2 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”
4 When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”
5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Crossway Bibles, 2016, p. Ex 3:2–5.
I love the way this plays out.
God appears to Moses, but it’s unclear if it’s an angel or if it’s the Lord. From right there you get some clues. Any angel that shows up isn’t God, but carries His authority. We know from Revelation that you shouldn’t worship an angel, they are messengers, created being just like us, but when any of us comes with the authority of God, His authority makes His very presence there.
But He wasn’t on the path Moses was on. He didn’t block Moses’ way like Balaam and his donkey. He didn’t knock Moses to the ground like SaultoPaul. God appeared to Moses as an interruption.
And Moses said “I will turn aside…”
Moses had to change course, interrupt what he was doing, and go over and check it out. He didn’t know what it was, how to approach it, or even what he was going to do about it.
This is us, with spiritual things, every day.
It looks like a thing. What is that? Who is that person and what are they doing?
Sometimes, when we turn aside to see the great sight is when we notice God is doing something.
When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see,
When God saw Moses take the bait and respond, God called out to him. James says this out loud thousands of years later:
James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Not only does God call out to Moses, but he gives Moses the rules of engagement so that he can come even closer.
”Do not come near, take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
This is the Garden of Eden, the giving of the Law, and Easter morning all wrapped up together. God wants us to draw near to Him. He wants to draw near to us. But He’s not like us.
He
Is
Holy
You don’t just run up and hug the Lord. Of course, there’s a couple places in scripture where He is open to that, but He is entirely other. If you’re a shepherd, I don’t care if you got miraculously born out of a racial genocide and an oil-covered basket dropped into the Nile, you show some reverence. But God’s gonna show you how to show that reverence so you can get closer.
Take your shoes off.
Reverence Matters
I was talking to a friend this weekend and he had some observations about the seeker-sensitive churches of the 90s and naughts and the swing towards stained glass, smells and bells spirituality in the 2020s. As he’s talked to young folks that are turning away from moving lights and haze toward the smoke of incense and the lighting of stained glass, he hears one common thread that attracts them.
Reverence.
I see a couple of the local seeker churches being seeker churches and trying to backfill liturgy and sacred spaces into their current culture.
It fits a little bit like your grandpa’s dress shirt.
Even if they don’t have the vocabulary, being liturgical or reverent as an act of being seeker-sensitive is obvious.
Reverence is weird. It is scripted, but it can’t be scripted.
I remember the time my grandma called me out one time.
”I can’t quote the Bible like you protestants, but I know Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I learned that from the Mass.”
Now for me, 18 some-odd years in the Catholic Church didn’t convince me that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I was doing reverence for the sake of reverence. I was doing scripted reverence and that was all I knew. I needed some protestants to tell me the interior, personal part to get me to understand the scripted reverence I had been doing.
Now I know. You stand up when the Gospel is read because you’re attentive to hear God’s word. You kneel after you’ve eaten communion because OH MY GOSH you just ate the body and blood of Christ like they did at the last supper! (Not really, but that’s the idea, so on your knees, boy.)
Instead of backfilling the sacred, let’s turn aside.
So rather than backfilling some sacredness into the void we left when we chased after making churches like a rock concert, what if we introduced some openness to “Turning aside” in our daily life and see if God is doing something over there.
Adding sacredness into something that isn’t sacred is again, irreverent. It’s actions without heart. It’s going through motions.
And that’s the last thing we want.
Instead, let’s celebrate turning aside from our usual uninterruptible paths and looking to see what Jesus is doing. He’s doing it.
And once we turn aside, He’ll call out to us and tell us how to approach Him the right way.
