Homily for Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, 11 October, 2020

Exodus 33:12-23
Psalm 99
I Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

Do you ever find yourself wondering why, through the ages, God uses such an array of unusual characters to work out God’s purposes?

I invite you this morning to imagine with me an icon of Moses.
His face is painted on the surface of a wooden panel about the size of a sheet of typing paper.
Icons are renderings of figures or events. They’ve been revered in Eastern Orthodox tradition for centuries. They’re pictures, yes, but much more. They invite us to focus our thoughts deeply on the person or event represented much as we would when studying a passage of scripture.

We all know the story of Moses, fished out of the river by the daughter of the Pharaoh and raised as her adopted son.

We know nothing of his childhood or young manhood. Did he ever wonder who he really was?

What we do know is that the direction of his life changed forever the day he witnesses an Egyptian overseer brutally beating a Hebrew slave.

It’s the first radical turning point in Moses’s life.

Something “snaps” inside him. He flies into a rage, kills the overseer and buries the body in the sand. But when he realizes that there is a witness, he flees, winding up in the “outback” of the land of the Midianites. There he marries one of the daughters of the local priest and goes to work for his father-in-law tending sheep.

And it’s there the second turning point in Moses’s life occurs: he meets YHWH, the Holy One who speaks to him from a bush that appears to be on fire and gives him the “call” that will shape the rest of his life:

“So come”, the voice invites “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:10)

“What?”

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Moses protests.

YHWH’s response?
“I will be with you………” (Exodus 3:11,12)

And so begins a kind of “friendship” between Moses and YHWH. If the word “friendship” bothers you, it’s at least an ongoing conversation as intimate and personal as any “face to face” relationship we can imagine.

And this is the time Moses really begins to understand who he really is!

Underneath all the aristocratic polish and apparent self-assurance of the
“Egyptian” Moses is a shy, even insecure, Hebrew man whose speech is halting who is prone to painful self-doubt, periods of despondency as well as periodic outbursts of rage!

In other words, not very unlike you and me!

None the less……. he’s given this seemingly impossible task. He must want it “just to go away”!

Before proceeding, let’s turn aside a minute and fill in the context of the passage we read a few minutes ago: Moses has gone up the mountain of God where the Holy One “gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone written by the finger of God.” (31:18).

That conversation must have been a long one and the people waiting at the base of the mountain grow impatient: “Come”, they request of Moses’s assistant Aaron, “make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him”. (32:1)
So Aaron, fashions the infamous “golden calf”, and the people begin to worship it and then they decide to throw a big party!

And that is a very foolish and a doomed decision!!
Because…….just as the party really gets buzzing, Moses appears!

He’s carrying the tablets in his arms!
Seeing what is going on he throws the tablets down, smashing them to bits!
Then, surely with great sorrow and disappointment, he pronounces judgement and punishment. He smashes the golden calf, grinds it into powder, mixes it with water and makes the people drink it!

But, in his heartbreak, he turns again to YHWH and pours out his heart:

“See, you have said to me, ‘bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said. ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now, if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight.” (33:13)

Why look so closely at this “icon”?

Because this strong but flawed man who is haunted by doubts yet involved in a relationship with the Holy One so intimate and trusting that he is able to move through difficulties and challenges with a strength, determination and wisdom far beyond his nature has much to teach us!

The key?

“Show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight.”

And, as in the past, the answer comes: “My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.” (33:14)

And Moses, so overcome by that assurance, makes a daring and outrageous request, “Show me your glory, I pray!”

YHWH grants that request! Hides him in a cleft of a great rock covers him with his hand and all the Glory of the Holy One, passes by, allowing Moses only to see his back.

But that’s enough for Moses!

So, what’s emerging in your mind now as you contemplate the icon?

Do your thoughts lead you to yearn for something like that close “friendship” with The Holy One?

Do you long for answers and reassurance in the face of the questions and emotions that swirl around in these tumultuous days and make us painfully aware that we, too, are frightened, confused, prone even to anger?

Do you get flustered and anxious when someone asks you to do something which sounds like it’s beyond your ability or when someone asks you about your faith? Do you start making excuses and begin to mumble when it comes to talking about Jesus?

Keep the image of the icon in your mind and meditate on the man Moses.

Can you then pray with him, “Lord, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight?”

The promised Holy Spirit will guide you!

Professor Ellen Davis recounts an old rabbinic story[1]. It relates Moses’s request of God to allow him to sit in the classroom of Akiva, the great Talmudic scholar. Afterward, Moses asks, “Lord, you’ve made a terrible mistake. If you could create a brilliant mind like that, you should never have entrusted the treasure of Torah to me. Akiva understands your commandments much better that I do……you could have chosen a scholar like Akiva, Lord, to be your prophet. Why did you ever pick an ignorant man like me?”
And God shrugged and said, “Shhhhh, Moses – I wanted it that way.”

Amen!

 

[1] Davis, Ellen, Preaching the Luminous Word, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2016, 38