line to protect our sisters and brothers in such dramatic fashion. Fewer still will hear God speaking from a burning bush. But God still speaks, and each and every one of us has the opportunity at every moment in every place to listen for God speaking a word of love, a word of justice, on behalf of the powerless, the hungry, the outcast, the poor, the marginalized, the voiceless. When God speaks a word of love and justice, and we respond with faithful acts of service, of doing justice, of making peace, of faithful worship, the ground on which we stand is hallowed. So kick off your shoes! You are standing on holy ground! Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
1:46 PM
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