Sermon: Holy Ground
A sermon preached at Rothwell United Church on September 3, 2023. Perfect for the first Sunday in the season of creation!
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Today is the first day of school for the kids in my area. It was an exciting morning in this house! However, as I walked my youngest to school, I was struck by the high heat and humidity. With a very “unseasonable” heat + humidex forecast of 41 degrees Celsius, we were confronted with the climate crisis as soon as we opened our front door to step outside. There is no air conditioning in the classrooms since the school was built in the 1960s at a time when cooled indoor air would rarely, if ever, be needed for the health and safety of the children and teachers. My daughter, her classmates, and her teacher were in for a very uncomfortable first day of learning.
I walked home thinking about what is needed for all of us, children and adults, to become motivated and energized to take climate action. One thing that we need, as people of faith, is to experience the Holy in the Earth community of which we are part. That makes my sermon from this past Sunday appropriate for today.
In the sermon, I invite us to reflect upon what it means to be standing on holy ground in our world today, based upon the story in Exodus in which Moses encounters God in the burning bush. How can we understand the Earth community as holy ground?
Scripture Reading
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 Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 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. 3 Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 5 Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ 6 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.
7 Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ 11 But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ 12 He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’
13 But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you”, and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ 14 God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’[a] He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you.”’ 15 God also said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “The Lord,[b] 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 for ever,
and this my title for all generations. (Exodus 3:1-15 NRSV)
Holy Ground
Preached on September 3, 2023 at Rothwell United Church, Ottawa ON
Let us pray:
God of Life,
May the words of my mouth
And the meditations of all our minds and hearts
Lead us to deeper understanding of you
And the love you call us to live. AMEN.
The writer and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams describes one of her earliest experiences in the natural world. When she was only four years of age, her mother and grandmother took her hiking up to a waterfall in Wyoming. With each of them holding on to her, they lowered her so that she could drink from the clear pool of water at the base of the waterfall. This was a profound experience for Williams who describes it as “an initiation into this fountain of knowledge, spirituality, vitality, life, curiosity.”[1]
Described as an early baptism, this transformative experience led Williams to “seek spiritual sustenance in the natural world.”[2] For her, returning to the natural world again and again would help to make her whole. This and other experiences in nature also convicted Williams to engage in environmental activism, as part of her vow to the sacred she experienced at that waterfall.
Williams’ experience is recounted in the book Turning to Earth: Stories of Ecological Conversion, in which the author F. Marina Schauffler explores the ways in which nature writers, such as Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Henry David Thoreau, and others, have had transformative, mystical encounters in the natural world that led them to lives of immersion and wonder in the natural world, and writings in which they sought to convey the mystery and importance of caring for the Earth community.
It's a valuable book in which I learned about how Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, the pivotal book about the dangers of DDT, was blessed with a lifelong love of nature from her mother, and experienced a direct sense of calling that came from the sea.[3] Aldo Leopold, a conservationist and developer of the idea of having a “land ethic” of relationship between people and the natural world, was transformed from his former utilitarian way of looking at the world through a profound encounter with a wolf and her pups.
This book, Turning to Earth, speaks about the early transformative experiences of nature writers, and because they have written about them, we know about them. But such experiences do not just belong to the published, or the famous. They are not the purview of the few, those destined to be in the public eye through their writing. Indeed, their experiences all happened in ordinary places in the world, to them as ordinary people.
It was just such an experience that happened to Moses.
Moses was out and about, going about his day as a shepherd. As a shepherd, he would have been outside each day, all day. On the day when he encountered God in the burning bush, I don’t know what the weather was like; was it sunny? Cloudy? What time of year was this? What were the seasons like in ancient Egypt? Was Moses well-rested, or was he tired? How was he feeling? Although we know Moses as one of the most important figures in our faith tradition, he was actually just an ordinary person, going about his regular day. He wasn’t looking for God that day; wasn’t hoping to encounter God when he set out with his sheep.
Yet, as biblical scholar Rita J. Burns points out, “he was attuned enough to the mysterious within his surroundings to let it capture his attention when it presented itself.”[4] He was attuned enough to notice a strange fire in the bush, a fire that wasn’t consuming anything, and to investigate it.
He did so, and Moses had an encounter that so transformed him that his life was forever different. Even before he knew that it was God talking, he knew that he was in the presence of the Holy, of something beyond himself and the bush that was burning. Then, God spoke, and, as we know the story goes, Moses Was called to be a leader to his people, a prophet to the nations. Moses was transformed through his encounter, through his mystical encounter within the natural world.
Moses encountered God in nature! Moses encountered God in a burning bush, in a normal, ordinary bush, in which God made God’s presence known to Moses. Indeed, it wasn’t just the bush that contained the presence of God; the whole area did. God tells Moses to remove his sandals because he is standing on holy ground. That ground, that ordinary dirt and rock and scrubs in the desert of Egypt, was holy ground. It contained the presence of God.
Now, some might argue that the burning bush wasn’t ordinary at all, since it was the special bush from which God spoke. But there was a bush at that time, the Dictamnus albus plant, that contained volatile oils that could catch fire. In any case, the writers are using an image of the common to tell an uncommon story. God used an ordinary plant, even if it had unusual properties, to express the extraordinary.
God uses all that is around us to be present to us; to show Godself to us; to invite us into mystery and transformation. As people of faith, we know that God made all of creation, a creation that began 13.8 billion years ago when the universe came to be, and God called it good. The scriptures are full of images of God, and experiences of God, through and within the natural world, through and within the Earth community.
Of course, God shows Godself in the natural world! For this is our world, the Earth community that we are born through and in, that is part of who we are and that we are part of. God invites us continually, to experience God, in so many ways. God invites us to meet God in the ordinary, in the every day, in the natural world that is our world, too.
That ground, that ordinary dirt and rock and scrubs in the desert of Egypt, was holy ground. It contained the presence of God.
We learned this from Jesus, too. As he says in Hebrews, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). We encounter the holy in others. And, on the road to Emmaus, the men did not realize until he broke bread with them that they were actually walking with Jesus (Luke 24:13-32). We encounter God in others.
We know about this; we are used to the lesson to look for God, to look for the face of Jesus, in the people we meet. We aren’t always very good at it; we often find it easier to see God in those who look like us and act like us and who are nice to us, yet can fail to notice God in those who are different. But we know, at least, that in other people, we are to seek the face of God. And, sometimes, we have those encounters, unexpected encounters, with the Holy in other people, that move us and change us, deepen our faith and our sense of call to help others.
But God doesn’t just show up in people. God shows up, the Holy is present, in the Earth community, too. How many of you have had spiritual experiences when out in nature, or encountering animals, birds, plants, in your life? How many of you feel a deeper sense of peace, a calmness, a greater sense of wholeness, when you get out on the trail or the water? When you take time away and go to the cottage or camping? God shows up, the Holy is present, out in the natural world, in the Earth community.
Indeed, we need now, more than ever, to experience God in the Earth community, in the ordinary, everyday natural world that is in and around us, as well as when we manage to get out into the wilderness. We need this now, more than ever, for our experiences of God in the natural world can move us to take action to save the world, to move to Earth healing. Marina Schauffler says, “By disclosing the miraculous within the ordinary, revelations hold the power to strengthen an ecological practice and reconfigure one’s life.”[5]
This is what happened to Moses. Moses encountered God in an ordinary bush in an ordinary place and was transformed and called to discipleship. This is also what happened to Rachel Carson, Terry Tempest Williams, and Aldo Leopold. It is also what happened to Bill McKibben, the environmentalist and author, who is also a practicing Methodist. God is present in the natural world; the Holy is present. God is waiting for us to notice, to be attuned enough to pay attention. I invite you to go into the world, paying attention to the flora and fauna, the wild things around you, whether in the bush or here in the city, and allow yourself to be attuned.
Watch and notice; soften your vision; widen your focus. Go about your day as you do, and be attuned to what you encounter, where the Holy is present, to where God is calling you to notice. What do you see? What do you feel? What do you experience?
I have had my own experiences of God in the natural world, in the Earth community, both in the wilderness and on city streets. Last year, as I finally began to act on God’s call on me to develop my ecotheology ministry, I wrote the following prayer, based on the passage from Exodus that we heard this morning. I would like to pray it with you now. Let us pray:
O God,
I am standing outside on the ground in my yard.
An ordinary patch
of grass and dandelions.
I am reminded that this, all of this,
is your creation.
The sky above and the birds who fly
the trees and the river nearby
the oceans to the west and to the east
the Arctic ice and the African deserts
the flora and fauna
the vast diversity of people and cultures
it is all your creation.
Suddenly, I feel like Moses.
For I realize that
this ordinary patch of grass and dandelions,
part of your creation,
is holy ground.
All of it:
sky and birds
trees and river
oceans, ice and deserts
flora and fauna
people and cultures
is holy ground.
I take off my shoes.
And like Moses,
I hear you calling me.
You called him to lead your people out of Egypt.
You are calling me to Earth healing.
I hear you calling me, God,
your voice speaking from within
the burning bush that is your whole creation.
I take off my shoes,
on this ordinary patch
of grass and dandelions
and I say yes.
AMEN.[6]
When have you known you were standing on holy ground?
[1] Terry Tempest Williams, quoted from an interview with F. Marina Schauffler in her book Turning to Earth: Stories of Ecological Conversion (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 28.
[2] Schauffler, Turning to Earth, 29.
[3] Ibid., 82.
[4] Rita J. Burns, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers (Wilmington, De: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1983), 45.
[5] Schauffler, Turning to Earth, 75.
[6] This prayer was published in The Unmooring Journal, Vol. 1 Issue 4, Summer 2022 as “Prayer of Ecological Commitment”. https://www.theunmooring.org/issue-4.
I remember standing on holy ground a few years ago. We had stopped at a rest stop along the highway in August. As we walked through the meadow next to the picnic tables, there were monarch caterpillars on the milkweed. As I looked, I saw more and more of them - at least half. dozen! I was standing on holy ground.