The beginnings of our Sacred Journey
Exodus 3: 1-6
September 10, 1989
Welcome back. Welcome back to this place where God speaks to us. Welcome back to this place where we wait, and watch, and wonder, and worship. Welcome back to this place where we are enabled to hear the voice of God.
Welcome back. You may not know it, but you’re on a journey. Our task this morning is to make you aware, conscious of your sacred journey, and have you joined hands with others as we travel together in the coming year.
Our pilgrimage starts this fall by focusing our attention on Moses, that seminal Old Testament figure whose life story is 1 long journey. We begin our study of Moses not at the start of his career, but with the youthful exploits of a young man driven by a sense of justice. No. You pick up the story at midlife for it’s here that Moses starts to discern the shape of his sacred journey. As some wag once said, youth is wasted on the young. I suppose I shouldn’t be saying this when we set aside this year as focusing on youth. But usually, young people haven’t the experience or insight to view life as a journey.
Many young people I talk with see life as preparation for a pilgrimage, or simply a series of random events. I suppose you have to have some pain and suffering, some Gray hair and bifocals before you can become aware of the nature of the journey.
But back to Moses. Our Old Testament lesson picks up the Moses chronicle when he is living in Midian. Moses is no longer the youthful fire-eater filled with vim and vigor, brimming over with concern for the downtrodden. by this time, Moses has married, has children, and made a place for himself in the community. He had settled into the mundane life of a sheep rancher. The causes that gave passion and excitement to life have been replaced by security, routine, and retirement.
But then one day, out there on the desert, Moses has an experience, an experience that makes him aware that there is more to life than meets the eye. Out there in the wilderness, Moses sees a Bush and within the Bush of flame appears to be burning, not a particularly unnatural happening. Scrub bushes often catch fire in the desert yet in this case, the flame doesn’t consume the Bush itself. A miracle perhaps, but most people would simply see it as a quirk of nature.
Moses, we read, turns aside to view this happening. The important part of the story is that he consciously makes a choice. There are many options. It was late in the day and he could have glanced quickly at the site and talked about it at dinner. If he’d had a camera, he might have snapped a picture and sent it to a magazine. Or, like many Old Testament figures he could have set up a shrine and invited his neighbors to worship. If you really want to let your imagination go, you could picture Moses as a BC entrepreneur marketing the miracle. Come to Midian in the fall when it turns cooler. See the sights. Taking a miracle. Sign up with Doctor Moses, the expert on burning bushes.
But no. Instead, he turns aside. He waits, he watches, he wonders. Somehow by God’s grace he realizes this is the beginning of a journey. Suddenly, the very ground he is walking upon becomes holy ground. The very moment becomes a sacred moment, and the sacred journey commences.
The first thing that happens when you’re on a sacred journey is that God speaks to you and more often than not you are given a task. And if you’re anything like Moses, you’ll try to weasel out of it, or suddenly you’ll become deaf. God speaks to me? Don’t be ridiculous.
Whenever I feel this way, I think of the magnificent lines from George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. Joan of Arc is asked how she knows that her actions are the right ones. She replies, I know the voices come from God, whereas King Charles, who has been listening, interrupts in an exasperated tone, Ohh your voices, your voices. Why don’t the voices come to me? I am king? Joan responds softly, they do come to you, but you do not hear them.
The journey began for Moses at a place called Midian. It started with a burning Bush. Not a very remarkable incident, but for Moses it was the key moment, the moment he became aware of his sacred journey.
For each of us there is a different moment. We see burning bushes in different ways. We have different tales to tell of where and when and how our journey began. Perhaps there was no single incident, but rather a series of moments that started us off. For me, there was an incident, a small moment in time, when a scraggly black youngster slammed his books on my car. It took place on the Lower East Side of New York. I was there looking for a temporary job teaching kids, working as a social worker for a few months in between college and the Air Force. A boy, obviously poor and angry, saw my shiny car and this affluent white do-gooder who didn’t belong in the neighborhood, sitting there snoozing. And so he took his tide up books, struck the hood with all his might and dented the car. It was as if he were saying, I’ll never have a car like this. Or, why don’t you stay Uptown?
I could have honked the horn, jumped out and grabbed him, called a cop for telephone my insurance person. Instead, I looked into the youngster’s eyes. I can’t remember what was contained in them, but from then on I knew I was on a sacred journey, a sacred journey that began 36 years ago on the Lower East Side of New York.
Moments like this, and others no less small and insignificant, are the stuff of a sacred journey. Who knows where it started for you? Sometimes, only your unconscious registers will start. Sometimes when you sit quietly and meditate, you can remember where the burning Bush and God spoke, and you were on holy ground.
I know most of the psychological theories about my experience of mine. I have done my share of analyzing and rationalizing of that happening over the years, but the turning aside, that day, and seeing into the youngster’s eyes is still a part of me. It wasn’t a very big beginning, nor was it terribly dramatic, but I’m sure, sure as anything, that I began a sacred journey.
This summer I reread Frederick Buckner’s The Sacred Journey. It’s one of the great books on a person’s religious pilgrimage. Let me share with you a brief passage.
There is no event so commonplace that God is not present within it, always hidden, always leaving you room to recognize him or not. Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that he is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and the gladness, touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it. Because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments.
So on this wonderful day of welcome, when you come to claim your parish church, I ask you to look around. Look at the mountains. Look at the desert from within the window, and see it covered with burning bushes. Look at your neighbor and see her for him as a fellow traveler, a Pilgrim. And look at yourself and realize you are on a sacred journey.
Amen