Radiate

Dear blog,
How have you been doing lately? Whenever I read your posts, you seem to be needlessly cynical and tired. Maybe it's time for a little pick me up. So consider this my gift to you: a non-exhausted, delightful muse on the glory of God.

Yours always,
Christy

Today's sermon was on... Well, I can't quite remember. It had something to do with the contrasts between the old and new covenant in 2 Corinthians 3, but honestly, I got distracted with journaling through a few things from worship, and then I saw verse 18 and I was a goner. Gosh, this is fun. Just thinking about it makes me a little bit giddy.

I love the story of Moses encountering the glory of God and Israel's response. It is both heartbreaking because of their rejection and uplifting because we are offered that same choice to behold His beauty. That last phrase is borrowed from a song that Tiffany Aitken often sings when she leads worship at Life Center: "Put Your beauty on display / Around me / Put Your goodness on display / To You be / All honor, glory, and praise forever and ever ... / We have come to behold Your beauty / Drink in Your goodness / And give you praise..." It's such a powerful song because it expresses something deep inside our hearts: we want to see Him.

Exodus 33 tells the story of a rebellious people who would only allow God to rest nearby rather than in their midst. Oh, maybe that's an overly harsh interpretation of why the Tent of Meeting was placed outside of the camp. I might also say that perhaps God desired to establish that pattern of Him pursuing us pursuing Him, that anyone who wanted Him would have to "go ye." David changed all of that when he placed the Tabernacle in the middle of the city, but that was several hundred years later. In this time and this place, they were former slaves wrestling with this strange reversal of circumstances by a God who scared them more than their brutal former masters. ("Not as slaves, but as sons!" Oh that's a good one too... *happy sigh*)

Right. So in their midst, we get a glimpse of a few guys who have come a long way since slavery and who realize that they want God more than they fear Him. He might not be safe, but He is good. It's in the middle of that discussion that we end up with Joshua remaining behind to catch every last drop of the rain of God's presence. But Moses took it a step further. One day, as he was chatting with God about ways to save these stubborn Israelites from themselves (oh wait, did I mention - he was chatting with God?! And that in the same verse where it talks about Joshua staying behind, it says that he did so "face to face, as a man speaks to his friend"? Whoa show shaka dakine and then some), Moses sort of casually slips in there, "Hey God, we've been through some tough times together and since You literally JUST said that I have Your favor ... Uh, can I see Your glory? Pretty please?"

And God says... Not exactly yes. Apparently it's a pretty common feature of deities that you can't look on them in their full godliness or you'll die. Zeus was apparently kind of stupid about that one on multiple occasions. But hey, this is not a light request we're making. The human mind was made to hold the universe at most and nothing more. How can we who are bounded by laws and natural order even begin to comprehend the sight of the Most High?

Instead of saying that He'll show Himself to Moses, He says He'll do three things: 1) He'll make all His goodness pass before Moses. What does that even begin to mean? Apparently we can only handle one attribute of God at a time, and even then we'll be missing about 99.9% of the fullness of God in that one area. What the? Who is this God?! 2) He will proclaim the name of the Lord (i.e. His name) before Moses. Tangent: The first task ever assigned to Man was to name all created things. In some ways, this is an extension of his dominion over creation. In many cultures, the idea of naming as a divine superpower is pretty strong. The Mesopotamians unsurprisingly shared this belief, as did I think the Egyptians and the Mayans if I remember much from my mythology class. So to have someone's name might mean control over them. What do you do with a God who doesn't give you a name, just His state of being? I AM THAT I AM, the completely uncontrollable God. Apparently Moses has matured since his encounter with the burning bush because God was about to do some proclaiming.

After those two offers, there is no response from Moses, but God seems to be having some kind of inner monologue (dialogue?) because He says that Moses can't see His face, but then He makes this "seeing Him" thing happen. So 3) He'll tuck Moses into a cleft of the rock and then after He has passed by, Moses can see His back (or as someone once put it, probably Rob Bell, the place where He was a moment ago). I especially enjoy the latter translation. Imagine a God so mindblowing that we can only just handle seeing the place where He just was - and that, only after we've spent hundreds of hours acclimating ourselves to His veiled presence.

Moses ends up hanging out on the mountain for forty days and nights, neither eating nor, get this, drinking. Boo yah, three day maximum. When he comes down from the mountain, his face is glowing with the radiance of exposure to God's glory. Exodus 34:30 says, "When Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him."

Let's get one thing straight: God is not safe. It's the Aslan comparison all over again. So they were right to fear the Lord. But at the same time, He is good. When we know the fear of the Lord without experiencing the love of God, we either reject Him or become intensely cruel as we become like what we worship. The heartbreak of this story is that God's own people asked Moses to veil his face because they were afraid of their God. What we fear, we do not fully trust. What we do not trust, we keep aloof from. What we keep aloof from, we harden our minds toward. How to receive as a Lover the God whom we fear?

And in the midst of that burden, He says, "Look at Me. Behold My beauty. Look at the place where I just was." If we can open our eyes for but a moment to gaze on His face, we will never be the same. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says that we are beholding the glory of the Lord in a mirror and it's changing us. We don't even have to look directly at Him: His reflection does the work. The cool thing is, Moses's face was veiled because the people couldn't handle it. He had seemingly become the reflection of God's glory. An if we're all walking around with unveiled faces, we get to experience God's glory both one-on-one and as a community of believers. The radiance of your face is not the same as the radiance of my face, because God has shown us different aspects of who He is based on what we need and what we are seeking. Together, we can participate in the teaching experience by building one another up in the knowledge of Him.

So in case you were wondering: God is awesome. He's unbelievably hard to wrap your mind around, probably because He's infinite, and He is unbelievably fun. Even though I'm not-so-secretly in love with the Doctor, I would hang out with God over taking a ride in the TARDIS any day. Oh, oops, conviction. Do I make that choice in everyday life? Okay, we'll save that discussion for another day ;)