Exodus 33:12-23
Proper 24 / Year A
I had just
graduated from high school and a classmate was throwing a party at his home to
celebrate. Now, the thing you have to
know is this friend had an older sister who was a senior when we were lowly
sophomores and she was drop-dead gorgeous – the kind of angelic being we put on
a pedestal and revered from afar, but could never approach. Well, at the party I was standing with Ward
Ballard at the dining room table, filling our plates with food. The older sister appeared out of nowhere with
one of her equally spectacular girlfriends, looking to get some get some food
from the other side of the table. Try to
imagine it as a movie scene filmed in slow motion with sweeping music behind
it. Then, the unthinkable happened. The sister looked up from her gathering,
looked across the table, looked us right in the eyes, smiled her beautiful
smile, and said, “Hello.” It was as if a
goddess from above had noticed us and validated our existence in the
universe. “Hello”, my friend Ward and I
said in response, but we were so dumbstruck (or awestruck) neither of us could
think of a single thing more to say. So
then and there, in the presence of these two heavenly beings, Ward turned to me
and said, “So Keith, a-ba-a-ba-a-ba-ba-ba!”
I have never laughed so hard in all my life.
That memory came
back to me as I pondered this morning’s reading from the Book of Exodus. Moses seeks assurance the Lord will journey
with him and his people. “My presence
will go with you,” the Lord responds.
But Moses needs more. He wants to
see the Lord face-to-face. He wants to
encounter God’s full glory. Now this is
not a passing fancy or a mere curiosity.
For Moses, it is a passionate desire.
Most of us, I suspect, want to perceive how God is at work in the
world. We want to know what God would
have us do. We have certain needs and
concerns we turn over to God. But I have
meet very few people in life we want to “see” God eye-to-eye,
face-to-face. Perhaps it is because we
imagine God does not have a physical ‘body’ that can be seen. Perhaps it is because we sense we are
unworthy of such an audience and honor.
Or maybe perhaps it does not occur to us this should be or could be a
spiritual goal.
But it is a
spiritual goal for the author of the 99th Psalm, which we read just
moments ago. One of six psalms known as
“Enthronement Psalms”, it proclaims the Lord is King. It is a carefully constructed piece of poetry
composed for four stanzas, each with three lines. It mentions “the Lord” seven times and uses a
pronoun to refer to the Lord seven additional times (seven being the Hebrew
number for perfection and completion).
And three times, in three different ways the psalmist calls on us to
proclaim the greatness of the Lord for the Lord is holy.
Holiness, something
wholly other. The poet grounds the
Lord’s holiness in three things. First,
the Lord is King, reigning over all creation.
Next, unlike earthly kings who may rule out of self-interest, show
favoritism, and impose tyranny, the Lord’s holy Kingship is marked by justice
and righteousness. Finally, the psalmist
reflects on how our holy King elects to be in relationship with the human family
in order to ensure justice and righteousness in human affairs. We are to seek the Lord who sits
enthroned. We are to bow down before the
Lord’s footstool. We are to worship the
Lord upon his holy hill (Jerusalem).
The 99th Psalm
calls us to reorient our spirituality from being me-centered to being
God-centered; from being me-focused to being God-focused; from looking at ourselves
to looking at God.
Which brings us
back to Moses. He wants to do more than
perceive God, he actually wants to see God.
Once God understands this the Lord tells him it simply is not
possible. “You cannot look on my glory
and live.” So God tells Moses to stand
in a cleft in a rock and says God’s hand will cover Moses as God walks by. And once the Lord is past, God’s hand will be
lifted and Moses will be allowed to see God’s back as the Lord walks away. While still awe-inspiring, this experience
will not be so overwhelming as to be deadly.
I was thinking
about Michelangelo’s famous painting The
Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel.
It is the work depicting God as an old man reaching out his hand to a
reclining Adam who is reaching out his hand to God and their fingers almost
touch. In the painting Michelangelo has
Adam looking squarely into the eyes of God.
It suggests as originally created we were made to be in complete
communion with God, but once sin is introduced into the world, artists like
Michelangelo portray Adam as walking away from God, head bowed in shame, with
an arm shielding his face in attempt to prevent God from seeing him and to
negate any possibility he might look at God.
I’ve told you
before of an experience I had several years ago when I was a chaplain for a
senior high youth conference. I led
devotional times and helped campers prepare for evening worship, which they
led. After a session where I introduced
the young people to C.S. Lewis’s book The
Great Divorce (in which fictional characters go to heaven but opt to leave
because other things are more important to them than meeting God), I worked
with a dozen campers to plan the evening service. We decided each person would spend to time
pondering what they believe heaven will be like and what about it they are most
looking forward to about it. The plan
was to have them share their thoughts with the entire camp during the evening
service. They did a great job, but one
thing struck me. They talked about
things like playing their favorite sports and never getting tired, but not one
of the young people mentioned anything about meeting God or worshipping God or
adoring God. Heaven, for them, was a
me-centered place. Perhaps we can chalk
it up to youth, still, I suspect many of us want heaven to be what we want with
little consideration of what it will be like to be in the presence of a holy God
who makes us go “a-ba-a-ba-a-ba-ba-ba!”
When Moses asks to
see God’s glory he is in what is know as “The Tent of Meeting,” which Moses
erected outside of the Hebrew camp. It
is where he would go to speak to the Lord while his people tarried in the Sinai
wilderness. In response to his request,
the Lord instructs Moses to carve out two stone tablets. You will recall Moses smashed the originals
when he came down from the mountain and found his brother leading his people in
the worship of a golden calf. So Moses
does his chiseling and carries the stones back up the mountain (not an enviable
assignment!). And there on the mountain
the Lord passes before Moses and Moses bows down and worships. The Lord promises to be “compassionate and
gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” It becomes God’s covenant promise to all
people through Moses.
Does seeking God’s
glory make a difference? You bet it
does. It leads to the Lord defining
God’s relationship with the human family, a promise which cannot be
broken. And it changes Moses. His face becomes radiant and as a result his
brother and his people become fearful in his presence. They now have the “a-ba-a-ba-a-ba-ba-bas”
when they are around him. But this is
not Moses’ desired outcome, so he begins to veil his face in their
presence. Maybe in another sermon I will
explore what it means to withhold some of your personal experience of the Holy
One, but (as they say in business meetings with newsprint) “Let put that idea
in the ‘parking lot.’”
Here is what I take
away from today’s readings:
· God is awesome and
worthy of your interest and pursuit.
· This pursuit will
change you in ways you cannot imagine.
· Your pursuit of
God’s glory in your life will have a profound impact on those around you: your
spouse and family, your friends, your church, your community, your nation, your
world, and even all of creation.
· If there is nothing in all creation more worthy than the holy Lord, then there is nothing more worthy of our interest and our pursuit.
