This Is Holy Ground                                                               8/18/46

 

Scripture:  Exodus 3: 1-12

 

Text:  Exodus 3: 5,6a;  “And He said, ‘Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.’  Moreover he said, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’”

 

It is easy to miss something worthwhile, even something of great importance, through failure to recognize it.

 

The story is told of a woman of New York City who was interested in philosophy, and much interested in some philosophers.  She knew that Professor William James lived in or near the city and lectured in one of its great universities.  She fancied herself a great admirer of William James, and cherished a hope that she would one day meet him at some one of the many social functions which she attended.

 

As a matter of fact, Dr. James lived some distance out of the city where he had room enough to develop a few non-urban hobbies, like raising chickens.  He had quite a flock of hens which not only supplied the James table with eggs in abundance but laid enough so that there were a good many to sell.

 

Of course he was a busy man with his lecturing and writing and constant reading.  So he had a man to care for the yard and the chickens.  This yard man used to take the eggs into the city and deliver them to certain homes regularly, where “fresh-from-the-country” eggs were highly prized.

 

Some of these city customers knew that the eggs came from Prof. James’s farm.  The woman I first mentioned was one of them.  But she had never seen the great philosopher in person.

 

One week the yard man became ill and was unable to work.  Dr. James looked after the chickens himself for a few days.  Came the day for delivery of the eggs, and still no yard man.  So Prof. James put them in his car and took them to the city himself on his way to the university.  He was a man of no unusual pretensions, wore a fairly long mustache, dressed in ordinary business suits with no unusual smartness of tailoring.  When he appeared at several back doors and servants’ entrances that morning, he was just a new delivery man to those households where he was not personally known.  He repeated the egg deliveries several times before he had the help of the yard man again.

 

A short time later there was a city social function attended by many people, among them the woman who admired philosophers.  And, it happened that the affair was attended also by William James.  Someone whispered to the delighted lady that Prof. William James was to be present that evening, and was in fact entering the room right then.  Looking expectantly toward the drawing room door, the lady saw the man with the mustache and the common manner.  As though momentarily distracted she exclaimed in surprise, “O! There’s the man who delivers the eggs!”

 

How easy it is to miss even that for which we look, when we have not known that it resides in the common or familiar.  And when we are not even looking for the unusual, it must be that we pass by wonders constantly.

 

Here is that timeless story of Moses and the burning bush.  There are perhaps a great many people who can see in it no more than a curious wonder and are content to gape at it and say, “Marvelous; it must have been a miracle.”  Others are perfectly content to call it a miracle and let it go at that .  Others, impatient with the idea of miracles, brush it aside.

 

For myself I care not whether the little bush was oxidized or not; or even whether it had been set afire, through someone’s carelessness, or spontaneously or in any other manner, or possibly whether Moses may have been “seeing things.”  The answer to that curiosity question has little to do with the timelessness of the story.  It wouldn’t have been remembered ten years, let alone these many centuries, if it had not had a far greater lesson with real point.

 

Picture the story again; a man with a passionate concern for fairness, who had taken the part of whipped and abused slaves, though he himself had been raised in privilege aloof from their sufferings, who had had to flee the wrath of the angry Pharoah, and was now dwelling in a foreign land - married, prosperous, secure.  Life had its monotony as one stayed out with the sheep, hour after hour, day after day, to see that they walked into no danger, fell to no enemy, stayed where the pasture and the water were sufficient.

 

Grass and weeds and field flowers and stones were commonplace, monotonous items of his experience.  So were outdoor meals and evening camp fires.

 

And yet, right there in the midst of the familiar, Moses ran into the greatest experience and opportunity of his life.  Something caught his attention and aroused a bit of curiosity.  At that level, he might have plodded carelessly right over the opportunity.  The story relates that Moses said to himself, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight.”  And who is there anywhere, who takes off his shoes to run to a fire?

 

But the voice of the Eternal calls to Moses, lifting him out of his trudging stupidity.  “Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”  Don’t come here with ordinary steps, ordinary dress, ordinary shoes, ordinary thoughts, common curiosity.  Take off your shoes; make a special preparation; come thoughtfully, reverently, teachably - for this is the place where you will receive a commission to deliver all of the children of Israel from the bondage of Egypt.  This is holy ground.

 

Is there any of us who has never blushed to find that he has clumsily intruded into a place or situation sacred to someone?  A crowd gathers quickly at a street curb.  We join it pushing in to see what’s going on.  Elbowing through, we discover within the crowding circle that some distraught person is trying to shield an injured, or ill, or even lying loved one from the rude eyes and curious speculation of the crowd - shuffling around with hats and shoes on.  Let us fools silence our clattering tongues, uncover our brazen heads, take off our shoes, so to speak.  Unless we know how to help, we discretely withdraw.  The place is holy ground.

 

But in the case of this realistic story from the Book of Exodus, there is more than discreet and embarrassed withdrawal at the scene of someone else’s grief or joy.  This was holy ground because it was a place of inspiration, a moment when an ordinary sort of man saw new and extraordinary opportunity.

 

Now if Moses stood before some little bush flame, it would seem that we people of our day in this 1946 world stand in the midst of a forest of fiery trees, burning violently.  And there are too many, thickshod and tough, carelessly, thoughtlessly plodding through the woods without even noticing the flame.

 

God calls to men and women of this age!  Where are the spiritual descendants of Moses to hear and listen?  Take off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.  It is only those who sense the sacred nature of this awful era, and take off their shoes and prepare their minds and souls, who will be able to live in this age as life must be lived -- people who believe in God and in His earnest desire to reconcile people to himself and to one another even in tragic days.

 

It is an unforgivable sin to live these years as though God were absent, as though there were no divine meanings in them - meanings “which lie hidden even in the very heart of sorrow and pain.”  [Augustine]

 

            “Earth’s crammed with heaven,

              And every common bush afire with God.

              But only he who sees takes off his shoes.”

                                    [Elizabeth Barrett Browning]

 

In recent years we have known the indignation of honest folk toward those who made outward signs of patriotism and love of country, and yet drove their cars on forbidden trips with black market gasoline, needed to supply the men who were doing the dying for country.

 

What shall we suppose may be the indignation and despair of God toward any of us who make outward signs of piety and love of him, and yet stroll through these years on our own self-esteem and pride, with no visible sense of responsibility to the opportunity of living in this decade?  We stand on holy ground.  Let us see it, and take off our hats and shoes, and listen for the voice of divine opportunity.

 

The ground of these years has been made holy by the struggle which Mr. Churchill described as “blood and sweat and tears” - and not alone the blood and sweat and tears of wartime.

 

1)  Blood is the symbol of sacrifice.  It has so sanctified the earth that no man, remembering can dare to walk across it irreverently, carelessly, intent solely upon what he believes to be his own interests.  The sacrifice of blood has touched so many so deeply that it is almost a profanation to speak of it.  Who shall be so callous as to fail removing his shoes with all their dust - lest he track pettiness, and self pity, and personal grudges across sacred ground.  Whatever sacrifice has been made honorably, as was Christ’s sacrifice, is made for all common folk everywhere and for their children.  He who sees walks carefully and prayerfully into the future.

 

2)  Sweat is the symbol of toil.  Here it is so easy to forget the toil of countless folk who put their contribution of honest effort into our own well-being as we do to the well-being of others.  Mildred McAfee Horton has pointed out that the saying of Jesus to his followers, that we ought to bear one another’s burdens, is not so much an injunction as a description of things as they are.  No single item of food or clothing or shelter or tools or of cultural interest comes to any of us without the toil of many.  Whoever shirks his own part refusing to bear the burden of others puts a burden on others and breaks a law of life.

 

There is no such thing as difference between a sacred or a secular occupation.  Every piece of work that is an honest contribution to the true welfare of people is sacred toil and is not to be regarded lightly or disregarded.  To forget, is to rush off with hard-soled shoes across all sorts of hands - bus drivers’ hands, bakers’ hands, cleaning women’s chapped hands, children’s smooth hands, artists’ sensitive hands, farmers’ callused hands -- all hands, human hands trod upon by people who have not the sense to see and take off their shoes.

 

3)  Tears as symbol of sorrow come near to the heart of fundamental Christian faith.  Now and then we leave the portals of our churches cheered by a sermon on beauty or love or even laughter.  But we only scratch the surface of the Christian faith if we ignore sorrow and suffering -- for tears are a central fact of living and the Christian wants to know what to do with them!

 

We are all tired of hearing about suffering - even the little aches and pains of our own existence - let alone the unspeakable anguish of other millions.  But suffering is not to be escaped as long as we live.  It is for us to learn to meet it constructively and not be destroyed by it. 

 

In God’s economy there is no suffering without purpose, no anguish without meaning.  It is for us to seek the purposes and find the meaning.  We do not do these things by rushing in to get an answer by Monday noon.  We find them in God’s good time and pleasure after we have had sense enough to take off our shoes on ground that is holy.

 

And the God of the fiery bush and the flaming forest is the same God forever - the God of our fathers, of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob; the God of the Pilgrim Fathers and of Lincoln and of Phillips Brooks.  He is our God and we are his people and his good earth, with all its quakings, is holy ground to us!

 

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Dates and places delivered:  Wisconsin Rapids, August 18, 1946