Every Common Bush, Afire With God
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on the Third Sunday in Lent (C), March 20, 2022.
Exodus 3:1-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
I am who I am (Ex: 3:14).
Few passages in Scripture illicit so forcefully a central question of faith: Who is this God?
This is most likely the question of Moses as he stands beside the burning bush. And this is a question for us: Who is this God?
A question that is so very big, so very emotive. It may begin as a question, but by the time you get to the end the question turns to awe in your mouth. Who could ever hope to know the ways of God, much less the essence of God? It’s the mystery of the thing that is both frustrating and gloriously enticing.
God cannot be contained by our limited ability to know.
And yet, today’s reading from the Book of Exodus is about knowing. And, it is for many, me included, a thin space –a place where our human limitations come alongside eternity, expanding, if we make space, the way we consider God, the world, and our place in each.
It speaks to the question already raised: Who is this God?
Listen again to words that give us a glimpse of the “revelatory heart of God,” this time in the King James translation.
And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians (Ex. 3:7-8).
And the Lord said, I have surely seen; I have heard; I know; I am come down.
Through these statements we glimpse the heart of God.
This is a God who is paying attention. A God who has seen and who has heard. A God who knows the sorrows of His people.
And this knowing, this is a different kind of knowing. A knowing that is less about facts and figures, less about weighing costs and benefits, less about acquiring information and filing it away in the cabinets of our brains and more about intimacy, connection, deep listening and longing, respecting, and understanding.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart (Jer. 1:5).
This knowing sings of a God in living relationship with all of creation, outside even the bounds of life and death.
Who is this God? A God who knows, a God who is come down, revealing Himself this morning to Moses, and through Moses, revealing Himself to you and to me.
“In the history of the world,” writes theologian Ellen Davis, “there are two people who have known God most intimately, known God in ways that mortal flesh ordinarily could not tolerate without burning to a cinder.” [1] One of these is the Blessed Virgin Mary, who held God in her womb. The other, of course, is Moses.
Moses, who lived in a time that understood trespassing on holy ground meant risking everything, even instant death. The high priests certainly knew this as, one day out of the year, they dared to enter the Holy of Holies, enveloped in smoke as a precaution, for none could see the face of God and live. But Moses, well God spoke to him “face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” [2]
How did this come to be? Listen again.
Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush . . . And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Ex. 3:1-6).
In a world that is broken and hurting, full of uncertainty and suffering, God appears to Moses. Moses, who has a job to do, (a worthwhile one at that!), a path to take, a duty to tend his father-in-law’s flock. And yet, he turns aside anyway, compelled to draw closer so that he might see, hear, and know.
In a world that is broken and hurting, full of uncertainty and suffering, God likewise appears to us. We, who have worthwhile jobs to do, paths to take, duties to tend to. Where are the burning bushes here and now? What are we being called to turn towards so that we might see, hear, and know the call of God?
The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us:
“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries
. . . unaware.”
This is our task. To see. To hear. To try to know the will of God for us in each moment of this one “wild and precious life” that we have been gifted.
Like Moses, we must be on the lookout. We must be curious. We must hold our own plans, our own convictions, lightly.
Ultimately, we must be willing to find God in unexpected places, at unexpected times, and, sometimes, in unexpected people.
Who is this God? This is a God who speaks, who calls to each of us here and now. A God who does not need us, and yet chooses us.
And yet, like the high priest who puts his life at risk entering the Holy of Holies, God’s call sometimes puts us, with all our carefully laid plans, at risk. To accept that risk, the risk of being called “off track” if you will -called from one path to another altogether, is to live by faith.
And who is this God?, but a God who is unexpected.
Consider this, Gods self-revelation to Moses and God’s incarnation by way of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a God “off track.” A God not following the plan. A God, unexpected.
Davis explains,
God is revealed as a . . . God who gets derailed for the sake of the things of humanity . . . The revelation to Israel [through Moses] is a completely new way of seeing God. In the ancient pagan imagination, the high gods, the really big players, were ensconced in a heavenly realm where they –well, acted like Gods. . . . The drastically new thing that happened [at the burning bush] is that the Creator of heaven and earth entered into unlimited engagement with the people of Israel. [3]
Who is this God?
A God who is come down. A God who knows our suffering and has entered it fully. A God who chooses us, again and again.
This is the God we name in the funeral liturgy with these words:
As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives . . .
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him
who is my friend and not a stranger (BCP, 491).
And so, as we walk the pilgrim way of Lent in a world that is broken and hurting, let us place our trust in God’s promise, which is the Good News. That, in the fullness of time our God, for love of us who are undeserving and yet graced, came down to deliver us and all mankind.
The flame of the burning bush finding its home in Mary’s womb birthed then into the world as light and life abundant is still burning and, despite all the world’s attempt to extinguish it, it burns brighter still.
Indeed,
“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries
. . . unaware.”
So “remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Amen.
