Readings: Psalm 105:1-6, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28, Exodus 3:1-15
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, September 3, 2023
I received my training for ministry at the Welsh Presbyterian Theological College in Aberystwyth, on the coast of mid-Wales. Historically, Welsh Presbyterians were passionate about their theology. Whilst their church was born amid Methodist Revivalism, their founding fathers looked to the work of an earlier reformer, John Calvin of Geneva, for a theological identity. They sifted and studied and sought to be faithful to God in defining what they believed. They argued. They separated. They forgave. They came together again.
That process eventually gave rise to the writing of a document, in 1823, a defining charter, that eventually became the theological statement of Welsh Presbyterian orthodoxy. It was called “The Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic Methodists.” It was the bedrock of a church that for the next 75 years of its life would experience wave after wave of religious revival, adding thousands to its membership.
At this years General Assembly of the Welsh Presbyterian Church, a special historical lecture by the Rev. Philip H. Eveson, titled “The Forgotten Classic” was delivered, to note it had been 200 years since the document had been produced.
(The lecture can be viewed on https://youtu.be/WT3HcQBOgUo)
As a seminary student I was intrigued by the fact that the very building, even the actual room where that document came into being, still existed in the town of Aberystwyth, where I was attending seminary. I figured that those who put that document together must have experienced a powerful movement of God’s Holy Spirit in their meetings.
So, one day I decided to check the place out, hoping that maybe something of the fire that inspired those early pioneers of the Welsh Presbyterian faith still lingered on the premises and that, just by going in there, it may ignite my own heart and spiritual passion. Then somebody pointed the building out to me.
I never did go inside. It had become part of the warehouse of a local supermarket. No plaque on the building. Nothing to even indicate that an event of tremendous significance, a moment of divine grace, had been felt in that place.
It was just a rundown old building. The only atmosphere I may have experienced if I had gone into the place was that of the workaday world of a busy little town. There would be nothing to indicate that this, had for a brief period in history, been holy ground.
Moses had an encounter with a bush. I would imagine that if by some process we could go and stand at the actual spot where Moses stood, even view the very bush that Moses saw burning without being consumed, we would wonder what all the fuss was about. It would just be a bush.
Even more so would that be the case if we happened to be somebody who had never even heard about Moses or the encounter with God that Moses had. If that was our situation, then we wouldn’t even be looking for a sign or expecting a presence. The last thing on our mind as we walked through the desert would be that we might be standing on holy ground.
Moses didn’t expect to be confronted by God either. Moses was just getting his life back together. He’d made his escape from Egypt and had finally come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t an Egyptian prince but a Hebrew son of a Hebrew slave. He had a wife and was out working for his father-in-law tending sheep. He was fully immersed in the culture and traditions shared by a long line of his ancestors.
And then what? God upsets the whole apple cart! The line between the sacred and the secular is obliterated. He thought he was treading common ground, living in the way his forefathers lived. It turned out to be holy ground and his life was never quite the same again.
It took something a bit special to get his attention. There he is, going about his daily business, when he notices a bush on fire. On further examination it turns out to be all fired up but not burning up. Then God speaks. This was not normal. God was not in the habit of encountering people in such a direct way.
Moses is awestruck. It was one thing to see the bush, but to then hear God’s call! “Here I am, Lord,” he says. “Come no closer” he is told, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the land on which you are standing is holy ground.” Moses removes his sandals and starts to be afraid and hides his face.
After identifying Himself as being the same God who had been followed by ancestors whom Moses had become familiar with, in verse 7, God explains how He had seen and heard and knew about the terrible circumstances under which His people suffered.
For sure many of them kept faith, but as their plight grew worse, their faith could not always rise to meet the challenge. Therefore, to know that God had seen, heard and knew about their circumstances was a positive thing. The sort of thing that shone a bit of light into the darkness.
There’s a lot of times in our own lives when we need that assurance. Some of the things that life brings our way can cause us to question what we believe about God. We are easily shaken. It can be something personal like an illness or a family tragedy. It can be something that touches us all, like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.
At times we just need to be reminded that God sees and hears and knows. Sees the things we go through. Hears the prayers, sometimes spoken, sometimes too difficult for words. That God knows not only what we are going through but also how best we can get through such times.
In verse 8 God says, “I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians.”The Hebrew word that is used for ‘come down’ is ‘yarad.’ ‘Yarad’ is rich in meaning, particularly when used of God. It pictures God as one who stoops down to lift us up, who wants to enter, in a powerful way into the circumstances that hold us back from being the people God would like us to be.
It’s a word that has particular significance for Christians, for we believe that it is precisely this God who is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. A God who is not content to let us keep going on and on in our own way but comes where we are to open us up to possibilities never dreamed of. The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. God Incarnate enters our world and redeems our times.
The Hebrew word used for ‘deliver’ is also worth considering... “nawtsal.” It carries with it the ideas of rescuing, saving, plucking out, plundering or even ‘stripping away from.’ God in Christ comes to us, as He came to the Hebrews, to deliver us from sin and guilt, to strip away from us all that robs us of the dignity of being children of God, to plunder the dark places of our lives by flooding them with His light and life and setting us free.
As always there is a sting in the tale. Moses must have been very happy to hear that God had not only seen, heard and knew about the peoples plight and that now He was going to rescue them. But when he learned that he personally had an important and difficult role to play in the process, well, he is the first to suggest that God may be looking to the wrong person.
“Who am I?” he cries out, “To do such things as these?” He complains he is not fitted for the task, not suited for such a position, that he didn’t speak right, walk right, talk right, act right… you name it... every excuse in the book goes through his mind. He is scared that nobody will believe him. He even asks God what he’s supposed to say if the people started to question him about how he was so sure that God had given him the job to do. “Who should I say sent me?”
God answers that request for a name in a wonderfully ambiguous way. “I am who I am” comes the reply. “If you have to tell them something, tell them “I am” sent you.” In some bible versions the footnote is included that “I am who I am” can also be translated as “I will be what I will be” or “I am that I am”
One of the hardest things about being a preacher is that you must explain to people that God can’t be explained! When all is said and done, at the end of the day, God defies all our theories and dogma and creeds and concerns. God remains enigmatic, mysterious, and unpredictable.
Some things we can be sure about though. One of them is this. God’s purposes in the world are not going to be accomplished unless God’s people take the work of God’s kingdom upon their shoulders.
We rejoice that Christ died on the cross for us. Unless our rejoicing causes us to be willing to ‘Take up our cross and follow Him,’ then all that saving and setting free and liberating and healing and forgiving will never happen.
We may say, “Now if God came and spoke to me through a bush then I’d believe.” It’s not going to happen. Do you know why? God has spoken His ultimate word. God’s final word came not through a bush, but through a tree. Through a wooden cross that was outlined on Calvary’s hill, the cross upon which Jesus Christ was crucified. Moses is told in (Exodus 3:8). “I have come down to deliver them.”
In Jesus Christ God has come to deliver us. And then God said to Moses, as God says to us today…(Exodus 3:10) “So come, I will send you…”
We may think that the place we are right now is common ground. Not so. Right now, wherever you are, can be holy ground. It is the presence of God that turns the common place into the holy. I challenge you to listen for God’s call wherever it is you are reading this sermon. I challenge you to respond to God’s call. Remember, the church is not a holy place but a holy people. Unless you and I respond to the call God places upon our lives, then God’s work is frustrated.
As I discovered in my seminary days, when I went searching for a building where a confession of faith was composed that defined a churches belief, holy ground cannot be captured in buildings. And Moses discovered that holy ground cannot be confined to deserts.
Go with God this week, and wherever you go, will be holy ground. Carry Christ in our heart and walk in the presence of the Holy Spirit and the common places of our daily lives can become touching places, places where God’s love can be known and communicated to others.
Tread gently,
Walk in peace
And go with God.
For we stand on Holy ground!
AMEN.
The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.
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