Well, friends, our scripture lesson today that Flo read for us from Exodus it hinges on whether we lowly mortals can see the face of an immortal, invisible, all holy God and live to tell the tale.
And when it comes to the face of God, I’m reminded of an amusing story about a kid’s Sunday school class. In this class, one day the teacher decided to give the kids a break from their lesson and let them do some finger painting. After a time, the teacher approaches one little boy and asks, “What are you painting there, Billy?” And at that, Billy looks up and answers, “I’m painting the face of God.” And the teacher responds, “But that’s impossible. No one’s seen the face of God.” Billy then turns back to his paint and says, “Well, they will in five minutes.”
And in that story, you got to admire Billy’s childlike boldness and innocence. But unfortunately, it’s the boldness that the grown-up Israelites showed to their detriment right before our reading today, when they tried to design a god for themselves. And I’m speaking of the infamous episode of the golden calf in Exodus 32. So, do you remember that story?
Moses is on the mountain, 40 days communing with God and getting the Ten Commandments. Meanwhile, his people decide that Moses and the God he represents must have abandoned them. So they take matters into their own hands. Rather than a transcendent God they can’t see, they’d rather have a more down-to-earth God that they can touch and see. So they pile all their jewelry together and they fashion a golden calf. Even roping mothers or Moses’s brother Aaron in on their idolatry, they tell themselves that this fancy idol of gold, fashioned in an image that they’ve chosen and made for themselves, is the god who rescued them out of slavery in Egypt, and that idolatry does not end well for them as it never does in Scripture nor in our own lives.
But let’s not forget that this notorious story of idol worship of a golden calf, which I’m guessing none of us have ever done, it begins with a very human fear that all of us have felt, and I’m speaking of that fear that God has deserted or has given up on us. I’ve felt that fear before, even as a pastor. Just over the past year, near the end of my seven years of pastoring Westview United Methodist Church, it felt like that a bit because over the course of a few months after seven years that I thought had gone beautifully, well, water came pouring through the roof in multiple rooms after a snowstorm. An expensive boiler that was only six or seven years old totally collapsed and died, and I dealt with tragedy and painful personnel issues that totally came out of the blue that I never expected. And I’ll admit the question passed through my mind: Where is God in this? Maybe you’ve asked that question, either on a personal level or in terms of your church family, wondering why, if God’s still with you, it isn’t more obvious.
Sometimes, honestly, I work now at the conference center as the coordinator of faith formation for Western PA, and I know folks there have wrestled with that fear after the hits we took from COVID, followed by disaffiliation and the splitting of our denomination. We too, like those ancient Hebrews, wonder when things aren’t going as expected if God’s left the building.
But friends, one comforting thing about our lesson today from Exodus 33 is that even Moses, the great prophet of God, he longed for assurance that God was with him. How else to explain Moses his his pleas in verses 12 to 16 that God would go with his people and not abandon them in their wanderings. This, that this plea. It’s in response to God saying at the beginning of Exodus 33 that an angel would go with the people and would accompany them to the promised land. A pledge that sounds pretty good to me. But Moses has the audacity to say, “No, an angel’s not good enough for us, God. We want. We don’t want an angel to go with us. We want you, yourself.”
Then in verse eighteen, Moses demands of God, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And by the end, God does concede to Moses his request, but not how Moses was expecting. That is, God says to Moses in verse nineteen, “Okay, Moses, I will make all my goodness pass before you, but you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” And then, in one of my favorite moments in the Bible, in part because I sometimes wonder what the heck it means, God places Moses in a cleft of rock as the glory of the Lord passes by. Only Moses can’t see this glory because he’s in the dark, covered by the hand of God—a hand that’s lifted once God’s already passed by, so that Moses can only look up and see God’s backside.
And friends, sometimes you have to love how strange the Bible can be. In fact, in case you are wondering, the Hebrew word for backside here it literally refers to God’s hindquarters. So that, so to say, that Moses gets mooned by God isn’t too much of an exaggeration here. But surely this raises the question of how that’s an appropriate response to Moses’ request to see God’s glory. Was God mocking Moses by showing his backside?
Well, one thing we know is going on here is what we sang up together in that great hymn: Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes. Or, in the words of another old favorite: Holy, holy, holy, though the darkness hide thee, though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see. Those hymns are getting at a theme throughout Scripture that in our sinful state we don’t have the capacity for seeing God’s glory as it is. For that, we’ll need new resurrected bodies. So that in the words of our funeral liturgy, we shall be like Him. For we shall see Him as He is.
But still, why this business about God’s backside? Now, here I’m persuaded by the great reformer Martin Luther, who took Moses seeing God’s backside to mean that any time we see God in this fallen world, God’s not going to look like what we were expecting. So, whereas you and I, we would like a God who looks like a king sitting on a golden throne, holding a sword. What we got instead was a carpenter raised in poverty in Nazareth. That’s what Luther called seeing God from the back. Or whereas you and I would prefer a God who strikes down his enemies with vengeance and violence, and and gives us license to do the same. What we got instead was a meek man who turned the other cheek when he was struck and prayed for his enemies even as he was dying. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing. Again, that seeing God from the back, and friends, I guarantee that if you were you or I were God, there’s not one of us who would choose to die in shame, naked and alone on an old, rugged cross. And yet, in all of history, there nowhere but in the cross do we see more clearly who God is or what God is truly about.
But again, the cross doesn’t look like what we would call glory at all, but what we would call weakness and shame. So once more, friends, isn’t that seeing God from the back? And yet, I hope you’re picking up on some good news here. For if God’s glory is there, even in the dark and the shameful places of this world, this means that nothing—not even our weakness and failure—can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Truly, He will never leave you, or nor forsake you. And in fact, it’s at our lowest that we may see God most clearly.
Take the testimony of Auburn Sandstrom, for example, a woman who talks about a time in life when she was in the depths of addiction to narcotics. By this point, Auburn was estranged from her family, a poor, struggling mom to a young son, and suffering in an abusive marriage. On top of that, as an addict, she was heading towards what folks in recovery call rock bottom. In the night, she hit rock bottom. Auburn questioned whether to end her life, but that’s when she pulled out a phone number her estranged mother had sent her years back, with a note saying it was the number of a Christian counselor who could help.
And even though she had no faith at the time, Auburn was desperate enough to call this number, and not only that, but to call it around two o’clock in the morning. And at that, a groggy man answered on the other end and said, “Hello.” And Auburn explained she knew it was it was so late, and she was sorry to wake him up, but she needed to talk to someone. To which the sleepy man responded, “Okay, okay, I can talk. What’s going on?” And as Auburn started to talk, minutes. Turned to hours as she found herself being more open and honest with this stranger on the phone and with herself than she’d been in years. She spoke about abuse in her marriage, her guilt over failing her son, and she first said out loud that she was an addict who needed help. And to all of this, the man on the phone responded with kindness, saying things like, “Well, tell me more about that. That that must have hurt, and I’m so sorry that you have been through that.”
But finally, after talking into the early morning, Auburn said, “Well, you’ve been so kind to listen to me this long. Now, aren’t you supposed to tell me to go read my Bible or something?” And at this, the man just laughed. And again, Auburn said, “Well, you’ve done a great thing in listening to me and encouraging me. How long have you been a Christian counselor?” There was then a long pause before the man said, “Auburn, please don’t hang up. But there’s something I need to tell you. I’ve been trying not to bring it up. Well, what do you mean?” Auburn said. “Well, well,” says this man. “I, I was afraid to tell you this, but I’m not a counselor. And that number you dialed, it was the wrong number. But I just knew when I heard your voice that you really needed to talk to someone. And there was something that made me stay on the line.”
Now, though it took a while, still for Auburn to get fully sober after that night, she nonetheless looks back at that random phone call with a stranger as the turning point of her whole life. When she thinks about that call, she says she experiences peace that passes understanding because she says it’s the moment when she first realized that somewhere in this universe there exists an unconditional love, and that at least some of that love was meant for her. She ends her testimony by saying, “Quote: This is what I know. In the deepest, blackest night of despair, if you can get just one pinhole of light, all of grace rushes in. If you can get just one pinhole of light, all of grace rushes in.”
And friends, what is what is the cross of Jesus? But that one pinhole of light, where grace still rushes into our lives and into this world. Grace for each, grace for all, grace forever. And if you truly look at the cross, it’s not a cross of gold like we have on the altar. It’s a cross that doesn’t look glorious at all to the naked eye, but to those who are being saved, it is the power and the glory of God. And that cross promises that even when times are dark, that you don’t need to be afraid. That cross is how we know God is with us always to the end of the age. That cross tells me that God is with Fairhaven United Methodist Church today. No matter what challenges you may be facing, that cross assures me that God is with me at the conference center where I felt called to share hope in a setting where hope’s been challenged over these past few years. That cross says that even when things look darkest, that we’re actually being sheltered by the shadow of God’s right hand, just as Moses was that day in the cleft of the rock.
So, friends, I pray that as you look at the cross today, that you find that perfect love that casts out fear, all fear, even yours. And in that spirit, I close today with words of a musician named Christopher Powers. Words I that moved me recently, and I felt called to share with someone I knew who had who had just lost a beloved family member. Powers writes, “Quote.”
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “My child, do not fear.” But Lord replied, “My trembling heart, the darkness is so near. It rises up before my eyes. It quenches every light with cruel and hopeless words. It weaves a world that ends in night.” And then I heard the darkness say, “What horrors lay in store? Descend to restless misery and madness evermore. Come now, my slave,” the darkness said, “and dwell within my lies, where melting mirrors reflect your fears and hope, like all things, dies.” O Lord, I cried, please give me light. My suffering, who can tell? Come down into this damned night with hope. Invade my hell, and then from depths immeasurable, a new voice came to me. This very threat that you so fear, I bore upon the tree. And should you fall into the pit that you most deeply fear, there you’ll find by Calvary’s love, my heart to yours draws near. So turn, my son, my trembling son lies cannot dwell in light. Look on the truth. Believe my love. I am the end of night.
So may each of us find that love today, and may it be so in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
