The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
August 28, 2011
Vol. 14 no. 33
Holiness is basically indescribable. If you say something is holy, it almost surely isn’t. All you can do when you bump into something holy is take your shoes off.
People remove their shoes for reasons of cleanliness and health, and some do take them off in a sanctuary. When Moses encountered the burning bush, cleanliness had little to do with it. The Lord told Moses to take off his shoes for this was holy ground, and Moses got the point. Obviously, a bush burning, but not burning up, is not something you can figure out logically, an unworldly sight.
But that’s not the point. Holiness is something completely different from the normal, literally “set apart,” yet still present in this world. It is a paradox where something of God exists in the midst of something human – the best example is the incarnation of Jesus.
Shoes have seldom been holy. In the ancient world, they were meant to protect your feet from sharp and dirty surfaces and were never completely successful, which is why Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. We aren’t born with shoes, so around the burning bush they were an intrusion of human invention into God’s simplicity. Moses was probably wearing clothes and these too were not a part of God’s original creation, yet only shoes had to come off. Don’t try to figure out holiness, for as soon as you think you have, you’re no longer holy.
Most people tend to think - “what’s the use of being holy?” – especially watching those puffed up by a pretense of holiness, and you can’t blame them. Still, unless there is the holy there is no real world.
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan