Proper 22 - God Bursts Through.

St. Andrew's Church

28 August, 2005

I first met this woman many years ago after she called out of the blue and wanted to talk to a Priest. I shall call her Sarah. I had never heard of her before. She was not a Anglican and she hadn't been to any Church for many years. She was in her mid forties, a few years older than I, but we were contemporaries.

She was discontented with her life. She had been through a terrible ordeal a few years before. She had been injured terribly in an accident overseas and hadn't been expected to live. Only after months of recovery overseas was she able to return to Canada for many more months of rehabilitation. She was intelligent and highly skilled but the months of her recovery had taken its toll on her emotionally. She was between jobs and looking for work in her expertise.

But the worst part of all was her feeling that God was very far away, even though she remembered how she felt closer to God as a young person. Sarah felt that she was living life in a kind of exile. She was in exile from a happiness she used to know, she was in exile from a sense of meaning to her life, she was in exile from her own sense of spirituality.

Sarah wanted to know how to return.

Although not all of us have been through some of the terrible experiences that she went through, I think that probably all of us can understand something of how she was feeling. All people seem to have times in their life when it feels like they are running on empty spiritually. Our lives can lose its sparkle. Our lives can feel flat and empty. These days people seem to be so busy that their lives go by in a blur of activity. Routines become mechanical and monotonous and when we find a moment to think of deeper things, we might feel that we are in exile.

How can we once again recognize the presence of the Holy in our lives?

Let me tell you the story of another man who lived in exile. He ran into trouble with the law. He literally had to flee his country or be killed. He was a refugee. His home country was a dictatorship. Ordinary people were enslaved and brutally treated by the dictatorship. The dictatorship was involved in ethnic cleansing and mass murder. This man decided that he would fight for freedom. He became a rebel. One day he killed an official who was in the act of brutalizing a person. He tried to keep it a secret, but when he found out that his secret was known he knew he had to leave and not return.

He became a rebel in exile. His life lost its meaning. Instead of leading his people to revolution and freedom, he had to take a menial job. He had no connection with friends or family. Eventually he married a local girl but still was unable to connect with his own country.

You know him and his story. His name was Moses. He, too, truly felt he was in exile. It was such a part of his life that he even named his first son, Gershom, which means, "Far from home." His life was without meaning. And yet, one day, his whole life was to change because he recognized the presence of God and he felt God's call.

Moses saw, perhaps, just a flicker of something different at the edge of his vision. He turned and placed his whole attention on it and saw what the Bible says was a burning bush in the middle of the wilderness.

Now there are thousands of scientists and people who have tried to come up with a simple suggestion to explain what Moses saw. Perhaps it was just a colourful bush. Perhaps it was a type of herb whose Latin name is Dictamnus albus. The whole plant produces aromatic oils which, on a hot day might actually spontaneously catch fire. There are many other suggestions and theories. However all of this conjecture misses the main point of the story. The story isn't to be taken literally - it's full value is in its metaphor.

What happened to Moses that day is that he found himself in the presence of God. God burst through his mundane life one day and everything changed.

People who have religious experiences never have the right words to explain how it came about and what happened. And so language is a metaphor for the deep truth of the experience. Thus, throughout the Bible we have simple words trying to convey awesome and sometimes invisible realities. Pillar of cloud or pillar of fire, the spirit descending like a dove, the voice of God rumbling and breaking the rocks. A burning bush. This language is metaphor pointing towards that which is beyond description.

The point is, even though Moses must have been discouraged, felt left out and in exile - God did break through. I also believe that Moses was ready to see.

I believe that we often live our lives simply running over the surface of things - especially when our lives get busy. We cover a lot of ground when we jump around like we do, but we don't experience depth. But we only ever experience God in the depths of a thing.

How many times has God given us a sign of his presence and we have simply looked the other way.

Pedro was driving down the street in a cold sweat because he had the most important meeting of his life, and couldn't find a parking place. Looking up toward heaven, he said -"Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of my life and I'll even give up tequila."

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.

Pedro looked up again and said - "Never mind. I found one."

I don't mean to suggest that God does parlour tricks for his chosen people. But often I think people feel their existence has become spiritless and mundane because they've not had eyes to see God reaching out to us. Perhaps we are looking for a literal burning bush to catch fire on our front lawn, when what we really need to do to is get back to a discipline of meditative prayer which helps us to treasure each moment of our day and to see it bursting with divine grace.

I suppose the other thing which might discourage us from hearing or at least answering God's call is that all too often it isn't a call to affluence and ease, but a call to struggle and difficultly.

When Moses heard what God wanted him to do, he shrank back protesting that he couldn't do it. I'm sure there were times when Moses had wished that he had looked the other way, instead of being drawn to that burning bush.

When the disciples are at an all-time high, after having seen the wonders of Jesus' ministry, he tells them that their call is to follow him to the cross and to death. Peter protests. How could this be true. The people are following them around in droves because of their ministry. It has all been so successful. How could going through struggle and death be a part of God's plan?

Well, I tell you, God's call is often a difficult road of hard work and sometimes apparent failure. There is always struggle involved. But, following God's plan is the only way to find deep meaning for our lives. If we live only for ourselves and our wants we will always be searching for that greater sense of meaning. Our lives will be flat and mundane and we will feel far from God. If we live only for ourselves, then we are living lives of exile: for God created us to live for him and to live in a community of interdependence and service.

God's ways are not our ways. They might not make sense. It might mean a hard road ahead. However, finding God in your life, following Jesus' path of self-sacrifice will give you the meaning that you seek in your soul. And in the midst of trial and hardship, you will experience joy. Join us here at St. Andrew's to discover how to live lives of gratitude, meditation, and service and to develop eyes and ears to see God's grace and to hear God's call.