(This sermon is preached standing in the chancel, with the preacher’s back to the congregation during all but the closing of the message. It is an animated dialogue - almost a monologue - between the preacher [representing Moses] and God. A second person, by way of wireless mic and in an adjoining room speaks the part of God. The purpose of the message is self-evident and strikes its target parabolically -- and successfully)
"God, there’s a long way of wilderness between your people here at Mt. Sinai, where you gave us the Law, and the place where you keep saying you want us to go. That “Promised Land” has never seemed farther away.
Don’t get me wrong, God; it’s not that I doubt you when you tell me that all these people (sweeping arms behind toward the congregation WITHOUT TURNING AROUND) must move together to Canaan – I believe you mean that, Lord. It’s just that you’ve already seen how undependable and unreliable we are. These people all say “Yes, Yes! We love God… We want to do the will of God.” But then, just as soon as my back is turned or a temptation presents itself, or an opportunity to gripe and complain comes around, they fall away from your dream for us like kids running for stick candy.
You saw what my first mate, Aaron, did when I was in that meeting with you up on the mountain. I’d no sooner left camp, Lord, than he started taking up his own collection and playing like HE was your anointed leader. He had the people worshipping something besides you, God -- a golden calf of their own making, in fact – and having orgy parties all night long.
So God, I can hear you fine when you tell me, over and over again, “Bring up these people; lead these people,” but frankly it’s a little frustrating. Can’t you fudge a little bit, God, and point out to me ahead of time which ones will follow me and which ones won’t? After all – those Presbyterians over on the Loop are telling everybody that you know ahead of time who is, and who isn’t going to make it to the Promised Land. So, the way I see it, if you’d just let me in on that information, God, and tell me who will be coming with me, it would make things so much easier. Then I wouldn’t have to keep wasting time on the losers, or the ones who stab me in the back, or the two-faced ones, or the ones who try to divide the people by complaining all the time. You know how it is, God: they cry for freedom, they cry for a relationship with you – for life in the covenant – and as soon as you give it to them they can’t handle the responsibility and want to head straight back to Egypt. (Pause)
I know you love me, Lord, because you have told me you that you ‘know me by name.’
(contemplating…)
’Know me by name…’ That means that you know me inside and out. You know my motives and how much I love you. You have searched my heart and yes, God, there is still some sin in there, but you know that all I really want is you.
In our times together in the Tent of Meeting you’ve spoken to me in the quiet stillness and whispered that, somehow, I’ve found favor in your sight. It’s amazing, God, that a human like me could even hear your voice – but to think that Almighty God might even be mindful of someone like me – it’s more than my heart can hold.
But if it’s true, God, then I want something more. I’m hungry for more of you, God. I’m hungry for my eyes to be opened wider, and hungry to be amazed by you again like I was that day at the Burning Bush. And I think that if I want to know you more, God, then I must follow you – I must to align my path, my ways, with yours, just like you want your people to follow me.
But how can I do that God, unless you show me?”
I need for you to show me the way that you do things – the way you work through the events of the world. How is it that you come in the clouds or inscribe your will in stone? How is it that you answer our prayers, or circumvent our enemies? Tell me, God, so that I can come closer to you – and be more like you – and find even more favor in your sight.
All I want is you, God. All I want is you.” (Pause)
(a bit cocky) And besides, God – this nation is yours, after all. If you want the best for them, then you need to help me be the best for you, right?
(2nd speaker, God, responds) “MY PRESENCE WILL GO WITH YOU, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.”
That’s good, Lord – because if your ‘presence’ doesn’t go forward down the road and through the days with me, then don’t let us move one inch from where we are right now. I don’t want to travel without you, Lord. It would lead to nowhere and I hate to think what would happen to me, if I even tried.
We’re different from other people God, because you have made us yours. And that makes it hard sometimes, especially on the young adults. We don’t talk the same way as unbelievers; we don’t swallow everything people hand us. We have different rituals and we love to pray and sing praises to your name.
But Lord, if your presence is not with me, your anointed leader — if you let my words fall to the ground, then none of that matters. It is just emptiness and meaninglessness. If your presence is not with us, then how will outsiders know you love us? Me and your people? How will the world know that you are real and that we are yours? By ourselves, God, we’re not special at all. We’re nothing. It’s only because your presence is with us that we are distinct. Your presence is the only thing that matters.
I WILL DO THE VERY THING THAT YOU HAVE ASKED; FOR YOU HAVE FOUND FAVOR IN MY SIGHT, AND I DO KNOW YOU BY NAME.
Thank you, God. Bless you! We can do all things if you will just stay with us. Our existence as a people depends on you. But God, could I ask just one more thing, please? (pause) I’m almost afraid to ask. God, I want to see you’re your GLORY; God, I want the beatific vision – the light that is so bright, that washes everything in white. The light that is so bright that it hides you. Such a gift would lift my soul so high; it would make me never doubt you again. I want to give all of myself to you, God. Would you give all of yourself to me? Will you let me see your glory? See all of you?
I WILL MAKE ALL MY GOODNESS PASS BEFORE YOU, AND I WILL PROCLAIM BEFORE YOU THE NAME, ‘THE LORD’;
Glory? God, or goodness? I want for you to show me your glory.. (pause)
Well, I guess that having a bright light experience with you God, a knock-down moment of amazement at your power and glory isn’t the same thing as seeing your goodness, is it? Lightning can make a bright light – or a forest fire, or oil lamps in a desert. But goodness, that’s something else altogether. If you show me your goodness, then I can know you. I can know what kind of God you are. I can learn from your examples to be good too – and to love like you do. Goodness is something that I can understand. Glory just knocks me off my feet.
AND I WILL BE GRACIOUS TO WHOM I WILL BE GRACIOUS AND I WILL SHOW MERCY ON WHOM I WILL SHOW MERCY.
Oh God – I can see now that you ARE gracious to me. You don’t always give me what I ask, but you give me what I need. Even though I have doubted you, and argued with you, and lost faith in you, you still love me. Even though we, your own people, have been disobedient, and grumblers, and gone off and worshipped other things and other gods beside you, you still have mercy on us and refuse to let us go. Thank you, Lord, for holding us to your purpose, for having mercy on us and being gracious to us. Thank you, God – for second chances, and third chances, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth…
(God interrupts..)
BUT -- MOSES, YOU CANNOT SEE MY FACE; FOR NO ONE SHALL SEE ME AND LIVE.”
I’m beginning to understand that, Lord. For me to ask to see you face to face, to see all of you, as you really are, would be like asking a stone, or a scrap of wood, to comprehend the love of a mother for a child – or for a raindrop to comprehend the grandeur of all the oceans and all the creatures that inhabit them. You are too great, too much for my mind and heart to grasp. To see you in all your holiness would consume me as if by fire.
MOSES, THERE IS A PLACE BESIDE ME WHERE, [ONE DAY,] YOU SHALL STAND ON THE ROCK; AND WHILE MY GLORY PASSES BY, I WILL PUT YOU IN THE CLEFT OF THE ROCK AND I WILL COVER YOU WITH MY HAND UNTIL I HAVE PASSED BY.
THEN I WILL TAKE AWAY MY HAND, AND YOU SHALL SEE MY BACK – BUT MY FACE SHALL NEVER BE SEEN.
(now turn around, slowly, and face the congregation)
What would it be like, I wonder, to stand on the rock, beside God? To be raised up and given a place near to the Lord? To see out of that cleft and look across our days like a wife looking for her sailor husband to return home – knowing he is there, but not able to physically see him; knowing that there is someone greater than us working all things together toward his own chosen ends?
Will it be like those days when we catch a just-beyond-our-senses glimpse of the reality of a world beyond? When we hear the voice say, “Go this way,” and when we do, our lives are completely changed in a way we never expected? At times like that, we know that there is a place where all things are connected, as if just around the corner, just out of sight, but very much there.
And if, as human beings, our earthly frames cannot bear to see God in all his glory, as he works in the world, how much must he love us to have split the difference – to have made a place for us that bridges the gap between us and himself? That bridge is like the transformer on a power line. It takes the power and glory and holiness of God and incarnates it into someone that we can see and understand. Someone we can talk to and rest in without being utterly destroyed.
With the love of God’s own hand, we are covered and sheltered on that bridge – in that rock. And on days like today, when we lay the things of earth aside and draw close to his heart we can see, maybe, just a little, through his eyes. And we can look back and know how all the things in our lives have worked together to make us the people we are.
But God does not want us to spend too much time looking back. Once we are assured that God in his providence does work all things together for those who love him, then he takes away his hand and moves forward.
“Look,” God says, “try with all your might to see me. Strain your eyes and your heart. You will see me – but it will be like a wake of events in the river of time. I will be moving forward, out and onward before you. Making a path for you. You shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. (by Gerard Manley Hopkins)
(Pause)
“Standing on the rock, you shall see my back,” God says. “But my face shall not be seen.”
Amen.
