The Quintessential Politician

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Christ the King Sunday

November 20, 2011

William G. Carter

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

          When I was ordained as a preacher, my father suggested I should never discuss politics in the pulpit. I have often remembered that, as elections roll around and national events unfold. It’s tempting for a preacher to speak out for one side or another, especially if convictions are strongly held and lives are at stake.

          And then there’s the complication that the Bible talks about politics on nearly every page. Remember how the story of Israel unfolded this fall. Pharoah was the emperor of Egypt. He reneged on his forefather’s contract with Joseph and enslaved the tribes of Israel. But God is the Sovereign Ruler, even over Pharoah. God called Moses to lead what a rebellion that disrupted the Egyptian labor force. It was called “Occupy the Promised Land … by Getting Out of Egypt.” In the words of William Sloan Coffin Jr,, “If Moses had believed in separating religion and politics, the Israelites would still be slaves and making more pyramids for free.”

          Critical moments in scripture are political moments. Jesus himself was crucified at the command of a Roman governor, after being arrested by some movers and shakers among his own people. The apostle Paul regularly fell afoul of the law, most notably the Roman governor of his day. Paul was accused of being “a pestilent fellow, an agitator of all the Jews throughout the world” (Acts 24:5). How did Paul counter these charges? He gave a rousing defense that reached the ears of King Agrippa.

          In the Bible, there are politics on just about every page. Two books in scripture are titled First Kings and Second Kings. A number of psalms were written to celebrate the coronation of royalty.

By the time you get to the last few pages of the Bible, there is the strong affirmation that Jesus is the King of Kings. Every political leader will answer to him, even those who believe they are an end in themselves.

          If only because the issue comes up so often, we need to talk of politics. What makes for good politics? Or for a good politician? If the rulers of this world must answer to the King of Kings, they have a sacred obligation to govern the people well. And if they don’t, God considers them expendable.

          This is the governing issue of our text. Ezekiel is a priest. He is held captive in a foreign land. Stolen away from Jerusalem, Ezekiel saw the Temple of God obliterated by the Babylonian army. All of the candles were extinguished and the sacred rituals were interrupted. The priests were removed from their posts, many like him by force. They were valuable to the Babylonian Empire because they had money, authority, and lots of connections. If the government controls the priests, it may be able to control the people who revere them.

          What a government cannot control, however, is the voice of God. God comes to Ezekiel to speak in a series of visions. One vision is the one we have heard in this text selected for Christ the King Sunday. God looks ahead to the day when the people are governed through generosity and care.

Now, that’s quite a statement. The Jewish people had their hopes demolished by a foreign army. The central meeting place between them and God had been torn down. There was plenty of blame flying around – some said it was the intimidating power of Babylon, others accused the Jewish political leaders of being weak and corrupt. What everybody could agree on was what they saw: the once-flourishing nation of Israel was in serious decline.

This is the point at which God speaks. Chapter 34 is a political vision, and what it declares is that God will establish a new ruler to watch over his people. This new ruler will be like a Shepherd. He will watch out for all of the people – not only his supporters, not only his friends, not only his cronies – but all the people. He will be broadly concerned for the widest possible public good, rather than remain narrowly focused on any one slice of the population. And the Lord reveals who this Good Shepherd will be.

          Listen again to the promises of our text:

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

          Now, lest our eyes glaze over as if this is one more generalized Bible promise, the model that God establishes for the heavenly throne is a model for every earthly seat of power. Just a few verses before our text, God indicts the politicians of Israel. Looking them straight on, God says, “You have been feeding yourselves without feeding others.” That’s the perennial issue, isn’t it? Misusing power for your own benefit. Skimming what belongs to everybody simply because you are currently charged with their oversight.

          The indictment God offers goes on from there:

·        You have not strengthened the weak (that is, no plan for empowerment)

·        You have not healed the sick or bound up the injured (call it a health care plan)

·        You have not brought back the strayed nor sought the lost (they have not retained their wandering young people)

·        “All you have done,” thunders the Lord, “is rule with harshness and force.”

All of this suggests why God is so concerned with good politics: because God has made every single human being and God wants each of these children to flourish. If God has a political agenda, it is eliminate the “have nots.” How is this going to happen? By including the “have nots” among the “haves.” Some people might call this “socialism.” The Bible calls it the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom is where everybody is valued. The Kingdom is wherever everybody is regarded equally.  It seems the people at the top of Ezekiel’s food chain kept getting confused about this. They had no regard for those trampled under the rulers’ feet. No concern for the well-being of all the people. In no small part, that was precisely why the nation was in so much trouble: call it a systematic neglect.

When the Penn State scandal broke a couple of weeks ago, a friend was paying careful attention to the news reports. She had been a student there in the late 1980’s, and she listened with interest as one of the high ranking officials declared that his office had done everything possible to protect innocent youth.

She shook her head and thought, “That’s not the same man that I remember.” She had worked part-time as a waitress while she was a student. He and his family went to the restaurant every week. None of the wait staff wanted to take their table. They were rude, demanding, and regularly obnoxious. “They treated the staff like dirt,” she said, “and wanted to get special treatment because of who they were.” Not surprisingly, they never left any tips.

It’s a small thing, she said, particularly given the damage that the Grand Jury recently reported. And she wasn’t surprised when that high ranking official was fired for his role in the scandal. She noted, “Character is what you do when you think no one is watching. Ignore the ‘little ones’ who bring food to your table, and it may reveal how you are disregarding the other ‘little ones’ around you.”

What Ezekiel receives from God is a vision for how people are to be taken seriously, particularly those who are weak or injured, lost or strayed. The one who governs well is the one who shepherds all the people. She or he will be fair to all, and this fairness means that those who are most vulnerable or have the greatest need are regarded with the same dignity as any child of God.

This is the same vision that Jesus offers for the end of time. “The Son of Man will come and separate the sheep from the goats,” he says. People shall be sorted on the basis of one matter: how did they respond to human need? Did they do anything for the benefit of those who were hungry, thirsty, naked, or sick? Did they visit the prisoner or welcome the outsider? Or did they pass those people by? The way that people respond will reveal whether or not God’s grace is at work within them.

We have every reason to expect that our leaders should be good people, that they should be generous and truthful. Public service is a noble calling when it really is public service. We can quibble about strategy and policy, and many of us do. But the real test is how well a society cares for those of greatest need.

If the only value honored by a people is prosperity, life can descend into a contest to see who can gain the most stuff. Greed will consume everybody who is infected by it, leaving the poor to become expendable. That’s not what God wants.

A society like ours is called up to remember a basic truth: that we march only as fast as the slowest person in line.  To be the keepers of our brothers and sisters means, among other things, that we must slow down enough for others to walk with us. That’s not easy, especially if we are accustomed to nice things.

Last week, I found myself at a church supper in southern Appalachia. Some friends were with me, and they were eying the meal that was being prepared. The ham was overcooked, the vegetables were wilted, the macaroni has melted down to lose all shape. It was nothing like the church suppers that I normally enjoy! My friends murmured criticism, quiet sarcasm, really, and pledged to stop for a real meal on the way home. They began to giggle and laugh as a way of coping with a bad plate of food.

Then Anna came with her tray to sit with us. She was a young girl, maybe ten or eleven years old. She put down her tray, went to get a glass of milk. Our host whispered, “This is probably the only meal she is getting today.” My friends changed their tune in a hurry. We watched with admiration as she prayed a prayer of thanks and ate every bite. One of my friends said, “Anna, what do like most about school?” She talked about writing a poem about her cat. “I like to do that,” she said. Then she scurried off to do her homework before her mom got off work to pick her up.

How dare anybody think that they are better than others! Every single person is valuable. Every single one.

The quintessential politician is the Good Shepherd, the kind of shepherd who watches out for every lamb. None of us can do that perfectly, but all of us can do that together. We need the kind of public leaders who keep our conscience awake, the kind of leaders who pay attention to the well-being of everybody, and not merely play to the agenda of those put money in their pockets. This is a noble calling, and nobody does it perfectly. Yet the vision of scripture is clear. God says, “I will save my flock, and they will not be ravaged. I will set up my shepherd to make sure all are fed.”

Jesus comes as that kind of shepherd, a shepherd with concern for every single lamb. He offers the model for how our leaders are called by God to govern. Even so, there is no one who is so fair to everybody, no one else who has such love. That is why we call Jesus our King. 

(c) William G. Carter

All rights reserved.

Never Since . . .

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

November 6, 2011

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. (34:10)

All good things must come to an end . . . including the story of Moses. That’s what we have here in Deuteronomy 34. This is the end of a book, the conclusion of a great soul. It offers up the how and when of Moses’ death, and then give an appraisal of his importance. This is his obituary, his final listing in the Jewish scriptures. It is not the last time Israel would summarize what he did

            “Never since has there arisen a prophet like Moses…” Never since.

            The book of Deuteronomy is written hundreds of years after the life and death of this man. The writers of this book are looking back to assess their own history. They realize Moses has been founding father to them, a man of critical importance. If it hadn’t been for Moses, they wouldn’t have ended up where they are. They would still be slaves under Pharoah’s thumb. God would have had to use different people for more modified success. Never since.

            Never since has there been a family like the Gibbons family. The Gibbons family moved to this little railroad town and decided they needed a church. They had ties to the missionary work of the Gospel. They wanted a church that spoke to them and for them, a church that would make a difference in the world. They couldn’t find such a church, so they started one. This one. Never since has there been a family like the Gibbons family, in starting First Presbyterian Church. They hoped, of course, there would be a Second Presbyterian Church, a Third Presbyterian Church, and so on. But they were the ones who got it started.

            Never since has there been a mother like Lois. I don’t think any of you knew her, but I did. She waited in her hospital bed for her 85^th birthday. When it arrived last Wednesday, she decided she had enough and she fell into the arms of her Savior. She was the mother of five children. Arguably I was the sixth one, based on the number of times that I ate at her table. Her oldest son Mark was my good buddy.

“Ma” (as I called her) was always telling me to stay for supper. When we laid her to rest yesterday morning, her five children testified to her goodness and hospitality. “My mother’s life was a life of service,” said one of her grown kids. “She put everybody else in front of her.” They acknowledged her as their caretaker. Now, in silence, they hear her commissioning them to be caretakers of one another, and caretakers of the world. Listen to how their testimony began: “Never since . . .”

We have our long parade of saints whom we honor and remember. We think of those people today who have gone before us. Our lives are now different because of who they were. Perhaps they gave us birth. Or they entered our lives at a critical moment, said what needed to be said, did what needed to be done. We cannot pretend that they were not here before us, blazing the trail and clearing the path. Can you think of a name? Can you remember a name?

Never since have I had a teacher like Mabel Bensley. She asked me to stay after class while the rest of the kids were released to the playground. “Billy,” she said, “I wanted to talk to you when the other children weren’t around. Sometimes it seems like you are a little bored when the rest of us are working through a lesson. I wanted to give you something to extra to work on, something that I think you might enjoy.” It was a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Up until then, I thought teachers were supposed to teach you what you already knew, wipe your nose, and make sure your shoes were tied. It never occurred to me that a teacher could challenge you to grow.

And the day I was ordained as a minister, she sent me a little note. It said, “I knew this day would come, because I had praying for it to happen for years. Mrs. B.” My professors at Princeton never wrote a note like that, but she did. She pushed me, challenged me, believed in me. Never since have I had a teacher like Mrs. B.

Never since has there been a pastor like Edgar Frank. I was raised before his voice, and I don’t remember ever fidgeting. My parents remember, but I don’t. When Rev. Frank preached, everybody leaned forward, mostly because his voice was as soft as golden silence. You could hear a pin drop because he talked so quietly. That was his way of securing your attention. We had to lean forward as an act of faith, trusting that he was going to say something essential, offering up some word we could not live without.

But his work was never locked up after Sunday. In his quiet way he taught me that all of life is aimed in two directions. We respond to God who made us, who loves us. That is the first and greatest direction. Everything we do is because God comes first. And second, we relate to one another. That’s what he taught me. You make yourself available to others. You listen to them, you take them seriously. Every birthday, he used the new technology of the telephone. He whispered, “I just wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday. May God grant you another good year.” That was it. That’s all he said. Of course, I don’t think he had a lot else on his plate, just spent the entire day making birthday calls. But I’ll tell you: never since have I known a man who spoke the voice of love to one person after another after another. Never since.  

So what are they going to say about you? What kind of impact will you make? Maybe it’s obvious. Or maybe it is something that you do not even know you are radiating. It could be your calming influence or your peaceful spirit. Or it could be the way you steer the ship through choppy waters. Maybe it’s the way you walk into the room and take charge. Or perhaps it is the way that you encourage somebody to be better than everybody thinks they are. Maybe you are the one who teaches that it is possible to forgive. Or perhaps it’s the quiet center of your life that affects everyone within reach.

What will they say of you when you are gone?

One morning in 1888, a Norwegian businessman reached for his morning newspaper. Flipping idly through the pages, he received the shock of his life: he saw his own obituary! It was a terrible mistake, of course. His brother had recently died, and a careless reporter had mixed the two of them up. He had gone to the newspaper's files and pulled the biographical information on the wrong man.

Well, here’s the thing. As the man read his own obituary, he didn’t like what he saw. Oh, the details were accurate enough. He was an inventor, world-renowned, and had gained one of the largest fortunes in world. Yet the newspaper called him “The Merchant of Death.” The headline read, “The Merchant of Death is Dead.”

His name was Alfred Nobel. While working as a chemist, he had accidentally discovered a way to convert the explosive nitroglycerin into a powdered form. He called the product “dynamite” and it made him richer than his wildest dreams. But his obituary said, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”

He decided to change the purpose of his life. Rather than sue the newspaper, Nobel began giving his money away. He made provision in his will for the famous Nobel Prizes, rewarding each year those who had made the greatest contributions to humanity. Eight years later, when Alfred Nobel passed away from a stroke, he accomplished what no other person in human history has managed to do: he had rewritten his own obituary.

God’s blessing is always hidden in the second chance. Sometimes that is when life begins. Remember Moses? Say whatever you want, but he was a murderer. He killed an Egyptian who was beating up on one of his fellow Hebrews, and hid the man’s body in the sand. Pharoah got word of this and Moses began to run. If that was all there was to the story, we would not be here this morning. But God got through to Moses, found him, spoke to him, and gave him the work of freeing a huge tribe of oppressed slaves. For a good long while, Moses was God’s point man to a disorganized gaggle of people who weren’t always sure they wanted to be free.

But now, looking back, from the vantage point of many years, they realized how significant he was.

When All Saints Day rolls by each year, it is a reminder that every life matters. Every single person has the possibility of positively affecting somebody else. The power of God is worked out in the kind of lives that we live, in the hands we hold, in the words we speak, in the truths we defend.

Never since, I tell you… You and I can talk about these people who have affected us. They taught by example. They showed us the good Word of God in flesh. The power of remembering people is not merely to remind us of their legacies, but to remember the legacies that we will leave behind. When it comes to the memories of other people, we take responsibility for the memories that we are making.

“Never since has there been a prophet like Moses…” There are plenty more prophets, lots and lots of them. There are always plenty of prophets among the people of God. These people speak face to face with the Lord our God, even if they do not readily see that face. Yet they keep chasing after the face of God until God finally blesses them. And they do this so they can extend that blessing to everybody who can receive it.  

(c) William G. Carter

All rights reserved

What People Will Do For God

What People Will Do For God

Exodus 35:20-35

October 30, 2011

Stewardship Dedication

And they came, everyone whose heart was stirred, and everyone whose spirit was willing, and brought the LORD’S offering to be used for the tent of meeting, and for all its service, and for the sacred vestments.  (35:21)

 

            If you look around long enough in the Bible, you can find just about anything. Today we find a story about an unbelievably generous offering. Moses has challenged the people of Israel to give to God out of their resources. He asks if anybody has a generous heart. Then he turns them loose.

Pretty soon, the people come running back. They are pushing wheelbarrows full of gold and silver. They bring fine linen and priceless jewels. All of it is given to God. As one Bible scholar says, “This story is a stewardship dream come true.”[1]

I know our church’s stewardship team is optimistic. They believe this can happen again, and today could be the day. The only problem might be if somebody murmurs, “It’s still a dream!”

            This Bible story offers up an extraordinary moment. The people give freely. I scratch my head in wonder, especially after all the events that we have heard from the book of Exodus. Moses is raised against all odds in Pharoah’s family (2:10). He discovers somehow he is a Jew, and murders an Egyptian who was beating up on a Jew (2:12). Running off to the desert, God finds him (3:4). Moses has his burning bush moment, when God sends him back to Egypt to lead his Jewish people out of slavery (3:12). It’s an amazing story.

            God gets the people out from under Pharoah’s thumb (14:30). Then God feeds them (16:13-14). God gives them fresh water (17:6). God protects them from enemies (17:9). Then God gives the greatest possible gift to a tribe of liberated people: God gives them ten Holy Words to guide them in their freedom (20:1-17). It’s a gift of continuing speech.

            But freedom doesn’t begin so well. The people cash it in on a golden calf (32:3-6), in one more futile human attempt to shrink God down to manageable size. When there is every reason for God to blast them back into the sand, God forgives them (32:14). This forgiveness is a gift that reveals God’s character: the Lord is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (34:6).

            All of that leads us to this moment. The God who speaks with Moses is going to set up shop with them. God needs a human meeting place. So what our story reports is the very first Building Campaign for the people of God. It had to be a movable building, for the people will keep wandering in the desert for three and a half more books of scripture. But this tabernacle, this tent, will be the place where God meets them for worship, instruction, and identity. The way it works is this: the people assemble for worship, they learn about steadfast love, and they remember who they are.

            This is the reason why the offering is so overwhelming on the Sabbath in our text. It’s a very simple principle: we give our money freely to anything that gives us meaning, value, and purpose.

            Picture the conversation between a teenager and her father.

•  “Dad, I need to get a new phone.” What’s wrong with your current phone? 
• “It doesn’t work so well since I dropped it in the toilet.” Why did you do that?  
• “But I need a new phone.” What kind of phone do you want? 
• “Well, all my friends have an Apple iPhone 4S.” What’s so special about it? 
• “It does all kinds of cool stuff: you can order books on Amazon, check movie times, use it as a GPS, and see how many point the Steelers are behind.” Does it make phone calls, too? 
• “Sure Dad, you can even do Skype and look at the person you are calling.” Dad: I remember when phones made phone calls. 
• She says, “Well Dad, anybody who is anybody has the iPhone 4S.” He says, “So this phone will give you meaning, value, and purpose.” 
• Absolutely! “But that’s what you said about the last phone before you dropped it in the toilet.” She looks at him with big brown eyes. 
• He starts to thaw. How much does the iPhone cost? 
• “They are having a sale. If I don’t get the extra memory or any of the apps, it’s only 649.” He considers this; I think I have seven dollars in my wallet. 
• “Funny, Dad. It’s six-hundred-forty-nine.” That is a lot of driveways to shovel and children to babysit. 
• “But Dad, I already have three hundred dollars saved up.” (He has seven bucks, she has three hundred.) Dad wonders: Why do you need this phone? 
• She replies, “It’s like you said: it will give meaning, value, and purpose.”

            Does she get the phone? I don’t know if she gets the phone. I do know that people give their money to just about anything that gives them meaning, value, and purpose. That’s why the Israelites were giving their money to God. They know the Source of their bread. They know that, unlike that cell phone, Pharoah no longer owns them. Israel knows that the wrong they have done has been forgiven. The people are free. The best expression of their freedom is their generosity.

            That leads me to notice three important insights that we can learn from this story.

            The first is this: generosity is the name of the game. Generosity is the fruit of meaning, value, and purpose. Generosity is a much better word than stewardship. “Stewardship” is a manager’s word. You take care of what you have; that’s stewardship. “Generosity” means you give it away. You give it, not merely to the church, but to the world! And behind that, to the Maker of the world! When was the last time you made a really generous gift? Not the token amount or the cautious sum – when was the last time you truly emptied your wallet for something or somebody?

One of the awkward things about growing up in American culture is that our culture silently tells you to draw a circle around your life. The circle defines you. It confines you. It declares, “I will share this much, but I won’t give any more.” That’s it. No more. The circle is drawn in fear. Unless God intervenes, we will live inside this circle most of our days.

           

It happens early, by the time we become little children. Do you remember Shel Silverstein’s “Prayer of a Selfish Child”?  It goes like this:

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my toys to break,

so none of the other kids can use ‘em. Amen.[2]

But the generous person knows how to step over the line, to move outside the confining circle. Generosity is a learned habit where we extend ourselves beyond all confinement. Israel discovered that generosity is the primary virtue of God. Rather than hold back in fear or strike back in punishment, God keeps giving and giving and giving.

And even in the desert, they decide they want to be like that! They will not be self-absorbed, self-contained, self-reliant, and ultimately self-centered. They will step over the invisible circle, and they will be generous. “Generosity” is the word.

            The second thing is that generosity is a group activity. It is not the private donation of a wealthy individual but a communal work.

            I know a congregation, sadly, that struggles to understand this. I worked there for five years, and then I moved up here twenty-one years ago. They have the same number of people attending that they did twenty-one years ago, although the contributions are about twenty-five percent less. 

            When you scratch below the surface, you might discover a few reasons why. How did the congregation get started? A wealthy factory owner built the church for his workers. They didn’t have to do a thing. The factory owner didn’t ask them to pay for the preacher. He simply deducted some money from each worker’s paychecks and called it a “pledge.”

            Then they had another millionaire, a man who learned about electricity from Thomas Edison. He went off to Ohio and started Dayton Power and Light. Made a lot of money, but never forgot his home church. He got the notion in his head that the tall steeple should be illuminated at night, so he gave thousands of shares from his company to set up an endowment to perpetually pay for the steeple lighting. Last time anybody checked, the fund was making enough money to pay for the whole electric bill, with more than enough to spare.

            Then they had Jim Fuller, another millionaire, who died and left behind $37 million for his family to fight over. At the request of the family, I did a five minute funeral for which they paid me fifteen bucks. His attorney was so embarrassed that he added another eighty-five. The finance committee at the church wondered out loud if Mr. Fuller might remember the church in his will. After replacing the furnace for them three times, he did not. The congregation panicked; it was running out of millionaires. Fortunately they did not give away much money for mission.

            Well, take a lesson from Israel: there were no millionaires in the desert. Those were the days before Las Vegas, you understand. The account from Exodus 35 is clear. Everybody participated. Everybody gave generously.

And everybody gave different gifts! For those with gold and silver, it was gold and silver. For those with fine jewelry, it was fine jewelry. For those with skill in spinning tapestry, they spun the tapestries. For those who could carve wood or work with metal, they carved the wood and worked with the metal. The point is everybody took part as they had the ability and the opportunity.  Every gift was valuable and costly. Each gift contributed to the greater good.  No one could do it alone; all of them could do it together.

Those of you who ask for money, perhaps for an alumni fund or a marching band, know that participation is the key. Before a foundation gives a nickel to a college, they want to know how many graduates are giving something. The marching band will sell you a small box of oranges, in the hope that next year you might buy another. Each gift matters, and together the gifts will overflow.

In fact, I stopped the scripture reading a few verses early because it keeps going on and on and on about how much the people contributed. The people were so generous that they gave more than Moses needed. So much so that Moses had to send word throughout the camp, “Stop giving! We have too much!”

Generosity is the name of the game (three cheers today for the Generosity Committee!). Generosity is a group activity. And the third insight is certainly the most powerful: generosity changes everybody who practices it. If we are generous as God is generous, God will change us, shape us, make something better of us. That is a promise that we cannot know unless we take the steps to grow in our generosity.

It’s there in our story. Over and over again, there are descriptions of what was going on within the givers.  “They came, everyone whose heart was stirred, and everyone whose spirit was willing, and brought the Lord’s offering.” Those phrases are repeated: everyone whose heart was stirred, everyone whose spirit was willing. As they give, something beneficial happens to them. Giving is good for the givers, and it is good for us.

That is why we offer ourselves to God this day. We are taking part in the perpetual gift exchange that God establishes with the world. We receive, we give. That’s the flow of the thing. If we receive well, with thanks and gratitude, we give well – and we are changed in the motion.

Generosity is not a natural inclination. It is a learned behavior that counters our human fear. Generosity undermines all caution. We hurl ourselves into the arms of God because we trust that we will be caught. And we hurl ourselves into the arms of God because we love God so much.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a writer in spirituality, has a great perspective on this. "Abundance," he writes, "is not measured by what flows in, but by what flows over. The smaller we make the vessel of our need, the sooner we get the overflow we need for delight."[3]

There is a story about a husband and a wife traveling around the world. In Korea, they saw a field by the side of the road. In the field, a boy pulled a primitive plow while an old man held the plow handles and directed it through the rice paddy. Both the boy and the old man were singing church hymns. The husband was amused and took a snapshot of the scene. "That's a curious picture. I suppose they are poor," he said to the missionary who was their interpreter and guide.

"Yes," was the reply. "I know that family. When the church was built in their village, they were eager to give something to it. They had no money, so they sold the only ox they had and gave the money to the church. This spring they are pulling the plow themselves." The husband and wife were silent for a few minutes, until the wife said, "That was a real sacrifice."

The missionary said, "They did not call it that. They thought they were blessed that they had an ox to sell."

The two tourists had not much to say. But when they reached home, they took the photograph to the church and told their pastor about it. "We want to give more money to God,” they said, "and we need you to give us some plow work to do. Until we saw that scene and heard the story, we never knew what joy, sacrifice, and generosity are all about. Now we want to find out for ourselves."

How about you?

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

---

[1] Walter Brueggemann, New Interpresters Bible, commentary on Exodus, p. 962

[2] Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1981) 15.

[3] As quoted by Martin Marty, in his newsletter "Context."

No One Sees the Face

Exodus 33:12-23
October 23, 2011
William G. Carter

The LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” And the LORD continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

We are moving with Israel through the wilderness. The stories we hear are signals to us that the journey will continue long after anybody arrives at the Promised Land.

• God brings Israel out of Egypt. It is a gift of liberation. From point forward, the struggle will be to remain free. The people are no longer slaves, no longer bound to Pharoah. But they will be tempted to fall back into the predictable and confining methods of brick-making. They will skip the Sabbath, thinking they are free when they are no longer free. It’s a recurring human issue.

•  God gives manna as a gift. It is the daily bread for which Jesus teaches us to pray. It can sustain all of us, and there is just enough to feed everybody. The continuing challenge will be to trust that is true, to take only enough bread for today, to avoid the temptation to hoard more for ourselves at the expense of others, to continually express fresh gratitude to the God who provides the same daily gifts.

•  God gives the Law on Mount Sinai. This is the gift of Torah, of holy instruction. It is particularly hard to keep from distorting this gift. We are tempted to push up against the Law and think we know better than God. Or we are tempted to reduce the Living Torah into iron-clad policy, becoming ourselves inflexible and obnoxious. Or we are tempted to use God’s very Words as a club to whack others who are still learning to be obedient.

 The challenges are exposed in the wilderness. They never go away. The church, like Israel, will continue to work out its salvation with awkwardness. The gifts of God identify our issues. What happens in the desert does not stay in the desert.

In the story for today, we gain a glimpse of how our true relationship with God will proceed. Moses senses that he is at the point where he can make a notable request. He says, “Lord, show me your glory. Show me the fullness of your face.” God says no. God will remain out of sight. God will not be obvious to us or our children. All God will grant anybody is a fleeting glance.

This is a defining moment for Israel and for us. Revelation will not come readily. God can speak, God may converse. God will offer life-giving words. But God will not show us everything we want to see. Some of the truth will be withheld. This is the kind of God we have.

Now, I don’t know how you feel about that. Maybe you came to church today with the hope that I or somebody else could offer you the magic formula for how you, too, could understand all the holy mysteries of the universe. A lot of people want that. A lot of Christian churches promise that. They write books, offer seminars, hand out charts. Some of them offer “forty days of purpose,” while others suggest forty days of Lent. There was a group of my acquaintance that proclaimed a proper diet would open your mind to God’s presence, while another group practiced long, silent prayers.

In the end, I asked, “What did you see?” The clearest answer: “a cloud” or “a fog.” One pious woman once told me she had a vision and saw Jesus’ wounded feet. I said, “Anything more than the feet?” She said that was it.

This is one of the most awkward things about religious faith. No one sees the face of God.

A lot of people are not content with this. They would like to say something different about the Deity. You can go to some places, they call them churches, but they are really set up more like movie theaters. The lights dim, the soundtrack begins, and video engineers begin to manipulate the senses.

Cue the sound technician. A thunderous orchestra swells through the sound system. There is the roll of tympani drums, a flash of light, footage of a magnificent waterfall, beneath it all a Bible script: “the God of glory thunders…” Everybody says “ooh” and “ahh.” They sit inside, sheltered and protected, watching a clip of a waterfall with a Bible verse.

More and more, that’s what passes as a religious experience in our land – a manufactured, Technicolor miracle. Technology can be used to manipulate people into a temporary suspension of disbelief. Then the show is over, the lights come up, and people leave essentially unchanged, back to over-consume their potato chips and harass their neighbors. On the way out, they fill buckets with cash to keep financing the Big Production.

Yet once the lights return and the amplifiers are turned off, the truth seeps back in. God rarely overwhelms us. God never shows us everything we wish to see. Sometimes God doesn’t show us very much at all. People will go decades of their life, like old Abraham and Sarah did, without so much as a whisper from the Lord. And in this apparent absence, one kind of religious huckster after another will try fill the gap, manufacture some meaning, and make a few bucks to maintain the illusion that they have seen the Lord.

Israel knew the truth: God is hidden. When Moses came down the mountain and made his report, they already knew in their bones what he would say. Israel’s experience is our own. It’s not that God is not there, or here; but that God cannot be manipulated.

We can hear it in some of their prayers. Psalm 27, for instance. It starts strong and declarative: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” The presumed answer is “Nobody.” Then the affirmation is repeated, “The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” And the presumed answer, again, is “Nobody!” The Psalmist goes on to say, “I want to live in God’s house all my days. I want to behold God’s beauty. I trust that God will shelter me and keep me safe.” These are clear, resounding declarations. Faith announces that God protects us.

But then the Psalmist slips a bit. She says, “My heart says, come, seek God’s face! Your face, Lord, do I seek . . . Do not hide your face from me. Do not cast me off.” (27:8-9)

Over and over again, this concern recurs, especially in the Psalms. “You hid your face, I was dismayed.” (30:7) “How long will you hide your face from me?” (13:1) “Why do you hide your face?” (44:24) “Do not hide your face from your servant.” (69:17) “Why do you hide your face from me?” (88:14) . . . and over and over again.

God is elusive. God remains out of sight. This is what Moses learns. It is the same truth that all of us learn. There is always a thick fog in front of God’s face.  

A few years ago, a woman in Miami declared she saw the face of the Virgin Mary in a toasted cheese sandwich. She sold the sandwich on eBay for $28,000, an astonishing sum since the sandwich was ten years old. Shortly after that, I found a little plastic item in a novelty catalog. It was a kind of cookie cutter that leaves an impression of Mary’s Son on a grilled cheese sandwich of your own. Out of deep reverence, I bought one of those for my father for Christmas. Given how God is so elusive, this little gift seemed ridiculous enough to reinforce the point. I would add that, out of deeper reverence, even though he laughed after he opened the package, Dad never actually used the gift.

Is God out of sight because God doesn’t like us? In our text, we can hear Moses badgering the Lord on this point. Four different times, he exclaims, “If we find favor in your sight . . . if we find favor in your sight . . . Lord, will you go with us if we find favor in your sight?”

This tires God’s ears’ “Of course, you have favor in my sight,” says the Lord. Favor is not the issue. You don’t have to keep asking if God loves you. Of course, God loves you. If God didn’t love you, God would never have snatched you out of Egypt, fed you with manna, or give you the Torah. Favor is not the issue.

Well, maybe it’s something else. Maybe the problem is not with God; perhaps it is with us. After all, Jesus made a promise of his own on the mountain top. Remember? He said, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). It sounds possible that we might actually see the Holy Face, if we are pure enough in heart. So that could be why some of us never see it; not going to mention any names…

Along those lines, there was a period in British history called the “Nineteen Year Winter,” from 1135 to 1154 AD. A season when the country was coming apart, it was popularly called “The Great Anarchy.” The Anglo-Saxon history books described it as “a time when Christ and his saints slept.” Or to put it another way, there was such a total lack of purity within the country that absolutely no one saw God.

Is this hiddenness truly one of God’s attributes? Or is it evidence of human impurity? A bit of “yes” to both, I’m sure. It could simply be the description of an honest religion, where we have to trust what we cannot completely see.

Some years ago, a Hebrew scholar by the name of Richard Eliot Friedman wrote a book called The Disappearance of God. He read the Bible carefully and traced how God slipped more and more into the shadows as the pages went on. In the Garden of Eden, God walked and talked with Adam. By the Tower of Babel, God stopped appearing to the whole human race. In the wilderness, God appeared as a pillar of fire and spoke the commandments to all, but then never spoke directly to the people again.

In the Hebrew Bible, God appears last to King Solomon (1 Kings 9:2) and then the verb is retired. On another rare occasion, God ignited a huge bonfire of wet wood at the request of the prophet Elijah. After that, God stopped doing any more public miracles. It was quiet for about nine hundred years. People remembered the deeds, recited the ancient words, and had to get along without any epiphanies.

This was the world into which Jesus was born. To read those stories, the angels began to sing, a new star was thrown into the sky, and things began to happen. Yet these special moments were not obvious to everybody. In fact, they were largely out of sight. Jesus stayed incognito for thirty years, learning to work with wood, keeping the religious customs, largely blending in.

Then for a brief period, give or take thirty-six months, things began to happen around Jesus. Local events: a crowd fed again with enough bread for one day; the sick and infirmed healed over here, a few over there; rumors of a dead man walking, a blind man seeing, a windstorm squelched. But none of it was obvious to large groups of people, except as one person over there was changed, another here, another there . . . and we have little record of what happened to those witnesses.

And then came the final revelation: the same Jesus who some of the people began to regard was divine was murdered. If God was present that day, it was hidden in God’s restraint. There was no punishment for the people who condemned and crucified Jesus. Instead Jesus uttered a prayer, “Father, forgive them; they do not understand.” His spoken prayer was answered in silence, in sheer silence . . . and hidden mercy.

This is God’s way in the world. To stay just out of sight. To tiptoe through the fog. To refrain from casual banter when there are planets at stake and human hearts to win.

Sometimes I wonder: what does God’s face looks like? On any given day, is God smiling? Or is God frowning? Is God’s countenance passive and serene, like the fat Buddha? Or is God full of emotion, passion, and energy? We don’t always know. But we trust God is here.

That’s why we are going to sing the next hymn. It’s a communion hymn and the opening line announces, “Here, O Our Lord, We See You Face to Face.” That seems to counter the very story we have heard today from Exodus, except that the very next lines declare, “Here would we touch and handle things unseen / Here grasp with firmer hand eternal grace / And all our weariness upon You lean.”

This is what faith propels us to do: to reach for what we trust but cannot see, to claim what we believe but cannot prove. It’s the reaching and trusting, the claiming and believing that make faith real. If God were merely our Errand Boy, answering all our requests, we would simply put in our orders and believe the lie that all the planets orbit around us.

Instead we put our trust where it really belongs: in the God who brings us out of Egypt, the God who gives us what we need, the God who brings us alive by the Word that is still speaking. 

(c) William G. Carter

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