Kathryn Greene-McCreight's chapter on Moses and Aaron is intriguing. I have always been drawn to and felt a kinship with Moses' reluctance to be called by God. Most pastors admit to feeling this way. As Greene-McCreight points out, Moses accepts his call only with a reluctance that anticipates the cries of the prophets who will come after him--Woe is me! I am only a boy! or Jonah who just flat out sailed in the opposite direction.
Moses' three objections seem like good ones: Who am I? Who are You? What if they don't believe or listen to me? Of course he also tried the "I am slow of speech, send someone else" excuse. As Greene-McCreight points out, Moses' reluctance is not tied directly to his ignorance of God's identity but to his own fear and trembling.
Later, after God becomes angry with the "stiff-necked people," Moses is ready to disaffiliate with them. He conveniently refers to the Israelites in a distant way. God says "I will not go up among you, or I would consume you." Exodus 33:3 Wow. There you have it.
Divine absence. We've heard more of this concept in the last ten years or so in books and theological discussions but most folks just don't know what to do with it. Greene-McCreight says that God's absence here is a blessing not a curse. Normally, God's presence is blessing. But, when we sin, it is God's absence that is mercy. She writes: The people take up their own freedom to reject God, a freedom that is in fact slavery to idols of their own making.
If our Lenten journey is about finding freedom anew, what idols do we need to abolish in order to find God's presence, the Promised Land? Is the Church experiencing God's absence in any significant way? If so, how?
This discussion parallels, to some degree, Diana Butler-Bass' concern with how we envision God's presence or absence. She has a poignant point in suggesting that God is always found in the horizon, the line where heaven and earth touch.
She writes: Physicists talk about a cosmic horizon, the edge of the universe past what we see. Horizons retain an aspect of mystery, even a sort of transcendence. They are never quite where they once were; they always shift. To speak of God and sky is to speak of intimacy, but it also hints at a different sort of distance as well--not like God sitting far above the world, but perhaps more like God at the horizon. Just beyond what we can see, there is more.
She writes: Physicists talk about a cosmic horizon, the edge of the universe past what we see. Horizons retain an aspect of mystery, even a sort of transcendence. They are never quite where they once were; they always shift. To speak of God and sky is to speak of intimacy, but it also hints at a different sort of distance as well--not like God sitting far above the world, but perhaps more like God at the horizon. Just beyond what we can see, there is more.
Just beyond what we can see in the wilderness of Lent there is more. Just beyond what we do and hold in our week to week experience as Church, there is more. Moses was not granted access to the Promised Land. As the illumination above shows: I have let you see it with your eyes but you shall not cross over there.
Maybe there are promised lands that we will never see. It is worth considering what those are in our lives and how we grieve the loss of their realization. It is worth considering how, where, when, or who designated these as promised lands. Can we find contentment with the God who peeks at us through the horizon of our lives?
I find this quote helps in navigating the horizon, the presence and absence of God: Emptiness is only a disguise for an intimacy of God's, that God's silence, the eerie stillness, is filled by the Word without words, by Him who is above all names, by Him who is all in all. And his silence is telling us that He is here. --Karl Rahner
I find this quote helps in navigating the horizon, the presence and absence of God: Emptiness is only a disguise for an intimacy of God's, that God's silence, the eerie stillness, is filled by the Word without words, by Him who is above all names, by Him who is all in all. And his silence is telling us that He is here. --Karl Rahner
A prayer from Walter Brueggemann:
We tell these stories
about being hungry and thirsty
and frightened and angry
and desperate.
And then we tell stories
about your food and your water
and your presence.
But the second half of the story
does not ring powerfully true in our own experience,
so much so that we find ourselves
and our whole beloved community
are often pilgrims in a barren land;
and we find our sophistication and our affluence
does not at all treat our condition of wilderness.
So finally we are driven back to you,
about to receive and then drawn up short
by the One who has nowhere to lay his head either.
We are bold to pray for your gifts
and for your presence
but we do so prepared to endure a while longer
our thirst and our hunger and our sense of absence
because we have resolved to be on your way with or without you.
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