Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster at Choral Evensong on the Sunday next Before Lent, 3rd March 2019
Moses, remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.
(Exodus 3.5)
+
In
many cultures taking one’s shoes off before one enters somewhere
special,
set aside and holy
- be
it someone’s home, a burial ground or a place of worship -
is
perfectly normal.
Perhaps
it hasn’t caught on so much in the cooler climes of northern Europe
because
having cold feet is a reality not just an expression.
This
passage of Exodus isn’t about shoe etiquette
it’s
about the awareness of standing on holy ground,
about not
trampling on things that are holy (cf Matthew 7.6).
It
also draws us to reflect on the
intimate
and
yet distant
character
of God.
On one
hand there is a deep intimacy.
God
speaks to Moses by name,
almost
as a friend,
‘Moses,
Moses’.
To
which Moses answers,
‘Here
I am’
‘Here I am’:
the refrain of Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Mary, the Mother of the Lord,
when
they respond to the intimate, holy, powerful call of God.
And
there is distance:
‘Come no closer!’
‘Come no closer!’
And then the command to Moses
to
remove his sandals.
This
episode is prompted by Moses,
the
shepherd,
leading
the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro,
beyond
the
wilderness to the mountain of God.
Moses
leads the people of Israel
beyond
the figurative
wilderness of slavery and
beyond
the actual
wilderness of Sinai
into
the Promised Land.
Our journey
through Lent will take us
beyond the wilderness of
fasting and discipline
into
the Promised Land of Resurrection
in
Christ, the Good Shepherd.
Lent
begins in dust and ashes.
Ashes:
the
fruit,
- if
fruit is the right word –
the fruit
of fire.
Moses
came across a mystical bush,
on
fire
but
not turning into ashes.
Little
wonder, then, that iconographers have portrayed the Burning Bush
as a
type of Christ,
borne
in his Mother’s arms.
In that
icon is the distance and destructiveness of fire
and
the intimacy of Jesus Christ
- in
his Mother’s arms -
who
comes to share our human experience,
more
intimately than we can know ourselves.
For as the prophet Elijah knew
- when
he met God on the self-same mountain, Horeb -
the
mystery of God is not found in the elements:
not in the mighty wind;
not in the earthquake;
and not in the fire.
It was
only the sound of sheer silence
in
which Elijah apprehended the presence
of the
Holy One, of God (1 Kings 19.11-13).
So we
remove our footwear to tread gently in God’s presence.
We
remove our footwear
so
that we tread quietly, softly, gently,
in
order to hear the sound of sheer silence.
We
cannot hear God above the clatter of the busy footsteps of our lives.
We
remove our footwear
so that
we don’t trample on the holy ground of the lives of other people.
We
remove our footwear
so
that we are in touch with our journey
- sensing
the soft and hard ground –
and journeying
deeper into the mystery of God’s love.
This coming
Lent may our hearts be set on fire
– yet not
destroyed –
by the
holiness and intimacy of deepening our journey with God.
On the
Day of Resurrection two disciples
equally
prosaically as Moses
encountered
Jesus Christ,
and
having walked along with him,
broken bread within him
reflected,
‘were
not our hearts burning within us while we were talking to him on the road,
while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24.32).
Come, my Light, and illumine
my darkness.
Come, my Life, and revive me
from death.
Come, my Physician, and heal
my wounds.
Come, Flame of divine love,
and burn up the thorns of my sins,
Kindling my heart with the
flame of your love.
Come, my King, sit upon the
throne of my heart and reign there,
For you alone are my King and
my Lord.
Amen. (Dimitri of Rostov)
