Seeking Certainty and Control
As I read today’s scripture, I am reminded of a college friend who was once involved in a romantic pursuit. After weeks of finely calculated moves, he finally secured a first date with the girl he was pursuing. It was a casual date over coffee, but it went well and lasted a few hours. My friend, however, was crestfallen. There was no kiss at the end of the date. So he set about planning for another date, and soon enough he got it. This time, there was a kiss at the end of the date. But again, my friend was crestfallen. He had sent her a text later that night, and he didn’t hear back for a whole day. Maybe her kiss had just been an act of charity, he thought. Maybe it didn’t really mean anything.
You can probably see the pattern that is emerging here. It continued for some time. Soon they were texting regularly every day. But still my friend was unsatisfied. First, it was because her messages weren’t as long as his. She’s not reciprocating, he said. Then her messages were long enough, but they didn’t contain enough exclamation marks or emojis. She’s not as enthusiastic as I am, he said. On and on it went. My friend would seek reassurance of his girlfriend’s care, and as soon as he got it, it wasn’t enough. He needed more. He wanted proof of their relationship, certainty that it was real. He wanted to know it was in his control.
Moses Negotiates with God
Last week, we saw Moses placate an angry God who was planning to destroy the Israelite people. (Just a reminder: if this depiction of an angry God is disturbing, it may help to remember that this God is a character in a story. To be sure, the character of God in the Bible is inspired by people’s real experiences of God, but it is not equivalent to the reality of God. The character of God that we read in the Bible is always already an interpretation of the people who are writing.) Even though Moses talks God down from consuming the people of Israel, the character of God is still stung by their infidelity and declares, just before today’s scripture, “My angel shall go in front of you [to the Promised Land]…but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people” (Ex 32:34; 33:3). God is distancing Godself from Israel. An angel will lead them, but not God Godself.
Our scripture today begins with a worried Moses who is seeking reassurance of God’s care. “Consider…that this nation is your people” (33:13), he pleads. In other words, “Why just an angel? Why won’t you go with us? We are your people after all.” Moses’ words soften God’s heart enough that God makes a small concession. “My presence will go with you.” But here the “you” is singular. God will accompany Moses, but still not the people.
Moses is not consoled. He seeks further reassurance that God still loves the people of Israel and will accompany them to the Promised Land. “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us?” (Ex 33:15-16). By now, God’s heart must be melting at the sight of Moses’ earnest concern for the people, because God agrees, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight” (Ex 33:17).
But again Moses is not entirely consoled. He wants further reassurance of God’s presence and love. He wants certainty. He wants to know that this relationship is in the bag, that it’s completely under his control. So he asks to see God: “Show me your glory, I pray” (Ex 33:18). God yields to Moses’ request, but only so far: “I will make my goodness pass before you…but you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (Ex 33:19-20). So, God hides Moses in the cleft of the rock, narrowing his angle of vision, and God covers Moses’ vision with a hand until God’s face has already passed by.
The Good News of Mystery
This famous passage has captivated readers and inspired all sorts of debate as to whether a person can see all of God or not. After all, other passages seem to indicate that, actually, Moses has seen God. For example, in Numbers, God tells Aaron and Miriam, “With [Moses] I speak face to face—clearly, not in riddles; and he beholds the form of the Lord” (Num 12:8). But I wonder if this debate misses the point. I wonder if the meaning of our scripture today has less to do with whether or not we can see God and more to do with Moses’ pattern of seeking reassurance.
Like my friend in college, Moses keeps pressing for more and more. He desires certainty of the relationship. Ultimately, he wants the relationship to be in his control. And therein lies the problem. Relationships are not a matter of certainty and control. They are not about mastering another person, so that we know everything about them and can predict their every move and calculate our own every move accordingly. To approach a relationship that way would be to kill it. The relationship would look more like a computer program, a bunch of 0s and 1s. The other person would be turned into an object, a still life, a freeze-frame photo. We would no longer be open to their depth, their difference, their holiness, their life which cannot be captured or contained. Maybe that is what God means when God says, “No one shall see me and live” (Ex 33:20). “If you think you’ve seen all of me, then this relationship is as good as dead. If the reassurance you’re seeking is certainty and control, then we’re as good as done. That’s not a relationship. That’s you, all by yourself, alone, isolated, trying to control the world.”
It is good news that God’s face cannot be entirely seen. That is the good news of any healthy relationship. The mystery is actually a mark of intimacy. Not knowing the other person completely is not a problem. It’s actually constitutive of a healthy relationship. It means we are living not in a mindset of mastery but rather by faith and faithfulness, trusting that there is always a hidden, yet-undiscovered goodness in the other person. The mystery means there is always more. You might call it eternal life.
“God’s Mystery”
I do not think it is a coincidence that Paul regularly talks about mystery and even refers to Christ as “God’s mystery” (Col 2:2). Christ is always surprising us, always showing us a new angle on God’s goodness. We think we know God, but then Christ tells us a story or does something unthinkable. Think about his parables, how they turn the worldview of his listeners (then as now) upside-down. A God who is waiting and watching for the wayward son who disowned him to his face, whose first response when the son returns is not reproach but rejoicing? A God whose justice is the good pleasure of paying every worker the same wages, no matter how many hours they worked? And think about Christ himself, who eats with the unwanted and unwelcome (“tax collectors and sinners”), who stops to embrace little children and the sick, whose wisdom and power are on fullest display in the cross, which seems foolish and powerless to us.
The mystery of God, which is Christ, does not mean that God is distant. It means that God is intimately near. It means that, despite all the natural difficulties and pains of this life, we are in the embrace of a Beloved whose love exceeds all that we can hope for or imagine, who will surprise us, again and again, with goodness and grace.
Gregory of Nyssa, who was a church leader in the fourth century, writes, “Concepts create idols. Only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.” May Christ be ever for us not an object of knowledge or control, but a wonderful mystery, the living embrace of our loving God.
Prayer
God of hidden face,Beloved who holds us in intimate embrace—
Sometimes our fear gets the better of us,
And we want the certainty of control.
…
May your mystery be for us not a stumbling block
But an enticement into relationship,
Inspiring us to trust in your yet-undiscovered goodness,
Inspiring in us a wonder that makes us fall to our knees.
In Christ, the mystery of God: Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment