Evangelism | Discipleship | Servanthood | Diversity
Finding Christ in the Burning Bush- sermon
Finding Christ in All the Wrong Places:
At the Burning Bush
Exodus 3
Oct. 4, 2009
Rev. Dr. Keith M. Curran
St. Andrew Presbyterian Church
1885 Bridge Road Suffolk, VA 23433
www.standrewpres.net
Sociologist Tony Campolo says that “The God we worship is a hidden God. He does not force us to confront Him, but waits patiently for the time to come when we all seek Him out. God longs for us to seek after him with heart and mind and soul.” (Let Me Tell You a Story, pg. 1)
In one lecture he told a story about a rabbi’s daughter who was playing hide and go seek with the children of the neighborhood. She hid but the other kids played a cruel joke on her and purposely didn’t find her and they all ran home. Crying, she climbed onto her father’s lap: “Daddy, I was hiding and nobody tried to find me!” The dad hugged her with a mix of parent and rabbi wisdom said, “God understands. God understands more than you realize.” It does seem that one of the things that must frustrate God the most is who often we just don’t look for God to be present. The Bible says that if we truly seek Him, we will find him, even if it seems like we’re looking for the Divine in all the wrong places.
How many of us would look for the Christ of the New Testament in the story of Moses and the burning bush? You might now, now that you’re starting to get the picture that we can find the Christ, (the Second Persona of the Trinity…the Expressive Being of Divinity) in the Old Testament whenever we find the Transcendent God breaking into the time/space continuum of human history. We talked about that last week as we did some good theology. Theologians call it the Pre-Existent Christ whenever we read about God breaking into our natural world and history’s timeframe. Maybe a better way to think about it is just to say that we can often find Jesus Christ in what we might consider, all the wrong places; such as at the burning bush.
Our story today is a good example of the Pre-Existent Christ. Moses, not a young man any more, was living in the northern Arabian desert as a shepherd, the son-in-law of a Bedouin sheik. It was the Late Bronze Age (about 1400-1300 BC) and Moses was in a sort of self imposed-exile from Egypt, where he grew up as the adopted grandson of the Pharaoh. But after killing an Egyptian overseer who was brutalizing a Hebrew slave, he fled for his life into the desert. There he settled down and raised a family.
The story takes us to a desert mountain and an unimaginable and improbable experience. He sees a bush on fire, yet the flames do not consume it. It’s not a wildfire like what went on last summer in the Great Dismal Swamp; it’s a lone shrub engulfed in a Divine flame. From the fire comes the Word of God. “I am the eternal God!” he hears. (Last week we read in John’s Gospel that Jesus was the Word and the Word was God. John 1:1) Here the Word is spoken and it is God; the great “I AM” (Hebrew – Yahweh or Jehovah). And Moses finds himself standing on holy ground. (Ex. 3:5)
What makes the church say that this holy ground experience is an instance where the Pre-Existent Christ is present? Again we turn ahead 1350 years to John’s Gospel and find Jesus calling himself, I AM. I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. I am the good shepherd, the living water, the living bread, the grape vine, and the doorway. In one conversation he actually says that he was before Abraham and Sarah’s time and then just says it……. I am I AM! (John 8:58). When some of the people heard it, they picked up rocks, ready to stone him.
When the shepherd Moses encountered the great I AM, he encountered the One we know from the Gospels as the Good Shepherd, Jesus of Nazareth. And that encounter became holy ground.
What is holy ground for us today? Could it be a moment in worship where Christ became a very real part of your life? Or in the far corner of our property where a simple pattern of bricks creates a prayer labyrinth? There, in a niche of unkempt trees, a 15-minute, prayerful walk in and out of the circle path can be holy ground.
For John Muir (1838-1914) the stunning majestic beauty of the Yosemite Valley was his cathedral made without human hands. On the PBS National Parks mini series this week, we heard of the debt we owe to this son of an itinerant Presbyterian preacher. His preacher/father was so stern that he would spank his son into memorizing the Bible. As a young college educated man in search of a meaningful life, he ended up in California working a sawmill in the great Yosemite Valley at the time it was being set apart by Congress for preservation as a park. There, amid nature’s splendor of waterfalls and Half Dome and the grandeur of the mighty red wood trees, the oldest living things on earth, he found holy ground. Walking into the valley he realized, “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
For John Muir, he found the Creator in nature’s cathedral to be holy ground, often at the foot of a particular Giant Sequoia that was 3250 years old; just a sapling at the time of Moses’ own burning bush experience. What is holy ground for you?
One summer ago, Deb and I stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Neither of us could speak. Eyes welled up with liquid emotion; we were standing on holy ground. As Alfred Bryan said of the Grand Canyon in 1921, “I am ten thousand cathedrals rolled into one.” We stayed at the rim with thousands of others to witness an unforgettable sunset. The shuttle bus dropped us off at the campsite and as the vehicle’s lights faded down the road, the high desert moonless night enveloped two puny humans in a blackness that trapped us at the bus stop like flies in flypaper. Yet that moment of panic turned into our very own burning bush as our pupils gradually adjusted their aperture and we took in our first breathtaking look at a night sky overflowing with milky white stars.
“O Lord, our Lord, your name is wonderful everywhere on earth! I often think of the wonders of nature your hands have made, and of the moon and stars you put in place. Then I have to ask, “Why do you care about us humans? Why so concerned about us?” (Psalm 8 paraphrased)
Yet we don’t have to visit a National Park or the Midean desert to stand on holy ground. We don’t even have to consider ourselves holy to encounter the Christ of the Gospels. For 2000 years, people like you and me have found holy ground right here at the Table of the Lord. “When you do this, do so in remembrance of me,” said Jesus. “This is my body, my blood,” he said. In other words, “I am with you right here in the sharing of this simple meal.”
We are standing on holy ground.
At the Burning Bush
Exodus 3
Oct. 4, 2009
Rev. Dr. Keith M. Curran
St. Andrew Presbyterian Church
1885 Bridge Road Suffolk, VA 23433
www.standrewpres.net
Sociologist Tony Campolo says that “The God we worship is a hidden God. He does not force us to confront Him, but waits patiently for the time to come when we all seek Him out. God longs for us to seek after him with heart and mind and soul.” (Let Me Tell You a Story, pg. 1)
In one lecture he told a story about a rabbi’s daughter who was playing hide and go seek with the children of the neighborhood. She hid but the other kids played a cruel joke on her and purposely didn’t find her and they all ran home. Crying, she climbed onto her father’s lap: “Daddy, I was hiding and nobody tried to find me!” The dad hugged her with a mix of parent and rabbi wisdom said, “God understands. God understands more than you realize.” It does seem that one of the things that must frustrate God the most is who often we just don’t look for God to be present. The Bible says that if we truly seek Him, we will find him, even if it seems like we’re looking for the Divine in all the wrong places.
How many of us would look for the Christ of the New Testament in the story of Moses and the burning bush? You might now, now that you’re starting to get the picture that we can find the Christ, (the Second Persona of the Trinity…the Expressive Being of Divinity) in the Old Testament whenever we find the Transcendent God breaking into the time/space continuum of human history. We talked about that last week as we did some good theology. Theologians call it the Pre-Existent Christ whenever we read about God breaking into our natural world and history’s timeframe. Maybe a better way to think about it is just to say that we can often find Jesus Christ in what we might consider, all the wrong places; such as at the burning bush.
Our story today is a good example of the Pre-Existent Christ. Moses, not a young man any more, was living in the northern Arabian desert as a shepherd, the son-in-law of a Bedouin sheik. It was the Late Bronze Age (about 1400-1300 BC) and Moses was in a sort of self imposed-exile from Egypt, where he grew up as the adopted grandson of the Pharaoh. But after killing an Egyptian overseer who was brutalizing a Hebrew slave, he fled for his life into the desert. There he settled down and raised a family.
The story takes us to a desert mountain and an unimaginable and improbable experience. He sees a bush on fire, yet the flames do not consume it. It’s not a wildfire like what went on last summer in the Great Dismal Swamp; it’s a lone shrub engulfed in a Divine flame. From the fire comes the Word of God. “I am the eternal God!” he hears. (Last week we read in John’s Gospel that Jesus was the Word and the Word was God. John 1:1) Here the Word is spoken and it is God; the great “I AM” (Hebrew – Yahweh or Jehovah). And Moses finds himself standing on holy ground. (Ex. 3:5)
What makes the church say that this holy ground experience is an instance where the Pre-Existent Christ is present? Again we turn ahead 1350 years to John’s Gospel and find Jesus calling himself, I AM. I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. I am the good shepherd, the living water, the living bread, the grape vine, and the doorway. In one conversation he actually says that he was before Abraham and Sarah’s time and then just says it……. I am I AM! (John 8:58). When some of the people heard it, they picked up rocks, ready to stone him.
When the shepherd Moses encountered the great I AM, he encountered the One we know from the Gospels as the Good Shepherd, Jesus of Nazareth. And that encounter became holy ground.
What is holy ground for us today? Could it be a moment in worship where Christ became a very real part of your life? Or in the far corner of our property where a simple pattern of bricks creates a prayer labyrinth? There, in a niche of unkempt trees, a 15-minute, prayerful walk in and out of the circle path can be holy ground.
For John Muir (1838-1914) the stunning majestic beauty of the Yosemite Valley was his cathedral made without human hands. On the PBS National Parks mini series this week, we heard of the debt we owe to this son of an itinerant Presbyterian preacher. His preacher/father was so stern that he would spank his son into memorizing the Bible. As a young college educated man in search of a meaningful life, he ended up in California working a sawmill in the great Yosemite Valley at the time it was being set apart by Congress for preservation as a park. There, amid nature’s splendor of waterfalls and Half Dome and the grandeur of the mighty red wood trees, the oldest living things on earth, he found holy ground. Walking into the valley he realized, “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
For John Muir, he found the Creator in nature’s cathedral to be holy ground, often at the foot of a particular Giant Sequoia that was 3250 years old; just a sapling at the time of Moses’ own burning bush experience. What is holy ground for you?
One summer ago, Deb and I stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Neither of us could speak. Eyes welled up with liquid emotion; we were standing on holy ground. As Alfred Bryan said of the Grand Canyon in 1921, “I am ten thousand cathedrals rolled into one.” We stayed at the rim with thousands of others to witness an unforgettable sunset. The shuttle bus dropped us off at the campsite and as the vehicle’s lights faded down the road, the high desert moonless night enveloped two puny humans in a blackness that trapped us at the bus stop like flies in flypaper. Yet that moment of panic turned into our very own burning bush as our pupils gradually adjusted their aperture and we took in our first breathtaking look at a night sky overflowing with milky white stars.
“O Lord, our Lord, your name is wonderful everywhere on earth! I often think of the wonders of nature your hands have made, and of the moon and stars you put in place. Then I have to ask, “Why do you care about us humans? Why so concerned about us?” (Psalm 8 paraphrased)
Yet we don’t have to visit a National Park or the Midean desert to stand on holy ground. We don’t even have to consider ourselves holy to encounter the Christ of the Gospels. For 2000 years, people like you and me have found holy ground right here at the Table of the Lord. “When you do this, do so in remembrance of me,” said Jesus. “This is my body, my blood,” he said. In other words, “I am with you right here in the sharing of this simple meal.”
We are standing on holy ground.
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