Every week, during the school year, there is something that happens in the children’s area that I suspect most of us do not see.
Every week, our preschool and elementary-aged children come into the building, and they take of their shoes. Now, I know kids’ shoes get dirty and rugs are expensive, but they don’t take them off because somebody decided the carpet would stay cleaner. And they don’t take them off because we’re from Mississippi and people like to depict us that way.
They take off their shoes because they have been taught a story about Moses. They have been taught about a bush that was burning but was not being consumed. They have been taught that God spoke to Moses from that bush and said, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Then they are taught that the Atrium they are entering is a special place that the people of this church have set apart for them. It is a holy, special place where they can be with God.
And so each week, they take off their shoes.
I love that, and I love knowing that this isn’t just something our youngest children are doing now. Children have been taking off their shoes to enter the atrium for twenty years. Sterling, who was baptized this morning, was once one of our preschoolers taking off his shoes at the door and walking into the Atrium and learning that this was holy ground. And this morning, we watched him take another step in that same journey of faith.
There is something truly beautiful about that. Faith is a journey, but it is also a story. And we don’t begin or even continue that story by ourselves. Long before we are able to make our own promises, other people are telling us the stories, teaching us the songs, showing us how to pray and helping us recognize where God is. And eventually, we begin to claim that story for ourselves.
That is part of what happens to Moses at the burning bush. Moses wasn’t looking for a burning bush. He wasn’t sitting around wondering what God wanted him to do with his life. He was working. He was taking care of the sheep. He had gotten up and gone about an ordinary day and then something caught his attention.
A bush was burning, but it wasn’t burning up. And Moses says, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight.” And he turns aside. He notices. He pays attention. And because Moses stops to pay attention, he discovers that he is standing in the presence of God.
And then God says something that, on the surface, seems a little strange: “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Before God tells Moses what he is supposed to do, God tells Moses where he is. Before God gives Moses an assignment, God gives him a moment. Before Moses goes anywhere, he has to stop, take off his shoes, and pay attention. He is standing on holy ground.
We often tell this story as a story about calling. Because it is. Moses is called. Called back to Egypt. Called to stand before Pharaoh. Called to lead God’s people out of slavery. But Moses does not respond to this calling with immediate confidence.
Moses has questions. He has doubts. He has objections.
“Who am I”
“What if they don’t believe me?”
“What if they ask me your name?”
And eventually, Moses says, “Lord, could you please send someone else?”
I think that may be one of the most comforting lines of Scripture. Moses is uncertain. Moses is afraid. Moses definitely has some imposter syndrome. And yet God calls Moses anyway. God doesn’t give Moses everything that Moses wants to know. God doesn’t give Moses a detailed plan. God doesn’t tell Moses exactly how every conversation with Pharaoh is going to go.
God doesn’t even remove all of Moses’ questions. Instead, God says, “I will be with you.”
God’s answer is not certainty, it’s presence.
And maybe that is one of the hardest things for us to trust about God’s call on our own lives. We would like to know where it is going and how it will turn out. We would like to know that we are making the right decision. We would like God to give us the whole map before we take the first step.
But there are also times when what we need from God is not a map at all. We need presence. Especially in the moments when we are grieving, when we are afraid, when the ground beneath us feels less certain than it did before. And maybe that is why these words from Romans matter so much: “weep with those who weep.” Sometimes faithfulness is not knowing what to say or knowing how to make things better. Sometimes it is simply being present with one another in the places that hurt.
God’s answer is not always certainty. But God’s promise is always presence.
Rarely does God call us all at once. Sometimes God gives us enough light for the next step. Sometimes God gives us a burning bush. Sometimes God gives us a person. Sometimes God gives us a question that won’t go away. Sometimes God gives us a restlessness we cannot quite explain. Sometimes God simply puts something in front of us and asks us to pay attention. Calling begins with attention, with listening, with recognizing that God is already present before we have figured out what God is asking us to do.
There’s a little wisdom here from a rather unexpected theologian, Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton one said, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
Now, Dolly wasn’t trying to write a theology of vocation, or maybe she was, but either way there is something in her words. There is a difference between discovering who we are and simply deciding what we want to do. And when we recognize that we are God’s beloved child, discovering who we are is ultimately about discovering who God has created us to be: the gifts we have been given, what breaks our hearts open, what we love, and where those things meet the needs of the world around us.
And then, having discovered something about who we are, we have to decide what we will do with it.
Moses had to do that.
Sterling is beginning to do that.
And all of us, in one way or another, are still doing it.
This is one of the gifts we give the children in our family of faith. We don’t simply tell them what Christians believe. We tell them their faith story. We tell them where they come from.
We tell them about Abraham and Sarah, the grandparents of our faith.
We tell them about Moses, who led our ancestors out of bondage.
We tell them about Miriam, who sang and danced a victory song of freedom.
We tell them about the Jewish hope for a Messiah.
We tell them about Jesus.
We tell them about the church as God’s redemptive people in the world. We tell them these stories because faith does not begin with us.
We are part of a story that began long before any of us arrived, and will last long after each of us departs, but eventually, each of us must decide what we will do with that story.
This is part of what we celebrate at baptism. Sterling has grown up surrounded by the love of this family of faith, and today he walked through the water as an outward sign of an inward decision, a decision that the story we have told him is his story too.”
When we dedicate our babies, we remind their families that they belong to us as well. Because faith is not something we figure out alone. We are carried by other people’s faith before we can carry it ourselves. Someone teaches us the stories, someone teaches us the songs. Someone brings us to church. Someone wonders with us about our questions. Someone sits beside us when we are hurting and reminds us what we have forgotten. Someone helps us recognize holy ground. And then at some point, we begin to make that faith our own. And even still, the church says “we will encourage you, we will provide the resources of this congregation for you, we will help you discover your unique gifts for the betterment of the world.”
Because even when we know we’re ready to walk through the waters of baptism, we don’t know exactly where our faith will take us, all the ways our gifts will be used, the places where God will call us.
But we do know that we belong to God’s story, and that shared story means we belong to one another. And we know that God is with us.
Today’s lesson from Romans reminds us what that belonging looks like when we live it out:
“Let love be genuine.”
“Love one another with mutual affection.”
“Rejoice in hope.”
“Be patient in suffering.”
“Persevere in prayer.”
“Contribute to the needs of the saints.”
“Extend hospitality to strangers.”
“Rejoice with those who rejoice.”
“Weep with those who weep.”
That is what a life shaped by God’s calling and God’s presence looks like, and it is why the burning bush matters. Moses’ calling begins not with a command but with an encounter. Not with Moses knowing what comes next, but with Moses discovering that God is already there.
“Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Our children hear that story, they take off their shoes, they walk into the Atrium, and they are reminded that God is here. But not just here, in this place, here in their hearts, as close as their breath. I hope they never forget it.
And I hope we don’t either.
There are so many times in our lives when we are tempted to think that God must be somewhere else. But Moses finds God in the wilderness. Our children learn to recognize God’s presence in the Atrium. Sterling stood in the waters of baptism and claimed his place in God’s story. And Paul tells us that we encounter God in the ordinary work of loving one another.
Church, where is God asking you to pay attention?
What is happening in front of you? Who is standing in front of you? Where is there love that needs to be given? Where is there suffering that needs someone to sit beside it? Where is there joy that needs to be shared? Where is there a gift that needs to be offered?
Where is the holy ground beneath your feet? Because we may be standing on it already. We may have been standing on it for a long time. Maybe what we need is simply to stop long enough to notice.
To turn aside. To listen. To take off our shoes.
And to trust the promise God gave Moses: I will be with you.
Amen.