Sermon 3/20/2022 “Holy Ground”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection, Alexandria, Virginia
Text: Exodus 3:1-15
Day: 3Lent, Year C
Occasionally, here and there, now and then, someone experiences God in a profound way. And sometimes, if the encounter greatly shapes human history, the events of the encounter with God get told again and again.
Today’s lesson from Hebrew scripture tells us of such an event that happened some 3,400 years ago. This is the event where God got the attention of Moses, a murderer who had escaped justice some 40 years prior.
At the time of Moses’ first encounter with God, he had spent the last 14,600 days tending the sheep of his father-in-law, a priest of God our Creator in the northwest portion of Arabia. On THIS day, Moses saw a burning bush that wasn’t depleted by the fire. Besides being just plain odd, not being used up was a sign of God’s presence. Don’t we, when we are doing what God has called us to do, get more energy than the work takes?
But HUMAN economy is a scarcity model. In our human experience, one minus one is zero. But God’s math doesn’t work that way. In God’s economy, one minus one equals one, just as one plus one equals one. Because, as we learned during our affordable housing project, God gives us everything we need to do his work. We’re not here for divine math lessons today, though. Were just noticing how it is that a burning bush not consumed by the fire HAS TO BE GOD’S WORK.
You know Moses’ story. You know how God redeemed Moses, how God challenged him to free some slaves in Egypt and give them a new identity as God’s people. God needed a people whose identity was grounded in him because God was “about” – in God’s time—ABOUT to send his Son into this world and there needed to be a people who could nurture the Son’s spirit with their identity as “God’s chosen ones.”
Don’t ever forget, though, that all people are God’s chosen ones, each loved beyond compare. In that divine math I mentioned, God loves with an un-depleted supply of love, no matter what.
Moses’ call story, though, occurred the day he saw God in a burning bush and heard God speak out of the flames. You know what happened after Moses said “yes” to God. The part that caught my attention today is God’s declaration that the ground on which the bush stood was “holy ground.”
What IS holy ground, and what makes something holy?
My online dictionary says something is holy if it “is dedicated to God or to a religious purpose.” By this definition, these candles are holy; this room is holy; and each of you are holy, simply because each of these things is—and WE ARE—dedicated to God.
My Book of Common Prayer says that “the Church is holy because the Holy Spirit dwells in it, consecrating its members and guiding them to do God’s work.” Notice that the PLACE, any place, isn’t holy due to its own characteristics or location. A place is holy if we perceive God present there.
We who are physically at Church of the Resurrection today are all currently on holy ground. We are IN a sanctuary, a word which literally means “a container of holy things,” derived from the Latin word sanctus, which means “holy.” This building was “consecrated,” or set aside as holy on Holy Saturday last year (on April 3, 2021, to be exact) due to our desire to experience God here, due to our desire to seek a relationship with God here.
But wasn’t this space, this ground, already holy? Hadn’t we, for over five decades, met God here? And hadn’t we seen OUR burning bush—or in our case, our dwindling church so surprisingly full of life, the very congregation that Martha Swearingen called “the most alive dying church I’ve ever seen?” And didn’t we hear God’s call here? Hadn’t God said, “I’ve heard the cry of my people; they can’t afford both food AND shelter?” And didn’t God say, “I have an impossible holy job for you to do, Church of the Resurrection?”
Having completed THAT mission from God, our call isn’t over. How do I know? Because we are still alive, not just breathing, but thriving:
- Thriving despite the virus and all its miseries,
- Thriving despite how durned creaky we’re getting, physically speaking, and
- Thriving despite the economy, war, disaster, and just plain not getting to see our grandchildren grown up (if we even have grandchildren).
So, by definition and because we are both breathing and thriving, God is calling us into a new mission. We think we have discerned what God wants us to do:
- Feed our hungry neighbors with physical food, never forgetting that God’s Word is our primary food;
- Connect with our neighbors here to this holy hill (so that they might perceive THEIR burning bush); and
- Create beloved community right here in this holy space and beyond in witness to God’s love for absolutely everyone.
Be aware of the dangers of holy ground, though. There are three:
- The first is that we are on Holy Ground and don’t even know we are. This is primarily a danger to our neighbors: By extension of our actions to create affordable housing here, the place on which they live is holy ground, also. And they won’t know that their home is set aside for God’s purposes unless we tell them, show them.
- The second danger of holy ground is that we know we’re in holy space and won’t want to leave it. But God’s mission for us always involves sharing our sanctuary with others. We can overcome this danger by BECOMING holy space, becoming sanctuary. We are then portable sanctuary, moveable sanctuary for those who have not yet found THEIR holy space.
- The third danger of holy ground is that we think God’s call is a one-time thing. But the reality is that ALL (all!) encounters with the divine come for a reason, a purpose. They are always attached to a purpose for which God is calling us.
Listen up, Church of the Resurrection:
- We are on holy ground.
- We ARE holy ground.
- How will you—how will we—fulfill our new mission?
