Last week, Rev. Piazza shared with us the experience of the wilderness,
that place that the Hebrew people spent during the time between their
captivity in Egypt and the Promised Land. And Rev. Piazza also
reminded us that the wilderness, the desert, the tough and barren and
dry times, is also a spiritual place, a spiritual state of being—and I don’t
think I’ve met anyone who hasn’t gone through a period where they felt
they were lost, emotionally or spiritually—I know a woman whose
personal experience in the desert lasted almost 30 years—she couldn’t
seem to make contact with God for 3 decades until, until, like the people
of Israel she finally found herself at the edge of the desert, looking at the
Promised Land for the first time in many years.
And of course, as Rev. Piazza pointed out last week, there are some
things you can only learn in the desert, one lesson being that slavery is
more than a matter of chains and masters—the people of Israel brought
with them a slavery of spirit and the only way to break those chains was
in to be forged into a new people in the spiritual heat of the desert.
(POWERPOINT: SLAVERY—WILDERNESS—PROMISED LAND) Again,
as Michael said last week, it was that long wilderness in the desert, the
time between slavery and the Promised Land, it was during that time God
that worked to get the values of Egypt out of the people of Israel. The
old patterns had to be burned away underneath that hot desert sun, and
in the heat of that place, sanctification took place, the process of
becoming more and more like God, and the purging away of those self-
destructive beliefs about themselves, it was only going to happen in a
place where God could get their attention—and that was the desert;
indeed, for many of us, the spiritual and emotional deserts have been
the places where God our attention as well.
But Israel listened, they listened, sometimes they listened well,
sometimes they listened poorly, but they listened, and in the end they
came to know that the God who had freed them from the land Egypt was
going to be the One who led them out this Wilderness. Out of the long
and complicated exodus from Egypt, this time between Slavery and the
promised land, out of this experience came trust—trust in the God who
had delivered them out of Egypt, trust in the God who was even now,
even in this desert, in the wilderness, this God was going to be there for
them, and was going to make sure, one way or another, that they would
get to the Promised Land. Jesus got it too, that trust, when he went into
the desert for 40 days, rather than the 40 years that the people of Israel,
and he was tested, he pushed to the limit, and he was found to be ready
for the next work before him, which was to tell the Good News of the
Gospel
But let’s face it—the wilderness is a tough place to learn trust—in fact, it
is the toughest place, AND, moreover it also the place that most us tend
to stumble on our way to learning that the most valuable lesson that the
desert alone can teach us—that God is trustworthy and that God really
will never, never let us go, even when we’re the ones struggling to free
ourselves from God’s gentle hand, oddly enough. The last 20 or so
chapters of Exodus really tells that story, the difficult story of how trust
happens with God, how trust happens between a people, Israel, and
God, this Yahweh who has rescued them the hands of their oppressors.
This last half of Exodus is just a great reminder that trust between
humans and God doesn’t come easy—for us or maybe even for God, to
be honest.
Let me share with you a little of the theology of Exodus this evening, the
hints of who God is, that we find in the last half of Exodus, so that we
maybe we can see how trust comes about between humans and God,
between the mortal and the divine. But we need to know where we are in
the story—and the story for us begins in chapter 19 of Exodus. The
previous 18 chapters have seen the people of Israel deal with this new
guy among them named Moses, who confronted the Pharaoh, who then
led the people through the Red Sea after a series of plagues that
eventually terrified the Pharaoh and Egypt. But, as we learned last week
in chapters 14-17, almost immediately the people started complaining
and doubting—slavery in Egypt looked better than this nightmare in the
desert, in the wilderness. And over and over again, God gives them
what they need to survive—clean water, food to eat, victory over their
enemies. And yet, there remains this lack of trust of God by the people
of Israel, and so God must find a new way of being in relationship with
these people, whom God brought them out of Egypt, a people who were
glad to be free, but don’t know what freedom really means, a people who
don’t quite trust the God who rescues them from slavery.
And the first thing God does in chapter 19 is to bring them to a place, to
a mountain, to Mt. Sinai. Its interesting here because the implication in
the text is that God is on that mountain, as if this place was a residing
place for God, a home for God. Now, for us, in the modern time, our
ideas about God don’t usually include the idea of God having a place to
say, or at least not a physical place to stay. We’re going also have to
deal with that issue in a few minutes with this idea of the tabernacle, but I
just want to briefly share with you why I think the Biblical text has Moses
climbing a mountain to greet the God of the universe, the God who has
brought them out of Egypt. More than anything, when the Bible puts
God into a place, a mountain or a tabernacle, or a temple, I don’t think
the Biblical writers really think that God is simply located in that one
space—actually, I think they are trying to make the point that God meets
us in places and spaces that we can fathom, that we can understand,
that we can locate in the emotional and spiritual map of our lives. You
know, sometimes people talk as if the church building is God’s home, we
sometimes talk about a church building as the “house of God.” But no
one really thinks that God lives here, like I live in my apartment—the
point is that when we use language that places God in specific locations,
we really are expressing our need to locate the God in the universe—
and the great thing about it is that God allows God’s own self to be
located, to be placed, for our sake. I mean, a God who is everywhere is
hard to find, but a God who is in a place, a space, that is a gift to us from
the Divine One—it God’s effort to meet us in ways that we can “get”. It is
a great gift, and it begins in this moment, when the people of Israel go to
the mountain to find out how to be in relationship with this God who has
brought them out of Egypt.
And so God is on that mountain, giving to Moses the keys to trust, the
keys to what it means to be in relationship with God. And its interesting
what God does here—God gives the people of Israel the 10
commandments, the basis of all the spiritual and social life of this new
nation that God has given birth to. Now, its interesting that as God is
working out this new relationship with this newly freed people, God doesn’
t give them the expected stuff—or at least expected in my eyes. If I was
working out a new relationship with someone, one of the things I would
probably do—in my better moments—is to discuss what kind of
relationship we were having—like, are we dating other people? How
often do we want to communicate? Where do you see this heading?
How should we be with each other? All those kind of things you work out
during different stages of the relationship
Now, having said that, I am not saying I always live up to that ideal of
having a healthy conversation with a potential partner a few months into
our dating, but you know…I’m trying! But what’s interesting here is that
the way God decides to get the people of Israel to trust the One who
brought them out of Egypt is not to lay down a bunch of rules about how
to be in relationship with God—actually, what God gives them is a bunch
of commandments on how to be with each other. Let me say that again—
God begins the relationship with these newly freed people by telling them
to live their lives together in a trustful way—don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t
murder, take a day off to rest, don’t want what isn’t yours, give your
parents respect. At the most, only two of the 10 commandments really
have anything to do with the people’s direct relationship with God: don’t
use my name recklessly, and don’t make the mistake of thinking that a
thing, an object, is me—don’t make idols. Otherwise, God’s formula for
this new trusting relationship with the people of Israel starts with God
commanding the people of Israel to do the right thing by EACH OTHER,
rather than doing the right BY GOD.
Isn’t that odd? How weird God chose to start this new relationship with
the people of Israel is to ask them to trust each other, to tell them to do
right and ethical by each other. The basis, the very foundation of Israel’
relationship with God is found in these 10 commandments—and 8 of
them don’t have anything directly to do with God. Isn’t that really the
same thing Jesus taught hundreds of years later in the Gospels—the
sum of the law can be found in two commands—love God with all your
heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. (Luke 10:25-
28). If we want to trust God and be trusted by God, we have to trust
each other and do right thing by each other—it’s an odd way to begin a
relationship—it’s like me saying to my partner, “the way you can love me
most beautifully is to love other people and do the right thing by them.”
But I think it should say something to us—in some ways, it’s a reminder
to us that we really are in a network of relationships, and my
relationships with you really does have something to do with my
relationship with God—in fact, I can’t really have the kind of relationship I
want with you if I am not doing the right thing by others. It is what God is
asking Israel to do—be ethical, treat each other right, and your
relationship with God will work, trust is surely to form.
So the next thing that happens in Exodus, from chapters 21-31, the next
10 chapters is that more laws are given to the people of Israel—some of
the 10 commandments are expanded, some new things are added to the
mix, like laws around slavery, and making ritual offerings, and what
annual religious festivals the people must keep. And Moses goes back
to the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights in chapter 24, in the midst of
these 10 chapters and he gets even more details about how the people
will be in relationship with this God who has brought them out of Egypt, of
how God and Israel will come to trust each other through the way they
treat each other—God and humans—and how humans treat other
humans. The relationship between God and the people of Israel, the
vertical relationship, the relationship between the God on the mountain
and the people of Israel at the base of the mountain is forever tied up
with the ways humans deal with each other, the horizontal relationship.
But that is not say that there are not challenges, direct challenges to
Israel’s direct relationship with God. You know, a few minutes ago, I
mentioned that 8 of the 10 commandments had to do with ethical
relationships between humans, but the first great challenge to this new
relationship of trust between Israel and God is found in those 2 other
commandments, in which God asks Israel to do right by God-don’t make
images of me that aren’t real, and take me seriously, even to the point of
respecting the name that I have given you. While Moses is on the
mountain, the people just get impatient in chapter 32, and they wonder
what happened to him, what happened to Moses on that mountain and
so something is sent into motion that begins to break the trust between
God and Israel.
“Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, this
man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what
has become of him.” That is what the people of Israel say, and then you
can hear God’s anger, God’s pain, God broken heart, when God almost
replies—“I brought them out of Egypt, and now they want to credit to
some THING, something they made out of their own hands, instead
acknowledging me, the one who has had actually MADE THEM with my
own hands.” But Moses pleads with God, and he begs God not destroy
those whom God has just rescued from the desert. Moses knows that the
people have broken the delicate fiber of trust between God and Israel,
and he does everything in his power to mediate this broken relationship—
in fact he even reminds God about God’s Promise to multiply Abraham’s
descendants—he even tries to shame God and to play on God’s sense
of honor—“if you destroy Israel, you will have broken your promise to
Abraham and Sarah,” that is is Moses implication in verses (32:)11-13.
And the Scripture says that God changed God’s mind about destroying
Israel—a crisis is averted, the Promise to Abraham and Sarah’s
descendants’ remains intact, and the people are spared early on in their
relationship with God. The trust may be broken, but the covenant,
fragile and strained, the covenant remains intact. In chapter 34, God
renews the covenant, God states God’s own commitment to be trust
despite the painful moments only chapters earlier—this is a God who
continues to trust the people, to believe in them when they are not
worthy of that belief.
What happens next, I think is extraordinary, really. It really capture the
essence of Exodus, more than anything else, I think, but I suspect most
of us are not even really aware of it. We’ve had this drama—we’ve
watched the people escape from Egypt, we’ve seen them complain
against God in the desert, we see them receiving the 10 commandments,
and then we seem them betray the God who rescued them…and then
this most incredible of moments happens—God comes off the mountain,
God says “my home is among the people”, and God commands the
people to make a place for this God to reside, to make a home for this
God who has decided to come off the mountain, off the place that seems
distant, and far away and “other.” Think about this: God’s reaction to
betrayal, to hurt feelings, to breaking down of the trust between God and
Israel, is not to run, its not to hide, its not to find an even higher
mountain to hang out at the top of. God’s reaction to Israel’s betrayal is
to come off the mountain, and to be with the people who have betrayed
God, these people who only days earlier chose to follow after an idol, a
thing, rather than One who rescued them from slavery in Egypt.
There is a sense that the whole idea of Tabernacle just seems…well,
incredible to us, to say the least. Here is this tent that is elaborately
dictated by God, in chapters 25-31, 35-40—eleven excruciating chapters
of details about everything, about where the Ark of Covenant, with its
tablets containing the 10 commandments, to its altars and its lamp
stands. This tent would be the place God resides in as the people travel
the desert. It just seems so…I don’t know, silly. God’s mobile home?!?!
But its not silly, really. I mean, do we really believe God lived in that
tent? No, probably not. But I tell you: this is one of those moments that
if we get lost in the details, the detailed description of what tabernacle
looked like, where this or that was placed, then we would have missed
the whole point of tabernacle itself: its not the tent that is the point, but
the God who has come off the mountain, that God that Moses climbed
UP the mountain, Mount Sinai, to greet—the God who is out there, the
God who is up there…this God has come down to be among us, and has
made a home among us, a place with the people. There will be no more
climbing of mountains to find God—God will not be there; instead God
will be at the base of that mountain and a million other mountains, with
the people of Israel—that is how God responds to a broken heart, a
heart broken by the people who chose to worship an idol rather than the
living God who took them out of slavery.
And this choice, this choice we see God making in these later chapters
of Exodus is the beginning, really, of this constant movement of God, this
relentless pursuit of us, this effort by God to get close to us, even when
we run away from God. God comes from the mountain and is with the
people—and even through all the subsequent history of the Old
Testament, with its tortured story of God’s relationship with Israel, God
still cannot get enough of them, even when God’s heart gets broken over
and over again. For us Christians, this incredible drive by God to get to
close to us, to know us and be known by us, it culminates the moment
when the Tabernacle and the Temple are not enough—that the only way
God can know us and be known by us is by becoming one of us, by
becoming one of us in this Jesus of Nazareth some two thousands years
ago. God wanted to get underneath our skin, to be among us, and so
God chose to incarnate God’s self in a person, a Jesus, so that God
could get us—so that God could know love and loss, life and death, joy
and pain, through us human beings. The movement from the mountain
to the tabernacle, and finally, to the person of Jesus—how relentless is
the pursuit of God of us, we human beings, even when we break God’s
heart! God is so faithful, to me, to you, to all of us, this church,
especially during this most beautiful and exciting and painful time—how
incredible is the goodness God, how faithful are the ways of the One who
has created us and loved us and has never let us go! Amen.
