Holy Ground; August 30, 2026

speaker-0: Our first readings are from Romans twelve verses nine through twenty one. Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in affliction and persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and pursue hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly. Do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave wrath leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, and said, If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. For by doing this, you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So this summer I I read the Odyssey so that I could be one of those people who leans over during the movie to say, it didn't happen. While I was watching it, and Colleen will tell you that I hung a mission accomplished banner in the back of our car after the fact. We finally got around to seeing it yesterday in theaters. Loved it. And there are amongst many others, two such scenes that are not in the book, in the poem, but in the movie. and in those two scenes, they're almost exactly the same. Odysseus asks this. Why don't the gods speak to humans in a language we can understand? The Greeks did a lot of things well. But one of the things they knocked out of the park are stories about human nature. My prayer today is that you will have something of an answer to Odysseus's question. That you will begin to see every moment as a holy one where God is indeed speaking. So listen with me. For the word of the Lord from Exodus three. Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. And there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush. He looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. And then Moses said, I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up. The sheep didn't understand him, I don't suspect. When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush. Moses Moses. And he said, Here I am. And then God said, Come no closer, remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. And he said further, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt. I've heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings. And I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hibites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me, and I have also seen how the Egyptians oppressed them. Now go, I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? God said, I will be with you. And this will be the sign for you that it is I who have sent you. When you brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain. But Moses said to God, If I come to the Israelites and I say to them, The God of your ancestors has sent me to you, and they ask, What's his name? What shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. He said further, Thus you shall say to the Israelites, I am, has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the Israelites, the Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this my title. For all generations. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Gracious God, may we have ears to hear your voice this morning, eyes to see your presence all about us. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. O Christ, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. It is possible that you have missed key moments in Moses' life. Many of the stories from scripture that stick with us are the ones that show up in children's books, which are largely just like a highlight reel with very little context, or the ones in Moses' life that might stick out to you have been deeply formed in your brain folds by the creative stylings of C.C. B. DeMille and Charlton Heston. But if we can learn anything from a life of faith and regular old life as we mature, it's that context matters. So you can be forgiven if you only remember the real big Moses' of life, or the big moments of Moses' life, just because there are so deca many of them. And we've got baby in a basket, Moses, which is neat. Of course, you've got the burning bush, today's scripture. The whole plague debacle has him as the point guard. He was the star, if we're not counting God, and of course we are, so give me a break, of everything from the Ten Commandments to the parting of the Red Sea. He also led the Israelites. 40 years. That's a good old tenure in any kind of church, I'll tell you what. So that we think that mo we think about Moses when we think about the manna in the wilderness, we think about the pillars of fire and cloud that led them all. But there's an awful lot that happens in between those moments that frame all of them up. So you might not remember that Moses is in fact not confronted by the burning bush while he's on a spiritual retreat. Speaking of spiritual retreats, a friend of mine just got back from a 10-day silent retreat where they were not permitted to speak, to read, or to write. And because it was his second time, they fasted 19 hours a day. Now that might be enough to make a guy see some things. But that is not what we're talking about with Moses this morning. Now Moses had recently left to Egypt because he killed a guy. You see, Moses was a Hebrew, adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, and he spent his entire life passing as an Egyptian in Egypt, living high on the hog. But when he got older, he realized that his people, the folks that he looked like, were being oppressed as slaves by the Egyptians. And one day he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, likely almost to death, and almost certainly without consequence, because that's how power works. And Moses was enraged. So he looked around, didn't see anybody, thought he was in the clear, and he kills the guy, hiding his body in the sand. The text says. The next day Moses returns to the scene of the crime, likely to check on his cover-up because sand is famously blowy. remember when we had Saharan sand in the neighborhood? That was wild. But while he's doing that, he sees two Hebrews fighting this time. Two of his people. And he intervenes again. But these dudes do not trust him. at all. Remember, he's lived his entire life as an oppressor. So they ask him if he's fixing to kill them too. And at that moment he realizes that the jig is up and people know and he hightails it out of Egypt. And he runs to a place called Midian. And there's no reason for you to know anything about Midian because it was nothing special. But it had it well and he was thirsty. So he stops there in Midian. He has a meet cute with a couple of local girls, ends up marrying one of them. Her name's Zipporah. They have a little baby boy. His name's Gersham. That story's insane. You should read that sometime in Exodus. And he's just trying to live a normal life as an exile from Exodus. It gives real. Dexter is now a lumberjack situation vibes, if you know what I mean. Which is precisely what gives this whole or makes this whole scene so poignant. God comes looking for Moses. Moses wasn't a spiritual seeker. Moses was hiding on the run from the law, and God finds him. Now people in my hometown, I I'm from Pennsylvania. They spend all spring looking for morel mushrooms. You ever seen a morel? Looks like a gangrenous thumb is what it looks like. not very appetizing to look at, really, but delicious to eat. They come out in the spring, they're wild, they can't really be cultivated, which makes them all this more special. And they're particular little buggers. They come out when the dandelions do, soil's about 50 degrees. They prefer the south or the eastern slopes of hills, depending on how early in the spring you're looking. They really like elm trees, and they like the elm tree even better if it's dying. They're really particular and difficult to find. And if you find a morel spot, you keep that information to yourself. I have never, ever, and I have begged and pleaded, known anybody to give up where they've found morel mushrooms. Because that is holy ground. I think that's how we treat spirituality. I think it's how we have a tendency to view meaning and holiness and goodness, like God is hiding, like God is a basic. Why don't the gods speak to humans in a language we can understand? Here's a point in case. Ever heard of water divin divination? Where you hold the rods and walk around like a dingus until you find water? That apparently works, first of all. But did you ever consider why they call it divination? Because it's hard to find. Like, even baked into our languages is this understanding that we've got to divine the divine. We've got to search hard for it, like God is hiding from us. But I don't think that tells the whole truth. Indeed, I don't think it tells the truth at all. Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes in her epic poem Aurora Lee four lines that have been wedged into my soul since the first time I read them. She responds to the notion that God might be hidden from us like this. She writes, Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush of fire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round and pluck blackberries. Ain't nothing wrong with the blackberry, but I'd rather see the bush of fire with God. You know, every genuine spiritual experience I've ever had in my entire life has made me feel more connected to the world around me. It's been some sense of wonder or unity or joy that almost goes beyond my ability to put it into words. In fact, the closest that I've gotten to words are the words that Paul gives us in Romans 11, just before our reading today, when he says that from Jesus and through him and for him are all things. That everything is being drawn into Christ and suffused with him, even that crepe birdle that you've seen a thousand times on your way to work, or that one that you've been trying to kill for like ten years in the corner of your backyard that just Won't die. Or is that just me? I don't know. I think that all of these moments of revelation, these moments where we see, if not with our eyes, then with our our guts, our hearts, our soul, those moments when we see that heaven is crammed into all things, those moments are supposed to make us love it. Those moments are meant to open up your heart. To the enemy, to your neighbor, to the poor, to those who are wielding power in evil ways to this earth, to your kids, to that kid who's already making your kids' life miserable this school year. Those moments of revelation are meant to help us realize that God is all places. And if God is there, then our hearts need to be there too. That's why God showed up in that burning, not burning bush for Moses, so that Moses would love his people again. So that he would have the courage to face his very real fears about going home to free his people. Would he be killed? I don't know. Tit for tat, and he was a murderer, right? Would he be accepted? Probably not. Mo no. But God found him. And he told him that he had a job to do, and even if it didn't go to plan, which it often did not, the promise was that God would be with him. Everywhere he went, every common bush of fire with God, every hardship that feels like it's burning you up, God is there. Every beautiful moment, God enhances, God is there, the ground is holy. The ground is holy. You know, we could do worse for a playbook, I think, on what that love that God is calling us into when our eyes are open to the fact that the ground is holy. We could do worse than our reading from first or from Romans twelve. You hear what it says, just like punching you in the face with directives for what this life looks like. Let love be genuine. You can't fake it. Let go of the ego game and outdo one another indeed. But by showing honor, be patient, persevere in prayer, give what you've got to those who are in need. And for those who don't like you none, bless them. And not like bless your heart either. I mean really, really bless them. Don't repay evil for evil, but trust God to take care of it for you. Love all and let God sort out. This is the love and the purpose that we are all open to in those moments when great myrtles burn. And I gotta tell you that any religious experience that turns you away from others, that hardens your heart, or turns you away from earth for heaven, as if God isn't so present as to make every bit of ground holy ground, that's no religious experience at all. And worse, It's often just self aggrandizement with a nice Jesus sheen on it. And we can keep ourselves from seeing every bush of fire with God and simply sit round and pluck blueberries or enjoy the blossoms. There's nothing wrong. One of my friends thinks that blackberries, sorry, are a perfect fruit. Ripe. Delicious. Off the vine. That remains an option. You can see it for just what it is. It's a lesser option, but it's an option all the same. Because we keep ourselves from seeing the fire, then it keeps us a safe distance from the fire that might burn in our bellies to see the world made right, to see justice done, to see the poor fed, for enemies to be loved even at the cost of our own egos or maybe even our own safety. But for those of us who see, there is no unseeing. You gotta take off your shoes. You gotta make a change. The call of God is clear and the ground is holy forever now. You gotta follow. And the fact is that you don't have to be ordained as an elder or a deacon, as we will do just in a minute, to be called for such a special purpose in the world. Lord knows that in my youth, I all of you know probably by now that I was raised a holy roller, hands up on the ground, fall down on the floor, speak in tongues. And we were taught that to work for God, you had to be a missionary or a pastor. And some of us were dumb enough to believe it. I'll sh actually I'll share my story some other time if you haven't already heard it, but I'd have done almost anything else other than this unless God had grabbed me by the scruff and told me that stuck my nose into the fact that I was being called into this particular work. But I could have been just as useful to God if I had been the physical therapist that I wanted to be, or a janitor, or a stay-at-home dad, or whatever it is that you're doing right now. God can transform your life when you see that bush of fire. Truth is that Moses saw what Odysseus couldn't. That God is always speaking. That God is always opening our eyes to see the beauty of all things, the God-filledness of all things, and calling us into love. So, how can you come alive to the life of love that Romans is calling you to today? Or do you need a change? How can you give up retribution or regret? How can you engage fully in hospitality and a zeal for love? Blackberries are wonderful, but how much more wonderful when we see God at work in all things? And just imagine. Just imagine if we all had eyes to see the sort of place that this would be, if we treated it all as holy ground. Imagine. May God make it so. Thanks be to God. Amen.