R
E L A T I O N S H I P S : L E A R N I
N G T O F L Y
A SERMON FOR THE 24TH
SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME—A
October 19, 2014
by William F. Thomas II
Exodus 33:12-23
12Moses
said to the Lord, “Look, you keep
telling me, ‘Bring this people up,’ and you haven’t let me know whom you will
send with me; and you keep saying, ‘I know you by name, and you have found
favor in my eyes.’
13“Now,
if I really have found favor in your eyes, teach me your ways so that I can
know that I really have found favor in your eyes, and show your people, this
great nation.”
14He
said, “You will go before me and I will give you rest.”
15He
said to him, “If you won’t go with us, don’t bring us up from this place. 16How can anyone tell that I have
found favor in your eyes, I and your people, unless you walk with us? Isn’t that what makes us different, I and
your people from every other people all over the world?”
17The
Lord said to Moses, “I will do
this thing also, the thing you have asked, because you have found favor in my
eyes, and I know you by name.”
18Moses
said to him, “Show me your glory.”
19He
said, “I will cause all my greatness to cross over before you, and I will
proclaim before you my name, ‘The Lord
who is gracious to whomever he is gracious and who has compassion on whomever
he has compassion.’ 20But you
cannot see my face. No human being can
see my face and live.”
21The
Lord said, “See, there is a place
with me, and I will set you on a rock. 22When
my glory passes before you, I will put you in a crevice in the rock, and you
will stand on that rock. 23I
will place my hand on you, and you will see my back, but my face cannot be
seen.”
“Show me your glory.”
Honestly, there may be no more
audacious request in Scripture. And the
context is pretty incredible. Moses and
God had just had their first fight. Just
days after that amazing spectacle at Mt. Sinai, where God had come down on the
mountain to introduce himself to the people he had delivered out of Egypt. The mountain blazed with fire and was
blanketed with dense smoke. The air
quaked with overwhelming sound of trumpet blasts. Then there was the voice of God: “I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD. YOU WILL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME. YOU WILL MAKE NO GRAVEN IMAGES…”
Then, just a few days later, the
people threw a bunch of golden jewelry into a fire, melted it down, and made a
golden calf to worship.
God’s reaction was rage: “Moses, stand over there, get out of the
blast zone. I’m going to annihilate
them! I’m going to start over with you,
and make you into a great nation.”
Pretty, it degenerated until Moses
was sounding like Laura Petrie from the old “Dick van Dyke Show”: YOU DON’T LOVE ME ANYMORE!
What he said was “You said I had
found favor in your eyes, and that you know me by name.” That means, “You said you loved me!”
If you really loved me, you wouldn’t
give up on your people.
And, like the long-suffering spouse
in a ‘60’s sitcom, God sighed and said, “Okay, okay, you win.
“But I won’t lead them like I did! If I’m that close for five minutes I’m liable
to lose my temper and somebody’s going to die!”
Moses pulled the L-bomb again: “If you loved me, you’d lead us
yourself. And if you don’t, just leave
us here to die!”
In the previous chapter, you can
read where Moses’ first reaction to God’s plan to kill all the people was, “If
you do, blot my name out of your book too!”
Then God said, “Oh, all right. I’ll do this too, because I really do love
you.”
That was when Moses blurted out, “Show
me your glory!”
The fight was over, they both had
calmed down. And, as so often happens
after such fights, when there is resolution, we realize how much we really love
each other! And, oddly, we’re closer
than we had been before!
God and Moses were in a
relationship. And every relationship is
a relationship.
If
you’re in close proximity with anyone for long enough, there is going to be
friction. Even if that person is God. And that’s not a bad thing, necessarily. One of the most influential Christians in my
life was fond of saying, “If you and I agree on everything, one of us in
unnecessary.”
When I was in seminary, the mother
of a friend gave me a book called Notes
on Love and Courage by Hugh Prather.
Some of it I found wonderful, one or two places I found
blasphemous. Some of it made no sense to
me at all, but, to my credit, I considered his age (in his 40’s) and mine
(mid-20’s), and I decided those parts might make a lot more sense a dozen or so
years down the road.
He talked about his marriage. He told the story of getting his lovely
fiancée into a car, driving across the state line into Oklahoma, and getting
married before a justice of the peace. Then he said if he hadn’t made it expensive,
difficult, and publicly humiliating to leave her, he wouldn’t have stayed. And if he hadn’t stayed, he would have missed
out not only on the love of his life (Isn’t it amazing how long it takes you to
figure out how well you married!), he would have missed out on some of the most
valuable growth experiences of his life.
Did you ever wake up and realize
your spouse has changed overnight? That,
suddenly, things she used to hate she now wants, things he adored yesterday he
finds boring today?
Mr. Prather said at those times,
usually he was pretty satisfied with himself.
He didn’t see that he NEEDED to change.
But she wanted him to.
And he wanted not just to stay
married, but to have the happiest marriage possible.
And, a little way down the road, he
realized that the change he never wanted or even considered had made him a
better man, a better husband, a better Christian
I tell you, Christianity is all
about RELATIONSHIP! Your relationship
with God, your relationship with others, and your relationship with
yourself. Sin is best defined as
anything which hurts any of those three relationships. Righteousness, God’s will, ultimately
maximizes all three of these!
That influential preacher I was
quoting earlier used to tell the story of how mama eagles teach eaglets to
fly. He said when it’s time for the
eaglets to fly, first mama eagle removes all the soft, comfortable padding from
the nest so the little birds are on hard, sharp branches and thorns, and
they’re uncomfortable and scared. If
they spoke English (Maybe they speak Eaglish!), they’d be crying, “Mommy! Did I do something wrong? Mommy!
Are you mad at me?”
When they’ve come to realize the
soft parts of the nest are NEVER coming back, she shows them how long and strong
her wings are, and puts her wings down at talon-level, until the first one gets
the idea, and climbs on. She takes off,
and shows the little guy how beautiful it is up there, the exhilaration of
flying, the wonder. She brings it back
to the nest. Then she takes it up
again. And again. Until, finally, one time, she shakes the
little guy off and lets it fall. She
catches it. Then she shakes it off
again. And catches it. And again, and again, and again until it
figures out what its wings are for.
She does this for each eaglet until
it can fly.
But its career as a flier begins
with discomfort.
From all my experience, from all my
study in the Bible and theology and Christian history, I can assure God has
never picked anybody up, taken them 20,000 feet into the air, and dropped
them. I frankly don’t believe God plans
all our discomforts, pains, and losses.
They just happen naturally in our world.
But I do believe God whispers in our ears (and it takes a lot of
practice to hear it), “I wish you didn’t have to hurt, but since this has
happened, may I teach you something? May
I help you grow stronger? May I show you
how to be more like me?”
The greatest laboratory for growing
Christian character is marriage and family.
The second best is Church. And
the growing edge is where we disagree. When
you cut and run, you short-circuit the process.
When you backbite and gossip, you throw a hand grenade into the machine.
But when you sit down, one-on-one,
with the person with whom you disagree, when you have THAT level of courage,
THAT kind of love, THAT commitment to your own growth, to your Church, to your
God, miracles can happen.
Moses and God calmed down a
while. And when the fight was over, what
followed is what often follows at the end of, shall we say, a lovers’
quarrel.
Moses said, “Show me your glory.”
That means, “I love you.”
That means, “I missed you.”
That means, “Draw me closer.”
What would happen in Watkinsville
United Methodist Church if we talked TO each other instead of ABOUT each
other? What would happen if our
relationships meant more to us than our egos?
Scary thought, right? Hard!
But what in life that is easy is
worth anything?
