Holy Spirit, set us ablaze with your love, that we
might be lights to the world. Amen.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only they who see takes off their shoes; the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” That is a part of a poem by Elizabeth Barret Browning, an English poet who lived in the 1800s. It’s one of my favorite lines in poetry, or prose, and you’ve probably heard me quote it before. My hope is that if you haven’t yet heard me say it enough to have it memorized, that, eventually, you will. In a nutshell, that’s what faith is all about – being alive to the fact that, indeed, every bush is afire with God. As our first reading this morning is Moses’ divine encounter at the burning bush, it is good to remember that earth is crammed with heaven.
Certainly,
a burning bush is noteworthy, but it’s another part of this passage that makes
it so foundational for Jews and Christians. Last Sunday, you’ll remember that we
heard about Moses’ birth – how he was born in a time of oppression and
genocide, but through the courage of Shiphrah, Puah, and his sister, Miriam, Moses
is saved from death and grows up in Pharaoh’s court. When Moses was grown, perhaps
in his 20s, he saw an Egyptian beating an enslaved Hebrew and Moses killed that
Egyptian. He became a fugitive and had to run, and eventually settled in the
land of Midian, what we would call Saudi Arabia. There, Moses came to the aid
of a certain shepherd’s daughters who were being harassed at a well. After that,
Moses married Zipporah, one of this man’s daughters. We don’t know how much time
passed, Scripture only says “After a long time, Pharaoh died” and we are told
that God heard the cries of the Hebrew people and acted to bring salvation to
the people.
God
speaks to Moses out of this burning bush and Moses has some questions. How much
Moses knew about God, we can’t be sure. He was raised in Pharoah’s household and
lived in a foreign land after he fled – so he may not have grown up hearing the
stories that we know from Genesis. But he knows that he’s encountering
something bigger than himself at the bush. So he asks, “Who shall I shall you are?”
It’s a fair question. In Moses’ day, and in ours, sometimes the messenger
carries as much weight as the message.
God’s
response is one that scholars and mystics have been pondering for thousands of
years. God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”
But that’s only a guess at the translation. It’s the word that conveys being or
happening, and it could also be “I will be who I will be,” or “I will be who I
am,” or “I am who I will be,” or something like that. Interestingly, the Hebrew
words behind that name are all vowel sounds, and Hebrew is a consonant-based
language. In giving a name that is vowel-based, God is saying “I will not be
defined or constrained by human language.” The words in Hebrew also have a very
breathy sound, suggesting that God is more easily breathed than thought about.
I
absolutely love this passage and could go for hours on it. Don’t worry, I won’t.
The angle I want to take on it this time though is the timelessness of God’s response.
Using the verb for being, God tells Moses that he is that which all being,
existence, and meaning is founded upon. This is true, has always been true, and
will always be true – that God is. So, for the rest of this sermon, I want to
consider what God’s being in the past, present, and future points us towards.
We
begin with the past. Some Jewish scholars say that the bush that Moses
encountered had been burning since the very beginning of Creation, it’s just
that Moses was the first to notice it. Friends, how true it is that God’s love
is burning all around us and we just don’t notice it. Maybe it’s because we are
preoccupied with tasks and appointments, maybe because we’re looking at screens
all the time, maybe it’s because we have a pathological need to explain everything
– but I wonder when the last time you were caught off guard by wonder and love?
Last
Sunday, I preached about the dangers of forgetting and it bears repeating today.
When we forget, we get into a lot of trouble. When I talk to people who are struggling
with faith, nearly all of their struggles are rooted in the past. In the moment,
most people can be swept off their feet by love and beauty, which are sure
signs of the divine. And a lot of people, even if mired in difficulties today,
can find strength to face the future. It’s the past that gives us trouble.
If
we don’t take the time to turn aside and notice those burning bushes of God’s
grace and mercy in our lives, when we reflect on life, we might assume that God
wasn’t there. If we don’t allow ourselves to be distracted, we might miss out
on the Spirit’s intrusions into our lives. If we believe the lie that we really
are okay and don’t need any help, we might refuse the light and warmth of the
fire that God has set before us.
God
tells Moses, “I have heard the cries of my people.” And it’s not just that God
knows what going on with us, but God cares and is concerned. God says, “I have
come down to deliver them.” God’s presence makes all the difference. At this
point in the narrative, the people have not been liberated from their
oppression, they have not escaped Egypt, they have not come into the promised
land. But these things are assured because God has come down; because the bush
is burning. God has promised to be with us. But if we’ve not paid attention to
God’s presence with us in the past, then we start to wonder if God will be with
us in the future. When we ignore burning bushes, we are left stumbling in the
dark. When we say, “I’ve got my own light, thank you very much,” we end up with
self-made idols that always let us down. God has always been with us, and if we
recognize that, that past is seen not as a place of despair, but the foundation
for God’s salvation.
When
it comes to the present aspect of God, what this encounter reminds us is that
God is to be experienced. More than being the object of theology or philosophy,
God is sensed. That burning bush must have been quite the sight to see, but
there was also the crackling sound of the flames, the blazing warmth, the
smokey smell, and even the charred taste of any food that might be cooked over
it.
We
can never know God as intended or desired if we keep faith as a matter of our
thoughts. And I’m saying this as someone who has hundreds of theology books,
listens to hours of church-related podcasts each week, and has three degrees representing
twelve years of study in the field of religion. Yes, we can certainly know God
through our intellect, but that’s a secondary way of knowing God. God is to be
experienced just as afire is to be experienced. If you are cold, looking at a picture
of fire will not give you warmth. If you are in the dark, wishing you had a
torch will not help you to see.
This
is why practices of faith – things like physically receiving Communion so that
we can taste the goodness of the Lord, things like serving those in need so that
we can touch them, things like singing where we use our bodies to offer praise –
matter so much. And what happens is that these experiences allow us to
experience the God who is instead of the gods of our own making. God is
manifest in a burning bush, which really is an oxymoron of sorts. A bush that
is burning typically does not burn very long before it becomes ash. But this
divine fire is never consumed. It is a contradiction, a mystery.
God can never be fully
understood, and so when we approach God only through our thoughts, we will end
up with frustratingly incomplete and unsatisfying results. It’s why very few
people ever come to faith through debate, but rather most people can tell you stories
of conversion experiences. What this means for us in our current moment is that
the church, if we are to draw near this sacred flame, we must focus on
encountering the presence of God that is available to us in others and in
Sacrament. I’m not saying that programs or initiatives are bad, but we have to
keep in mind that the things that we do as a Parish are not ends in and of
themselves, rather all that we do is about gathering around this fire in
beloved community. And if what we do is distracting us from that fire, well,
maybe we need to let those other flames die out.
When it comes to our future,
God’s name gives us hope. At the end of the reading we heard God say, “This is
my name forever, and this my title for all generations.” Each year, I get an annual
statement from the Church Pension Fund. According to their records, February 1,
2049 is my anticipated retirement date. If you asked me when I was ordained
what I thought the Church would look like in the year of my retirement, I could
have given you some guesses. If you ask me today, I’ll tell you that I don’t
have a clue. The Church, if we are to be deserving of that name, will still be
baptizing people, celebrating the Eucharist, and serving those in need in 2049,
but beyond that, I really don’t have a guess.
There’s a book that came out
recently that I’ve been reading called “The Great Dechurching.” The authors claim
that we are in the midst of the most significant 25 years in our nation’s
religious history. Since 2012, more people have left the Church than joined it
in the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham revival
era combined. Across political affiliation, age, race, education level, and
denomination – church affiliation is on the steep decline. And we are not
positioned well for this change. We are burdened with the trappings of
Christendom in a post-Christendom world. We have structures, expectations, and
buildings that no longer serve our needs. Imagine working for the Yellow Pages
in 2023 and you’ll have an idea of where we are. And if you don’t know what the
Yellow Pages is, that’s the point.
One possible, and even
understandable, response to this reality is despair and resignation. The stress,
anxiety, and existential fear that is facing the Church is absolutely real,
just as the changes that will be coming are. God is a God of not only the past
and present but also the future, so we still have hope. We have hope because
three days after being killed, Jesus rose from the grave. We have hope because that
fire of God’s presence that Moses saw in the burning bush now dwells within us
through the Holy Spirit. That’s what the flame above the people’s heads in our
Pentecost icon shows us. We have hope because Jesus has promised us that nothing
can thwart the Church, not even the gates of hell. We have hope because though the
Church may well be declining here, it is growing at an unprecedented rate in
Africa and Asia. We have hope because God can be seen in burning bushes that
are not consumed, meaning there is unlimited potential and possibility in God. What
this means in practical terms for church budgets, buildings, and programs, I truly
don’t know. To be sure, I have anxieties and concerns; I won’t pretend that I
don’t. But more than that, we have hope that the fire of God’s love will
continue to burn for all those who turn aside to see it.
I find it interesting that
Moses also asked God another question – “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?”
God never answer that question. It doesn’t matter if Moses was prepared or equipped
for this mission. Moses’ credentials and experience aren’t what made this salvation
possible. Rather salvation comes through the name of the Lord – the God who is, and was, and is
to come. “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God,” the
ever-burning power of God’s gracious love is where we find our healing from
yesterday, our strength for today, and our hope for tomorrow.
