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I'm sure that you all have gotten used to the sign, No shirt, no shoes, no service . And you see it on many restaurant doors, they decide to become so common, we hardly see

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them anymore. And since most of us wear shirts and shoes as a matter of course we just ignore them. But these signs became ubiquitous in the early 1970s apparently to keep out the hippies. But now

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, but the hippies are Adrian middle class republicans, they just breathing it out and fine dining establishment as a matter of courts or the few holdouts, go find a food truck. Mm Yeah. Now I

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realize that's an odd way to start a sermon. The guarding question of the semester set by our worship committee is what is God doing? What is God doing here? And now? And my response is

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simple. I have no idea. But the question got me to thinking about biblical theology, phonies the times, the many times when God told people what God was doing and that got me thinking about moses

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and the burning bush and that got me thinking about shoes in particular, moses is shoes. Now the new RsV with its typical fastidiousness read sandals, but the RsV and the king James version just have shoes

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and that's what I grew up with. So that's the word I'm using today. I think it was obvious that moses wasn't wearing floor times. Mm mhm And as I thought about it, I thought how

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odd the commandment was You are standing on holy ground . So take off your shoes. Now the bible makes it clear that the Holy is dangerous. God tells moses little later on. You cannot see my

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face For no one shall see me and live And a generation or two later, Zaia, the son of a Dadaab touches the ark of the covenant as it is being carried to Jerusalem and he falls down

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dead proving indiana jones is right okay now we contemporary christians do not have enough sense to be aware of the holy, the people of the old testament new better. They knew that the holy was dangerous and

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yet moses was instructed to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground and he did not die . Instead there was light and there was a voice and there was moses standing with his feet in the

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dirt, the stuff out of which Adam and Eve and all of their Children were made holy ground, Holy moses holy mountain, holy light and holy voice and holy task. And it all begin with taking

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off shoes. Now I've got nothing against shoes. I'm wearing shoes right now as are I am sure most abuse she was protect your feet from the cold and from the rocks and from biting things and all

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that makes sense. But shoes also stand for something . They stand for all the things that we humans construct to shut ourselves off from the natural world. It's not just our shoes that insulate us from holy

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ground, its houses and cars and stores and rugs and airplanes and asphalt and concrete and dozens of other things we live. We spend most of our time in cocoons made by our own hands and we wonder

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where God might be. We look out the window and no God rejected television and no God, we go to facebook and no God, no God, no wonder it's hard to see out of a cocoon

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. And so to return ourselves to the holy things that God has made. We have to take off our shoes in the service of the Lord. Yeah . Gregory of Nyssa and his life of moses.

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Put it this way, sandaled feet cannot ascend the height where the light of truth is seen. But the dead and earthly covering of skins which is quite most shoes are the dead and earthly covering of sin

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skins must be removed from the feet of the soul . Many years later three fishermen stood on the top of the mountain Along with the 4th who was Jesus of Nazareth and there was light and there was a

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voice or rather there were three voices. 3 voices of moses, Elijah and jesus. And at this point peter hopefully suggested that they build a retreat center up there. Now it's not recorded that James and

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john said anything, but I can imagine them rolling their eyes. Mhm. And then there was a cloud and then there was another voice, the voice that repeated the words jesus baptism. This is my

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son to be loving with him, I am well pleased and I followed the simple command. Listen to him yeah, which is what they had been doing for some time but had they heard how they understood

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? Well, maybe not yet, maybe not yet . Now, that might have been the end of it transfigured, Jesus might have shown himself to all of humanity and have everyone falling on the ground covered

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on, overcome with fear. Instead everything went back to normal and there was only jesus saying, do not be afraid. And they went back down the mountain waiting for them below with the father and the

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son who had seizures, then fell into the fire waiting for them below and they went down the mountain and that's the crucial point. But down below there was an anguished father and a tormented boy and a

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group of disciples who had tried to heal the child and failed completely down below with the representatives of suffering and failing humanity, and they did not need to be overwhelmed by the vision of glory of jesus glorified

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. The Lord did not come to make a display , said ST athan ages. The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to teach and to heal those who suffer for one who wanted

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to make a display. The thing would have been just to appear and dazzle to beholders, but for him who came to heal and teach. The way was to put himself at the disposal of those who

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needed him, Jesus came to put himself at the disposal of those who needed him. And that is why these two epiphanies, the burning bush and the transfiguration were private. They were to prepare those who

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were to be sent out moses to the enslaved people of Israel peter James and john and all the rest to the whole world for not just jesus, but the followers of jesus also were to be put at

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the disposal of those who needed them. Now we see in these two stories, the double movement of the spiritual life, the one movement is the movement towards God, the movement of the barefoot sole.

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The second movement is a movement toward others. The movement of the engaged body. For the one movement , you take your shoes off or the other, you put them back on. Either way you're going

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to be doing some traveling. So what is God doing now? God is doing what God always does . The rains come, The sun shines, the grass and the flowers and the trees grow. People

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are born and people die. The ongoing work of creation, which is not just back then, it's here now and in the midst of that there is the ongoing work of redemption, the work of those

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who are called and those who are sent the words of teaching and healing. The word, the work that is often quiet and sometimes almost invisible, but nevertheless, real Saint paul, who also saw a

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light and heard a voice towards the end of the letter to the romans quoted the prophet Isaiah rather in exactly. But so what he was, Saint paul , Yeah, How beautiful are the feet of those

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who bring good news and that's reason enough to take