“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5

Signs of spring are everywhere. My daffodils have already come and gone, the robins visit each morning to breakfast on worms wiggling in the damp earth and daylight lingers well past 8:00. Winter is gone – except for the sudden snowstorm which practically blinded me last week with saucer -sized snowflakes in the headlights. I have a favorite bookmark: “Blossom by blossom the flowers appear.” That’s how a mountain spring comes, practically unnoticed until suddenly it is in full bloom.

Yesterday I saw another harbinger of spring: a jogger in shorts and T-shirts, a hardy early bird of sorts. It was 42 degrees out, I had the car heater cranked up and had to marvel at his dedication, especially since at first glance I thought he was running barefoot on the sidewalk. I think he must have had on running sandals but it looked like his feet were naked in the cold.  I couldn’t get the picture out of my head.

Then at church a word came forth about allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to God and to each other, by metaphorically taking off our shoes. When we stand before God in prayer, we are on God’s ground not ours.  Moses was told by God to remove his sandals because the fire he saw burning, the fire he was approaching was  on “holy ground.” It was not to be approached profanely. I think of that story: Moses’s turning aside to see the strange sight, the fire of God’s Spirit burning in the wasteland, God’s voice, the command to acknowledge the Lord’s Holiness. It doesn’t get much simpler than this picture: God is God, Moses is mortal and then there beckons an invitation for a   relationship: “To love the Lord Your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength.” This is the first and the greatest commandment as set forth in the Torah. It is the reminder that in God’s holy Presence, we have to come vulnerable and naked. Loving God requires our coming to Him without our shoes on.

Jesus adds the second commandment, “To Love our neighbors as ourselves.” He always deepens the call of God. He broadens the invitation God made to Moses by inviting us closer to Himself and to the Father. Could it be that we’re to approach one another similarly, also vulnerable, without anything coming between us? Not only yes, but it is the yes of Jesus showing us how it’s to be done. Just hours before He was crucified, He celebrates Passover with His disciples and washes their feet. Most of the time the message we get from this story is that Jesus takes on the servant’s role, that He humbles Himself to do the most menial task and that He is washing their filthy feet just as His death would wash away all our sins.

But it is also that before Jesus could wash Peter’s feet – and the others’- He had to take off Peter’s sandals. The shoes had to come off. That which protected the feet of the disciples when they were literally walking with Jesus in Galilee and Judah now had to be removed. There in the Upper Room was Holy Ground   right in front of their unseeing eyes. Perhaps Jesus didn’t actually remove 11 pairs of sandals. Perhaps the shocked disciples saw what He was doing and slowly began to unbuckle their own sandals. What emotions must have been churning in their hearts as they did so, awaiting the intimacy of the Lord’s washing hands!

I was touched by the pastor’s Word and considered the shoes all of us were wearing:  me in patent leather flats, other women in dress shoes, teens in flip flops or slippers, men is tough construction boots and sturdy cowboy boots. Many folks wore athletic/tennis shoes. Little kids kicked off shoes and ran in their socks.

What do shoes tell about us? How well do shoes reveal our self- identities ? I wonder if there are subtle reasons for our choice of footwear. The shoes I put on often often reflect my mental attitude and my spiritual disposition more than anything else.  We wear shoes to keep our feet from the elements and from harm.  Some wear shoes for comfort or to protect their feet from injury at work.   Some wear special shoes for medical problems. Hippie types come in Birkenstocks and sandals. Some wear their vanity; some their independence and pride. Some just want to be comfortable and casual and put on anything within reach. Some show off wealth or try to hide poverty. The disciples wore sandals for a reason and so do we still.

When Jesus removed the disciples’  shoes, He was also removing the one protective layer which came between them and intimacy with Him. When we come before God in prayer or into relationship with our “neighbor”,  those idolatrous things our shoes represent also have to be unbuckled, untied, undone, slipped off and removed. Jesus calls us to Himself but He wants us on His ground which is holy, not ours which is muddled and muddied. Pride, self protection, emulating idols,  vanity, health, sports and recreation, gritty independence – what’s worn in the heart and displayed on our feet comes between us and God , between you and me. Of one thing I am certain: I cannot remove my “ spiritual sandals” by myself. Even this simple thing is beyond my ability for I fail over and over. Without Jesus loosening my protective shoes which I’ve worn too long, comfortable, familiar shoes which I think are useful, but are really worn out, beat up and useless, how can my feet be washed in and for humility ,  fit to trod onto Holy Ground, to love God and my neighbor? I have to come barefoot and for that I need my Lord.

Friede