Glory Be!

(Scriptures: Exodus 33:12-23
I Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22)

Those among us of a certain age may remember the old 1950’s TV show “The Honeymooners”. Or if you were a little younger, you might have watched the Flintstones, which was sort of a cartoon version. The main character, Ralph Cramden, was loud and volatile, but his wife, Alice, knew how to manage him, and certainly knew how to cut through Ralph’s bombast. Just about every episode had a moment when Ralph and Alice were squabbling, and Ralph would come out with lines like, “One of these days, Alice, Pow! To the moon!” But just about every episode ended with Ralph telling Alice, “Baby, you’re the greatest.”

In our Old Testament reading, Moses has been talking God down from a “pow, to the moon, Alice!” moment with God’s people. The context of today’s reading from Exodus is the aftermath of last week’s reading from Exodus, when Aaron made a golden calf for the people to worship. At this point, the relationship between God and the chosen people is strained nearly to the breaking point, with Moses caught in the middle, between the sinful people and an angry God. Not a really comfy place to be. Certainly not a place I’d want to be. In last week’s reading, God had threatened to destroy the people and start over with Moses’ descendents, but Moses implored God not to destroy the people. While God relents, God also tells Moses that he would not accompany the people, lest God’s anger break out and destroy them. Once again, Moses implores God to go with them, and God once again relents. Reading the text is like watching a married couple or a pair of close friends after a really bad falling out, when they’re awkwardly trying to repair the relationship and aren’t quite sure what to say in order to get past the previous ugliness. Sometimes it takes longer than a half-hour sitcom to get to the “Baby, you’re the greatest” ending. But sometimes during that time of patching things up, we’re open to sharing ourselves at a much deeper level than we do when things are going smoothly.

Something of the sort happens in today’s reading. After Moses’ success in imploring God to turn away from God’s anger, and Moses feels like things are patched up at least a little bit, Moses becomes a bit bolder and asks God, “show me your glory.” Remember that God led the people of Israel, appearing as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. We’re told that Moses used to go to what was called the tent of meeting, located outside the camp. Moses would enter the tent, and the Lord would speak to Moses, and we’re told that the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Moses experienced God’s presence in a special way, and the Hebrew even uses the word “face” to describe God’s presence. As we sometimes talk about God’s strong arm as a metaphor to indicate God’s power, the Hebrew uses the word “face” in this passage as a metaphor to indicate presence. But even with all that, Moses wants more. “Show me your glory, Lord.” Let me see you, not just as appearances of cloud and fire, not just your “face” as in a metaphor for your presence, but as you truly are, in your fullness.

Moses may not fully have known what he was asking. We’re told that God in God’s holiness is not like us, but “other”. God is utterly holy, and we are sinful. Remember that Moses first saw God in the appearance of a bush that burned but was not consumed. Scripture tells us that “our God is a consuming fire.” To see God in all God’s glory would be more that Moses could stand, and still live.

So God offers to give Moses as much as Moses can handle without being destroyed. God says that all of God’s goodness – not his glory in all its fullness, but his goodness, would pass before Moses. God would share with Moses the divine name, and allow Moses to see God’s back after he had departed. For, God tells Moses, you cannot see my face and live. Moses hears the divine name, which amounts to hearing the divine identity: The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The name is related to the phrase “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.”

While our Exodus reading seems strange and far removed from our own life experience, this account may help us gain a deeper understanding of our relationship with God. We all yearn to draw closer to God. As Augustine wrote, God has made us for Godself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in God. In our yearning for closeness, we look for some tangible token of God’s presence, something we can see and hear and touch and even smell and taste – maybe even something we can use and control, like a lucky rabbit’s foot. This is why shrines of saints and relics of departed saints were so popular in the Middle Ages – as tangible evidence of someone else’s encounter with the divine – and why even today we read news accounts every now and then about someone who sees the face of Jesus or Mary in the bark of a tree or in a piece of toast or a sticky bun or whatever. In a very different way, but with similar intent, many Christians misuse Scripture to try to hold Jesus to some sort of rigid timetable for Jesus’ return. To put Jesus on a timetable is to try to control Jesus – some Christians even try to orchestrate events in world politics to try to accelerate the 2nd coming of Christ. But Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation and everywhere in between, is very clear that while God listens and responds to our prayers, God will not be controlled by human beings, will not be held to a timetable, will not be contained within the boundaries of human theology or human understanding. God’s graciousness in hearing our prayers should not be mistaken for our entitlement in expecting God to wait on our every demand.

Martin Luther contrasted what he called a theology of glory – a theology which Luther opposed, a theology which relied on displays of church pomp to point to God’s glory - with what Luther called the theology of the cross. The theology of the cross, which Luther embraced, said that God is known, not in human power, but in human weakness; not in our wealth, but in our poverty; not in our self-reliance, but in our brokenness and consequent reliance on God. Paul wrote that in Christ, the foolishness of God is wiser than all human wisdom, and the weakness of God, stronger than human strength. As we read in Philippians a few weeks ago, we worship a God who in Jesus Christ emptied himself of all glory for the sake of the salvation of humanity and all creation. Those times when we feel most desolate and forsaken may be the exact times when God is closest, carrying us when we’re too weak to stand on our own.

God allowed Moses to see God’s back, after God had passed by him. And that’s often how it is with us. We may not see God coming, but we may see him going. It is often in retrospect, looking back after we’ve gone through some life-changing experience, that we know God was somehow in the midst of that experience, that “surely the Lord was in this place, and I didn’t even know it.” Remember that the two disciples on the Emmaus road didn’t recognize Jesus until Jesus broke the bread – and as soon as the disciples recognized Jesus, Jesus disappeared, lest the two disciples try to hold onto the moment. Or we may remember the story of the risen Christ, on his encounter with Mary in the garden, telling her “don’t touch me.” Some writers interpret Jesus’ words as meaning “stop holding onto me” or “don’t try to hold onto me.” Our God is not static, not a statue or idol, but a God always in motion. So our task as Christians is to discern where God is, and meet God there.

Our Gospel reading gives us in a few sentences the contrast between human attempts to grab at glory and the elusive glory of God. Jesus used a trick question about taxes as a teaching moment. He asked whose image was on a coin, and of course it was that of the emperor. In a typical human attempt to strive for glory, the emperor had his image stamped on the coin so that people couldn’t even buy the necessities of life or sell or conduct business without encountering an image of the emperor. Meanwhile, God’s glory is hidden, not in the imperial glory of Rome, or in the arrogance and contempt of the religious establishment, but in the humble person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Theologians tell us that God is both imminent and transcendent. God’s imminence is in those personal, private or even congregational “holy moments” when we feel God’s presence so strongly we can just about touch it. We heard about some of Emanuel’s holy moments during our anniversary in September. But God in his transcendence is the God who created everything, who is beyond all earthly things, who is utterly unlike us, utterly other than us. God is both imminent and transcendent – far beyond our understanding, yet closer than our own breath. In a sense, God can even be seen as playful, always just beyond us, playfully teasing us with the most tantalizing hints of his presence, able to be felt and experienced, but not controlled.

I’ll mention it for probably the 100th or more time – at any rate, not for the first time, or the last – that our name, Emanuel, means God with us. We remember those holy moments when God was with us, our parents and grandparents, in years long past. But we cannot relegate God-with-us to the past, to memory. Emanuel doesn’t mean “God was with us” but “God is with us.” God’s name can mean “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.” Even in our weakness, God is with us and will be with us, for, as Paul wrote, God’s strength is made perfect or complete in human weakness. May we here at Emanuel, as a community and as individuals, continue to experience God’s goodness passing before us – and may we at Emanuel invite others to taste and see that the Lord is good. Amen.

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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. We're in the Bridesburg section of Philadelphia, on Fillmore St, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org