At first glance, this may look like it is just a stethoscope.  We see them all the time, when we visit the doctors, when we get our blood pressure taken, when we watch doctor shows on television.  It is just a tool, just a thing, that doctors and nurses and physicians assistants use, in order to make sure that we are healthy.

            But what do we hear when we put these on?  The beating of a heart, the steady rhythm of life, the pulsing of blood that runs through your veins and through mine.  The holy mystery of life itself, beating on and on inside us.  I remember early in my pregnancy, as a stethoscope was placed over my belly, hearing the beat of my baby’s heart – the holy and sacred joy of a new life, growing inside me – the mystery of my child-to-be, the promise and wonder that I heard in his steady, beating heart.

            It may look like it is just a stethoscope, but look closer, and it points us to the mystery, to the awe, of life itself.  Rachel Noami Remen writes of this beautifully.

            “Recently during a physicians’ seminar on listening, we all took out our stethoscopes and spent several minutes listening to our own hearts.  We are all middle-aged people and for the first little while everyone anxiously diagnosed themselves, fearful of hearing a split S1, a third heart sound, or perhaps the murmur of an arteriosclerotic valve.  But as time went on, we moved past all that and heard something steadfast in the midst of our lives that had been there always, even before we were fully human.  Our lives and all other lives depended on it.  It was a profound and ineffable encounter with the mysterious.  Most of us were deeply moved.  We had diagnosed hearts for years, but none of us had ever experienced this before.  In that moment we had glimpsed something beyond our habitual way of seeing and hearing and knew that what we work with every day is life itself.  It was the sort of moment my grandfather would have blessed.

            Afterward there was a silence.  Then one of the cardiologists present began to speak about his work and to wonder around how one could be so close to something holy and not even know it.”

One of my favorite depictions of our scripture reading for today is found in St. Vitale Church in Ravenna, Italy.  It is a painting on the chancel wall of Moses, encountering the burning bush.  But there is not just one bush on fire, every single bush is aflame with God’s presence.  Some ask the question, how many bushes were on fire before Moses stopped to look?  And we notice in the text itself that God does not begin to speak, until Moses starts to pay attention.

Moses passes the burning bush and exclaims, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”  And when God sees that Moses has turned aside to look, that is when God calls to him from the bush.

            The difference between looking and seeing is illustrated in this passage in many different ways.  Once Moses has truly seen the bush, truly seen that God is present, a dialogue begins.  And it begins with God speaking of all that God has seen.  “I have seen the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry.”  The Hebrew word here for seeing is the word “ra’ah.”  It does not refer to look or a glance.  “Ra’ah” is a type of seeing that meaning to move toward another with kindness or sympathy.  It is to really see, to really witness, another, and to move towards that other.  There is seeing, and there is really seeing, and in this text, God and Moses are really seeing.

            But in order for Moses to see further, in order for Moses to really encounter God, he must also see himself, he must also know himself.  After God speaks to Moses about the suffering of his people, about God’s plan for deliverance, the very first question that Moses asks God begins with “Who am I?”  “Who am I that I should do these things?  Who am I that I should encounter God?”

            You see, up until this point, Moses has very real questions about his identity; he has had no idea how to see his own self.  He calls himself “an alien residing in a foreign land.”  But he has never really been at home anywhere.  

Raised by his Hebrew mother, Moses was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter and given an Egyptian name.  Although he tries to intervene to help his kinfolk, the Hebrew, he ends up murdering an Egyptian and being rejected by his own. He flees Egypt and the mess he had created there, only to be identified as an Egyptian by the women he meets at the well in Midian.  From the adopted son of royalty, Moses is now shepherding flocks, working for his father-in-law.  Who is he?  Egyptian or Hebrew?  Royalty or shepherd? 

As it turns out, Moses’ dual identity makes him the perfect person to confront Pharaoh for the sake of the Hebrews.  And although he is reluctant, we have already seen his deep sense of justice, his desire to intervene for the victimized and the mistreated.  Moses understands the Egyptians and the Hebrews, he understands those who work in the fields and those who live in a palace.  As Moses comes to terms with his identity, as he begins to truly see himself, he can also see God, and the plans that God has for him.

And after asking the question, “Who am I?”  Moses turns and asks the question, “Who are you?”  “Who are you, God?  What is your name?”  It is a powerful thing to learn the name of God, and in this scripture, God responds with the words, “I am who I am.”  This phrase can also be translated as “I will be who I will be,” an assurance of God’s presence not only in the present, but also in the future.  By the time this encounter is over, Moses knows God by name, Moses has seen God in a burning bush, and Moses knows who he is to God, a person who is called to serve and to deliver.

             

            The fact that all of this happens while Moses is standing there with bare feet reminds us all that while God’s presence can be found in the heavens, holiness can also be discovered on the lowly ground where God becomes know, in the dust beneath our feet, the very earth from which our most ancient ancestors were fashioned.

            When we pay attention to the earth, to the trees, to the holiness in one another, we see God, and in seeing God, we also get to see ourselves, holy and sacred and called.
 
            Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, tells the story of a woman named Celie, whom we first encounter as a fourteen-year-old black girl who is beaten and raped by her stepfather.  Celie is forced into an abusive marriage, and she is constantly berated, harassed, and insulted.  Early on, when she looks at herself, all she sees is ugliness.

            But as life continues, she meets Shug, and after a rocky start, the two women fall in love, and Celie begins to look at herself, and at the world, differently. They talk about life and race and gender and even about God. 

            “Listen,’ Shug said, ‘God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.’ 

‘You saying God vain?’ I ast. 

‘Naw,’ she say. ‘Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it ticks God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.’ 

‘What it do when it ticked off?’ I ast. 
‘Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But 

any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back."       

            In the movie version of this conversation, the two women spend some time just noticing the trees and laughing together, until Shug declares , “Oh Miss, Celie, I feel like singing!”

            The women truly see God, and truly see themselves, and Celie no longer sees herself as an ugly, lowly woman, but as human being who dances and sings, loved and cherished by God.  We can see God in the color purple, the way God seeks to please us, and know how deeply we are loved.

            I was recently at a preaching conference where Barabara Brown Taylor, one of the most gifted preachers of our time, gave a talk entitled, “Saving the World One Sermon at a Time.”  I prepared myself to listen to a lecture about all of the bad things in the world that need saving, and how we can save the world through our sermons.  But as she began to talk, I realized that she was really chastising us preachers, for what we have done to the world.

            We use the terms “the ways of the world” or he was “worldly” or she was “so caught up in the world,” so frequently that the word “world” has become associated with that which is bad and ugly. We need to save the world, says Barbara Brown Taylor, by loving the world, celebrating the world, finding God in the world.  Stop, she said to us.  Stop equating the world with that which is evil.

            Yes, there are bad things in the world.  Yes, there is pain and suffering and sorrow.  But the world is full of beauty, the world is full of God, the world is full of that which is holy and sacred and good.  In the world, you can find the color purple.  In the world, you can see God.  Start saving the world, one sermon at a time, by celebrating this world that God has given to us.

            The more we speak of the “ways of the world” as evil and bad, the more we see the world with those eyes.  We see the pain and sorrow and suffering, and we even project that negativity onto this beautiful world that God has created, we even project that negativity onto God’s beloved children, assuming that everyone has an ulterior motive, that everyone is in it for himself.  But when we realize that this world is of God, that this world is in God, and God is in this world, we look with different eyes, and we can truly see.  Everywhere we look, we see the holy and the sacred.  Everywhere we look, we can see God.  In one another and in all of God’s creation.

            When the physicians started to listen to their hearts beat, they were listening for illness, listening for a murmur, for a sign of trouble.  After all, that was what they were trained to do.  But then they started to really listen, and they heard the sacred sound of life, that had been there all along.

            We don’t need a stethoscope to feel our hearts beating, to feel that holy wonder of life pulsing inside of us.  We don’t need a stethoscope to hear ourselves breathing, to feel the air fill our bodies like the spirit of God.  All we need is wonder, all we need are open eyes, open ears, open hearts.  All we need to do is look at that burning bush and see that God is there.  All we need to do is look at the fields of purple and see that God is there.  All we need to do is look and listen again to the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush is on fire with God;
but only he who sees takes off his shoes.”  

Let us truly see, let us truly listen, let us truly know the God who is here.  Thanks be to God.