God With Us

Scriptures:       Exodus 33:12-23; I Thessalonians 1:1-10;

Matthew 22:15-22

God With Us

Our reading from Exodus brings us a picture of Moses and God at a very tense moment.  Moses has just come down from Mt. Sinai, having received the law from God, written on stone tablets, to find that his brother Aaron has led the people into making a golden calf for the people to worship.  Moses freaks out, throwing down the stone tablets on which the law was written.  God is every bit as angry, and threatens to wipe the people out and make of Moses a great nation, starting over again to form a new chosen people from the line of Moses.  Moses intercedes with God on behalf of the people, appealing to God’s sense of honor, saying to God, “What will the people of Egypt think if they see that you brought them out of the desert only to kill them.”  So God calms down…..a little….but tells Moses, “ok, you go ahead and lead them to the promised land, and I’ll send an angel to go with you, but I won’t go with you, because if I do I’ll just get angry again and wipe them out, for they are a stubborn people.”  It’s one of those moments with which the parents in our congregation will be familiar, when your kids mess up big time, and though you love them, for a split second you feel like strangling them…but of course you don’t, because you love them.  At this point, the dialogue between Moses and God is sounds almost like the bickering between a married couple, as God starts referring to the Israelites as the people Moses led out of Egypt, putting the responsibility on Moses, while Moses in effect says to God, “Oh no you don’t, it was your big idea to have me lead them out of Egypt.”; God saying to Moses, “they’re your people; I wash my hands of them” and Moses saying to God, “No, we’re your people, you’re stuck with us.” Again, it’s like when the kids mess up, and the parents point fingers at each other, each saying, “they’re taking after your side of the family.”

And so God and Moses go back and forth some more, and the conversation finally calms down, and then the tone of the conversations shifts, sounding like that of a married couple trying to make up after a really bad fight.  Moses says to God, “I don’t know who this angel is that you say you’ll send with me.  If I’ve found favor in your sight, show me your ways.”  And God relents and says, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”  And now Moses is pleading, “If your presence will not go, don’t carry us up from here.”  If you won’t go with us, God, we’re not going any further, not one footstep.  And God says, “You have found favor in my sight, and I’ll do just what you ask.” 

And then the conversation gets a little weird:  Moses says, “Show me your glory.”  And God responds by saying he will allow his goodness to pass before Moses, and tell Moses his name – even a bigger deal in that culture than in our own, because to know the name of God meant to know the character of God - and Moses will be able to see God’s back, but not his face, because Moses would not be able to see God’s face and live.

All of this sounds a bit remote from our experience, but it has to do with us as individuals, and has to do with us as the gathered congregation of Emanuel Church.  For starters, this is a story in which Moses repeatedly implores God, “please be with us” – and the name of our church – Emanuel – means, God with us.  Theologians speak of God both as transcendent – God far off, God beyond our knowledge and understanding, God above us and beyond us – and as imminent – God among us, God within us, God closer than our breathing. 

God with us – what does that mean?  It’s trust that, over the 153 years of this church’s ministry here in Bridesburg, God has been in our midst, that our worship is to God’s glory and our ministry is a small part of God’s mission in the world.  Our church was founded at the start of the American civil war, and as our country has been through some really difficult times – a flu epidemic in the early 1900’s, two world wars and a depression, the Cold War, the Vietnam war, and our country’s involvement in various conflicts in the Middle East from the early 1990’s to this day – Emanuel Church’s ministries have continued, because God is in our midst. Our congregation has also been through ups and downs – started with not that many people and all of $9 in the bank, being led by a succession of pastors, some beloved and some not so much, with various programs and ministries beginning and ending over that time, with the care of the cemetery a constant concern, with periodically having to deal with vandalism to the building – and God has been with us through that too.   I’m sure at various points those pastors had to deal with discontent  among individuals and groups within the congregation, and on occasion these pastors likely felt like Moses, about to be stoned by his people.  And our individual members through the years have been impacted by all of this, along with their own joys and sorrows – and God has been with them.   Just as the Israelites spent time in the wilderness, refreshed occasionally by an oasis, Emanuel Church has continued for over 150 years – some of those years a really hard slog, with periodic moments of celebration in which it could be said that “Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.”

There are some things that the words “God with us” do not mean.  They do not mean “God with us and only us” or “God with us and with nobody else.”  We are a community of the faithful, but hardly the only one.  Bridesburg, small as it is, has lots of churches.  God is with them as well, and each of those congregations has their own story of how God has walked with them through good times and bad.  Similarly, we have sisters and brothers around the world, people of faith, and God is with them, as with us.

The words “God with us” also do not mean that God will unconditionally bless everything we do, whether it’s faithful to God or not.  Through history, nations and political parties have claimed God’s blessing on their cause.  During World War I, German soldiers had “Gott mit uns” – God with us – inscribed on their helmets.  During World War II, in the time of Hitler and the Nazis, the Wehrmacht had “Gott mit uns” inscribed on their belt buckles – but no matter what the Nazis claimed, it is clear that God was not with them, indeed that their evil program was entirely opposed to God’s will and purpose.  “God with us” is to some extent a two way street – for God to be with us, we must be with God, looking and listening to discern where God is leading us, and then following.  If God is leading us forward but we refuse to follow and insist on staying where we are, God’s plans will go forward by other means, but we will be left in the dust unless and until we repent.

That odd story about God allowing his goodness to pass in front of Moses and God telling Moses his name – again, God’s name related to God’s character – but only allowing Moses to see his back reminds us that, no matter how close we feel to God, God is still beyond us, beyond our capacity to fully understand and experience.  God wants our love, but also our awe, our deep respect.   I think some churches and some Christians forget this aspect of God, feeling a little overly entitled, wanting to think of God as their buddy, on their level, without remembering that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways.  Kevin Smith’s 1999 movie Dogma, with George Carlin playing a Roman Catholic cardinal advocating that churches take down their crucifixes and replace them with figures of what he called Buddy Jesus, parodied this tendency to bring God down to our level on our own terms.  It’s easy to forget that the God of whom we sing “what a friend we have in Jesus” is the God of whom it is written in the OT book of Deuteronomy and the NT book of Hebrews that “thy God is a consuming fire.”   And so God allowed Moses to see God’s back, but not God’s face, for, God says, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.”

That phrase – “the face of God”.  It recurs several times – when Jacob wrestled with the angel, and afterward said, “I have seen the face of God, and yet my life is preserved” in other words, I saw the face of God and lived to tell about it.  He uses that phrase when he meets his long-estranged brother Esau, and sees that Esau is gracious – “to see your face is like seeing the face of God.”  Earlier in Exodus, we’re told that Moses went into the tent of meeting, and the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.  And then in today’s reading, we’re told Moses cannot see the face of God and live.  Scripture doesn’t give us any easy answers…in fact, I almost think the text is teasing us a bit, playing with us, asking us to wrestle with just how closely and powerfully we can experience God.  And I think this is intentional.  When we’re dealing with God, we’re dealing with holy mystery….we know God enough to experience God, but not enough to control God.   Remember that the unpronounceable name of God that Moses heard is interpreted as “I am what I am” or “I will be what I will be” – that is to say, our liturgies and our hymns and our prayers are intended to worship and glorify God, but not to control God – God is what God is and God will be what God will be, and God will not be controlled.  In our relationship with God, we are always the junior partner.  As Christians, we experience God most strongly through Jesus Christ – also referred to as God with us – who we experience in reading the Scriptures – especially the Gospels – through prayer, through the water of baptism, through the sharing of communion bread and wine, through fellowship with other believers.  

So Moses experience God’s glory after God had passed by.  And isn’t that often how we experience God’s glory.  While we’re in the middle of something, especially in the middle of a messy or scary situation, we don’t always recognize God’s hand in the situation.  Often it’s only in retrospect, when we look back on something, when the storm has passed and we’re looking at it in the rear-view mirror, that we can see that it was God who carried us through, and we can sing, “Through it all, through it all, I learned to trust in Jesus, I learned to trust in God, through it all, through it all, I learned to depend upon God’s word.”

God said to Moses, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”  May Emanuel – God with us – continue to be with Emanuel Church in our continued pilgrimage, and where Emanuel – God with us - leads, may we follow.   Amen.