Sermon for the 22nd of October - Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Lectionary Readings for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Exodus 33: 12-23
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 favour in my sight.” Now if I have found favour in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favour in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.’ He said, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ And he said to him, ‘If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favour 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.’ The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favour in my sight, and I know you by name.’ Moses said, ‘Show me your glory, I pray.’ 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. But’, he said, ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.’ And the Lord continued, ‘See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 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; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.’

Matthew 22: 15–22
Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Homily for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

How are we able to see God's glory in a world such as today's world, today? Does God, will God, still show his glory to us, as He did to Moses? God knows that we need more glory! Not the glory of war---we have read about and heard enough about that, from The Iliad to The Charge of the Light Brigade to today's newspaper chronicles of at least, at least, two terrible wars that are raging today. Not that kind of glory of war, but the very different kind of glory that is God's. There has just been so much bad news lately that I think we are all straining to catch any glimpse of the good.

So what does our reading today have to say to us about God's glory? It is interesting to remember that The Iliad and the Old Testament both come from the
most ancient layer of our written language. The Iliad was written sometime in the late 8th/early 7th century B. C. The oldest part of our Old Testament is perhaps even older than this---scholars think that much of the book of Exodus was written between the 9th and the 5th centuries B. C. Here are two very different portrayals of glory.

What are we given to think about today in this Exodus reading? It is an astonishing unprecedented exchange of words between Moses and God.
Moses speaks directly to God and says: You, Lord, have said, “I know you by name, and you have also found favour in my sight.” Now if I, Moses, have found favour in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favour in your sight. And Yahweh God, says, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. But Moses does not rest. Moses persists: he says, Consider too that this nation is your people. Moses wants a re-affirmation from God on all the people's behalf. He persists, and insists that God reaffirm the covenant promise he made, to be with his people all the way to The Promised Land--- to the very end. That is all the people need---that God stay with them, always.

And then Moses goes even farther, in this astonishing extraordinary conversation, and he demands of Yahweh God, the Lord Almighty, Show me your glory!
This is breathtaking. No mortal human being had ever dared to speak to the Lord Almighty like this, demanding to see God face to face, demanding a demonstration of his presence.

But God responds, and God says, I will do this; I will show you my glory. To do this he has to protect Moses from this dangerous encounter---Moses, his chosen one, the leader of God's people---and he puts Moses in the cleft of a rock, he covers Moses with his own hand as he passes by, or otherwise Moses would be burned up and destroyed by the awe-filled nature of the glory of God he witnesses. In the Hebrew scriptures, Moses is the only one who has seen God and lived. Not even Jacob the great patriarch in the chapter before, who realised after he wrestled with the angel in the depths of the night that his opponent had been God's angel or even God Himself---he exclaims as he opens his eyes that I have seen the face of God and lived! But Jacob could see nothing in the darkness of the night, and certainly not God's glory.

The closest even God's own prophets could come to seeing God's glory was the famous encounter of Elijah, the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, when he is fleeing from the death threat of the wicked queen Jezebel in the book of I Kings. Elijah gets up and goes to Horeb, the holy mount of God. To a cave, where he spends the night. There the word of the Lord came to him, saying, What are you doing here, Elijah? And Elijah answered, I have been zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away. God says to him by way of answer: Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. The narrative continues: Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

This was not God's glorious face, but God's presence, and it was enough for Elijah. After we have reminded ourselves of these encounters of our great ancestors---Jacob, Moses, Elijah---with God's glory, we ask, how do they still speak to us? The wrestling of Jacob, the glimpse of God's back of Moses, the absent sound of Elijah. Struggle, sheer awe, silence. These three things: struggle, sheer awe, and silence---these are still our responses to God's glory today.

As to that glory itself: we have been given the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit never tires and never ceases: the Spirit is endlessly active in this our world so defaced by the darkness of war---the Spirit is still manifesting God's glory, in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of places, today, as in every age of history. To us, the inheritors of the people God chose for those first revelations of his glory--to us, God is still showing us His glory. It is all around us. We have only to see it: in the grace of human encounter, of a sudden perception of a deeper reality, of a flooding of the senses with sheer beauty in a sunset, a musical phrase, a colouring of leaves of trees in this autumnal season--- these are all manifestations of God's glory in the world. We so often do not see them! But we can train ourselves to see!

I would like to end with a well-known poem which you have perhaps been expecting, as the words "grandeur" and "glory" are so close......this is Gerard Manley Hopkins's astonishing poem, God's Grandeur. It was written in 1877; Hopkins died in 1889; the poem was only published after the War---the great War--- in 1918. We can only imagine how these words sounded to the survivors of that terrible War. The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The Holy Spirit of God is still showing us God's glory, God's grandeur. It is here, all around us. We can see it, if we will. May that same Holy Spirit of God fill us with such longing, and also such insight, that we can not only see but be touched by such glory and so be empowered to do God's healing work, here, and now, in the midst of this dark and broken world.