Holy Ground, Ordinary Places | God’s Name Revealed

Hi, St. Andrew — Pastor Peter here, inviting you to consider holy spaces and sacred spaces. I think sometimes we consider sacred spaces to be a sanctuary, or where it's quiet, or a big basilica, or something kind of like that. But I think sacred spaces and places can also be interpreted much more widely.

As I join you from my car, I think about Moses' encounter with God in the wilderness — the burning bush, and the story and the language that came from the bush: "Moses, this is sacred ground. Take off your sandals and honor it." It was ordinary ground. He was not on a pilgrimage. He wasn't in a sanctuary. Moses was simply doing his work as a shepherd, and God encountered him there and reminded him of God's power and God's goodness.

And so it reminds me to think about how we sometimes take for granted those ordinary spaces that could become extraordinary sacred spaces — like how we gather around the kitchen or dining room table. Maybe it's just with our families, maybe it's when we invite people to join us. But we create something bigger and broader — it's community, and it becomes sacred.

I think about the conversations that happen not in meetings at the office, but happen in between — like in the hallway or in the parking lot, when you can go a little bit deeper into the lives of people and show care and compassion. What becomes an ordinary space can become a very sacred and beautiful space, where care and compassion resides and carries through.

So I really love how God shows up to Moses in this ordinary space and says, "I am with you, and I am — I am here." And how it invites me, and all of us, I think, to think about the classrooms, to think about our places of work, our roadways, our cars — all these places where perhaps we might think they're ordinary, but they could become, around a kitchen table, a place for sacred community to be real and alive. And I think it's also just really amazing that God can even use us to make it so.

So that's our invitation here today, as we live out faith and community life together. Thanks for joining me.