Loading...Moses of mythic proportions!
•the baby saved from Pharaoh’s infanticide by midwives, mother, and sister;
•the young man who killed the Egyptian overseer (a brute!);
•the shepherd who encountered the Divine YHWH in the bush that burned but was not consumed;
•the simple man who had the audacity to go to Pharaoh to demand, “Let my people go!”
This stuttering, insecure middle child!
He’s the one who leads the band of refugees and escapees
through the wilderness.
He mediates between God and the people
through hunger, thirst, and rebellion (even his own).
Then the whole group stops at a mountain in the wilderness and makes camp there.
God descends to the mountain
(we know this through the smoke, clouds, fire, and trumpet blasts),
and Moses, this mythical, legendary person
who has had many encounters with God,
goes up the mountain to hang out with God.
He’s gone a really long time – so long, in fact, that the people sort of forget what’s going on and what they’re waiting on and they distract themselves by making a calf out of gold – yet when he comes back down, he doesn’t seem much different.
Cranky. Angry. Throwing some flat stone pieces around.
But not really different.
Of course, it had been a long time
and people seem to have forgotten since they distracted themselves
with the making and worshiping of the golden calf.
After angry words and thrown stone tablets,
Moses is called back up the mountain.
And he is forever changed by the experience.
His face glows and people are in awe of (fear?) him because of that.
(After all, they’ve been told that anyone who encounters God face to face and looks upon God will die. And yet, Moses does not. Instead, he glows, so much so that he must wear a veil across his face.)
This encounter with God and the “glory of God”
is more than any other earthly experience.
Not surprisingly, there are so many questions:
What happened?
Who said what to whom?
What is the “glory of the Lord” anyway?
We have precious little to go on –
Moses’ own reaction,
the peoples’ reaction,
our own encounters with God,
other stories in the Bible.
Other stories in scripture such as the Transfiguration story
when Jesus and three of his friends/disciples
went up the mountain to pray.
While there,
there was light, smoke, and an otherworldly kind of moment.
Peter, James, and john saw this glory:
the changed appearance Moses and Elijah
dazzling white clothes a cloud that overshadowed
And they heard a voice:
“This is my Son, the chosen; listen to him.”
All of this gives us clues to the “glory of God”.
This like power
authority
divinity
awesomeness
This is God who is creating the world and all that is in it.
This is God who claims Jesus,
empowers him
commissions him for work in the world
and who instructs disciples to listen to him.
But, that’s not all there is with God and the “glory of God”.
I’ve asked groups of people – members of churches I’ve served in a Bible study group – “what do you think Moses and God talked about during their tete a tete?”
We often jump quickly to answers about God showing
mighty power, omnipotence, judgment, even anger.
But what about the possibility that God and Moses (God and Jesus) spent time focused on
compassion,
care,
forgiveness (even of the most despised actions and words – after all God forgave the people after the calf incident, and after all their murmuring and complaining)
reconciliation
repaired relationships
love, the bottomless, unending, unearned variety.
~~~~~~~
These encounters with God
show us that there’s more to God than we might first notice.
The disciples have been with Jesus and heard him teach and preach;
they’ve seen him heal and bring wholeness.
They go to a mountain to pray
and they see another side to Jesus.
This isn’t just some healer, teacher, and prophet!
This is God’s very self – this is the Divine one,
the face of God which we see each and every day among us!!
But this face of God is not just about smoke, clouds, dazzling clothes, and changed visage,
because God in Jesus comes down the mountain
and immediately encounters people in need.
Despite some irritation, Jesus gets right to work.
The every day service and ministry goes on-- healing a boy with a demon –
but now with the express goal of showing
the fullness of God everywhere:
the power and divinity and awesomeness AND
the service, compassion, and giving of self that culminates on the other mountaintop experience at Golgotha.
The glory of God in all of that it is
is shown to disciples then and now.
God’s power is not just about trumpets and clouds,
but in God walking with us in the high points and low points –
the mountaintop high and valleys of despair.
God’s glory doesn’t just show up for a few select people who have to then hide it behind a veil of cloth or behind silence,
but God’s glory is the presence of God with you
even when you feel most alone, abandoned, or unworthy.
The glory of God is the hope that you’re invited to live in,
a hope that doesn’t just reach out to you to give you life,
but hope that sends you to reflect that light and hope to others,
to serve others in the every day stuff of the world,
and to bring reconciliation, healing, and well-being
which IS the hope and glory of God
transforming the world.
Amen
