A text – Exodus 33:12-23
12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.” 14 He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”
17 The Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” 18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord,’ and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” 21 And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23 then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
A reflection:
What a conversation Moses and God are having! And it is not going well. Just before these verses begin, God has called the Israelites Moses’s people, no longer God’s people, showing impatience with them. God has just moved heaven and earth to bring the Israelites out of Egypt into the wilderness. God has destroyed a Pharoah and his army in the Red Sea. Moses has gone up the mountain to get from God the covenant they are to live by, as God prepares to “move in” with the people to make them into a nation of God’s people. But the people become impatient and seek an idol to worship, breaking the very first rule God has given them. Moses comes down the mountain with the ten commandments only to find the Israelites dancing around in worship of a golden calf that Aaron, his own brother, has made for them. The covenant is nullified already, Moses breaks the tablets, and he returns to the mountain to plead for the people and discover how merciful this God, who has brought them into freedom, will be. That is our scene.
You can hear Moses begging for God to be with the people, to stay among them. Moses also needs to know more about this God so he can tell his people. God is powerful, to say the least, and is capable of anger. But given the foolishness of the Israelites, how patient and merciful will God be? How tender and forgiving? What is God’s character? Will he even listen to pleading from very fallible people?
The answer is yes. And more intimately, God will bring his presence very close to Moses. Moses asks to see God’s glory. God will comply. God will do a version of what Moses asks. He will not show Moses his face, because it would kill Moses. God will hide Moses from full view and pass by him, shielding Moses with God’s own hand so that Moses will see only the back of God passing by. God is protective. God is willing. God has been riled up, but God is gracious.
Dr. Dennis Olson from Princeton Seminary speaks of this chapter in Exodus in wonderful, ordinary language for us. This conversation, he says, teaches us much about God: “The ever unfolding names of God. The character of God that always leans toward mercy and grace. The capacity of human prayer and advocacy to move God. The consistent yearning of God to be with us. In Exodus 33, we hear a powerful echo to a future witness to the unfolding character and name of God: ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory … full of grace and truth (John 1:14).’” To Dr. Olson, this conversation between Moses and God foreshadows Jesus’s life among us. God was desiring to live among humans even in the time of Moses, if humans just wouldn’t drive God to distraction and anger by their forgetfulness and bad actions.
Do we drive God to distraction, do you think? We certainly are forgetful of all the good God has done for us. We certainly do bad actions. Yet remember this: Moses prevailed upon God to stay with the Israelites, and God did. God still loves us and wants to be with us. How might we find a way to appreciate that faithful and gracious character of God today?
A prayer:
Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for wanting to be with such a proud, forgetful, erring group of creatures. Help us to remember our relationship with you, to be ever trying to celebrate it and your mighty love for us. Amen.
