Holy Ground

Moses and the Burning Bush

Oh God, our God, be with us as we eagerly seek for you. Restore us and quench our thirst, be our helper, protecting us under the shadow of your wings. Hold us fast as we cling to you and strive to understand your Word and follow your Ways. Amen.

8am: Now, during my sermon, there is a project that I need everyone’s help with. At the 11 o’clock, Ellie Cate and Luna will help me with coloring, but I’ve handed out blank leaves and flames for everyone. There are more available right up front here along with some pens. Because Grace is our Holy Place where we worship and speak with God as a community, we are going to make our own Burning Bush to decorate the kids corner and eventually, the Prayground. On your leaves, please write down something you want to offer up to God: it can be something joyous you are grateful for, like health or safety, something you do to serve God, like hospitality or music, or it could be something you struggle with and need God to help you face or overcome, like depression, a health crisis, or a conflict. It can even be something you are angry with God about. Whatever comes to your mind. Then, on the flames, write down the things we think of when we think about God. Things like “Justice” “Mercy” “Forgiveness” “Strength” or “Power.” You can add your leaves and flames to the offertory basket when it comes around. At the 11 o’clock, we will add to the leaves and flames and, with Ellie Cate and Luna’s able coloring assistance, we can then construct our bush!

9am: Now, I have a special project I need some help with. Grace currently has a “kids corner” and eventually will be putting a “prayground” in place so that the littlest members of the community have a space where they can engage in worship in a space designed for their age and stage of development. Because it will be a holy place where we worship and speak with God, we are going to make our very burning bush. I have here some leaves and flames, that Ellie Cate and Luna are going to help me color during the 11 o’clock, but we want this bush to be a reflection of everyone at Clarke Parish. So, on your leaves, please write down something you want to offer up to God: it can be something joyous you are grateful for, like health or safety, something you do to serve God, like hospitality or music, or it could be something you struggle with and need God to help you face or overcome, like depression, a health crisis, or a conflict. It can even be something that you are angry with God about. Whatever comes to your mind. Then, on the flames, write down the things we think of when we think about God. Things like “Justice” “Mercy” “Forgiveness” “Strength” or “Power.” You can add your leaves and flames to the offertory basket when it comes around. At the 11 o’clock, we will add to the leaves and flames and, with Ellie Cate and Luna’s able coloring assistance, we can then construct our bush! And Nyon and Mary - I happen to have some crayons here if you want to help Ellie Cate and Luna with the coloring during this service.

11am: Now, I have a special project I need some help with! If Ellie Cate and Luna (Harlan? Regan? Lydia? Lily? Evelyn? Allison?) and anyone else young at heart could come up to the front here to help me. We are going to make our very own Burning Bush to decorate the church because this is OUR holy place where we come together to worship and speak with God. So, on your leaves, please write down something you want to offer up to God: it can be something joyous you are grateful for, like health or safety, something you do to serve God, like hospitality or music, or it could be something you struggle with and need God to help you face or overcome, like depression, a health crisis, or a conflict. It can even be something you are angry with God about. Whatever comes to your mind. Then, on the flames, write down the things we think of when we think about God. Things like “Justice” “Mercy” “Forgiveness” “Strength” “Mystery” or “Power.” Ellie Cate and Luna are expert colorers, so they will be my big helpers to color the leaves and flames we made at the 8 and 9 o’clock services. You can either bring your leaves and flames up here or back to the kids corner for coloring - or you can put it in the offertory basket when it comes around.

ALL SERVICES:

To quote the late great Queen Elizabeth II, 2014 “was not a year on which I should look back with undiluted pleasure.” Justin and I were married in June 2011, and we wanted to start a family. When more than a year had passed and I was still not pregnant, we began the process of learning about fertility treatments. After a few years of research and a year of procedures and evaluations and decision-making and then treatments, I was thrilled to discover that I was pregnant in late April 2014. By this time, we were in full-swing for wedding preparations for one of my younger sisters who was marrying one of Justin and my’s closest friends from college. We were thrilled to celebrate them and over the moon for our special secret.

The day before the wedding, I went to the clinic for my regular blood work and then headed to the nail salon with the rest of the bridal party. I was mid-manicure when I got a call from my nurse - she didn’t like where my HCG numbers were and was concerned that there might be a problem. I went through the rest of the nail appointment in a numb haze of fear. The nurse called back while I was sitting next to my mom getting our pedicures and she said that the doctor wanted me to come in immediately for an ultrasound. I asked my mom to make my excuses to the family and wedding party, and headed to the clinic.

The ultrasound confirmed the doctor’s concerns: the pregnancy was extra-uterine and we needed to terminate. They wanted me to come back the next day, but I explained that I was an honor attendant in my sister’s wedding, which was the next afternoon. The doctor agreed that I could wait until Sunday, but that I was not allowed to be alone for more than 5 minutes just in case things went sideways.

I went back to my parents’ house, up to their bedroom, and sobbed. My aunt and godmother was one of the few who knew that I was pregnant, and so she was one of the few who now knew what was happening. She tried to comfort me as I railed against God for this cruelty. What should have been one of the happiest weekends of my life, was soul-crushingly awful. I somehow made it through the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, the hair appointments. The wedding service almost broke me when the priest said “when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.” But I hung in there and went to the reception.

My cousins kept looking at me strangely during the reception, because I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t laughing or dancing or really even talking all that much. After my sister and new brother-in-law had departed, my mom came to me and told me that she was proud of me, and that I was officially off-duty - that it was time to take care of myself. I let Justin take me to the hotel, and he held me as I sobbed. I then returned to the clinic first thing on Sunday for a series of injections of methotrexate to terminate the pregnancy that was now threatening my life.

“I have observed the misery of my people … I have heard their cry … Indeed, I know their sufferings … I will be with you.” I tried very hard to stop believing in God. But throughout my grief and anger, I felt God there with me. I felt sheltered in the shadow of God’s wing and so I clung to God, and God held me fast.

Why did God allow the Israelites to become slaves? Why did God allow Pharaoh to kill the first born? Why did God then make the Israelites suffer through a generation of wandering in the desert wilderness to enter a land where they were beset by conflict, divided, carried off into captivity? Why did God allow the Armenian genocide? The Holocaust? God has the power to split the sea and draw water from a stone, so why do so many perish in flood or die from want of food and water? God has the power to heal the sick, so why do so many of our loved ones suffer devastating illness?

One of the most well-known verses in Exodus is found in our reading this morning - “I AM WHO I AM … Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” But there is a problem with this. Hebrew has no present tense for the verb “”to be” In Hebrew, if you want to say “I am hungry” or “I am short” you would literally say “I hungry” or “I short.” The Hebrew phrase - AHIYEH ASHER AHIYEH - is better translated “I will become what I will become” or “I will be what I will be.” God is not static. God is constantly in a state of unfolding, of action, of creation and creating, of becoming.

God promises to be with us in our trials and to give us a way out, to endure, but this does not mean that we are not changed. The ectopic pregnancy and struggle to have a child changed me. It changed Justin and my relationship with one another. But most of all, it changed my relationship with God. All the anger and grief, cursing and crying that I threw at God did not chase God away. God was there with me, drawing me closer, holding me tightly in his right hand as I transformed. I was burned by this experience - but I was NOT consumed.

I don’t know what my life would have been like had I not had this experience. Had pregnancy come easily or that had that embryo been able to develop into a healthy living child. What I do know, is that I would most likely not be standing here before you today. I don’t know what that life would have been like, but I do know what THIS life is like. Being a part of this wonderful community, the relationship I share with Justin that we KNOW can survive any challenge thrown at us, our beautiful daughter.

My best friend, Chana, is a priest in Chicago and she gave me the most wonderful analogy for these transformative times: when you are playing a video game and are approaching the completion of a level, you will usually face what’s called a Boss Battle. Essentially, it’s a really, really hard fight that you have to win. It will use all the resources and skills you’ve gained to date in the game, and you might have to try several times to get through it. When I’m playing, it usually involves calling in assistance from Justin to help me get through the fight. But then, when you defeat the Boss, you reach a new level. You start to find new resources that are more advanced than the ones you just used up. You learn new skills. The game get’s more complicated - and more interesting. When we are going through a particularly difficult period, fighting in our own Boss Battles if you will, it’s God preparing us to Level Up. It doesn’t take away how difficult or painful or terrible your battle is. But it DOES mean that God is preparing us for something WONDERFUL on the other side.

The spaces where we are transformed from our struggles with God - that is holy ground. Our prayground that we have all helped add to today, a place where our youngest members will continue to grow, learn change, and develop, is an important part of our Parish’s sacred space, a holy place of Becoming. I pray that God will continue to give us the strength to face the raging fires we find ourselves in, the faith to believe we will not be consumed, that God will continue to unfold Himself to us throughout our lives, and I pray that we will all come to appreciate the new creation God is constantly making us into. Amen.