October 16, 2005 Des Moines

TEXT: Exodus 33:12-23

Seeing What You Can

What is comfort for you? For some it is meatloaf and mashed potatoes. For others, jeans and a sweatshirt. For still others, it is something a bit more substantial. There is an old preacher story – that may even be true – about a fearful child in need of a hug who responds to his mother’s reminder that “God is always with you,” by confessing that he would prefer something with “skin on it.” What is comfort to you?

Moses was feeling a soulful ache that not even all the meatloaf and mashed potatoes in Israel could comfort. He had confronted the Egyptian Pharaoh and won the Israelites’ release. He had held his arms out over the Red Sea to part them so the refugees could pass safely through, and had guided and cajoled them through the wilderness and their justifiable apprehension that eventually questioned whether they had done the right thing in leaving the relative security of Egypt. He had organized, counseled, marshaled and mothered; he had interceded and reassured. And no sooner had he gone up the holy mountain to spend some quality time with God, the people gathered up all their jewelry, melted it down and cast it into a golden calf which they then proceeded to worship.

As soon as Moses got that whole mess straightened out, and lest they all have hell to pay for this serious breach of faithfulness, Moses headed back up the mountain to see what he might be able to salvage of their relationship with the one they should have been worshipping.

Suffice it to say, Moses was tired, mad, nervous and afraid. And protective of his little flock, despite their egregious and errant ways. So Moses, calling assertively into the vapors from whence he has heard the voice of God, asks for a little comfort. “Where the heck are we going, and who, might I ask, is going with us? You tell me to go, and you claim to know my name; you say you think I’m swell, but I’m feeling all alone out here. If you are still backing this little clambake, clue me in. What’s going through your mind?”

To which God ambiguously responds, “I’m with you – ahead of you and behind – and I will give you rest.”

“Umm,” Moses presses, “is that ‘you’ as in ‘me’ or ‘you’ as in ‘y’all’? If you aren’t behind the whole of us, don’t keep dragging us further into nowhere. I need to know that your arms are around us and your heart is with us. I need some reassurance – and some confidence. How about this: let me see your glory.”

God’s glory. We’ve had pieces of this conversation before, but it’s worth bringing up again. What is God’s glory, and what would it mean for Moses to see it? I tend to think of “glow” and “radiance,” but it has to be more than that. One writer suggests that “glory bespeaks God’s awesome, shrouded, magisterial presence, something like an overpowering light,” and that Moses seeks to draw “even closer, more dangerously, more intimately, to the very core of God’s own self” (NIB).

“Let me,” in other words, “see you, God, unadulterated, unfiltered, unveiled from the cloud. Let me see your face – your very self.”

But that, as it turns out, is a step too far.

In reply, God assures Moses that neither he, Moses, nor the people of Israel will be bereft. God will be with them – all of them. “But you can’t see my glory. I’ll show you my goodness, but you can’t see my face. The fact is, you couldn’t take it. No one can see the face of God and live.”

I’ve pondered this exchange. “I’ll show you my goodness, but not my glory.” And “no one can see the face of God and live.” That latter initially conjures up characters from Greek mythology – like the Sirens, the sound of whose voice lured sailors to their death of on the rocks; like Medusa, whose eyes would turn the unsuspecting onlooker into stone. Is that the secret God is revealing – that there is something magical or grotesque about the visage of God?

I hardly think so. What I think God is acknowledging is that the divine fullness is too immense for human comprehension. Like trying to wedge a size 20 foot into a size 6 shoe, there is simply too much God to fit into Moses – or anyone else for that matter. There would be stitches tearing apart, soles separating from uppers, laces breaking in two. There is simply too much of God to fully behold. The most that we can manage is a fragment. As Paul would later observe, now we see in a glass, darkly. Our understanding, our comprehension of God is partial, at best. We aren’t capable of knowing and seeing God completely.

But if we can’t see God’s complete identity, we can see something of God’s character – and that could well be, for Moses and the rest of us, a more immediate good. Ultimately, what we ache to know has less to do with God’s appearance than God’s behavior – less what God looks like than what God acts like.

We know how that is. We have all known handsome, pretty people who were, underneath it all, mean-spirited and cruel. Looks can be deceiving. There was nothing sinister, after all, about the appearance of Dennis Rader, the man who was later identified as the BTK killer in Wichita, Kansas. There was nothing about the outside that would reveal anything about his inside. How long have we been repeating the truism that “You can’t judge a book by its cover?” And if Moses seems to have it wrong on this point, God readily sees it right. “My glory is more than you could take,” God comments, “but my goodness you shall see – the essence of my power and intention for life; the compassion and mercy that you have experienced – and will; my very shalom.”

And I’m thinking that’s not all together different from our experience with each other – and the world’s experience with the church. “Selfhood” is never fully disclosed. We are each too complex, too mysterious, too “in process” for anyone else to completely understand. Regardless of how long or intimate the relationship, no one can finally say of another, “I’ve got you figured out.” There is something at the core of our being that is finally opaque, elusive and indefinable. If we turn the language of the biblical story to our more common way of speaking, others may see our face, but they can’t fully plumb the depths of our soul.

They can, however, see our “goodness.” They can observe our deeds of kindness, our compassion and mercy that stretch us out beyond our own interests and participate in the “shalom” of others. They can see the values that animate us, the convictions that guide us, and the affections to which we attend. They cannot finally discern the core of who we are, but they can see what we do, and that is no trivial observation.

These several weeks we are calling special attention to our stewardship as disciples – what we do, in other words, with what we have, as an expression of who we are. And one part of that has to do with each of us as individuals – the choices we make about the resources under our influence. We reflect on the money we have and how we obligate it or squander it or maximize its potential. If it is more than simple feathers to cushion our own sense of comfort, we think of it instead as a spiritual tool and wonder what kind of a world we are using it to build. And we think about our talents and our interactions and our opportunities and time, and wonder – if all these expressions of ourselves constitute our “goodness” – what others see when ours passes before them.

And we ask the same of the “goodness” of this church. What is our stewardship of the gospel entrusted to us – how we teach it and preach it and model it and share. When our “goodness” passes before our children, what do they observe? When our “goodness” passes through this neighborhood, what do its residents see? This metropolitan community, or beyond? It isn’t the whole of ourselves – our “glory,” our sum and substance; that is too elusive to finally know and name. But when, as stewards of this intersection, this building, and of God’s witness emanating through it, our “goodness” passes by, what do those watching from the cleft of the rock see?

God withheld from Moses something of the fullness of the Divine Self, but did not leave him empty. God, according to the story, will reassure Moses, and the name of Yahweh will be proclaimed to him.

‘See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock;and while my glory passes by I will put you in a 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 not be seen.’

“You shall see my back, but not my face.” It isn’t everything, but it is better than nothing. In fact, it is an amazing something. We will give thanks to see what we can see – the part of God that illumines and blesses our life and the steps we yet take in the wilderness ahead, praying that our own passing by – the parts of us that others see – will occasion just such reassurance, companionship, comfort, and hope.