AFTER THE EXODUS, THE WILDERNESS

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, MA
Sunday April17, 2005


READING: Exodus 33: 12-23

I know I shouldn't do it, and that it's probably some kind of sin, but I just can't help checking out the on-line betting sites to see what the current odds are on who will be the next Pope. As you no doubt already know, the Papal Conclave starts tomorrow, and the smart money says that it will all be over in three days, and that the next Pope will take the name Benedict XVI. And the current favorite is German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, age 77, dean of the College of Cardinals and head of the congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (otherwise known as the Inquisition). The odds on Ratzinger's election are now 3-1, while those on the earlier (and younger) front runners from the developing world: Cardinals Francis Arinze from Nigeria and Claudio Hummes of Brazil have now dropped to 8-1. The relatively liberal Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (age 78), the retired archbishop of Milan, is now running at 5-1, while his successor in that important archdiocese, the popular Dionigi Tettamanzi is now 7-1. Passing them both in this past week, however, is the 78-year-old Archbishop Emeritus of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustinger, who converted from Judaism at the age of thirteen, and whose chances have improved from 20-1 to a very competitive 9-2. Meanwhile, the odds on our own archbishop of Boston, Sean O'Malley, now as of this morning have fallen from 33-1 to 100-1, basically putting him out of the running, although still with better chances than HIS predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law, or those of conservative Catholic film maker Mel Gibson.

I've never really been one for betting -- life itself is a big enough gamble as it is. I generally feel stupid when I lose a bet, and guilty when I win one, so I pretty much just stay away from it entirely, with a few exceptions like the Massachusetts State Lottery (which is not really gambling anyway, but a voluntary tax on the mathematically illiterate, which I feel I owe), and an occasional NCAA tournament bracket (when I can remember to fill one out). I do have a little inside information about this Papal election though. I was over at my health club the other day, eavesdropping in the locker room on a conversation between two priests over in the next bay, and I heard one of them say: "well, no one from the Vatican has phoned the rectory asking for MY mitre size." And since I haven't gotten any calls like that either, I guess that's two of us we can rule out. But until the world sees the white smoke rising from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, it's really anybody's guess who the next Pope will be. And when it comes to guessing the Will of God, all bets are truly off.

A little closer to home, I also saw this past week where Episcopal Bishop Eugene Robinson has once again drawn the ire of the so-called "Family Values" crowd by pointing out that Jesus of Nazareth was a single man who (so far as we know) never married, but who rather spent most of his recorded adult life in the company of his male disciples, at least one of whom is identified in the Gospels simply as "the one whom Jesus loved," and also that Jesus is on record in the Gospels as having snubbed his own "traditional" family, by saying something to the effect that "whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

Of course, what truly irritates Religious Conservatives about Bishop Robinson (who, as you may recall, is gay) is the fact that he is also right -- at least inasmuch as any of us can truly claim to know and understand what Jesus really said and meant two millennia ago. We bring so much of our own experience, and prejudices, to our reading of any text...and the Bible is no different. And yet Scripture, like any good literature only more so, is essentially subversive -- it challenges the things we think we know, and forces us to look at ourselves from a different perspective. And this is what makes Scripture both so dangerous, and so powerful; so comforting and yet so upsetting. Texts become sacred by their ability to change peoples lives. And texts remain sacred, generation after generation, because human beings continue to hear and learn the Word of God by reading them. Yet often what we are TOLD they mean, and what we discover when we read them carefully for ourselves, are two very different things. And this is because, in many ways, the process of reading Scripture is a process of self-discovery. Through study we hear and learn the word of God that is written in our own hearts, and which gives our fragile lives their ultimate meaning.

It's in this context that I want to talk a little bit this morning about the idea of Wilderness. Last week during our Passover pageant we learned all about how the Hebrews who were held captive as slaves by the Pharaoh Ramses were able to escape their fate by following Moses out of Egypt and across the Red Sea. And if you were paying close attention, you might recall that at the very end of the Pageant the narrator just so happened to mention that rather than going straight on to the land of milk and honey like they'd been promised, they spent the next 40 years wandering around in the "wilderness" of the Sinai desert...and that basically no one who had crossed the Red Sea out of Egypt, Moses included, lived to cross over the River Jordan into Canaan.

Nowadays, thanks in no small part to the influence of the writings of people like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, the idea of "wilderness" has kind of a romantic reputation. The Wilderness is a place where we go for solitude, and to escape the press of civilized society, to commune with Nature and Nature's God, and to find in Wilderness the Preservation of the World. We've all probably done it, or at the very least tried it; it's no doubt one of the reasons we have chosen to live a mere five miles from Walden Pond. And yet, I think what we sometimes tend to forget while walking blissfully through these lovely second growth woods on a beautiful spring day is that, for most of human history, the prospect of being all by ourselves, isolated from society out in the wilderness in the presence of the Almighty was not so much comforting as it was terrifying. Awful, not Awesome. Likewise, it's one thing to worship the Creator in the abstract and at a distance, as part of a familiar group ritual: maybe sacrifice and barbecue an unblemished animal or two, share a few drinks together and dance around a Golden Calf. It's quite another to meet the Living God face to face in the Wilderness, all alone and far away from one's friends and family.

The wilderness is a place of solitude and a place of danger, a place of hardship and a place of trial and testing. It changes us: makes us harder, but also teaches us our vulnerability; makes us stronger but also more humble and aware of our natural human limitations and shortcomings. It reminds us of the power and the grandeur of heaven and earth -- of thunder and lightening and other forces far beyond our control; and that even though we are spiritual creatures, we are creatures none the less...part of the natural order, whose basic appetites are no different from those of any other animal, and whose eventual mortality is never really in question.

And yet, in encountering these truths we also sometimes discover that there is something More to our lives as well -- an experience which transcends the limitations and the appetites of mere flesh and inspires us to aspire to something more valuable than simple survival. Something which inspires us to create, to do good, to show compassion and help others, to practice justice making and defend the weak, the poor, the orphaned and widowed, the strangers to our community. In a word, something which inspires us to do the work of God, and which reveals to us the part of us all that Scripture tells us is created in God's image.

We also read in the Gospels that at the moment of his Baptism, Jesus heard a heavenly voice reciting to him what sounded like a portion of the Second Psalm: "You are my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." And I want you forget everything you think you might know about this story, and just put yourself in Jesus's sandals for a second. I suspect that for most of us, if we were attending some sort of outdoor religious ceremony and heard voices like that, the first thing we would think to do would be to check ourselves into McLean's. But Jesus didn't have that option, so instead we read that "the spirit led (or drove) him into the wilderness" where he fasted for 40 days. (By now I suspect that you've figured out that 40 is kind of a special number in the Bible -- twice the number of our fingers and toes together, or basically a lot).

We also read that during that period of fasting Jesus was tempted three times: once to work wonders and satisfy his own hunger by turning stone into bread; once to embrace a grandiose view of his own importance by tempting God to intervene and rescue him from a self-destructive act; and once to seek secular power and political sovereignty over the all the world. And each time (we read) he resisted those temptations by quoting passages of Scripture.

And likewise, when we look again at the prayer that Jesus later taught his own disciples, we see these same inspirations of humility, simplicity, trust and forgiveness at play. It is God who is sovereign, both in heaven and on earth. Let there be bread sufficient for our needs this day. Help us to be forgiving of others, that we might be forgiven ourselves. And encourage us that we might avoid giving in to the impulse to act badly. These are lessons learned in the Wilderness, where life itself is reduced to its simplest and most basic terms.

But it's really the story of Moses that shows us what life in the Wilderness is truly all about. Jesus's entire career as a religious leader -- from baptism to crucifixion -- only lasted for at most three years, and quite possibly only for one. Moses led the Children of Israel for forty years in the Wilderness of Sinai-- and that was AFTER his own encounter with the burning bush, and the challenging task of leading his people out of Egypt in the first place. And if we can believe what we read, the job was anything but easy. That business with the Golden Calf was only the beginning. The people murmured against his leadership the entire time: they didn't like all the new rules, couldn't understand why he was spending so much time up on the mountaintop, and why it was taking so long to get to the Promised Land. From our perspective, those answers are obvious -- they simply weren't ready, and they were never going to BE ready, but after forty years in the Wilderness learning a new way of being together in community, at least their children would be. Yet just think of what this must have been like for Moses, who was literally caught between a rock and a hard place, not to mention between a jealous and demanding God, and a stubborn "stiff-necked" people.

And this is why I love this passage from Exodus 33 so much. Moses basically comes to God and says "Listen, I've done everything you've asked of me, and taken the heat for it, and never complained; we're on a first-name basis, and I know you're pleased with my work, but still it bothers me that you won't even look me in the eye when you talk to me." And God responds, "Yes it's true I'm pleased with your work, and I'm planning to stick with you over the long haul, but I'm afraid that if I let you see my face I'd have to kill you. That's just the way it is. But let me tell you what I'm going to do. I know a place where you can hide in the cleft of a rock. I'm going to let you wait there while I cover you with my hand, and as I pass by I will lift my hand, and allow you to catch a glimpse of my backside, my rear end, my Toches. And that's just the way it's going to have to be -- take it or leave it."

And so naturally, Moses did what anyone in his situation would have done. He took God up on his offer. Life in the wilderness isn't alway perfect; you can't always get everything you want, and sometimes even getting what you absolutely need is pretty touch and go. And it isn't all beautiful vistas and pristine meadows either...sometimes it's mostly swamps and mosquitos and poison ivy. The journey from liberation to true freedom typically requires a long and arduous trek through the wilderness, where we forget our old, bad habits, and learn new skills instead. And none of us will ever see God face to face, at least in this lifetime. But when one has chosen to follow God, and been chosen, like Moses, to lead the people of God through the Wilderness to Freedom, what part of God's anatomy would you expect to see? It isn't always pretty, I know. But as long as we can occasionaly catch a glimpse God's Toches, at least we know we are headed in the right direction, and that God is going before us.

The story of the Exodus does have a happy ending of sorts. In the book of Deuteronomy we read how after forty years, God led Moses once more to another mountaintop, where he could gaze out across the valley and see the land that his people had been promised. And in that unknown place the Scripture tells us that Moses died "according to the word of the Lord," and that no one to this day knows the place where he is buried. And according to the Rabinical tradition, that phrase in Hebrew "according to the word of the Lord" (which can also be translated as "by God's command") is sometimes interpreted to mean that God kissed Moses on the lips, and thus in death granted Moses the favor that he had asked for all his life: to meet his Creator face-to-face, and to look him in the eyes as they spoke.