Exodus 33:12-23; Matthew 22:15-22

Without wanting to be either flippant or blasphemous, I don't think it out of line to say that there is something a little odd about the story where Moses gets to see the back side of God. This is Moses, the one who went up the mountain and brought down the tablets of the law; the one at whose uplifted rod the waters of the Red Sea parted and then came back together; Moses, the person who filled more roles than any other in the Torah -- prophet, priest, military leader, spiritual guide, political genius. And all Moses gets to see is the back side of God? This does not bode well for those of us who pick up a stick and find that we have neither a snake nor a rod in our hand -- just a stick. What will we get to see of God? Naturally the answer lies in the fact that here, as in most of life, there is more to the story. Rather than being a story of Moses getting the short end of the stick (if I may continue with my "stick" motif), it is actually a story of God's amazing grace, freely given -- one in a long series of such stories. Remember where today's reading comes in the grand scheme of things. God had heard the cry of the people of Israel in their bondage in Egypt. And recall that it was not a cry directed to Yahweh, the God of their fathers, about whom they seem to have completely forgotten. No, it was simply a cry of desperation; but a cry which God heard and to which God graciously responded. God raised up Moses who led the people out of slavery in Egypt and eventually to the Holy Mountain of Sinai where they received a gift that would enable them to live in harmony with one another and in union with God: the law. But before Moses even made it down from the mountain something had gone wrong, and according to Aaron's lame excuse, the people had thrown their gold jewelry in a fire and out popped a golden calf. The Lord was so disappointed, God determined to destroy Israel and begin anew, but Moses averted that destruction by pleading with God to change God's mind. Exodus 33 opens with good news and bad news. Moses is to lead Israel to the Promised Land; God will even send an angel on before them to clear the way for their advance; but God will not go with them. And why not? Because of God's wrathful nature? Not really; more because of God's grace and love. You see, after the sin of the golden calf, God had become very dangerous for Israel. They were such a stiff-necked people, the Lord pointed out, that there is a very good chance that with God along they will pull some new bone-headed maneuver that would result in their destruction. It is better for them to go on alone. I have heard stories told -- although I'm sure no one in this sanctuary has ever experienced such a time -- when a parent would say to a child, or one spouse to another, "Just leave me alone for now. Just leave me alone." And thus saith the Lord. When the people heard this news they were quite distressed. The loss of God's guiding presence on the journey is the equivalent of being stuck in the middle of the desert without a map -- sand as far as the eye can see with no apparent way out. So God is again petitioned by Moses, in today's lesson. There are two parts to this prayer that are of key importance to us as Christians. These two movements display a pattern of spiritual awareness which have been shown and re-shown throughout history and, unless I miss my guess, are present in most, if not all, of us. The first part is that we must begin our relationship with God by admitting that before we ever acknowledge the importance of God in our lives, God knows us and has been gracious to us. For Moses, it is a matter of recalling how God, in God's grace, reached out to the Hebrew people when they did not know God and how God called Moses when Moses did not know God. For us as Christians it is a matter, as the Apostle Paul put it, that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for our sins." God has acted on our behalf even before we were born, by providing the model of faithfulness and obedience that enables us to live in right relationship with God. The second part is that once we, like Moses, have established and acknowledged our utter dependence on God and God's grace, our prayers become more and more personal and in the process of spiritual growth, we gain new insights into the meaning of God's grace and love. Look at the three-fold progression in Moses' petitions: "Show me your ways" (v. 13), "Go with us" (v. 16), and "Show me your glory, I pray" (v. 18). Moses asks, first, for a road map, some specific directions for living, then for God's divine presence with him and finally, for a spiritual experience which will give him new insight into God. The request for a road map had already been fulfilled, of course, in the law. In the Old Testament, the law is never understood as an odious burden to be born, but as God's gracious gift that shows the people God's ways, how we may and ought to live in harmony with the God who loves us and whom we love. But the problem with the law is that like any gift it does put something of an onus on us. I am surely not the only one who has received gifts over the years that I really don't know what to do with: the unworn tie, the somewhat too-colorful shirt, the clock in the shape of a bird that stays in the attic. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, in the absence of a living relationship with God, we may not know exactly what to do with the gift of the law. Trying to rely on mere obedience to the law in order to win God's favor can become a liability rather than an asset. It is this business of living by the letter of the law, by legalism, rather than in a living relationship with God that lies at the heart of the familiar Gospel lesson for today. The trap laid for Jesus was a simple one, designed to be a no-win situation. If Jesus said it was okay to pay taxes, he would lose face with the masses, who deeply and passionately resented the Roman presence and domination; if he said it was wrong to pay taxes, he would take the side of those revolutionary types who, for political and religious reasons, advocated rejection of Roman authority and even rebellion against the empire. But Jesus turned the tables. There was more than one kind of coin available for use in first-century Judea. There were the standard Roman coins, minted with the likeness of the emperor. They held the inscription, "Tiberius, Caesar, son of the divine Augustus" or "Tiberius, Caesar, the majestic son of God." Both the image, understood to be a violation of the second commandment prohibiting idols, and the language were clearly offensive to pious Jews. But there were other coins, coins depicting sheaves of wheat rather than the emperor's head, available which allowed them to avoid blasphemy and contamination. When Jesus asked his examiners for a coin, without second thoughts they brought out a Roman coin with Caesar's head. The coin itself declared that they had given in to political compromise. So Jesus told them if they enjoyed the comforts of Rome, they should pay their dues to Rome. After all, who establishes the boundaries to which the emperor's claims extend, the extent to which we allow the dominant culture to mold who we are as people? Who indeed if not we ourselves? If we make compromises that make life a little more comfortable, a little less problematic, that is our business, but we shouldn't then haul God in as the backer of some point for our own convenience in the compromise. That is a misuse and a misunderstanding of what the gift of the law is all about, a misdirected legalism. Gratitude is not a matter of trying to twist the law to fit our own purposes; it is a matter of being enabled to see things God's way. When we recognize the amazing grace of God, when we appreciate the road map God provides as a way of molding our lives, not a means of manipulating God, we naturally want to know more of God, partly because we recognize how much there is that we don't know. And that brings us back to Moses' request to see God's glory and his chance to see the back side of God. In his Life of Moses, the early church father, Gregory of Nyssa, says that the reason Moses was permitted only to see God's back is that that is the proper view of one who follows, of a disciple. Seeing the back side of God is, thus, not only not a slight, it is a beautiful metaphor of the wonderful privilege of being able to follow our God. Gregory's image contrasts the desires of the people in Exodus 32 to have an experience with God and Moses' desire in Exodus 33 to know God. Aaron and Company proceeded with the time-honored practice of trying to manipulate and control God, making an idol; but Moses asked God for a meeting. Some modern Christians of all stripes -- liberals, conservatives, Protestants, Catholics -- seem especially certain that they not only know God's will on a whole range of issues -- economics, sexual ethics, and politics (all of which get intertwined) -- but feel quite assured that God must validate their positions. In a recent discussion group a student gave a 1990s kind of definition of religious dialogue: tell me what you think, so I can explain to you how wrong you are. Unfortunately, many of us seem to mistake hard language and hard-heartedness with being tough-minded and committed. The Pharisees who confronted Jesus talked tough but were really self-absorbed. Moses was totally committed to serving God and God's people, and the best he got was a glimpse of the back side of God. But that is not a bad view for all of us. It is a view that fosters humility, and that reminds us that God leads us, we do not control God.