Laurie's Sermon for October 19th 2008

The Voice of Promise
Exodus 33:12-23; 34:1-9

One time I received a card from a dear friend during a trying time in her life. It was a Winnie-the-Pooh card, but not the Disney variety. It was part of the ‘Classic Pooh’ collection, the kind with the drawings similar to the ones in Milne’s original books. Pooh and Piglet are walking in the woods, and it looks like it is dusk. The bear is leaning sideways to reach down to grasp Piglet’s paw and Piglet is having to reach way up high to hold on to Pooh. The caption on the card said the following:
“Pooh?”
“Yes Piglet?”
After a pause, Piglet responds, “Oh nothing, I just needed to be sure of you.”

There are various times in our lives when we need to ‘be sure of’ another’s presence. When we are lonely, when we are frighten, when we are facing an unknown future or maybe when trying to repair a broken relationship. There are times we need to know we are not alone, that someone is with us – even if they are doing nothing but simply being there, it is important to feel the presence of another. There are times we need to ‘be sure of’ God as well.

The happenings of this passage Jim and I read this morning are the result of Moses’ request for proof of God’s presence. As I mentioned earlier, Chapter 33 is mostly a record of Moses’ pleas for forgiveness and pleas for God’s presence. God is angry with his stiff-necked people and is ready to forsake them all and start over again with Moses’ descendents only. Moses does some smooth talking and God decides to not give up on the people and go with them as they continue their trek to the Promised Land. However, before the journey can begin, fences need to be mended and a right relationship restored and this begins with a new set of tablets containing the laws for how to live as a community with one another and with God.

In chapter 34, God has some instructions to Moses as to how to return to the mountain for this renewal of the covenant. He is to follow these exactly so that he may encounter God safely. God created the first stone tablets and wrote on them. This time, Moses has to make his own tablets and bring them up for God to write on. God then tells Moses the time and place he is to be as well as where all the people and herds are not to be. Verse 4 says that Moses follows all the directions and climbs up to meet God.

Just before receiving these instructions, at the end of the previous chapter, Moses asks what seems like an odd question that really sets the rest of Chapter 34’s renewal of the covenant in motion – he asks to see God’s glory. Moses has already been told back in chapter 3 that no one can see the face of God and live, but still he asks to experience a revelation of God, to experience the glory of God. The underlying desire here is that Moses is wanting to ‘be sure of’ God, to have proof that God’s presence can be seen or felt or heard.

Don’t we also have this desire at times, this need for reassurance that the clouds that may engulf our lives in doubt and fear also contain the presence of God? It is not that we always must see or hear something to believe it nor is it that our faith is lacking. Like Piglet, we just need to be sure of another being with us, to be sure of God.

This meeting with God is what is fascinating to me. God agrees to grant this request for proof, but God does so very carefully. God protects Moses by giving very specific instructions when God says: "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy… Behold, 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 can hear in this reading the inspiration for the first part of the hymn Rock of Ages – Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. No one can see Yahweh and live, so there is a cleft in the rock in which Moses is to be hidden and covered by God’s hand.

If we then skip over to verses 5-9 in the next chapter, this theme of God’s proclamation is continued. Moses is now on the mountain enclosed in the midst and literally the mist of God. The narration says the Lord descended in a cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name ‘the Lord’. You may remember that in Exodus chapter 3, Moses asked God what the divine name was and God’s answer was not a proper noun, but a verb – “I AM - tell them I AM has sent you”. Here in verse 6 the same verb is used to proclaim the divine name. “The Lord, the Lord” is what most of our English translations use and what we heard this morning. However, what is found here is the exact form of the same Hebrew word as appeared in Chapter 3. This makes the disclosure that much more personal in its tone. Instead of “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious”, as if a third person is listing the attributes, the Hebrew text reads, “I AM, I AM a God merciful and gracious.” This hearing heightens the awareness that the reality of Yahweh’s presence is in Yahweh’s very being.

This double emphasis of the divine name has been described by some as saying not just I AM, I AM, but saying I AM and this is how I AM. I see this idea relating in essence, “Who I AM is how I AM in relationship with my people” because God then proceeds to list several characteristics of God’s essence. God’s very existence or being is relational in its nature. Emmanuel is God with us, Jesus Christ is, was, and will always be God with us. This self-disclosure can be seen as the highest utterance of revelation. To quote Walter Brueggemann’s take on this text, “No where before has anyone been privileged to hear directly a disclosure of what is most powerful and definitional for God’s own life.”

These characteristics or attributes are the explanation, the true revelation of the content of God’s name “I Am” and thus the fundamental nature of God’s being. God is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, steadfast love, faithfulness, and God keeps this love for thousands of generations and forgives sins, but the consequences of sin cannot be wiped clear and will often affect several generations. John Calvin sees this as saying “There is only a moment in his anger, but life is in his favor.” Here, God is saying that though God does require judgment, God’s clemency can and will surpass any verdict or sentence of guilt.

There are two final thoughts I want to bring out this morning involving Moses’ response to this divine revelation of character. It says in verse 8 that Moses “quickly bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.” Moses’ immediate response is to worship. Think for a moment on this question – do we worship because we have had a proof of God’s presence in our experience, or do we have such an experience through our worship? I believe the answer to both is YES! These are interrelated.

Worship should be our immediate response when we have experienced the glory or goodness of God in some fashion in our lives, and too worship is often a place where we may encounter God in such a way. The danger comes when we take the two to extremes. If we only worship when we experience a cloud-filled revelation of God in our lives, I imagine very few of us would be worshipping very often. By the same token, if we feel that our Sunday worship should be a catalyst for experiencing a greatly moving revelation week in and week out, we are probably often disappointed.

You see worship is both a response and an experience, a giving of us to God and a receiving of God’s gift to us. Our God is a relational God and we are a relational people. Still, for most of us, the earth does not tremble and shake every Sunday morning and that should be OK. But if we will learn to listen closely throughout the entire week, we may discover there are a lot of little tremors that we often miss. And the only way to truly listen is one, to be quiet ourselves and two, to spend time in God’s presence.

This doesn’t mean we need an hour of prayer time, us talking and jabbering to God, each day. Doing that would be hard for most of us…I know I run out of things to say pretty quickly. We need to remember that if we are talking about strengthening a relationship, we cannot do all the talking, we need to spend a lot of time listening. Even taking 10 minutes, sitting still and quiet, imagining ourselves resting in God presence is a start to realizing that that Presence is always with us, wanting to be noticed, remembered and relished.

One final great morsel from this passage is in the last part of verse 9 when Moses asks Yahweh to go with the people, to forgive them, and then requests that Yahweh “take us for your inheritance.” Moses does not ask God for an inheritance, nor does he ask for possessions or wealth or comfort. Instead Moses asks to become a part of that which God possesses. The prophet here does not want the jeweled ring left in a will, he wants to be one of the jewels that becomes a living a dynamic part of God’s will, a permanent possession of God, by God. This is another way of insuring that God’s presence will remain with the people. Most treasured inheritances are not carelessly handled or forgotten; they are protected and kept safe and remembered – exactly how God looks upon us.

There are a lot of little parts to this portion of scripture, but I do believe the common thread of relationships holds these parts together. This same thread can be seen woven throughout the entire book as well as the entire Bible. We speak today of being in relationship with God more than having God’s presence with us, but there really is no difference in the two as far as I can see. Our relationship with God makes us who we are and God’s revelation, both in Exodus as well as in Jesus Christ, is our experiencing how God has been, is, and will continue to be in relation to us. Thus, we respond to this knowledge with worship and the prayer to be maintained as one of God’s chosen possessions. We can be sure of God because we know not all, but at least something of how God is in relation to us. Let us lift our hearts up to the Lord in thanksgiving and praise because God’s voice is truly one of promise. Amen.