A PRESENCE FELT, NOT LEARNED

Exodus 33:12-23 & Matthew 22:15-22

          The Gospel reading is tailor made for this season of our cultural and political life.  Jesus words about paying taxes to Caesar open up endless pathways to fruitful conversation about the role of government in the ordering and nurturing of our common life.  The text is multilayered and nuanced….much more so than first appears.  But at the very least we get a peek into a conversation about the realities of living in this world where the alternative to government is anarchy although evil governments are about as bad.  At the very least we listen in as Jesus reminds us that to follow him does not mean withdrawing from the world but engaging it fully.   In this life we live in this world of politics and economics, competing loyalties and social challenges that always will and always should compel us to dig deeply for solutions consistent with God’s kingdom values.  There is a sermon here and someday I might preach it.  But not today. 

Rather, in what seems to me the oddest pairing of texts in the whole three year lectionary cycle I would suggest that today’s Gospel reading is the background and the context for a much deeper question posed by the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures.  It’s the God question…..who, what, how, when, why, God.  The active eternal search for understanding and intimacy with the one who birthed us and all that is into being.  That’s what the Bible is, after all:  the story of the eternal human quest to know and understand this central mystery of our lives.  And it is in the dialogue between Moses and God that it finds its voice.  In our ancestral story Moses is a person with a unique intimacy with God.  On the strength of his awareness of God’s presence he becomes a great liberator….daring and risking everything for a hopeful future.  In the strength of that relationship a vision is perceived and followed and a new kind of community begins to take shape.  But even Moses doesn’t see or understand completely and he is never completely content with that.  At the burning bush he wants to know God’s name and all he gets is that enigmatic assurance:  I am who I am.  In the wilderness he complains and challenges and what comes is enough nourishment and enough grace and enough guidance to get the wandering pilgrims through another day.  And now, in this story, Moses and the people are poised at the threshold of a new place…a new tomorrow.  At this point Moses still believes that he is the one who will lead the people into that new land though he, like many of God’s leaders and prophets, will not go all the way.  That will be Joshua’s call to answer.  But here in today’s story is Moses…still seeking a more complete understanding….in passionate argument with the Holy One….his words reflecting both that intimacy with God that he has known and that vast distance between what he can perceive and know and the ultimate reality that has been his companion since birth.  [read, and invite reflection]

Paul, writing two thousand years later lamented that in this life we can only see and know in part, as though we were looking through a dim, clouded glass.  We can’t see or know God completely but when we catch a glimpse it looks like faith, trust, hope and love.  What we think we would like is clear direction on a neon sign, preferably in English or whatever our native language is. …but that’s not the way it works.  And there are plenty of people, of course who, when answers are not clear and simple shut down the conversation and abandon the quest.  They settle for a nice orderly predictable life that is fully supported by all conventional standards and completely devoid of mystery and meaning and wonder.  It is the yearning for greater knowledge and intimacy with God that keeps us growing and searching and clearing the debris from the path and looking for signs of that illusive presence that is our life’s companion on  our journey toward wholeness and fulfilling our purpose as individual souls and as people together.

            When we look at life in this way, as the Bible does, as Jesus did, we see what is wrong with the dogmatic approaches to life and God.  They present themselves as the answer and leave no room for the questions, no room for the journey that keeps us alive and searching and passionate.  Every human statement about the nature of God, no matter how many lofty adjectives are used is incomplete.  We seek knowledge and understanding but the best theology always begins not in the head but in the heart….and even I forget that sometimes.  Those who speak the most compelling words about this holy mystery are not those who begin in the library but in the wilderness of life, where every now and then we catch a glimpse of the awesome otherness within and beyond us.

I am struck by how many novels and movies and even TV shows begin here.  C.S. Lewis opens an ordinary wardrobe through which children enter that magical world of Narnia.  Touched by an Angel, Joan of Arcadia, The Adjustment Bureau….all are artistic expressions of that sense we have that there is just more going on in our lives than what appears on the surface.  And that something….that powerful elusive presence…. keeps pushing us toward becoming the whole, loving, creative inquisitive souls that is our destiny.

Where are you, God?  Let me see you fully is cry that underlies  all of our deepest longings.  In this world of  political and economic challenges we must engage Caesar in the work of piecing together a world that is peaceful and just.  But, as Jesus says, we can’t do that without engaging God…and being open to the questions of what makes us fully human and being open to the possibility that in the events and experiences and emotions of our lives, there is a loving mystery at work.

But, you say, we’re not Moses.  God hasn’t tucked us into a rock and passed by.  But are you sure?  We hold a newborn, dependent on us to help him navigate this new reality into which he has been thrust and it stirs in us a new, fiercely protective love.  Don’t you feel a faint stirring of another presence blowing through the room.  We sit vigil with one who is taking her final steps from this life into the realm of mystery and beyond our senses we recognize a loving presence, who beckons from beyond with assurance and compassion.  In this place where individual voices combine into songs and hopes and fears are woven together in prayer…..what do you think is the glue that creates the something more that happens?  Something deep within you begins to stir from a deep sleep calling you to imagine something new.  What imaginative power do you think is at work?  In the genius of a Steve Jobs who emerges from a Buddhist monastery to transform communication through the wedding of function and beauty…in the eye of a stranger in need, in the tender caress of a lover,  Do you not recognize something fluttering through your world, your life?  We can never see or understand God fully, any more than Moses, but that longing that haunts us at the deepest level of our souls, when it is recognized and welcomes, fuels the quest and stirs our souls and hearts in a way that makes of this life a holy adventure resonant with growth and possibility and promise.  May the quest and the discovery, the growth and the love that is possible in this be so for each of you and all of us together.  Amen.

Mary Gaut

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