Come visit us at Trinity Episcopal, Van Buren! Sermon for Sunday, Oct. 19th, Pentecost 19, Exodus 33:12-23 Pre-Processional Prayer: Heavenly Father, we offer praise & thanksgiving for favors granted & prayers answered. Help us continually to see the workings of your grace & blessings in our lives. In my relationship with God, I often have a really hard time seeing God’s hand at work in the present. Sometimes, I can’t see beyond my own outstretched arm, much less see where God is leading me. I am sometimes so full of fear, frustration, confusion that I sometimes have a have a hard time feeling God’s presence in the moment. Most of the time, I see God’s hand at work in my life when I look back into the past. When I look back in Chronos time, it is easier for me to recognize those moments of Kairos time, the times when God was present, when God had His hand on me, when God was working. I could not see or feel it clearly at the time, but, looking back I can now see it more clearly. I think this type of spiritual hindsight is one of the things going on in today’s Old Testament Lesson. Prior to today’s Old Testament lesson, Moses has been on the Mountain with God. Moses has received the 10 Commandments. He has come down the Mountain & discovers that, in his absence, Aaron has fashioned a golden bull calf from the Hebrew’s golden ear rings & that the Hebrews are worshipping this man made object as a god. Moses is discouraged & frustrated, doubtful & depressed, angry & unbelieving. Moses needs to be re-enthused, re-filled with God’s presence. In today’s Old Testament lesson, Moses says to God: “Please, let me see Your glory”. In other words: I need to see you more clearly that I may feel your presence more deeply. God grants Moses’ request, in part. God says to Moses that He will place Moses in the cleft of a rock & that as He passes by, He will cover Moses with His hand & that when He has passed by, He will remove His hand & Moses will see His back side. Moses cannot see God’s face. No one can see God’s face & live. God is transcendent, above & beyond all that we know or can imagine. Our feeble brains can not comprehend God, contain God or explain God. Our souls cannot experience God’s fullness. If God were to show us his face, we might burst into flames. Moses can only see God’s backside. Generally speaking, we tend to think of the backside of anything as its worst side. A person from the back woods is viewed as ignorant & poorly educated. The person who brings up the rear is the loser. The devil gets the hindmost. And yet this is the only portion of God that Moses gets to see. And it is nothing less than glorious. The story does not tell us in detail what Moses saw or what he experienced after God passed by, Only that in God’s passing, Moses saw God’s goodness. The goodness of God is the concrete experience of what God has done & is doing in the lives of his people. So it may be that Moses was better able to experience God’s goodness in that present moment by looking back on his calling at the burning bush, the deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt, God’s leading in the daytime cloud of smoke & the night time pillar of fire, the parting of the Red Sea water, the bubbling up of manna, the meat falling from the sky & the water from the rock. Seeing God’s back side goodness was so powerful that when he came down the Mountain, his face shown so brightly that it blinded the Hebrews & they asked Moses to wear a veil to hide the brightness. So, from today’s the Old Testament lesson, we learn, as Moses did, that as God is leading us, we see the signs of His glory, His goodness & His grace afterwards, in what He has done & where He has been. Our relationship with God may be sort of like looking in the rearview mirrors of our lives, we see how God has shown up, performing his work. We look back, seeing how God caused a bad situation to work out for our good. We see an event play out & remark, Only God could have done that. We reflect on an unfolding series of happenings & know that those pieces could have only come together by the hand of God. We look back at things that happen to us so undeserved and unmerited. It was Gods working. While the path of our lifes journey is not always a straight line, when we look back, we can detect the leading of God, be it more like the switch back of a mountain road God still gets us to the destination he desires. Today’s Old Testament lesson reminds us that, many times, it is only after long reflection & hindsight that we are finally struck with & able to see what God has been doing all along. Post –Recessional Prayer: A prayer written by Shirley Hile Powell I have never spoken with my God In person, face to face, Yet deep within my heart I know I was saved by His loving grace. I speak with Him through prayer And can feel His presence near. I know that He is with me When my gloomy days are here. I long for Him to hold me In His loving arms one day, But until then Ill be content To whisper, I love You, as I pray. What a glad and joyous day it was When in Him I first believed. How can I ever thank Him For the blessings Ive received? God has done so many wonderful things, But the ones that I treasure the most Are the gifts of love that He gave to us - His Son, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 01:53:42 +0000
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