In many religious traditions,
including our own,
there is a profound tension
between God’s transcendence and God’s imminence.
Transcendent…
God as holy and with that wholly Other,
different to such an extreme
that there is an impermeable barrier
between God and humanity
—Creator and Creature.
Luther in fact uses the language of
“The Alien Works of God,” and “The Alien God”
to describe this
indescribable, strange,
God of ours.
Imminent…
God as close as breath,
a heartbeat,
the hairs on our head
—God our Sibling we wrestle with
and God the Parent of us all.
God in intimate conversation with us.
At an extreme, Creation as an outworking of the Creator.
And in today’s story of Moses
bathed in God’s radiant afterglow,
and the story of Jesus
pointing to humanity as an image of God…
we come face to face with that tension anew.
God as Other
and God as Brother.
Prayer
Moses, that fascinating mediator between God
and the throng of escaped slaves
who become something more
—become a people…
Moses regularly pushes the envelope with God…
at the burning bush
he button-holes God
and pushes God beyond command,
to a name…
“Who should I tell them sends me to free them?
Who is our liberator?
What is your name!”
Names have power
—Just say someone’s full name, including middle names, loudly
and see if they revert to childhood
or notice how people react to their old nick-names
when at a high school reunion.
So, Moses’ ask is a big ask
—and surprisingly
he gets what he asks for,
“I AM that I AM” and
“The God of your ancestors.”
Now Moses pushes further still,
to see God’s face.
I was on a Zoom call this last week
and met a Pastor face-to-face
—virtually
—who I’d only known by name
through his writing and common friends
—I finally got to put a face to the name…
so too Moses
—he wants to put a face to the name “I AM.”
God responds
—I’m not going with you,
I’m not following you into the Promised Land,
because my presence,
my Holiness,
my complete otherness,
will consume you like fire…
after all:
-you all created a Golden Calf,
-you rebelled in the desert,
-I’ve rushed among you
-and the earth responded by swallowing you up…
This is a Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of theology
—God’s terrible glory
is face-melting
is fire,
is thunder and lightning,
is clouded darkness,
leaves behind volcanic lava-flow.
But Moses pushes
—and God accommodates his request…
Moses gets to see God indirectly,
-through the cleft in a rock,
-shielded by the hand of God,
-and only from the backside.
It’s like watching an eclipse
by poking a hole in a piece of paper
and watching the shadow.
Or like looking at a gorilla
—the only way you can do so
without them getting aggressive
is by giving them the side-eye.
Even bathed in God’s radiant afterglow,
there is still that distance
—God is still very much transcendent,
still a God who is Alien,
who is Other.
Jesus takes a different tact,
when he walks into this step-up,
springing this trap.
The Pharisees and Herodians
—two Jewish groups who agree on almost nothing,
their central sticking-point being how to relate to Rome
—they set Jesus up starting with flattery,
then going for the jugular,
“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?”
This is a no-win question,
either he is
-a traitor to his people
or
-an enemy of the state.
He has to declare himself a rival to Rome
or a quisling to empire.
But wow, Jesus’ question in response
causes these Herodians to tell on themselves.
They dig into their pockets
and pull out a day’s worth of pay like it is nothing
—in the temple…
they pull out a forbidden coin
in the temple
—they are pulling out what is considered a graven image,
in the courtyard of God’s house.
It is sort of like that controversy on Twitter,
back when it was Twitter.
Someone created a hashtag
about hypocritical pastors wearing $1,000 shoes
and getting rich off poor people,
and Prosperity Gospel preachers misunderstood the point.
They started using the hashtag
to brag about how expressive their footwear was…
they told on themselves!
But Jesus doesn’t stop
at unmasking the unkind intention
behind these questions,
he then points to the image and the title of God
—that all the way back in Genesis
we humans were declared to be God’s image
—we belong to God,
we are worthy of dignity and respect,
AND—the part of Genesis we often miss,
we’re image bearers who point
to God’s ultimate possession
of the creation
—that we are, in a meaningful way,
stewards of this creation,
caretakers and keepers of it.
God is found in
our being and our doing
—God as imminent
as a coin in a pocket,
as our very self….
God is transcendent
—distant from who and what humans are,
because of our inhumanity,
-we give ourselves over to Caesar,
-we mar the image of God in our neighbors
—we make war on each other,
-we cheat each other,
-we abuse and dispose of each other
Not only that,
we often forsake our duties
as stewards of God’s world…
We have the power
to co-create with God
or destroy God’s world,
and so often we choose the latter…
God is imminent,
imparting dignity to our being
and meaning to our doings
—We are God’s Sibling and Stewards…
Look to your neighbor
—you look upon the image of God.
Think about your roles, relationships, and responsibilities
—that is how God is made known.
There is an ecstasy in that,
Literally it throws us out of ourselves!
a Divinity in that.
Even as
the mystical flow of
-living out our vocation
and the experience of
-existing as signs of Gods’ love,
are always ephemeral
—they gush away
whenever we try to grasp onto them
—for God is still Transcendent…
And between the two, the cross.
There we meet God being flayed
by every idolatry and temptation,
humanity’s inhumanity toward humanity
on full display.
There too, God a sibling
—a sign of costly, caring, love
for the whole cosmos.
A Human life lived,
letting us know that we’re not crazy,
those ephemeral experiences of utter goodness
—true, real goodness,
have echoes in the life of God.
On the cross, God Transcendent, God Imminent.
Thanks be to God.
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