Title: Seeing God
Author: Christopher Harbin
Text: Exodus 33:12-23
We struggle with stretching our understanding to embrace new concepts. It is a hard thing to reframe how we approach new ideas, for we bring so much baggage to every new experience. When our well-established ideas are challenged, it is difficult to take in new information or know what to do with it. How, then, can we know the unknowable, see the invisible, touch the intangible, and make sense of what is beyond our finite human grasp? That is the essential enigma in all religious enterprise. How shall we grasp what is out of our reach and somehow transmit that to others?
Traditionally, we like to make much of Moses speaking directly with God. There are even texts that report Moses speaking with God as with a friend, "nostrils to nostrils" as the idiom goes. Today's text would call that idea into question. It also conflicts with passages portraying Yahweh's willingness to interact with many more than Moses just as directly. While Moses wanted the people to come up before Yahweh's presence on the mountain, they feared doing so. In other texts, it is Yahweh who does not allow such approach. Then again, Yahweh does not always seem to abide by such restrictions.
Moses' interactions with Yahweh appear to run in diverging patterns. At times, it would seem that he meets Yahweh directly, speaking "nostrils to nostrils." In today's passage, he is only allowed to see the fullness of God's glory from behind, and this indirectly. However we might want to qualify Moses' interactions with and understanding of Yahweh, it is only partial. It is incomplete. Moses is still on a learning curve, seeking to better understand Yahweh's identity and character, as well as how we should relate to this redeeming God who is aware of our existence, our difficulties, our distress, and our needs.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about the Hebrew Scriptures as portraying God' ...
Author: Christopher Harbin
Text: Exodus 33:12-23
We struggle with stretching our understanding to embrace new concepts. It is a hard thing to reframe how we approach new ideas, for we bring so much baggage to every new experience. When our well-established ideas are challenged, it is difficult to take in new information or know what to do with it. How, then, can we know the unknowable, see the invisible, touch the intangible, and make sense of what is beyond our finite human grasp? That is the essential enigma in all religious enterprise. How shall we grasp what is out of our reach and somehow transmit that to others?
Traditionally, we like to make much of Moses speaking directly with God. There are even texts that report Moses speaking with God as with a friend, "nostrils to nostrils" as the idiom goes. Today's text would call that idea into question. It also conflicts with passages portraying Yahweh's willingness to interact with many more than Moses just as directly. While Moses wanted the people to come up before Yahweh's presence on the mountain, they feared doing so. In other texts, it is Yahweh who does not allow such approach. Then again, Yahweh does not always seem to abide by such restrictions.
Moses' interactions with Yahweh appear to run in diverging patterns. At times, it would seem that he meets Yahweh directly, speaking "nostrils to nostrils." In today's passage, he is only allowed to see the fullness of God's glory from behind, and this indirectly. However we might want to qualify Moses' interactions with and understanding of Yahweh, it is only partial. It is incomplete. Moses is still on a learning curve, seeking to better understand Yahweh's identity and character, as well as how we should relate to this redeeming God who is aware of our existence, our difficulties, our distress, and our needs.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about the Hebrew Scriptures as portraying God' ...
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