HERE I am, I AM! Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh and Exodus 3:1-15

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

Today’s poem is simply five deeply profound lines out of a Victorian verse novel called Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from 1856, which is heralded as the greatest long poem of the nineteenth century. The poem is a first-person narration of the heroine Aurora, set throughout Europe and references numerous Biblical and classical elements like Moses’ burning bush, from which our stanzas comes to us today – “And every common bush afire with God.” And using Browning’s poem and Moses encounter from Exodus, I would like to carve out the basic contours of a Biblical spirituality for inhabiting the world, encountering God, and doing good. We’re going to see that it involves paying attention and being present to a God who is personally attentive and ever-present so that we might see, hear, and help those in need.

A Biblical spirituality involves prayerfully inhabiting the wilderness, paying attention to strange things, and saying “HERE, I am.”

At my previous church, we were adjacent to an elementary school that my kids attended. Every day my youngest would walk over from school and hang out awhile before we would go home together. On one occasion we were leaving the church and she excitedly exclaimed, “Dad, Dad! Look! Look! Wow! Look at the angel.” She spoke with such passion and excitement that I was startled and began looking around for whatever she thought she was seeing. As I continued to swivel my head in all directions trying to catch a glimpse of this angel, I finally followed my daughter’s ecstatic pointing to a shadow on the ground of an angelic silhouette with wings. I wish I still had the picture – she wasn’t being silly. It looked like an angel. Of course, I followed the path of the shadow backwards to an awkwardly shaped stump of a tree that had just been cut but said nothing; rather, I excitedly “Ooo-d” and “Ahh-d” with her as she was caught up in this divine and thrilling moment that I was ignorantly walking by.

Friends, no matter how cynical I was in the moment (and, yes, I was quite cynical) I’ve come to believe that that encounter was far more divine than I initially understood. And I’ve learned that one should not ignore nor cynically dismiss either the angelic shadows nor the very real stumps of this world but can fully be present and excitedly point to the divine, at angels, at icons of God everywhere – they stand in line with us at the grocery store, walk their children to school, sleep under tarps on the side of the road, and show up in bushes, shadowy tree stumps, and sunsets.

But you will only see them if you can do what my daughter, most children, and Moses were capable of doing – being present, paying attention, saying “HERE, I am.” You will never see a “strange sight” if your response is, “Here, I used to be.” You will never be awed by “flames of fire from within” if you say, “Here, I will be.” You will find it hard to hear and see God if you refuse a curiosity to “go over and see” strange sights. BTW I’m fascinated by Christians – from all sides and walks of life – who refuse to “go over and see” strange things, who rarely ask questions, and who are quick to make assumptions like, angels don’t exist or bushes always burn, rather than taking the time to investigate things on the “far side of the wilderness.” Burning bushes should always impact our theology.

I can’t find the reference but I’ve heard tell that the poet William Blake once remarked that Moses didn’t actually encounter a “burning” bush but actually, simply saw a bush. In other words, he grasped the reality that all things burn from within – having been created by God. In this way, the encounter of Moses and God is not so much a special revelation whereby Moses experiences or discovers a unique encounter with God so much as he becomes aware that the whole world burns from within, that God is ever-present, that Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God.”

You don’t discover that truth so much as become aware of it. And when you do – you recognize, as Moses did, that all the earth is “holy ground.” So open your eyes, quiet your mind, ditch your shoes, investigate strangeness, ask questions like “why does the bush not burn up?,” and say, “HERE, I am.”

Two quick comments about how to live “HERE, I am.” 1. I don’t know if it’s a required path but my experience, including my own story and listening to so many of your stories, is that the context for being present comes from traveling, like Moses, “to the far side of the wilderness” (Ex. 3:1). The “far side of the wilderness” is always the path marked by extreme desert heat, desolation, thirst, and suffering. The “far side of the wilderness” has the odd ability to hone our attention by stripping away things that are unnecessary or which no longer work. Some of the earliest Christians called this the “wisdom of the desert.” 2. Second, to live “HERE, I am,” and discover that “Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God,” you must daily spend time in prayer simply being present to God. Spend at least five minutes a day, you can set a timer if you want, quieting your mind, letting go of any thought, surrendering to the God who burns from within. Any time a thought arises, or your attention is stolen, you can simply surrender and return to being present to God, by taking a deep breath and saying, “HERE, I am.” If you would like to practice this regularly and receive encouragement from others you can join Trinity’s Centering Prayer group which meets every Wed., at 10 am on Zoom, beginning again on Sept. 17^th. By the way, if you haven’t already noticed, these two “HERE, I am” moves are what defined the ministry of the Jesus, who started his ministry “in the desert” and who made silent prayer a hallmark and habit of his own discipleship (e.g. Mark 1:12; Matt.4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13, 22:39, 6:12-13; Mark 1:35; Matt. 6:5-6.)

But a Biblical spirituality isn’t only about prayerfully paying attention.

A Biblical spirituality requires paying prayerful attention because we are encountering a God who is personal, ever-present, and eternally attentive.

When Moses investigates the burning bush that doesn’t burn he hears the voice of God calling to him, “Moses!” Moses!” And God discloses that the ground is holy and, perhaps more importantly, that this God connects and covenants personally with people. This ever-present One defines himself by knowing us personally – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This is the God of Bill, the God of Margaret, the God of Mike, the God of Claudia, who is aware of present troubles, who sees particular misery, who hears wailing and weeping, and who is concerned. He doesn’t have to be informed. He doesn’t have to be made aware. And he doesn’t have to be talked into being concerned about us or being for us. But Moses is concerned. He wants to know God’s name apart from these personal connections. He once to know what God calls himself apart from anyone else because “God” isn’t a name. It’s meaningful to say, “I am Jeremie’s dad (Hi, son.) and it says important things about me but that’s not my name. And God responds with a mysterious name, the sacred tetragrammaton YHWH. It’s hard to translate. Some translate “I AM THAT I AM” or “I AM WHO I AM.” It signals that God is the very ground of being, the source of all existence and yet independent and noncontingent; that is, everything owes its existence to God but God owes God’s existence to nothing. But there’s also a deeper reality of spirituality at work here. Our contingency – our existence at every moment requires God – it’s baked into the name.

Scholars and rabbis say that the letters “YHWH” represent breathing sounds or aspirated consonants: YH (inhale), WH (exhale). So God’s name signals that at every moment – while we are breathing – God is giving us life and we are, in turn, praising the name of God.

A baby’s first cry, their first breath, speaks the name of God. A deep sigh, groan, or gasp, calls His name, too heavy for mere words. Even atheists speak His name, unaware that the breath in their lungs acknowledges God. Friends, Earth’s crammed with heaven whether you know it or not. You are crammed with heaven whether you acknowledge it or not. That doesn’t mean that a failure to acknowledge doesn’t matter. But it’s important to remember that there is no place, no people, no moment, where God is not. The oft-mentioned notion among some Christians that sin makes God absent utterly makes a mockery of the name of God. Sin does something to us – painful and deadly. Sin can’t do anything to God. It can’t keep God away. There is no place where God is not!

And yet all of this attentiveness to a God who, himself, herself, is always attentive, always present, always cares, leads us to one final move spiritually – to action.

When we are prayerfully attentive to a God who is ever-present attentiveness, we will always begin to see, hear, and help those in need.

Moses discovers that God is ever-present and knowing and will always “come down to rescue” (3:8). The One who is pure attentiveness is aware of our misery, our crying, and “concerned about [our] suffering” (3:7). And God loves to “come down” as us (Can us Christians give an “amen”?!”). After God’s dramatic demonstration of his awareness of suffering and proclamation that he will do something about it, He says to Moses, “So I am sending you.” To see God truly, in other words, will always involve you in the suffering of the world that God is ever-present to. Once you see the burning bush, encounter I AM THAT I AM, you simply can’t sit around and mindlessly munch on blackberries with a dirty, silly face.

Friends, if your spiritual practices – like prayer, Bible study, worship, giving – don’t have you being sent to help others in some way then you are not living into a spirituality anchored in Scripture. If you’re loving of God doesn’t have you loving others – Jesus says you are misunderstanding “all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:40).

But let me be clear. I am not suggesting some Herculean effort nor am I calling you to do anything. I’m not the One who calls you; that’s I AM THAT I AM’s work. I think it’s important though to recognize that there is a kind of Evangelical spirituality that often seeks to care for others through a sort of fame, a heroic type of life. And perhaps that is what God will end up calling you to, but I doubt it. Rather, I believe that perhaps the more honest calling, the more common experience will occur when, by becoming attentive in the wilderness of your own life, God calls you simply attend to those around you. God, as he did with Moses, will often send you back from where you came. What might that look like? I went to lunch with Michael Hutchinson this week. 

 

Do you want to know what Moses-like attentiveness looks like? Spend time with Michael Hutchinson who sees burning bushes everywhere. And Michael’s kindness, his sending, is to help people out at Youth Group each week, to volunteer to attend people at the 7-Eleven or taking time in the morning to remove sticks from the sidewalks so that people don’t trip over them. He’s a curious and investigative person who seeks to see God, to see others, to live in awe, and to be sent. Michael is an excellent example of what it looks like to live “HERE, I am.” He's crammed with heaven! It’s through people like Michael that God comes down to rescue us. Amen.