Community Church Sermons
August 31, 2008
Pentecost
16
Exodus 3:1-15
Click to Listen
Holy ground.
God told Moses he was standing on holy ground!
Now that little piece of news must have surprised Moses. After all, he was where he was and was doing what he was doing because his whole life had fallen apart. Moses was the quintessential successful guy who had everything, only to lose it all. In one moment of righteous passion, he had murdered an Egyptian, and even though he thought he had reason to do it, the Egyptian authorities did not agree. There was a warrant out for his arrest for murder. It was a capital offense and Pharaoh was promising the death penalty.
So Moses ran. He went on the lam and fled to a place called Midian where no one knew him. He married a girl there and ended up working in the family business as a shepherd. Can you fathom the fall of this man – from being on top of the world…to being knee deep in sheep!
Perhaps you can picture Moses, living with the guilt of his mistakes, working at a job he hated, leading a bunch of smelly sheep across a barren desert to a remote patch of scraggily grass way over by Mount Horeb whose name means “desolate” – Mt. Desolate!
And it is there – in that unholy landscape - that Moses encounters a burning bush and hears the voice of God speaking from within the fiery desolation of his circumstances:
“Take off your shoes, Moses. The place where you are standing is holy ground!”
I’ve printed in today’s bulletin a little song that is called, “Holy Ground.” I wonder if you’ll read the words with me…
And now, I wonder if you’ll sing it with me…
Like Moses, the song says we are standing on holy ground.
Do you believe that? Do you believe the place where we are right now and right here is holy ground?
Sometimes its hard to find the holy in the place where we are.
I know that Drs. Meadows and Puckett made some rather disparaging comments about the fact that I spent some of my vacation time digging a ditch. I believe they said something about me finally finding honest work, and that it’s amazing how the labor of digging a ditch will quickly help you discover your calling to ministry.
Okay. You got me. And I’m not going to try to retaliate because that’s not the Christian way.
I’m just glad that Tim’s commentary on my life gave him two minutes more to add to his four-minute sermon last Sunday. In fact, I heard the 8 o’clock crowd got out so early they had to wait for the restaurants to open to get breakfast! And Bob Puckett – well, I’m just thankful that he had something to say when he couldn’t read his own writing and forgot to turn on his microphone.
So I’m going to be the adult here and not jab back at Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
But what they said is true – I did spend some of my vacation digging a ditch. It was a ditch we had to dig because our septic line got plugged. I don’t know if you’ve ever dug up a sewer pipe, but I can vouch for the fact that it’s not something you ever want to do again. And when you’re standing knee-deep in something much smellier than sheep, I can assure you there is no way in the world you can believe that the place where you are standing is holy ground!
And yet…while we were sloshing around in the unholy waters of our Mt. Horeb-of-a-septic-system, we heard the voice of God from inside our camp on Highland Lake. We really did! It came in the cries of our beautiful little adopted granddaughter, Becca with whom we spent our first summer! And we heard God’s voice calling through the gleeful laughter of our fast-growing grandson Ryan. And even though it rained almost every day of our vacation, one day the clouds parted, and the sun came out, and we looked up to see a bald eagle majestically soaring in circles in the bright blue sky above.
Sometimes the ditch you are digging, or the problem you’re facing, or the tragedy you are experiencing turns out to be more than you imagine it to be. Sometimes, the miserable place where you are standing turns out to be holy ground.
It may not look like it. It may not smell like it. It may not feel like it.
But it is…holy ground.
This morning, our choir sang that beautiful arrangement of the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul.” In many ways, that hymn is about finding holy ground in the most unlikely places of all.
The hymn’s author, Horatio Spafford, was a very successful Chicago lawyer and a good friend of Dwight Moody, the famous evangelist. But life turned against Spafford in the early 1870’s when his son died of scarlet fever, and again later when he lost all his real estate holdings – everything he owned - in the great Chicago fire of 1871. Stunned by these tragedies, two years later Spafford decided to take his family on a trip to Europe, but at the last minute, a business obligation forced him to delay his departure. He sent the rest of the family on ahead, his wife Anna and their four daughters. But on November 22, 1873, the ship they were on collided with another. It started to sink. Anna Spafford stood on deck with her four daughters – Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta clinging desperately to her. Later, Anna would say that her last memory before losing consciousness was of her baby being torn from her arms by the force of the water. She herself was saved only by a plank that somehow floated up from below and kept her from drowning. But 226 others died that day, including her four little girls.
When Horatio Spafford heard the news, he boarded the first ship out of New York to go and meet his grief-stricken wife. One day, the captain called Spafford to the bridge and told him that the ship’s navigator calculated that they were right then at the place the ship had gone down. Spafford looked out over the raging sea that held the lives of his four little girls. Then he returned to his cabin and there – in that awful moment, that awful place, that unholiest of all experiences a parent can go through – God spoke and Spafford penned the words of that beautiful hymn:
When peace like a river attendeth my soul,
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
The place where you are standing – no matter where, no matter what, no matter why - is holy ground.
And what makes it holy is that God has staked a claim in it. It is holy because God is in it. It is holy because God’s love saturates it. It is holy because God promises to never fail you or forsake you.
From the story of Moses we learn that there is not a moment of your life that is apart from the grace of God. There is not a place or a problem where God is not found. There is not a joy or a sorrow that God does not experience with you and embrace you within. There is not an unholy circumstance that God cannot make holy.
Take off your shoes, Moses, for the place you are standing is holy ground!
And I want you to notice how God hallows Moses’ experience. God does not just entertain Moses. God does not just tell Moses everything is going to be okay. God does not even say, “I’m with you, Moses!”
No, God does not turn this moment into a religious experience about which Moses can build a shrine. Rather, God shows Moses the way THROUGH his desolation.
“Go back to Egypt, and lead my people to freedom.”
Some of the people I most admire in life are those who have suffered through some of the most devastating of life’s circumstances, and instead of running away from the experience, have instead embraced it and used it to benefit others. So women who have had breast cancer rally together to help other women through the experience. Men whose fathers never gave them approval make it their mission to be sure their own children know they are loved and valued. People who have experienced oppression and injustice rise up to change structures and societies for the better. Alcoholics join hands with other alcoholics, and people of faith who themselves have struggled with doubt embrace other doubters and tell them they’re okay.
And the same is true of those whose experience is blessing. I so admire those who are rich who become generous toward those who are not, those who have been loved devote themselves to loving others, those who have been given great skills and talents using them to bless others, and those who have received forgiveness granting forgiveness to those who need it.
Holy ground is found not on the other side of your life circumstance, but within it. It is there that God calls your name, and shows you what to do to get through.
“Moses, go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let my people go!”
What experiences of life have you brought with you today? I wonder if you will think about that problem, or that celebration, or that health concern, or that difficult relationship, or that wonderful joy you are experiencing…as we join our voices one more time to sing “Holy Ground.”