Shimmering with God

Lent 3, Year C

Exodus 3:1-15

A few weeks ago at the Lenten retreat here, we were gathered in this space sharing stories and thinking about our lives as part of God’s story.  It was a wonderful group of people and the sharing was holy and good, but not far into the morning I found that what I was really craving was silence and my own space, so I ventured off to the couch in my office and opened up the book I’ve been working on for Lent.

My attempted Lenten practice this year has centered around lectio divina, a way of praying with the words and images of scripture.  Lectio divina, or “sacred reading” is a way of slowly reading scripture not for study or content but to listen for how God might be speaking to us through it.  This way of praying understands scripture not as “written once to remain fossilized” for all time, but as continuing to reveal God’s wisdom in the unique circumstances of our lives. 

In lectio, you read some small portion of scripture slowly and listen for a word or phrase that “shimmers” - some piece that “beckons you, unnerves you, disturbs you, stirs you, or seems especially ripe with meaning.”  Once you find it, you gently repeat that word or phrase to yourself, allowing it to unfold in your imagination.  Then you sit with the images, feelings and memories that it stirs in you and listen for how that connects to your life, maybe how it calls you to be in the world, and then bring all of that to God in prayer.

Since I was introduced to lectio, this has been one of my favorite and most fruitful ways of praying.  I have trouble sitting in the silence of contemplative prayer without being overcome by distractions.  And the rote-ness and structure of more liturgical daily prayer has never spoken to me.  And so lectio offers a way of freeing myself to sit with God while also giving me something on which to focus my attention.  I have always been amazed by how lectio allows people to sit with the same few lines of scripture and have completely unique experiences. 

But I have to admit that even though I love lectio, I haven’t been consistent about practicing it.  And so this Lent I took on working through Christine Valters Paintner’s book: Lectio Divina: The Sacred Art.  She introduces lectio slowly and intersperses each chapter with invitations to experiment.  There is something about her writing that is encouraging and gentle enough that when I get to her suggestions for prayer I actually usually stop and try them rather than just reading past as I often tend to do with other books on prayer. 

The morning of our Lenten retreat, one of the suggested scripture passages the book invited me to sit with was the start of this morning’s old testament reading about Moses’ encounter with the burning bush.

This has always been one of my favorite Bible stories and so the words of the passage were “shimmering” like crazy for me.  I spent the rest of the morning sitting with these words and journaling about all the ways I felt God speaking to me through them.  And I have been returning to this passage over the past couple weeks, especially when I discovered it was one of the readings for this morning.  I want to share what shimmered with me from this passage and the feelings and prayers it evoked along the way.  Not because my experience is in any way definitive but because maybe you’ll want to go from here and try it yourself.

Moses was keeping the flock…

…keeping the flock…

I imagine Moses tired and maybe a little bored by his responsibility for this flock. Mind half on his job and half on something else.  And I thought of me, leading my flock - my kids.  I thought of how they can stray - repeating the same patterns of behavior, bringing out my same emotions and reactions.  Maybe Moses was feeling like me, distracted by his duties and not always enjoying the moment.  But then God appeared to Moses in that piece of his life.  I don’t think Moses realized that there was even a potential for this kind of meeting.  I think he was just walking in a mindless way and ended up on the edge of the wilderness to be encountered by God.  It was encouraging to think that God can meet me even in the midst of the schlepping and the repeated tasks that parenting so often entails.  Even when I’m not at my best and most patient.

Moses led his flock beyond the wilderness…

…beyond the wilderness…

Maybe the fact that Moses was headed toward the mountain of God meant that he already knew enough to be searching, even unconsciously — exposing himself to the wilderness in hopes of an encounter with God.  How can I be looking for those wild, open spaces?  Times of silence, prayer, intentionality?

There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked…

…he looked…

When Moses saw the burning bush, he looked at it - amazed, curious, wondering.  And God was there.  How can I be more attuned to the wondrous and amazing around me?  

Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight…

…turn aside…

Moses didn’t just look, he turned aside.  Moses in that moment was open to this new thing, and so the new thing was possible.  Moses was willing to turn from the direction he was headed in — presumably what he thought until that moment was the “right” direction —  even if just for a second.  And that was enough.  A small movement of heart and mind - a small willingness to turn.  What is on the periphery for me?  What do I need to pay more attention to?  What am I looking at but then walking by?  What paths might I be walking just because they are ahead of me, when another path might be leading to something new and unknown?

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush…

…When the Lord saw…

God was watching, waiting for opportunities to be in relationship with Moses.  And God is longing to have my heart open to seeing and hearing.

God called, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."

…Here I am…

Moses was present — in that place, in that moment.  How can I live in this place - in this here-ness?  So that I can see and hear the wondrous thing?

Then God said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

…holy ground…

Moses took off his shoes.  It seems so simple, and yet it signified so much.  This was the same dusty, rocky ground he’d been walking on all day, but now he recognized it as holy.  

What if we recognize all of this as holy ground?  

As I savored the words “holy ground”, I walked the labyrinth in - then took my shoes off in the center and walked out.  It was the same path, the same ground.  It was holy before too, but I didn’t recognize it.  It was holy even with the stained cement and the remnants of blue painters’ tape that show where the chairs line up.  Even with the paint lines fading in spots.  It is holy ground.  But not just there, where the labyrinth is painted, or even in this sanctuary.  It’s true of all the ground we trod.  

My feet got cold on the winter cement in the unheated church but somehow it was hard to put my shoes back on.  I wanted to keep that reminder - didn’t want to put that barrier between me and the ground - didn’t want my shoes (now symbolizing everything else that comes between me and recognizing the holiness all around me) to numb me again.  I wondered if Moses wanted to keep his sandals off.  What was his walk back to Midian with his flocks like?  It must have been hard to leave that special place, even if he was hopeful that it was true that God could make anything - even this bush - even his uncertain, wandering life — even this frustrating, overwhelming experience or that boring, repeated one — holy.

Just like the words of this wonderful passage from scripture, may we know our lives to be shimmering with holiness and possibility.  Amen.