29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came
down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses
did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with
God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his
face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But
Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation
returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 Afterward all the
Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.
33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his
face; 34 but whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take
the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites
what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see the face of
Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on
his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
Year C
Last Sunday of
Epiphany
February 7, 2016
Cross~Wind
Title: F2F
Introduction
I am going to share a story that lets us know the blessing and the
shortcoming of technology.
Most of us have on our smart phones facetime or skype on them. These
applications can let you see the person to whom you are speaking. When I first
moved here, it was somewhat cool to show a colleague what our new home and back
yard looked like. I do not use such applications much, but when I do, I am
always glad that I had it.
Sometimes, such applications allow amazing things to happen.
A little boy, 7 years old, was suffering from a rare and aggressive
brain cancer. He was restricted to his hospital bed in Rhode Island, but wanted
desperately to sing his favorite song, "Walk This Way," with rock
star Steven Tyler. I had to remind myself of this song, easy to do on the
Internet. I could not understand the words, so I looked up the lyrics. I almost
wish I had not. After reading them, I must say that I am not sure a 7-year-old
should have that as a favorite song. I know it makes me sound old and no fun,
but oh well.
In any case, you might think “No way?” for this boy to sing his
favorite song with Steven Tyler. In reality, no problem. Through a Skype video
call, 7-year-old Cole Grace and Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler connected for
a one-hour conversation. They also shared a special performance of "Walk
This Way," and Tyler gave a shout-out to Grace from his seat as a judge on
American Idol. Said Grace after the video meeting, "It felt pretty
awesome."
Here is the sad part. The boy would die about five months later.
Modern technology can make some truly amazing connections, across
continents and around the globe. In the world of business, virtual meetings
have become increasingly popular because they save time and money while
offering flexibility in location and timing.
However, is there a case for face to face?
Steve Manicor of bigIDEASblog questions whether web conferences and
virtual meetings can replace the value of face-to-face contact. He cites a
Forbes study from the summer of 2009 involving more than 750 businesses. The
study revealed that face-to-face, in-person meetings go deeper than webinars
and virtual events. In fact, 80 percent of the executives said they prefer
face-to-face contact to virtual meetings. Such executives believe that
in-person meetings are superior for achieving almost every business objective,
including persuasion (91%), leadership (87%), engagement (87%), inspiration
(85%), decision-making (82%), accountability (79%), brainstorming (73%), and
strategy (73%).
You can make a strong case for face to face. Business executives prefer
it. I imagine most other people do was well, including Cole Grace of Rhode
Island.
Think about it.
Singing from his bed into a computer was cool, but he really wanted to
be onstage with his rock idol Steven Tyler.
Even for me, as much as I enjoyed seeing my colleague on the phone,
walking around the house and the yard, and so on, I would much rather have had
him and his wife here. I could have shown him our new place and gone out to
eat.
I imagine that some of you have gotten used to skyping with children
and grandchildren around the country, and maybe even the world. Yet, as
wonderful as it all is, I can also imagine that every time this happens, most
of us think that real face time is better than virtual face time.
Application
Moses had a unique relationship with God. In passages like this, Moses
is the mediator between God and the people. He could be such because he had
unique face time with God.
Yet, our passage has some important lessons for all of us.
First, Moses texts us the words: Take the time to build a relationship with God.
After 40 days and nights on Mount Sinai, Moses still needed
face-to-face time with God. He went regularly into the Tent of Meeting in order
to have that time and build that relationship. Today, prayer, Bible study,
worship, and service help build this relationship. Such practices put us in
personal contact with God and keep us open "to the presence, the power,
and the possibility of God."[1] Kayc writes a devotion for
our committees each month. This month, the focus is on waiting before the Lord.
Waiting in stillness is like adding strands to a rope to strengthen it.
Remember,
prayer is a local call. Your Father is always in; the line is never busy. He
may not answer you in the way you expect; fathers are like that, after all. But
he will always answer.[2]
Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist who staged a
three-month exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. All day,
every day, she sat at a table in the museum's atrium. Members of the audience
sat at the opposite end of the table with no talking or touching. Her goal was
"to achieve a luminous state of being and then transmit it." She
literally wanted to sit there and give off light. While she did not achieve the
shining face of Moses, she made a compassionate and loving connection with many
of the people sitting across from her in silence. Some experienced tears rising
from within.
What would you think of me if I told you this sounded weird?
Yet, really, who are we?
People
travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas,
at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the
circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without
wondering.[3]
Here are people
willing to pay to sit in front of Marina. What kind of relationship might we
have with God, if we simply took the time to sit with God, silently, in deep
prayer and meditation?
The second text message Moses sends is: Expect your relationship with
God to change you.
Look at what happens when Moses spends time with God.
"the skin of his face shone
because he had been talking with God" (Exodus 34:29).
His shining face at
least means he became a reflection of God's own shining. Shepherds had to tell
others after they saw the glory of the Lord. The disciples saw the glory of God
shining while on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36). John 1:14 says
the disciples saw in Jesus, “the glory as
of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.” At risk of their lives,
they told others of the good news.
Transformation happens when we enter deeply into God's own life. We
become more compassionate, loving, forgiving and truthful. Our actions serve
others instead of ourselves. At work, at home, at school and in the community,
the people around us begin to see evidence that we are trying to follow the
guidance of Jesus, and to live in the light of his glory.
An unknown author penned these words:
Watch your thoughts,
They become your words.
Watch your words,
They become your actions.
Watch your actions,
They become your habits.
Watch your habits,
They become your character.
Watch your character,
It becomes your destiny.
A third text message from the mountain is this: Reach out to everyone,
even those who annoy you.
One of the attractions of virtual meetings is that we can keep our
distance from people who bug us. However, Moses insists on face-to-face
meetings, even with the rebellious and stiff-necked people of Israel. This is
harder than it looks. Most of us are glad to keep our distance from people we
dislike or disrespect, and we actually prefer virtual meetings with them. Moses
gets close to a rebellious people.
We are in a political season. Democrat and Republican, conservative and
liberal – America would be better off if they would get off the harsh words
said on the Internet and sit down at a meal with each other. It would not solve
everything, but it might solve some things.
Finally, Moses sends the text message: Keep moving, both up and down
the mountain, in and out of the Tent of Meeting.
Maintain balance between talking with God and humans, worship and work,
prayer and participation in life. You do not get close to God by leaving the
world. If anything, getting close to God will bring you closer to the world. It
will involve you in the mission God has for us in this world. Getting close to
God will help you bring the glory of God, with all its hope and inspiration,
into the middle of human life.
Conclusion
So go ahead and Skype or facetime when necessary. Nevertheless, listen
to both Moses and America's executives. Face to face is awesome.
Going deeper
Exodus 24:1-2, 9-11, and Exodus 34:1-35 relate the ratification of the Covenant. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and
seventy of the elders of Israel can worship the Lord at a distance. When
they went up, they saw a pavement of sapphire stone. “God did not lay his hand
on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they ate
and drank.” Moses has already broken the tablets that the Lord wrote, so now
Moses makes new tablets. “The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him.”
The Lord passed before Moses. “The Lord,
the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth
generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means
clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the
children, and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
Moses bowed his head in worship. Even if this people are rebellious, “pardon
our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” The Lord said, ‘I hereby make a covenant.”
The Lord will drive out the peoples who live in Canaan. They are not to make a
covenant with the inhabitants of the Land. They are to tear down their worship
centers, for they are to worship no other god, because Lord, whose name is
Jealous, is a jealous God. The reason is that when they prostitute themselves
before their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite Israel to do so as
well. They will marry them. They are not to make idols. They are to keep the
festival of unleavened bread. The firstborn belong to the Lord. They shall
observe the Sabbath. They shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits
of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering. Three times a year the males
“shall appear before the Lord God.” The Lord will enlarge their borders. They
shall not offer the blood of the sacrifice of leaven. They shall eat the
sacrifice of the Passover fully. The best of the first fruits of the ground
they shall bring to the house of the Lord. They shall not boil a kid in its
mother’s milk. The Lord has made a covenant with Moses and with Israel.
It was not necessary for Moses to ascend Mount Sinai in order to
encounter the divine presence. Indeed, the “tent of meeting” was so named
precisely for this reason (Exodus 29:42). It was into this oracular source that
Moses entered to receive divine communication (33:7-11), as represented by the
pillar of cloud which would descend and rest at the entrance to the tent. The
entrance to the tent of meeting was also the site of the sacrificial altar on
which daily offerings were made by Aaron (the high priest) and his sons (the
priests). In addition, this complex
nexus of offering and revelation constituted the evidence of God’s presence
among his people and the reminder of his deliverance of them from Egypt (Exodus
29:38-46).
Exodus 34:29-35 (NRSV)
29 Moses came down from Mount
Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant
in his hand, [The Hebrew word eduth is not the common
word for covenant (which is berit, which can refer to common agreements between
people or nations). Eduth is a technical term of the Priestly writers,
occurring about 46 times in the Hebrew Bible, and it always refers to the
contents of the divine charge to the Israelites, as summarized in the Ten
Commandments (or Words). Not surprisingly, the term occurs most frequently
in the books of Exodus, Numbers and Psalms, where emphasis is placed on the
nature of the divine-human relationship as being one of divine deliverance
(through gracious acts of mercy) and human response (through obedience to the
covenant which assures that continued safety).] Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been
talking with God. [Moses did not realize that, because of his conversing
with God (simpliciter, v. 29; more commonly, “the Lord” or “the Lord your God”
is used in this section; cf. vv. 26-27, 32, 34), his face “shone” or “emitted
rays of light” (v. 29). The rare Hebrew verb qaran is derived from the common
noun qeren, “horn,” and means, obviously, to display horns or shafts of light
(as opposed to radiate a diffused glow). The verb form occurs only here and in
Psalm 69:32 (v. 31 in English, where it means literally to grow or have horns —
“or a bull with horns”). The similarity in the Hebrew words (as well as the
Vulgate’s translation) resulted in Michelangelo’s famous depiction of Moses
with horns growing out of his head, one of the more grotesque examples of
biblical literalism.]30 When
Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and
they were afraid to come near him. [Unique
among the prophets to which both Israel and the first Christians looked for
inspiration and guidance, Moses bore not only in his arms but in his very
person the evidence of the mediating and revelatory role to which all prophets
were called.]31 But Moses
called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to
him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 Afterward all the Israelites came
near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When
Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; [It is not clear why Moses veiled his face
after speaking with his people. It is possible that the people continued to
react uneasily to the radiance of his countenance, and the veil was to remove
that distraction from his interaction with the Israelites. There is no mention
of harm coming to the people because of the radiance, so it is more likely
their reaction than the radiance itself which is the reason for the veiling.]
34 but whenever Moses went in
before the Lord to speak with him,
he would take the veil off, until he came out; [More understandable is
Moses’ removing of the veil] and when he
came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the
Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining;
and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with
him. [This categorization of the people reflects the concentric circles of
Moses’ intimates: his brother playing the most prominent (but highly ambiguous)
role (compare his leadership role in the golden calf incident, chapter 32), the
leaders of the congregation acting as lieutenants and finally the people
themselves. It is probable that the last group meant adult Israelite men, not
women and children, whose presence is usually specified (e.g., Exodus 12:37).
Moses’ instructions, therefore, to “all the Israelites” (v. 32) probably means
that Moses instructed the male heads of households who, in turn, carried the
instructions back to their homes and relatives. However, v. 34-35 employ a frequentative tense to describe an ongoing practice
of Moses in his office as divine mediator.
In fact, the story has a decidedly different emphasis from the main body
of Exodus tradition. Whereas in Ex 19ff
the focus of the Sinai tradition fell on the once-and-for-all proclamation of
the divine laws of the covenant, which were then inscribed upon stone tablets, the main point of this story has to do with
Moses' ongoing practice of speaking with God and communicating his words to the
people. The distinctive content of the story concerns Moses' use of a veil
or mask. What the text presupposes is
that Moses continues to speak with God, no longer on the top of the mountain,
but in the tent of meeting. Moreover,
the same immediacy between God and Moses is present which results in the same
afterglow of the divine majesty. By placing the story in this form in its
present position the author has given an interpretation of how he wants to
understand the entire Sinai tradition.
God and the revelation of the divine will stand at the center. However, Sinai is also the story of Moses,
the mediator between God and Israel, who continued to function as a mortal man
and yet who in his office bridged the enormous gap between the awesome, holy,
and zealous God of Sinai and the fearful, sinful, and repentant people of the
covenant.]
In the New Testament, note II Corinthians 3, a combination of midrashic
concerns over Moses' motivation of timidity in the use of the veil and the
assumption that the shining glory faded since it is not mentioned again with
specifically Christian emphases on Christ.
Moses’ face-to-face encounters
with the Divine were unique, as Israel’s religious tradition itself noted:
“Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend”
(Exodus 33:11). This unique access to the Divine, involving teaching, radiance
and a mountainous encounter, formed the backdrop for the New Testament’s
depiction of Jesus’ transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8; cf Matthew 17:1-13).
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