The chapel named after the doctor (Dr. Robert F. Thomas) who delivered Dolly Parton for a sack of cornmeal
14th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 17, Year A
Exodus 3:1-15, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28
Whenever I read about Moses and the burning bush, an important story of our faith, I can’t but help to hear Ralph Stanley singing, “Take your shoes off, Moses, you’re on holy ground.” This story has been used quite often to depict the honor one shows to God by removing one’s shoes. That sounds strange in our culture today, one might be more apt to put on black shiny shoes, but God told Moses to go barefoot in God’s presence. It might be that it means even more than showing honor for the sacred space.
We now know the science behind going barefoot. There are over 200,000 tiny nerve receptors in the bottom of our feet that instantly activate when they touch the ground. Your “sixth sense” or spatial awareness spikes and the brain receives sharp, clear data about your body’s exact position. To touch the earth is to connect with God.
Take your shoes off, Moses, so you can touch and feel the holiness of this place. When your feet touch this which God has made holy, the sensors activate and inform your entire body, from your feet to your head, and you notice not only the ground but are much more aware of all that is around you. Let your whole body sense God’s presence before you, Moses, in an unattractive, thorny bush which you might have otherwise dismissed–until God lit it on fire and got your attention. Here is another instance of God showing up in the things we think have no value and saying, here, I have made this holy by my very presence in it.
Dolly Parton of recent memory, may she rise in glory, created her whole over-the-top glamorous stage persona to make a point. When she was twelve years old she saw this woman walking down the street wearing high heels, a tight skirt, bright red lipstick, red nails, and bleached blonde hair piled high. She thought she was the most beautiful person she had ever seen. When Dolly asked who this woman was, her mother and other neighbors dismissed her saying, “Aw, she’s just trash.”
Now, Dolly didn’t really know what that meant and replied, “I want to grow up to be trash.” And later that became intentional and unapologetic, despite the ridicule, to remember and honor that woman. At an early age Dolly saw value and beauty in what others scorned. She truly lived her faith, frequently saying, ““I want to be loved, and so I try to love everybody.” You might say Dolly had her shoes off and noticed God’s beloved child walking down the street. In one way, Dolly got the whole world to see that unnamed woman in a new way.
Take off your shoes and be fully in the presence of God is how Moses started his journey in following this God. This is how Moses learned to deny himself of who he thought he was and live into the person God was creating despite his imperfections and very grievous wrongs.
From Moses to Mary to Peter to Paul all the way down through time to you and me, learning to follow God in Jesus the Christ, is a deliberate decision one makes on a daily basis. We have to get up every morning and recommit to how we will walk with Jesus.
Just last week we read about Peter being praised for proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah, to this week being rebuked for being a stumbling block. Jesus’ reaction to Peter suggesting he not go to Jerusalem and to the fate that awaited him suggests that the human struggle Jesus was experiencing was how tempting it would be to try a different way. After all, Jesus had all these loyal followers now who believed in him. Did he really have to go to Jerusalem? Jesus stayed faithful to the mission of his life, but surely he had to wonder in his humanness like the rest of us, “Can’t I take the easy way out?” It wasn’t that Jesus’ plan was to be executed, but the consequences of not ignoring the poor and suffering and the reason they are poor and suffering, doesn’t sit well with the powerful. Really living the love God asks of us rattles the walls of the status quo.
It might be that Jesus was reminding himself as much as he was explaining to the disciples that those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for his sake will find it. What we all truly want is just not necessarily through the paths we would like them to be. Pick up your cross and follow me, Jesus says. The implication of carrying the cross isn’t just suffering, but shame, labeling, and misunderstanding. That’s the whole reason Jesus and other criminals had to carry the crossbar through the streets–to be shamed. In every age, living counter to the culture of greed, power, oppression, and cruelty, and instead choosing the way of Christ: visit the prisoner, care for the stranger, love your neighbor, love God, and everyone’s favorite, love your enemy, will invite ridicule.
I frequently wonder, how do people know we are Christian? Is it by our love and actions or by the jewelry we wear? What does it really mean to deny yourself and follow Jesus? Paul gives us some insight on this. The entire reading from Romans today explains the expectations of how Christians are to be in this world. “Let Love be genuine, hate what is evil.” That whole first paragraph should be the banner we post in public places. We may spend a lifetime living into that but I believe the intent of the heart to want to live in a way where our love as Christians is genuine and freely shared is a good start, no matter how we stumble along–much like Peter.
And here’s Paul clarifying in the next paragraph what hating evil does not look like: Bless and don’t curse those who persecute you. Don’t repay evil for evil. Vengeance is mine says the Lord, but way too many of us today just want to be about the Lord’s business on this one, exacting revenge just in case we don’t think God will take care of it. Hate what is evil is not to act hatefully.
And then it gets harder. How do we deal with the evil we see in full display today? Paul quotes the Gospels here, “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Sister Helen Prejean, whose book Dead Man Walking was made into a movie, truly lives this out today in advocating that the response to death row inmates move away from vengeance and toward systemic reform and restorative justice. Which research shows to have a more lasting impact on violent crime.
It’s this loving your enemy and carrying your cross part that gets us really in a bind. Quite frankly we don’t want to and we will find very clever and valid arguments not to do so. A lot of folks stopped following Jesus when he suggested this to his followers. Andrew McGowan, Dean of Yale Divinity School, gives a helpful explanation of what carrying one’s cross is and isn’t. “Taking up the cross refers, then, to what disciples face specifically because of following Jesus, not to human suffering generally. The comparison of discipleship to carrying a cross is not an invitation to think of our varied personal struggles as a sort of spiritual gift…This is not the point here. This easy mistake has often led us to accept or hallow forms of suffering that we should not, but also to miss the distinctive and difficult fact of the call to be walking differently from many of those around us.”
Don’t ever forget the part of Jesus’ number one commandment includes love yourself. To think that one has to suffer to earn holiness points is really off base. Suffering for suffering’s sake leads nowhere and benefits no one. It’s not love when we allow someone to get away with abusive behavior, for example. Loving an enemy does not mean condoning their actions.
Yet Jesus didn’t shy away from offering love and restoration to everyone. Jesus’ love means being present to those who society will call worthless. Take your shoes off, and weep with those who weep. To take up a cross as Jesus did is to stand, always, in the center of the world’s pain. To take your shoes off, so to speak, to see God standing right in front of you in someone you might refer to as “those people.” Not just to glance in the general direction of suffering and then sidle away, but to dwell there. This is where one finds the proverbial burning bush and the need to take off the shoes to truly sense God before you.
Whether or not we find the path of discipleship leading to present suffering and shame, the way of following Jesus is utterly counter to the wisdom of the world. Our call to take up the cross is a call to love, not a call to suffering. Yet this radical love that Jesus asks of us may have consequences. Following Jesus means we aren’t in this for just ourselves, but truly for those God has asked us to notice and serve. Yet it is in this way of Jesus that we truly find our life. When Dolly was once asked about practicing her faith, she replied, “I don’t practice it. I live it.” Let’s live it, too, my friends. Take of your shoes and go with God.
Magdalena's Musings 