Take Off Your Shoes

Read Exodus 3:1-6

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

By this point in his life, Moses had settled into a usual routine. His upbringing, though, had been anything but usual. Moses had been born a Hebrew slave in Egypt. At the time of his birth, the Hebrews had become so populous that the Pharaoh in Egypt had ordered the murder of every newborn Hebrew male. In an act of extraordinary faith, Moses‘s mother had hidden him in a basket of reeds in the Nile River. He was found by one of the Pharaoh‘s daughters, who took pity on him and claimed him as her own. When the princess asked for a Hebrew woman who could nurse him, his sister (who’d been following behind and watching over the baby) stepped forward and volunteered her mother.

So Moses had grown up with one foot in each world. He was raised as part of Pharaoh’s family and therefore understood the mechanisms of power and privilege. But he was also deeply aware of his true identity, and it angered him to see his people suffer. One day, when he saw an Egyptian master whipping a Hebrew slave, something inside Moses snapped, and he killed the man. When it became clear he could not keep his crime a secret, Moses fled into the wilderness. There in the desert, Moses found shelter with a man named Jethro. He married one of Jethro’s daughters and helped look after Jethro’s flocks. Life was about as quiet as it could get for a man born into slavery and on the run.

Then one day, as he was keeping watch over his flocks, Moses spotted a burning bush. Moses “turned aside” to investigate further, because the fire didn’t seem to be consuming the bush. As he drew near, God called directly to Moses, who answered: “Here I am.” Then God told him to take off his sandals, for he was standing on holy ground.

This was perhaps the most important threshold moment of Moses‘s life. He had crossed a threshold when he killed the Egyptian man; he had run away from everything he knew. Now God was calling him to step back over that threshold—to go back to Pharaoh and back to his people—to reengage the conflict that he thought he had left behind. But the detail of the story I find most interesting is what God first told Moses to do when he entered His presence: Take off your sandals. You’re standing on holy ground.

What did the taking off of shoes represent? At a basic level, it could be understood as a sign of humility and honor. It could also be understood as an act of ritual purity. Moses’ sandals would have been covered with dust and therefore “impure.” Levite priests would one day serve barefoot within the temple for this very same reason. It could even be understood as an act of surrender—removing your sandals could signify relinquishing claims, authority, or territorial rights over a space, acknowledging that the ground belonged entirely to God.  

Here’s what I think: God wanted Moses’ full attention. Taking off his shoes was a way of being fully present in God’s presence, without pretense or hurry. In her book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, Ruth Haley Barton notes that it is “no small thing” to turn aside to listen to God within the hectic pace we all live in. She writes:

All of us have burning bushes in our lives, places that shimmer with grace, alerting us to the possibility that God is at work doing something we could not have predicted… But one of the downsides of visionary leadership is that we can get our sights set on something that is so far out in the future that we miss what’s going on in our lives in the here and now. We are blind to the bush that is burning in our own backyard and the wisdom that is contained within it. We squander the gift of this day just as it is, these people just as they are, the uniqueness and the sweetness (even the bittersweet) of this particular place on the journey just as it is, the voice of God calling to us in our own wilderness places. 

Sometimes, in order to recognize the threshold moment we are in, we have to take off our shoes and pay attention to what God is doing around us.

So how can you create holy space in your own life? It could look exactly like what Moses did, taking off your shoes and walking barefoot for a few minutes, to remember that all ground is holy. When was the last time you felt green grass between your toes? Or perhaps if we were to put God’s instructions into modern parlance, we’d focus less on apparel and more on technology. Perhaps if God wanted to call out to Moses today, he’d say something like: Close up your laptop. Turn off your phone. Get away from all the noise.

This week, try out a single practice—a single daily act that will help you “take off your shoes” as a way of crossing a threshold into holy space with God. See if that single act can help you listen anew to the voice of God calling.

Help me, O God, to turn aside from my “to-do list” long enough to listen. Draw my attention to the “burning bushes in my own backyard.” Give me courage to confront the conflict that lies below the surface of my life. I “take off my shoes” now to better listen to You. Amen.