Glory and Shadow

October 19^th, 2014            “Glory and Shadow”     Rev. Heather Jepsen

Exodus 33:12-23

          Our journey with Moses and the people of Israel continues this week.  After many Sundays of difficult readings, we finally arrive at something that we can be comfortable with.  Finally in this morning’s passage we find the God of grace and mercy that we have been looking for for so long.

          Our reading happens right after the actions of last Sunday.  Moses came down the mountain with the 10 commandments carved in stone only to find the people having a loud and ruckus festival centered around a golden calf.  Both God and Moses were extremely angry and the people of Israel suffered greatly for their sin. 

          At the beginning of chapter 33, God is ready to abandon the whole project.  God tells Moses to take the people on into the Promised Land but that God will not be with them.  God is still so angry that God cannot stand the presence of the people of Israel.  God declares, “I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” 

          Once again Moses pleads with God on behalf of the people.  Moses places an ultimatum before the Lord.  If the presence of God will not go with the people, then Moses refuses to lead the people into the Promised Land.  It is a wonderful theological issue.  Without the presence of God, the people of Israel are nothing.  Without the sign of God within their midst they are simply a rag tag band of strangers.  The presence of God is integral to their identity and Moses refuses to take “no” for an answer.

          When God relents and agrees to send his presence out with the people of Israel, Moses takes the opportunity to ask for one more thing.  To the Lord, Moses says, “Show me your glory, I pray.”  It’s a bold request, as bold as anyone has been with God this far along in the story of humanity.  And the amazing thing, the wonderful thing, is that God agrees; and the glory of the Lord passes before the man Moses.

          After months of traveling with the people of Israel, we finally find a God we can know and love.  It has been a long journey for us through Exodus and we have faced many a negative portrayal of the God we worship.  We have been challenged with the killing of the innocents at Passover, and we have been challenged with the anger and vengeance of God that has been a part of most of our readings.  We have struggled to find a God that we would want to worship, and things came to a head last week when we began to wonder if we even knew this God at all.  Perhaps the God of love and grace was only a golden calf we had fashioned for ourselves.  But no, that can’t be the case.  This morning we find the God we have been looking for.  This morning we find the God of love, the God of grace, and the gentle God of mercy.

          In our series of readings, Moses appears to be closer to God than anyone.  In fact, in the whole of scripture, one could argue that no one except for God’s own son Jesus, has been closer to the Lord than Moses was.  We read earlier in this chapter that “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.”  No one is closer to God than Moses, and yet Moses desires even more from the Lord.  Moses asks for even more closeness, even more familiarity; Moses asks to see the actual face of God.

          God agrees, but with certain stipulations.  God will make the whole of God’s goodness pass before Moses, and God will say God’s name aloud, but Moses must remain at some distance, he must be protected, and he may only see the “back” of the Lord.  For as God says, “no one shall see me and live.”  Here we come up against one of the great dilemmas of our faith: although God is familiar and near to us, God is also profoundly other.  God is both very intimate with the character of Moses, as well as very distant.  God is presented in anthropomorphic terms, especially here as the hand of God will shield Moses from God’s power.  But God is also complete otherness, as the power of God’s glory and goodness will be what passes by.

          This is one of the main difficulties with our faith.  As people, we struggle with this duality in our relationship with God.  We long to know God as fully as possible and to be ourselves fully known.  We long for God to say things to us like God says to Moses, “You have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”  And sometimes we are gifted like Moses, and we experience a sense of that presence.  But often we only experience that sense of otherness, that unknowable side of God.

          In fact, I think it is that shadow side that we have been bumping up against for a few months now.  And I say shadow not in the sense of evil darkness, but rather in the sense of a place where the sun does not penetrate, a darkness of mystery that remains unknown.  I am thinking of something like the far side or the dark side of the moon.  In our experience with God, there is always a part of God that we can never know.  We have been bumping up against that profound otherness, that shadow side of God, all throughout these readings from Exodus.  That is why we have been so uncomfortable. 

As we have read these strange stories, we have confronted an image of God that we are less familiar with.  The jealous God of punishment, the God of angry wrath and fire, the God who smites people for the sins of their fathers, the God who condones murder in the name of justice; all of these are the shadow side of the God we preach most Sundays.  These shadow stories of God are no less real than the stories we love to tell.  It has been a challenge for us to hold these two things together, as two sides of the God we know and love.

I might be digging myself into a big hole here, but I think the text agrees with me.  God says not that God’s whole self will pass before Moses, but only God’s goodness.  “I will make all my goodness pass before you.”  The light and love of God is what will pass before Moses, not the shadow side of wrath and anger. 

And the lovingness of God treats Moses gently, as a mother would.  While the glory passes by, God places Moses in a cleft in the rock so that Moses can hide.  God will cover Moses with God’s hand until the glory has passed, and then Moses will be permitted to see the back of God’s glory from a protected distance.  It is such a wonderful story, such a loving gesture, such a needed balm in our wilderness wandering.

This act of love is a high point in the narrative of God and Moses.  After the glory passes by, God agrees to restore covenant with the people.  You may remember from last week that, in his anger, Moses broke the tablets that the 10 commandments were written on.  Now God commands Moses to begin again, to carve two new tablets from stone, and to prepare to restore the covenant.  This is the grace and love we have been looking for.  This is the God of second chances that we so desperately want and need.

And so this week we consider the two sides of our God: the God of glory, who passes by with radiant, loving care; and the God of shadow who demands justice and obedience and who uses fear as a motivator.  Both of these are very real pictures of God that we can draw from these stories in Exodus.  While we are certainly more comfortable with the God of glory and goodness, we would do well to remember that the shadow side of God’s wrath exists as well.

I don’t think it is such a stretch to consider God in this fashion.  We tell stories about the fact that we are made in God’s image, and the truth is that we each have a shadow side in our own hearts as well.  My role as a mother is what immediately springs to my mind.  Most of the time, I am a gentle and loving presence.  Like God in the story I use my hand to shield my children from a world that would harm them.  But, push me too far and suddenly I can become a mother who asks for strict obedience and demands punishment when things get out of hand.  There are moments when I want to run away and forget it all.  And yet I always return to my children in love.

Is God so different?  Loving the Israelites one minute and then storming off in a huff the next, only to return with love and a renewal of covenant.  The prophet Isaiah reminds us that the Lord cannot forget the people of Israel any more than a mother can forget her nursing child.  Though God may feel wrath and anger at our sin, God always returns to us in love and grace.

Of course, that movement of love and grace is epitomized in the person of Jesus Christ.  In the fullness of time, God sends God’s son to reach out to us again, to show us the ways of love and justice, and to offer us a path by which we may draw closer to God.  I am sure you are familiar with that wonderful old hymn “Rock of Ages” that combines this story about Moses with the miracle of salvation through Jesus Christ.  In the hymn author Augusts Toplady compares the forgiveness through Christ to the cleft in the rock that shields Moses from the glory of God.  It is through Christ that we may hide in safety, and it is only through Christ that we may approach our Lord.

Today let us give thanks for this God that we are growing more familiar with.  The God of glory and goodness who draws near to us in love and protection; as well as the shadowier side of God which calls us to honest repentance and obedience.  May we honor and recognize the whole of the God that we worship this day; glory and shadow.  Amen.