3rd try - cut and paste of previous two

Sermon delivered on March 3, 2013

All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC

Thomas E Wilson Rector

God says to Moses, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us of the fullness of God’s presence in Holy Ground:

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,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.

 The founders of the three great Abrahamic religions - Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad – are each led into the desert to have an encounter with the Divine. Deserts are the edges of life, where ordinary daily life is disrupted, where business as usual is impossible, and where we are set free from petty distractions and can focus on that which is the core of life and meaning. 

Moses has come looking for Holy Ground.  He is an alien in a foreign land and he has undergone many losses. We are having a Lenten Study Series in which we look at “Living With Loss – Finding Hope”. Loss is part of life and, when we experience loss, we enter into a desert of the soul - which is a necessary journey in order for healing to begin. Without the courageous journey into the desert, we remain stuck in our loss and lead embittered or/and shallow lives dominated by the fear of other losses. The way to survive, and even thrive, in this desert is to rediscover the spiritual truth about ourselves and our changed lives in the space of Holy Ground, out of which we find hope.

Let’s take a look at the losses that Moses has had in his life. He has lost his family several times over. His Hebrew family gave him up to a privileged Egyptian family in order to save his life. He will be brought up in a family in which he feels like an alien in a foreign land, but it is the only family he knows. His confusion about where he belongs leads to a fatal attack on an Egyptian overseer abusing a Hebrew slave. He will lose the Egyptian family as well when he has to flee into exile to avoid a charge of murder. Raised in the Egyptian family he would have learned about the Egyptian Gods and the emphasis on order to maintain the status quo. Raised in the Royal Family he would have been known about the sense of “Holy Ground” in the Temple of Karnack complex, north of Luxor, and he would have lost any access to that Holy Ground ever again. 

Here was the Holy Ground for the Theban Triad of Amun-Ra, the King of the Gods and creator, Mut, the Mother Goddess, and their son, the falcon-headed Moon God which gives new life, Khonsu. The Temple complex was their home and only the Royal family - since the Pharaoh was considered Divine - and the Priests were allowed to enter these imposing collections of Temples, pylons, monuments, and the breathtaking Hypostyle Hall.

I remember 20 years ago walking through this complex and being in absolute awe of these columns, 30 to 60 feet high, with connecting beams weighing 70 tons balanced on these huge columns. When I looked up to these epistyles, I could see the decorations and art painted on the underside 60 feet in the air with the colors so vivid  it was hard to believe that they were painted more than three thousand years ago. The pollution from auto traffic in Luxor is eating away at the paint, but it was awesome. This place was not meant for peasants like me to walk through; it was meant to be Holy Ground, reserved for the God’s and their closest retainers.  

The old Egyptian religious systems were where Gods, who were forces of nature itself, operated in a cyclical system.  In the balance of different forces of nature, as you would see in an agricultural system based on the flooding of the Nile, they were committed to the maintenance of the status quo and had to be appeased by ritual, bribery, flattery, or magic or else disorder would break out. Out of the fear of disorder, these Gods were locked into doing things the way they have always done - even the Gods were not free. “Holy Space” meant space that belonged to the Gods. Gods had temples where they were housed and could interact with other Gods and Priests but from which the regular people were excluded. Gods were not all that interested in individuals but in the prevention of disorder in society and in the heavens, and for that, they needed ritual rather than relationship. Individual life was cheap and people disposable for the good of “order”.

And yet here was Moses, in the desert, the edge of regular life, filled with his sense of loss, as rumors swirled about the increased suffering of his Hebrew family, who he had never known, caused by his Egyptian family in the name of their God, from whom he was estranged. He felt deeply the loss of both the Gods of the Egyptians and the God of his ancestors’, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Out of this desert of the soul the God of his fathers' speaks to him and tells him that in this seemingly God-forsaken place is where Moses will find God. 

 The God of his fathers’ goes even further and says the name of the God, “I am who I Am.” This is the ground of being itself, not restricted to a Temple far away, but walking with those who seek the ultimate reality of deeper being. It is this encounter with the one who defines reality that gives Moses hope and strength to meet the days ahead and challenge the forces of oppression. Moses cannot do it alone and therefore asks for the strength from the power greater than himself to change himself and to change the world he lives in.

This God, the ground of being, declares that God-forsaken piece of desert as Holy Ground. There are no Temples, no Priests, no reminders of Glory, only the claiming of intimate space between the individual and God. This God is free from the needs of an institution and will live and move and have the Divine Being with the people. This is the God who is free from the shackles of the past, free from the fate of the future, free to be in the moment where each individual life is precious and loved. This God claims the space between us and says that the Holy Space is in the space between two people and how we treat our neighbor. To follow this God is to treat each breath as a gift and to walk so lightly on the earth since all is Holy Ground.

Moses enters into the heart of God, and because of that, also enters into the heart of the oppressed. He walks with God who walks with him, and together they set the people free to start a new relationship with God where each individual life is precious and loved. Over time the Hebrew people will decide that the maintenance of order is more important than justice, that life is cheap and individuals are disposable, and Holy Space is restricted to Temples where God needs ritual rather than relationship.

Then Jesus goes out into the desert to rediscover himself and the connection with the heart of God and the oppressed. He walks with God who walks with him, and together they set the people free to start a new relationship with God in which each individual life is precious and loved. Over time the followers of Christ will move to the position that the maintenance of order is more important than justice, that life is cheap and individuals are disposable, and Holy Space is restricted to Churches where Christ needs ritual rather than relationship. 

 

And so it goes until each of us enters the desert, the edges of life, where ordinary daily life is disrupted, where business as usual is impossible, and where we are set free from petty distractions and can focus on that which is the core of life and meaning. If we are lucky we can call that a Holy Lent, when we allow ourselves to take off our shoes and walk on Holy Ground and rediscover ourselves and the connection with the heart of God and the oppressed. Shoeless in the desert, we can walk with God who walks with us and together set people free to start a new relationship with God where each individual life is precious and loved.

The story is true for religious institutions as well. Christian religious institutions, of which All Saints’ is one, have undergone great losses. It used to be that Sunday mornings was when families went to church in order to find Holy Ground on which to stand in a world in which loss was always a threat. But churches have squandered that trust of being places of Holy Ground as we became apologists for the status quo and trying to keep everybody happy. We have abdicated our responsibility to be a hospital of healing by becoming condemners of sinners, encouraging those who are seen as less than complete or who do not agree with us to not sully us with their presence. We have been complicit with predators and have refused to deal with the evil of the world as we try to protect out institutions. Part of our new task is to keep pointing to Holy Ground not as fixed to a particular place and ritual but as being at the very ground of our being. God is here, offering healing even when it doesn’t feel like it, because God’s graceful love is greater than the limits of our meager senses and broken religious institutions.

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,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.