September 3, 2017 – Exodus 3:1-15
Exodus 3:1-15
Take off Your Shoes
Lectionary 22 – September 3, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
When I went to Japan a couple of years ago,
there were a few things that were hard to get used to.
Some of the food was very different – delicious, but different.
Different tastes and, particularly, different textures.
Japanese toilets are also very different and they take some getting used to –
but are oh so great when you do!
And then there was the whole shoe thing.
Now it is not uncommon for us to take our shoes off when visiting someone’s home.
But the Japanese take it to a whole new level – they are fanatical shoe taker-offers.
It is the land of slippers.
There are slippers for when you enter a home,
and maybe even different slippers for you to wear in different rooms.
You take your shoes off at a shrine or temple.
And even, as I found out, when you go into a change room in a clothing store.
I was trying on a t-shirt at Uniqlo.
I went into the change room without thinking about my feet – stupid me!
When all of sudden my friend Anthony, who has lived there for 25 years and has become
very sensitive to the whole Japanese foot etiquette thing shouted,
“Shoes! Geez!!!!!!!!!”
I immediately and obediently took off my shoes and went back into the change room.
I recently read that there are a couple of reasons why the ancient custom of taking off
one’s shoes in homes in Japan exists.
One reason has to do with cleanliness, and we can all understand that.
But the other reason is more interesting.
It is a way of making you relax when you are in another’s home.
Of making you feel at home.
Of just letting you be yourself.
As a person who has no love of socks or shoes, this was a welcome custom!
I love nothing more than taking my shoes and socks off and relaxing at home,
whether mine or someone else’s!
So when I read the account of Moses at the Burning Bush this week,
I kind of read it with different eyes than I have before.
People do not remove their shoes very often in the Bible.
There is here and another place in Joshua where the injunction is the same:
take off your shoes, for the ground on which you are standing is holy.
Well, okay.
But how is taking your shoes off respecting the holiness of a place?
I think partly, as Karla Suomala suggests in a commentary this week, it is about reverence and
respect and humility in the presence of the creator of the universe.
But, as she also suggests, maybe it is also about God wanting to make Moses comfortable,
to encourage him to just be himself, to make himself at home in the divine presence.
Because here’s the thing: as Professor Suomala notes, in the rest of the story,
Moses doesn’t sound particularly reverent or humble or awestruck.
Just the opposite: he feels comfortable enough to blurt out what he really thinks.
I mean, here is God.
God tells Moses he has heard his people groaning in slavery,
and he wants Moses to lead them out of slavery.
Moses, the Hebrew raised in the Egyptian royal court, feeling neither Hebrew nor Egyptian,
now in exile in Midian for 40 years after killing an Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew,
not really at home anywhere.
Wondering, probably, who he really is.
When God says, “Moses. Make yourself at home in my presence. I have a proposition for you.”
And then God outlines the single biggest rescue job in the whole Bible that would
have resonance for 1000s of years.
You or I would maybe bow our heads in
reverence and say obedienty, “Uh, okay, God, with your help I will do it.”
That is what an awestruck and reverent person humbled by the Divine would say.
But that is not what Moses says.
Basically he feels at home and comfortable enough to say,
“Are you kidding, God? Are you crazy? I am so not ready to sign on.”
Then he lists no less than five excuses as to why he can’t do it.
This sounds less like a submissive, awestruck person who is humble and
shoeless in the presence of the divine than someone who has been invited to
kick off their shoes, make themselves at home, and just be themselves and
have honest conversation.
(Karla Suomala at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3390)
See, God just wants Moses to be himself.
Because God needs Moses just as he is.
God does not need Moses to be someone he is not.
In order for Moses to fulfill his purpose in life, God needs Moses to understand that
in this venture God is calling him to, Moses needs to be himself, and no one else.
Moses needs to recognize that he has within himself the gifts for the grand thing that
God is calling him to.
He’s a Hebrew, who was raised by Egyptians, and who has been nurtured by the Midianites.
Moses needs to feel like that is who God needs, and that far from being a liability,
these things are central to who Moses is and to who God needs him to be.
Moses needs to know that he is making this day special by just being himself.
There is an old Hasidic story that shows the importance of being yourself,
which is such a hard thing:
Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, “In the world to come, they will not ask me,
‘Why were you not more like Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not more like yourself.’”
God is still calling us to world changing tasks.
Still calling us to participate with the divine in righting the world’s wrongs.
Still calling us into God’s mission to love, bless, and heal this world and every person in it.
We so often feel we do not have the gifts for this.
Or that we couldn’t possibly measure up to Abraham, or Ruth, or Paul, or Phoebe – or Moses.
But God doesn’t need those people for the things God is calling us to.
God needs us, here, in this place, with our particular gifts.
God has given us the gifts we need – the time, the talents, the treasure –
to do the things God is calling us to do.
The only question is whether we will give them or not.
Can we feel at home enough to be ourselves, to voice our doubts, and to respond to the call?
Can we be confident enough in a good and gracious God,
that this God has given us the things we need to do what
God is calling us to do here at Sargent and Victor, and
in our workplaces, our schools, our homes, and our communities?
Do we know that genuinely being our most authentic selves is enough?
It is very hard to discover who we genuinely are.
It is very hard to feel at home enough anywhere – or in anyone – to let our true,
authentic selves shine forth.
We feel like we will be judged – and sometimes we are, even by those who say they love us.
We feel like we need to be somebody, or someone else.
We feel like we couldn’t possibly be right, just the way we are.
But God loves the authentic, real you, just as God made you to be.
Here, in this place, this is the one place, at least, where the divine, the creator of all that is,
invites you to take your shoes off, and be at home, and be honest about yourself.
This is the one place where you can truly be accepted for you who you truly are.
And discover the great freedom in being that – and in being respected for that.
Jesus was very good at making people feel at home accepted, right?
He didn’t need Matthew to be other than he was, which was perhaps a shady tax collector.
He didn’t need Mary Magdalene to be other than she was.
And he didn’t need Zacchaeus to be other than he was – and, in nice twist, Jesus,
not having a home – or rather, being a person who made himself at home everywhere
invited himself to Zacchaeus’s home and made Zacchaeus feel he was accepted and loved
just as he was, in his very own home.
Zacchaeus, said Jesus, I have a job for you. Take half of what you have and give it to the poor.
And Zacchaeus said, “Lord, consider it done.”
God made you just the way you are. And that is an amazing thing.
You could take a lifetime trying to figure that out –
or you could just take God’s word for it right now.
God needs you just as you are with just your particular gifts,
to participate in what God is doing right here at Sargent and Victor.
So take your shoes off – the ground on which you are standing is holy.
Because it is here you can be your true self – and that is the holiest thing of all.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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