Cedar Park United Church

Holy Ground

Exodus 3:1-15
Romans 12:9-21

Today our scriptural story begins with Moses out doing his job minding his business. He is astonished to catch sight of a strange bush that burns with light. Moses’ curiosity gets the better of him and he approaches it. Did you notice that God does not address Moses until Moses notices the bush and moves toward it? That makes me wonder how many other times God had tried to get Moses’ attention? How many other holy moments, other invitations, other signs had God been putting out there that Moses did not pay attention to? How much patience did God have to have to get the attention of this guy? Now if Moses were still in the palace, there might have been so many distractions around, that he might have missed it. Perhaps a royal reception; a temple rite to perform, or maybe the chariot would have been going too fast; or there could have been soccer or ballet. Lives that hurl along at breakneck speed, don’t have time to notice burning bushes, or often any other kind of sacred encounter.

But this new Moses, the one in the desert, whose life has been broken, whose world is slowed down, is open to awareness, to the burning presence of God’s light even when it comes through an ordinary desert shrub. Sometimes, it takes wilderness to clear away the chaos, and crack us open to the holy; to get us beyond our self-absorption and fear so that we can hear God’s compassion for others, and God’s desire for us to do something about it.

You may never have known a burning bush, nor heard a voice speaking out of flames, but I’ll bet you’ve had deep spiritual encounters. Some of you have told me about them. A sense of guiding presences during a Healing Pathways treatment; A presence of one who had died in a way that was profoundly lifel-changin. A soul searing awe looking at the night stars while out on a quiet lake; and a knowing that you are stardust….connected with this vast mystery. Or sitting by a death bed of a loved one and finding a deep peace that passes understanding in the centre of your pain and loss. Or hearing yourself called to leave the life you had been living that was soul-destroying and to embark on an unknown and frightening new path.

We know these experiences of standing on holy ground; in the presence of the Sacred. Sometimes, these images or visions come in dreams- or meditation, sometimes in a simple thought that crosses our mind in the the midst of ordinary life. They are often about a call from the soul to deeper living, new life. Sing:
This is holy ground —- We’re standing on holy ground,
For God is with and where God is is holy, 2X

These are Holy Hands God’s given us Holy Hands
For the God is with us and where
God is is holy, 2X

These are holy lips God’s given us holy lips
Our God speaks through us and so these lips are holy 2X
And when you stand on Holy Ground, When you discover Holy Ground in you, you are never the same again. Moses sure wasn’t. His life was turned around.

This voice names itself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The meaning of this present moment is rooted in the past. This voice could not be taken lightly. Now Moses is being given the birthright of his ancestors – direct relationship with the Holy.

Moses’ reaction is natural enough. He hides his face, afraid. His fear was well founded for that encounter came with a purpose. When it came to Abraham, he was called to leave the familiar to journey with Sarah into a whole new land. When Jacob heard the voice in his dream of the ladder reaching to heaven, it shook his egocentricity to the core. Moses would be called to face into a past that he would rather avoid.

Notice what this God who confronts Moses is like. This God is not some academic idea of a God. This is a God of passion and compassion, and of liberating justice. God confronts Moses in this way because God has been moved to the core by the pain and oppression of the people in slavery in Egypt. God has heard their cries, and suffering and known, in a way that in Hebrew means to have felt it for oneself, (a word that means womb love) the sorrow of the people. God longs for the people to be set free, to be led out of slavery. God begs Moses to go to Egypt and tell the Pharaoh to let the people go.

Now Moses must have found that a prettyriduculous proposition! You think Pharaoh is going to listen? Let his slaves go free? no economic sense there! And don’t forget Moses is wanted in Egypt for murder- And besides he’s made a nice life for himself here.

His every instinct is to run! -to get out of there! – to forget this burning bush business! Moses comes up with a whole series of excuses to try to avoid God’s call on his life. It seems he has a Ph.D. in excusology. “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the slaves out of Egypt?”- ‘I’m a nobody, Pharaoh won’t listen to me. I can’t possibly do this impossible job. There’s got to be somebody else who could do a better job.’ (not excuses any of us have ever used of course!)
The irony is that when you really think about it , Moses is the very person to go. He speaks the language. He knows the Egyptian mind. He was raised in Pharaohs court. All his past has prepared him for this task, yet Moses doesn’t want to know that. He is afraid to live his potential fully.

“What shall I say when the people ask me who sent me?” asks Moses next. God answers this by giving the gift of the name which has been so sacred in Hebrew tradition that to this day, many Jews will not say this name out of respect. The voice says tell them that ‘Yahweh has sent me’

In Hebrew, one’s name reveals the inner essence of the personality. The name means “I am who I am, or I will be who I will be, or Beingness becoming”- This God is beyond time, eternally present, this living, being, becoming God,who can not boxed in by the past or the future, or by images or names we create to try to contain God.

Moses still keeps on with the excuses, this time hiding behind low self-esteem. ‘I am a slow speaker and not able to speak well. You really should get someone else, ”

Did you ever notice that once Moses accepts his inner calling, his speech problem seems to vanish? At least we never hear any more about it. Moses wants to deny his giftedness, so he can hang on to the safe life he has carved out for himself in the Midian suburbs.

Fear of our power can immobilize us. If we are free, we must accept responsibility for our lives. We have to make our own choices and give up dependency. It can seem easier to remain unfree, a victim, a slave. Then we can complain about our condition, blame our failures and unhappiness on others and avoid the burdensome responsibility of taking on our lives.

When Moses says to God find somebody else , God’s anger blazes at Moses, Eventually, after some more wrestling Moses reluctantly takes up the call to do this very scary thing; to stand up to the most powerful ruler of the land, to stand up against exploitation and injustice and call for freedom for the people.

His courage changed the course of history; and his story, even with its humble, ragged beginnings, has sustained those seeking both inner and outer liberation ever since.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
And if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
For your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
If you have been opened by life’s betrayals
Or become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
Without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
If you can dance with wildness
And let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
Without cautioning us to be careful,
To be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human…

“The Invitation” from THE INVITATION by ORIAH. Copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Where have you stood on Holy Ground? Where have you encountered God calling you to live your passion? What was that like? Did you follow? Or did you resist? When have you been called to be more than you thought you could be? When have you tried to run away in fear, only to find that that was really not a choice,, and you would have to grow into what you were called to be? What kind of excuses have you used to avoid taking on your light and your power? How have you been called to live more fully by God?

Living in the Midst of Empire

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Romans 12:1-8

Today’s scripture readings are a tremendous source of strength and hope for those trying to walk a path of spiritual integrity and of justice in a culture whose underlying values are fundamentally at odds with this.

Paul, writes to a fledgling church – a minority group whose values were out of step with the militaristic Roman empire in which it found itself. Paul had begun his life as one who terrorized and tortured this new sect who called themselves “The Way”. He had been part of the power structure, with Roman soldiers at his disposal to help clean up this radical rabble deemed a threat to National Security. Imagine what an amazing conversion it was for him to turn his life around, and become one of those whom he had hunted and tortured. The Damascus Road was only the beginning of his conversion! He had to learn to stand up to some of the very political and community leaders that he had previously worked with, and to speak a truth that was often counter-culture.

To the Roman church he says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God.” He then goes on to tell the community to use all of its gifts oriented towards God. Be a community in resistance, he is telling them. Support and encourage one another, persevere in tough times, keep hope alive by praying regularly, connecting with the Source of your gifts, and your hope. Good advice for modern churches too.

For our day, the question is still very much alive. Whose story do you choose to live by; the story of the Rome, or the story of God? This week I had the privilege of listening to a leading American theologian and philosopy professor from Claremont University, Dr, David Ray Griffen dismantle the official story of 911. He is a person whose faith and gift of analytical intelligence compells him to speak out and raise serious questions in a climate where there is great fear to speak out in critique. Others from a faith perspective question involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan , or question our addiction to oil, or the impact of globalization on culture, environment, local economies; We still struggle with how to” not be conformed to his world, but transformed by the renewal of our minds so that our lives prove the will of God.” How to be people of loving resistance-committed to life; and to disentangle our conformity to fear-based cultural values that would destroy it? How to orient our gifts, our lifestyles, our thinking toward God values, of community, of integrity, of justice, of respect for creation. We still struggle with how to create and sustain a community of people not conformed to the dog eat dog, consumer, economism ideology, that permeates our times? The kind of thinking that suggests:
• the poor have too much , and the rich do not have enough.
• that the production of material goods and market forces are more important than the production of healthy community, healthy people, and healthy relationships- that bottom lines are more important than hospitals, or daycare or schools.
• That money is the most important value, and is a sign of political and social worth-that productive, working adults are more valuable than children, elderly, unemployed, refugees-
• that property, and people’s right to accumulate wealth is sacred and an absolute right, no matter how much it robs from community, or from our Mother the earth.
• that the strongest have the right to impose their will on the weakest.

How do we learn to stand up and say no! not to be conformed to this world, as Paul says, but transformed by the renewal of our minds, that we may prove the will of God.
Whose story will we live by? The world’s or God’s?

We get some real clues, I think, in the ancient story from Exodus. A lot has happened since last week, when Joseph was reconciled with all his brothers in that strange sequence of events that saw a tear filled reunion. – But Joseph and the power he exercised died – and all of that 1st generation and there was a new king – This new Pharoah was Rameses II. Archeologists have found an ancient stone carving which translated reads He built the city of Rameses with Asiatic Semitic slaves. This new Pharoah knew nothing about Joseph, and his role in saving the nation, but he feared that he had a problem of national security. There was a population boom among the oppressed slave nation, whose birthrate was perceived to be outstripping that of the Egyptians. Pharoah feared that in their desire to escape from slavery they might join an enemy if there were a war. NOW Pharoah wanted to keep the Hebrews for economic reasons. They were his cheap labour force. So the first solution was to try to wear them down under heavy loads and harsh task masters so that they would not have any energy left to be a political problem. He tried to crush their spirits, to have control over them.

Xenophobic fear, fear of people racially and culturally different, is not limited to Egypt centuries ago. Uprooting people, putting them in concentration camps out of a xenophobic fear for national security has happened in many parts of the world; not so different from Pharoah’s solution. Remember our own reaction to Japanese Canadians, during World War II.

And it is not only in Egypt thousands of years ago, that people are thought of only in terms of the labour that they have to offer to those in control. South Africa has been a very obvious example of this kind of a system for a centuries. It happens, in the United States with Mexican immigrants, in our own country where we used Chinese labour to build our railways, and immigrants to develop the west. Even today many work in systems that do not take our humanity into account. Companies close, dismissing longtime employees, and move to places where they do not need to worry about decent wages, benefit packages, safety of their workers or concerns of the environment. Pharoah’s system still lives in our world.

The strange thing was – the more they were oppressed, the more the Hebrews increased in numbers, a sign in their tradition, that God was with them. Egyptian fear of the oppressed Hebrews grew, and so did the oppression. The next step was a very radical form of enforced birth control, the calling together of all the midwives who helped the Hebrew women, with the order to kill any male child, born to a Hebrew woman. Pharoah, wanted security for his people, but rather than try to work for a just ordering and sharing of the wealth and power of the nation- an option that might have led to real security- he opts for the path of fear and control. He does this to the extreme case of murdering children.

But then we catch a glimpse of God power; power not based in fear and control! – very different from Pharoah power, as we hear in this amazing resistance story. Midwives close to the miracle of life, routinely witness the sacred experience of birth. So when Pharoah gives the midwives orders to kill the Hebrew male children right at birth, THEY REFUSE. No big demonstration or a strike; That would have only got them killed. They simply, quietly, but very intentionally refused to obey the political, lawful authority because it was against their own wisdom and belief. By this simple act of civil disobedience, this courageous act of resistance, they turned around the course of history. Two poor women making the choice for LIFE in their own context- taking on their power, rather than giving into the fear and harrassment which they certainly experienced. Two women saying NO when they had been ordered to say yes, by the ultimate authority in the nation. Two women who knew that Pharoah was not God, and that his order was contrary to God’s will. Two lovingly defiant women, who refused to be submissive and obedient. Almost makes you think of Cindy Sheehan.

The action of these two women Shiprah and Puah, midwives who refused to kill babies, saved the life of Moses, who later became a great leader who would lead the people out of slavery. When called on the carpet because the population of Hebrews still continued to grow, they told a story about how they just couldn’t get to the births fast enough because the Hebrew women gave birth so quickly. And Pharoah, racist that he was, apparently fell for it.

But it was not only these midwives who showed courage and resisted. Moses’ mother Jochabed, kept her tiny son alive and hidden from the authories as long as she could. When it became too dangerous, she fashioned a little basket, a tiny ark like Noah’s, and set him among the reeds. Miriam, his courageous sister, faithfully kept watch over him. When the Egyptian princess found the child she reached beyond the boundaries of her culture, to defy her father and to receive into her own family, a Hebrew child. Miriam showed how resourceful she was, offering the princess a wet nurse for the boy. And so the boy child Moses, not only escaped death, but was raised in the court of the very ruler who tried to destroy him, raised as Pharoah’s adopted grandson with the woman who was his wetnurse and nanny none other than his own mother. This is God power- with an incredible ironic sense of humour no less.

Compassion in the court of the oppressor- a daughter of power who refused to obey her fathers order, who refused to fear and reject a child because he was of a different race- Two midwives who chose life and refused to cooperate with evil. And a courageous mother Jochobed and resourceful sister Miriam, all subverted injustice by taking on their power in ways that were possible for them. Women who chose to live by a story that was life-giving rather than Pharoah’s story. The movement for liberation from slavery, began long before the adult Moses appeared on the scene.

Whenever my courage gets low, or I am feeling overwhelmed by Pharoah’s ways, I remember these women of courage and the many other men and women of courage since then who have refused to go along with unjust authorities – Archibishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador , Dom Helder Camara of Brazil, Women like Nobel prize winner Rigobertu Menchu from Guatemala who continued to work for her people despite death threats and the murder of all of her family- The mothers of the disappeared in Argentina who refuse to be silent about their disappeared family members- Or the mothers of Chile who chained themselves together at the place where their government made decisions because these decisions were hurting their families. When the police came to unlock their chains and force them to leave, they gave them flowers. Or Ghandi who by his civil disobedience ended British rule in India. Other civil resistance movements that have led to the fall of the Berlin wall, and autocratic communist regimes in East Germany, Ukraine, Romania. The courageous resistors of South Africa Steven Biko, Nelson Mandele, Archbishop Tutu and many others too numerous to name who suffered imprisonment, and risked lives for justice. People like Christian theologian and minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer who died in concentration camp in Germany rather than collude with evil, or the Christian women of Germany who protested against Hitler’s order to divorce their Jewish husband, and won! or Raoul Wallenburg who saved thousands of Jews. or Rosa Parks in the Southern USA who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus and catalyzed the civil rights movement under Dr. Martin Luther King with its many named and unnamed folks who changed the world by life-giving disobedience. Today there are Christian workers in the Phillipines who are continuing their ministry and critique even though over 27 have been assassinated, or earlier this year, the resistance of the Buddhist monks both in Burma and Tibet. Or the 2 women of China we heard about this week who have been sent to reeducation camp for applying to stage a legal protest in Beijing. The list could go on. Ordinary people, with ordinary lives who have engaged in life-giving disobience and each in their own small yet significant ways whittled away at the power of the greatest empires on earth.

We may not be like these people we think of as heroes, but here in our own communities we are people of resistance when we value the marginalized; when we support empowerment of refugees and poor people in Montreal through our missions. We are people of resistance when we choose to buy fair trade products rather than products made in sweat shops. We are people of resistance when we value and support African grandmothers raising children of the AIDS epidemic, or when we build schools and wells in Africa through our Youth in Action group. We are people of resistance when we chose to value and care for our sick and elderly, when we take choices to reduce, refuse, reuse, recycle, when we make choices for LIFE rather than choices that lead to death of the planet, of our souls. Like these midwives who chose life, like Paul’s Roman church, we too find ways to not conform to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, so that you may prove by our lives and our choices, what is the will of God.” The question is Whose story will we live by? The empire’s or God’s?