Holy Ground
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Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. -Exodus 3:5
I guess I don’t usually think about the ground under my feet. Maybe I do on that first visit to the ocean in the summer when I take off my sandals and enjoy the feel of the sand between my toes. Or maybe I do when I’m hiking on rocky or uneven ground and I have to be careful about choosing my footholds. Or maybe I think about it in the dead of winter when the floor is so darn cold when I get out of bed! But generally, even though I stand, walk and hike out in the wilderness a lot, I don’t generally think about the ground upon which my feet are walking.
In this passage about the burning bush Moses is walking along, going about his regular day herding his father in law’s flock, and he’s probably not thinking much about the ground under his feet either. But then he notices something strange. A bush that is aflame, but yet, not burning away. Some have conjectured that sunlight was hitting the bush in a certain way, making it glow. I know my eye has been caught out in the woods by rays of light or by bright spots in the forest that seem to emanate light. But who knows. Maybe Moses was having a vision of flames. Either way, what is great about this story is that Moses doesn’t shake his head, blink his eyes and keep going on his usual way thinking, “that was wierd.” Instead, he stops to get a better look. He is open. He is curious. He wants to receive this unusual present moment.
When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush. It seems as if God was waiting to see if Moses would engage with that present moment or not - engage with God. And so when God sees that Moses has indeed stopped to really look, God calls his name - “Moses! Moses!” And Moses’ ears are open enough to hear God’s call, and he responds, “Here I am!”
Now - here’s the part about the ground. God says to Moses, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses, realizing who he was talking to, hides his face. Wa hat highly unusual and special moment in his life. A moment in which everything was about to change.
This is not the only example of a person encountering God in a certain spot in the bible. There are numerous instances of people encountering God in a certain spot and then building a pile or rocks or an altar there to commemorate the encounter. Peter and John and James have the same inclination when they suggest they build monuments in the spots where they saw the transfigured Christ speaking with Moses and Elijah in one of our recent readings.
When something life changing happens to us, we naturally want to mark these moments and places and preserve them as holy ground. But Moses didn’t have any time for that. God was asking him to begin what seemed to him to be an impossible task - to convince the Pharaoh to let his people go. Moses was fully of questions and reservations, but when he finally moved from that spot, he trusted that every step he took from that point on was on holy ground. God had called him to walk a walk and he was walking it!
It might be a good Lenten practice to notice where your feet are throughout the day and think about what called them to be there. Where has God put your feet today? How are you answering God’s call to you in this spot? What makes this holy ground?
