March 14, 2004
Exodus 3:1-8,13-15 + 1 Corinthians 10:16,10-12 + Luke 13:1-9
“Take off those shoes!” says the voice to Moses. “This is holy ground.” Is it because shoes defile “holy ground”? Is there something unclean about the shoes or sandals? Do they somehow track up an otherwise clean and orderly place? I don’t think it has anything to do with what is clean or what dirty. I think it has to do with contact — immediate, intimate, touching, contact. Feet on the ground, bare feet on the real earth, nothing in between – nothing to separate those feet from what is holy. Moses or anyone else for that matter cannot get near God while anything stands between. God wants immediate contact, and that realization scares Moses. He hides his face. The very idea brings to mind that wonderful behavior of a child who closes their eyes when they want to hide and not be seen or when there is something scary they don’t want to see.
Like Moses, we know better. We might close our eyes in an effort not to look at God, but it does not change the reality that God looks at us, a people in need of liberation. It does not change what God sees, our needs and our helplessness. The response of that God is Jesus Christ. In a sense, Jesus is God without shoes – nothing stands between God and us. So that nothing could come between us, Jesus sets aside his “equality with God” to touch the human experience – flesh on the earth: the bare feet of God leaving human foot prints: all to give us hope, to give us a chance, to give us holiness and peace.
The two pieces of this Gospel today speak with an urgent lesson of hope. Two incidents probably well known to the people of that place at that time are told again to shake the hearer out of complacency and laziness: to disturb those who always think there will be another time or plenty of time. Thinking that the disasters mentioned are a punishment for evil is wrong thinking in the mind of Jesus. It’s like suggesting that the people in the Murrah Building or the World Trade Center or the Pentagon were being punished for their sins on those terrible days of tragedy. Jesus will have none of that thinking – human violence and natural violence have nothing to do with God or punishment. Jesus uses the memory of those events to call us to readiness suggesting that we should live at all times in readiness, prepared to die.
Then, lest that readiness lead to fear or anxiety, he completes the lesson with a story of mercy and hope. The fig tree that gets some extra time and extra attention before it is cut down for lack of fruitfulness gets one final chance.
Luke would have us see that we are now living in that final time when Jesus the caretaker prunes, waters, feeds, and trims us for bearing fruit. He offers us an insight into these days and these times, and using the urgency of the first story, we are reminded of the fragility of life and the urgency of our need for conversion.
In Lent’s third week, we are stirred from our habits, our laziness, and our easy denial to see that this is the day for our conversion and renewal. We use these days to strip away everything the stands between us and holiness itself. We take off our shoes. We touch the divine, and the divine touches us in the flesh to make us holy, to make us clean, to make us pure of heart, and sincere in desire. The God who comes to rescue us would take us by the hand, but we must uncover our eyes, set aside our fear, and look for the face of God, the God who comes to save us and has come as one of us.