Life never stands still. It can crawl along too slowly, zip past us before we know it, torture us with opportunities we can never get again, or bewilder us with which path to take. But it never stands still.
A woman who learned about life's twists and turns shared her story with a pastor friend of mine. Shortly after her marriage, in full flush of love, she went out for a jog. Bursting with a feeling of how delicious her life was, she offered up a prayer of gratitude to God for her marriage, her health, and her faith. Feeling a twinge of guilt for being so carefree, she hoped that she could always be as happy as she was then. I don't think I need to tell you how that expectation turned out.
Shortly after her genuine, but naïve prayer, she and her husband moved to a new state. A friend had started an "innovative" ministry, and needed her husband's help to handle the staggering work load. So, they packed everything up and moved across the country. Well, the workload wasn't quite as full as the friend had led them to believe. Her husband had to get odd jobs around town just to put food on the table. With her husband coming home dirty and tired every night, she didn't find life as sweet as she had a few months earlier. With a bit of luck, her husband found a job back East, which meant another long move. Once they got there, she had trouble finding a job, eventually landing one she hated. She couldn't quit because they were so far in the hole from the disastrous excursion out West. Finally, after about three years of misery, her husband found a good job in another part of the state, and she could quit work to start a family. They both were full of joy when their first daughter was born. Anxiety overshadowed the joy when their precious daughter developed cancer. The once carefree young woman was now making frequent trips across state to a children's hospital. Through good medical care, and God's grace, the young girl beat her cancer. Both of the woman's two daughters are now fine. The one who had cancer became a piano prodigy.
Through all of these experiences, the woman's faith survived and even grew. She went from a tender prayer through some tough times. She came out the other end into middle age with her trust in God intact. She learned what we all have to learn. Life never stands still. Whether we like where life has led us, or whether we can't wait for our circumstances to change, things just aren't going to stay the same. Whether we do so physically or not, emotionally and spiritually, we can't just stay put.
Moses couldn't stay put either. By the time the scene in our passage opens, Moses has been through more than most people could take. Starting way back with the burning bush, where he first got his orders from God to lead the people out of Egypt, Moses has gotten a crash course on hardship, disappointment, and frustration. Over and over, Moses got his hopes up that Pharaoh would loosen his grip and let the people leave, only to have those hopes dashed when Pharaoh reneged. When they finally got out of Egypt, past the Sea of Reeds, then they faced the wilderness. They ran out of food. They ran out of water. They ran out of patience. Still, in all of that, God provided. God let them know that they were not in this alone. God provided manna. God brought water out of a rock. A cloud followed them to let them know God was with them.
The people could see all of the signs that God was with them: the parting of the Sea of Reeds, the manna, the water from the rock, and the cloud. Still, the stress, or the uncertainty, or the anxiety, or something got to them. They went off the deep end. In a moment of weakness, while Moses was up on Mount Sinai getting the instructions from God, the people freaked out. They rushed to Aaron and asked Aaron to make gods for them. The people who were supposed to bring a blessing to the rest of the world weren't strong enough to survive the stresses of the wilderness. What they did in making a golden calf may have been "only human," but it was still a lack of faith. When Moses needed the people to be strong, they caved.
We have to be careful reading the minds of biblical characters, but Moses seems to be at the end of his rope. After all he has been through, from Pharaoh to Aaron, Moses seems to have had all he can take. Are we reading too much into this to ask if he is wondering if this whole thing has been worth the effort? He has been through the conflict in Egypt, the danger of the Sea, the trudging through the wilderness, the hunger and thirst, the complaints from the people, and now this. The people he has been leading aren't mature enough, aren't strong enough, aren't brave enough to keep the faith in a time of uncertainty.
We get some confirmation of Moses' doubts in a scene just before our passage for today. Moses is talking to God just after the golden calf incident. Moses confesses the sin of the people, and asks God to allow him to make atonement. In seeming despair, Moses says to God, "But now, if you will only forgive their sin -- but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written" (Exodus 32:32). If the sin of the people is too great for God to forgive, Moses doesn't want to be part of God's story. After all he has accomplished, Moses would just as soon be "blotted out" of the whole narrative if the people's sins were too great for God to forgive.
When Moses is in the midst of this spiritual funk, God calls him to get up and keep going (Exodus 33:1). Surely, Moses is wondering how he can keep going. With perhaps a mixture of a sense of failure and of anger, Moses doesn't want to keep going. Who can blame him? The problem is, Moses and the people can't go back -- that would mean returning to Egypt, and they can't stay put -- they are in the middle of nowhere. The only thing they can do is go forward. Despite the frustration, the disappointment, and the anger, Moses has no choice but to continue to lead the people where God is sending them.
Before Moses can go one more step, he has to know one thing. Is God really in this journey? Even after all of the evidence of God's presence -- the Sea of Reeds, the manna, the water from the rock -- Moses wants reassurance that God is going with them. Moses says to God, "If I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways" (Exodus 33:13). Moses is the leader of the group, but Moses himself is not positive that God is directing this journey. Moses can stand the lack of resources and the weakness of the people if he knows that God is with them. That's what Moses asks for, assurance that God is with them in this long, painful journey.
What happens next is strange, no doubt about that. We have a hard time getting our heads around the next scene in the story. God hides Moses in a rock, and then reaches down the divine hand, holding it over Moses' eyes. God passes before Moses, but all he sees is God's "back." You would not believe how much ink has been spilled by Bible scholars trying to determine what God's "back" looks like! This story does not fit with our usual view of God. We don't think of God having hands and a back, or even a body at all. As the Gospel of John says, "God is spirit" (John 4:24).
As primitive and steeped in mythology as this little story is, it is often just what we in the twenty-first century need to hear. What God does in the passage is pure grace. Moses gets an indirect view of God. Whatever Moses actually saw, he got just enough evidence of God's presence to keep him going. God's back was just enough presence, enough glory, enough contact with God that Moses knew whatever he faced, God was with him. He could pick up from where he was, deal with the frustrations of the past, and make his way forward. He didn't know what the future held, but he knew God was in it.
We don't know what the future holds for us. Whatever our past was like, we're not going back. Life won't stay put. The only way we can go is forward, into the uncertainty. What's over the next horizon for our health, for our family, for our finances, for world events? Maybe, like Moses, something from our past drags us down. We're afraid to face the future because the past has been so painful. Life still nudges us forward, even if we aren't ready.
It's not just in our individual lives. The church does its ministry not knowing what the future holds. How do we do our ministry in the midst of secularism, rampant sensuality, and the massive indifference of the culture to the message of the church? With so many needs to address, the church can feel overwhelmed.
In our personal lives, and in the mission of the church, we aren't promised that everything will go the way we want. We face challenges, surprises, pain, and difficulties. We can face tasks that seem too great for us to accomplish. We may say, along with Moses, that if we have to keep going, we want to know that God is with us. If life is painful, and we can't make deals with God to avoid the pain, we at least want to have the assurance that God is there. This peculiar little story, with God hiding Moses in the rock and covering up his eyes so that Moses can see God's back, lets us know that we will not likely get a full vision of God. We don't see God directly, unmistakably. We never see God face to face, so to speak. There is a mystery to God we can never penetrate. Even in that mystery, though, God reaches out to us. We can experience God's presence, even if it seems only a fleeting glimpse. We may experience God's presence in a feeling of assurance after a prayer. We may experience it as a feeling of power and energy when we stand up to social injustice. Sometimes we just feel God's love breaking through our loneliness and fear. God is available to us in the church, through the Holy Spirit. God's presence may not be unmistakable, but it is real.
Whatever Moses saw when he saw God's back, it was enough to sustain him as he picked up to continue his long journey toward the Promised Land. In the twists and turns of our lives, in the exhilarating but frustrating work of the church, God will give us just enough presence that we know we are not alone. With that glimpse of God's back, we can put one foot in front of the other on our journeys. If we can hold on to the glimpses of God's back, we can face what the future holds with courage. Wherever life leads us, God will go with us.