When God Doesn't Speak

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67:

When we began this series, we started at the beginning in Genesis 1:1, when we are told that God said “let there be light.” And what happened? There was light. And so, simply by speaking God was able to create. That means that words matter, especially the words of God. Indeed the beginning of the most important statement of faith within Judaism, known as the shema, begins “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” It doesn’t say speak O Israel or believe O Israel, but “hear O Israel…” Listen to this statement. For us as Christians speaking and language are just as important, because we are told that at the beginning of the Gospel of John, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  And who is the Word?  Jesus.  So God speaking is important, and God talks a lot in Genesis.  God talks with Adam and Eve, God talks with Cain, God talks with Noah, God talks with Hagar and of course God talks with Abraham.  God talks a lot with Abraham.  In every step of Abraham’s story not only is God present and active, and yet in the passage we just heard, which is the last significant story of Abraham, God does not speak.  Now after the past two weeks in which we have heard God tell Abraham that he should listen to the voice of his wife Sarah and expel Ishmael and Hagar, and then last week when God calls for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac perhaps we are a little relieved that God is not talking or asking anything.

Today’s passage is a nice story.  A simple story.  It has a nice beginning, a good middle and even a happy ending because we are told that Isaac loves Rebekah.  But it’s not like this is an insignificant story.  This sets up the rest of the Book of Genesis and the creation of what will become the nation of Israel, and yet in striking contrast to everything that has come before, God is not a primary character.  In fact, God is not even there.  Abraham decides to send his chief servant back to his native land to find a wife for Isaac.  Why he is concerned about getting a wife from among his own country, versus those amongst whom he is living, is unknown.  God doesn’t tell him to do this. But, the steward sets off, along with other servants, many gifts and ten camels, which will become important, and as he approaches a well near the city of Nahor, he says a little prayer that God might help him find the right girl.

Getting Close To God

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-42:

We start today with a confession.  This week we will celebrate Ash Wednesday, although perhaps celebrate is the wrong word to use, but in the Christian calendar the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday is known as Transfiguration Sunday, the day in which we hear one of the accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain with three disciples.  A few weeks ago as I was doing worship planning, I wasn’t really thinking about this being the last Sunday before Lent, and so turned to the lectionary readings for today, and said, “Oh man, I don’t want to preach on the transfiguration again this year.”  While nowhere near as significant for most people, this story is sort of like Christmas and Easter in that it comes around every single year and we preachers get to a point and think, “what can I possibly say about this that hasn’t already been said.”  So my intention was to ignore Jesus on the mountain and instead talk about Moses on the mountain, which is also one of the traditional  readings for today.  But as I began to think about it more and more, I found myself seeing the connections and similarities between these two stories, and because God has a sense of humor, found myself coming back to preaching about the transfiguration, while at the same time trying to ignore it, because what I felt a pull towards in these two stories was not really what happens on the mountaintop, but instead what happens afterwards.

Moses has been up on the mountain talking with God, want to guess for how many days? 40.  And he comes down with the two tablets with the ten commandments in his hands.  This is actually the second set of tablets because he had shattered the first set he was given when he came down off the mountain and found that the people had constructed a golden calf and were worshipping it.  So Moses goes and meets with God again and comes down with a new set, which are the ones that end up in the Ark of the Covenant which makes Indiana Jones necessary.  But, when he comes off the mountain this time, in addition to the tablets, Moses’ face is also glowing from being in the presence of God, and the people are afraid to come near him, so Moses ends up putting a veil on his face, not to protect the people from what they see, but in order to try and quell their fear about what it means.  To put a distance between them and the presence of God.  Moses takes of the veil when he is with God, but then puts it on when he is with the people.  As an aside, when this passage was translated into Latin for the Vulgate, which is the Latin Bible, Jerome translated the word glows as horns, which is not really as strange as it may sound based on the Hebrew here, but that’s why sometimes you’ll see Moses as being portrayed with horns on his head, Michelangelo.