Exodus 2.23-25; 3.1-15; 4.10-17
There is a wonderful scene in the TV show The Big Bang Theory
where the
lead character Sheldon is showing his girlfriend Amy
one of his
all-time favourite movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark,
only to have it spoiled by her analysis of what she’s just
seen.
According to Amy, the movie has, what she rather
dismissively calls,
a ‘glaring
story problem.’
She tells Sheldon, in no uncertain terms,
that : ‘Indiana Jones plays no role in the outcome of the story.’
When he looks at her
in horror, she explains:
‘If Indiana Jones weren’t in the
film, it would turn out exactly the same…’
And then to prove
it, she goes on,
‘If he weren’t in the movie, the
Nazis would still have found the Ark,
taken it to the island,
opened it up, and all died, just like they did.’
The end.
And the question I want to pose for us this morning,
is similar
to the challenge from Amy to Sheldon.:
What role does God
play in the outcome of the story of your life?
Does God’s presence in my story, in your story, actually
make any difference?
Does it
improve things?
Does it
make them worse???
This is a genuine question, as they say on Twitter,
because one
of the accusations often levelled at people of faith
is that the
world would be a much better place
if we could
just rid it of the idea of God.
So let’s journey back to ancient Egypt,
and to the
story of Moses in the wilderness,
to see if we can get some insight
into the
significance or otherwise of God’s presence in the story of humanity.
Liz and I recently went to see the Show, ‘Prince of Egypt,
which is
showing just round the corner from here at the Dominion Theatre.
First things first, I love the Dreamworks movie.
But the
stage show certainly isn’t the movie.
Sure - the great songs from the movie are all there,
and are performed
beautifully.
The dancing is energetic, sexy, and creative:
I thought the
chariot chase was a particularly clever scene,
with actors
playing both tumbling chariots and racing horses.
And then there are the additional songs,
written by
Stephen Schwartz of Godspell fame,
who also
wrote the songs for the original Prince of Egypt movie.
Some of these new songs are great:
‘Footprints on the Sand’,
and ‘Always on your Side’
both
add to the relationship between the two princes
and
are worthy additions to the book.
But the most interesting addition
was Moses'
song, ‘For
the Rest of My Life’,
where he rails at God
for making
him the instrument
of God’s
vengeance against the Egyptians:
For the rest of my life
I will have to live
with this
For the rest of my life
I’ll have to face the
part I played
These faces filled with grief and with despair
Every morning when I
wake up they’ll be there
Seared into my memory
With a cruel burning
knife
For the rest of my life
there’s a weight on my
soul
Like a pyramid of
stone
There’s a weight on my soul
A ransom never to be
paid
The crimes I do, I do them in your name
I feel just as guilty,
all the same
Like a brutal soldier
Who does anything he’s
told
There’s a weight on my soul
For the rest of my
life
When you know you’re in the right
It’s so easy to be
wrong
You have to win the fight
So you close your mind
and heart up tight
And go along
Tell yourself you’re
staying strong
You ramp up your ferocity
Excuse any atrocity
But once you’ve won
You have to live with
what you've done
And for the rest of my life
I will have to live
with this
For the rest of my life
These questions
haunting me like ghosts
Does a noble end mean any means will do?
Is your power the only
reason to follow You?
And one final question I see no answer to
For the rest of my
life
How will I get
through?
Unlike so many of our victims
I have the rest of my
life
To get through
For me, this exploration of Moses' guilt and anger
is not only
the high point of the musical,
but also
the gateway to where I think it falls down.
Because it reveals the underlying theology of the show,
which is
that The only baddies in this story are the deities.
Moses is an ‘innocent puppet’
(to quote
Pontius Pilate from Jesus Christ Superstar)
and we see exactly
the same thing happening with Pharaoh.
Possibly the most bizarre twist of the musical
is the
revisionist retelling of the character Rameses,
who
comes across as a thoroughly nice, if slightly naïve, ruler,
who wants
to do nothing more than give Moses everything he is asking for,
but
is constrained by the ghost of his father
and
the demands of the high priest.
Several times in the musical Rameses releases the
Israelites,
only for a
word from the gods to countermand his decision
and send in
the army to oppress the Israelites instead.
This is, in the end, playing to a zeitgeist
that sees
all the evils of human warfare and violence
as
the end result of religious belief;
and the subtext is clear:
if only
Moses and Rameses had been left alone by their gods
to become
the mature, fully-integrated humans they were longing to be,
without
divine interference,
then everyone
would have lived happily ever after.
They’d have got away with it, if it hadn’t been for those
pesky gods.
And this feels like a betrayal of the story -
it
sanitises the complexities of the Passover,
it
excuses the excesses of the empire,
and
ultimately it silences God as a player within human drama.
From the point of view of this show’s version of the Moses
story,
the answer
to my question is clear:
God’s
presence makes things considerably worse.
But I’m not convinced that this does justice to the text,
so rather
than coming at it through the lens of West End Glitzy Theology,
let’s go back into the biblical story, to see what we can
find,
that might
help us answer the question of whether God’s presence
makes any
meaningful difference to the human experience of life.
Last week, you will remember,
we were
with Jacob, on the run in the wilderness,
receiving
his vision of a stairway to heaven.
Well, with Moses, we’re back in the wilderness,
with another
anti-hero of the faith
also on the
run from the consequences of his actions.
And as with Jacob,
the Moses
we meet here isn’t all that likeable as a character.
He’s murdered an Egyptian,
left his
people in slavery, and turned his back on his family.
We meet him as he find himself in conversation with God,
who has
rather strangely appeared to him
in the form
of a burning bush.
Just as an aside here, Liz and I visited Mount Sinai a few
years ago,
and at St
Catherine’s Monastery we were shown a bush
that the
guides claim to be the very bush where Moses met God.
In fact, our guide broke a couple of twigs off,
and gave
them to us - so we have some of the burning bush at home!
And also, I couldn’t help noticing, just alongside this
tourist attraction of a bush,
sits a
rather prominent fire extinguisher.
Clearly, if there are any further fiery theophanies in that
place,
God’s
presence will be quickly extinguished.
But back to Moses, who we meet arguing the toss
with God
about God’s call on his life.
He’s making all the excuses he can
to avoid
having to take responsibility.
From his protestations about his lack of public speaking
ability,
to his
straightforward cry, ‘O Lord, please send someone else’,
Moses doesn’t want to listen to the voice
that is
telling him to grow up, suck it up, and get stuck into making amends.
What’s interesting, though, is that God allows Moses agency
here,
God doesn’t
just say ‘Do it, or else’.
Rather, God appoints Aaron, God works with Moses’ flaws;
it’s more
like a dialogue, a dance, or an improvisation,
than it is
a clear-cut-call with detailed instructions.
And there’s something comforting in this, I think:
God works
through us, not in spite of us.
God’s will is done, but God’s methods are not fixed.
The Moses from the musical,
who feels
God has forced him against his will
into an
impossible situation
is not quite the Moses of the book of Exodus,
who is
called to reluctantly play his part
in God’s great
work of freedom and liberation.
And crucial to all of this
is the
doctrine of continuous revelation.
This is the idea that
not
everything that can be known about
God
has already
been made known.
Abraham had heard God’s call,
but it was
Moses who heard God’s name.
There is more to know about God,
as God is
progressively revealed
through
God’s ongoing relationship with humans.
So when Moses asks for God’s name,
the
response he receives is both fascinating and revealing,
but also
rather mysterious.
‘I am who I am’, says God;
‘I am the
one who is’, might be another way of putting it,
or possibly
just, ‘I’m me!’
The point is clear, which is that God is known, not by a
personal name,
as you and
I are known,
but by the simple fact of being there.
The starting point for understanding who God is,
is the
conviction that ‘God is’.
I was listening to a Radio 4 science programme recently
and Jim
Al-Khalili was interviewing Prof David Eagleman
about his
research into human perception.
David Eagleman’s point was that everything we see, taste,
smell, touch and hear,
is created
by a set of electro-chemical impulses
in the dark
recesses of our brain,
and that what we call consciousness is our brain’s attempt
to identify
patterns in these signals and attach meaning to them.
From a purely subjective point of view,
the world
does not exist outside of our brains,
because our entire perception of the world
takes place
within the darkness of the inside of our skulls.
And yet, we might choose to say, ‘God is…’
This deceptively simple statement of naming God’s existence
is a
statement of faith that there is something in this world
that
is definitively beyond ourselves,
something
other than ‘me’ and my own perception of reality.
The statement that ‘God is’,
the great
‘I am’ statement of God’s existence,
is a statement that God is ... the one
who is
truly other to, and external from, ourselves.
The next question, then,
and it’s a
question predicated on the existence of the divine other,
is what is this
God who is, like?
Is God loving, hateful, angry, forgiving, or indifferent?
These are
the questions of theology,
and
they are secondary and subsidiary questions
to the
primary question of whether God is.
Because if God is, then I am not all that there is,
and
everything else follows on from that.
And so Moses, asking God’s name,
and hearing
the answer ‘I am’,
is invited into a world
where he is
no longer the subjective master of his own universe.
In the story, God is not encountered in the abstract,
as a kind
of philosophical transcendent idea of existence.
Rather, God is known and made known through relationships
with humans.
God is the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
God is the
God of Moses’ ancestors,
God is
encountered through a community of faith.
And there’s a profound truth for us here,
which is
that we do not encounter God alone.
Even when, like Moses, we are alone on the mountain in the
wilderness,
we are part
of a longer story of God’s revelation.
And we always therefore encounter God
in the context
of God’s ongoing self-revelation,
through our
own communities of faith.
Sometimes I hear people wondering why we should bother with
church,
after all,
if God is everywhere,
we don’t
need to go to church.
But I think Moses’ encounter of God in the context of his
faith community
speaks of a
truth that God is made known
through the
relationships that God forms.
God is discovered in and through others,
and God’s
self-revelation occurs in the context
of God’s
people crying out for justice.
It is in relationships with people
that God’s
action in human affairs becomes manifest,
because God is revealed as a relational being,
who is
known in the effects of calling and claiming people
to become people of faith in a
faithless world,
making real
in and through their lives,
the conviction that God is.
So how should we respond?
What can we
discover from Moses story
that might
help us understand our own lives before God?
Well - if we’re looking for God’s action in human history,
we find it
through Moses’ response to the call of God on his life.
Without the voice from the burning bush,
without the
revelation of God breaking into his world,
Moses would have stayed as a shepherd in Midian,
and the
Israelites would have died in slavery in Egypt.
But as God forms relationship,
and calls into
being communities of faith;
as God is made known in and through people,
so lives
are transformed,
and the
world is changed.
We, like Moses, are enlisted to the task
of bringing
God’s freedom to those enslaved,
as God’s promised, covenant faithfulness,
is enacted
in and through human relationships.
Sometimes we long for God to act,
for God to
intervene.
And those who would question God’s existence
rightly
point to the fact that the evidence for God’s direct intervention
is conspicuous
by its absence.
Well, I do not believe in an interventionist God,
because
that is not the God revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai.
The God of the burning bush
is a God
who works in and through flawed and fallible humans,
whispering to them from the flames of revelation
that there
is more to this world than they can see on their own,
and calling
them to action that brings liberation to others.
This is how God changes the world,
through
people like Moses, and Jacob, and you, and me…
When God speaks salvation,
God’s work
is made known through people.
John’s Gospel grasps this most clearly
in the
language it uses to speak of Jesus.
Those of you who have been joining me on Monday nights
for my
Biblical Studies masterclasses,
will know that in John’s Gospel, Jesus is described as being
the ‘word’ of God,
and that seven
times in the gospel Jesus describes himself
using the words, ‘I am’,
a deliberate
echo of the revealed name of God to Moses on mount Sinai.
The God who is encountered by Moses
as the God
of community and relationship,
is the God of Jesus, God’s word spoken in human flesh.
This underscores that God is known in a person, through
relationship,
as God
encounters people personally.
The God of the burning bush
is known in
Jesus as word incarnate, as word embodied.
And Jesus calls people into relationship with himself
and through
him into relationship with God.
As John’s gospel puts it in chapter 15:
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my
love.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love,
just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in
his love.
(Jn. 15:9-10 NRS)
And so God is revealed,
in
community, in people, in relationship,
in Christ,
in the fire on the mountain.
But the revelation of God has to go somewhere,
if it is to
be transformatory of human lives.
Otherwise, what’s the point?
Does God’s presence in the story of human existence
make any
difference?
Does it improve things, or does it make them worse?
We’re back to the question I started with,
and the
answer is there, staring us in the face in the story of Moses.
The story of the Exodus is the foundational story
of God’s
deliverance of those enslaved to sin and oppression.
What happens next for Moses
as he hears
God’s call to look beyond his own world
and to
consider the world and needs of others,
is the same thing that happens in our lives,
as we learn
to listen to the divine voice that calls to us, too.
People are delivered from their enslavement to sin and
oppression.
There’s something significant to note here, though,
which is
that the Israelites in Egypt were not enslaved by their own sin,
but rather
by the sinful actions of the Egyptians against them.
Not all sin is to do with personal morality,
there can
be structural and systemic sins in our world
that oppress,
and demean, and distort, and destroy;
and God’s intent for freedom and liberation
is every
bit as much focused on these
as it is on the sins of omission or commission
that occur
at the scale of our personal lives.
But of course there is a relationship between the personal
and the communal,
both in
terms of sin but also in terms of liberation.
Just as our personal actions of sinful disregard for others
can be the
cause or continuation of their oppression,
as Pharaoh
discovers to his cost in the story of the Exodus,
so personal actions of turning towards those in suffering
can become
the method of God’s will for liberation
taking
shape in our world and in the lives of others.
The movement from death to resurrection
is written
through the story of the Exodus,
just as it is made known in and through the life of Christ.
The God who is made known in the wilderness
as the
divine other,
who is encountered in relationship
through the
community of faith,
who calls us to become
agents of
liberation,
is the God at work in our world
by the
Spirit of Christ,
drawing us to life from death,
and
inviting others to hear that call and respond.
The God who is known in the wilderness
is the God
of the cross, who knows suffering,
and who
takes action to deliver those who live in suffering.
What difference does God make to the story of humanity?
All the difference
in the world.
And we are an intrinsic part of that story,
as we, like
Moses, are called to play our part
in the
salvation of the world, the liberation of the oppressed,
and the
coming of God’s kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.
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