Sermon: Finding God's Presence

May the words of my lips, and the meditations of our hearts, be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

            The task thy wisdom hath assigned,

            O let me cheerfully fulfil;

            In all my works thy presence find,

            And choose thy good and perfect will.

These morning words of self-consecration by Charles Wesley, which we will sing at the end of this service, include the word ‘Presence', which is the theme of this sermon.

Exodus 19 is one of the defining narratives of the Old Testament. It's great theme is the coming of God to Israel on Mount Sinai; the awesome revealing of his Presence as a God who is near - but not too near - his people, a people that he is calling into covenantal relationship with himself. For Exodus 19 is the prelude to the giving of the 10 Commandments, and the establishment of God's covenant with the people he has chosen.

What a dramatic narrative is presented to us in the first lesson!  Israel has been brought out of slavery in Egypt, and that is wonderful enough. But even more wonderful is the statement that precedes today's lesson. God says,

I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself...you shall be my treasured possession, you shall be for me a priestly people, a holy nation.

And then an even more dramatic statement to Moses:

I am going to come to you, in dense cloud, in order that the people may hear me when I speak to you and so trust you ever after.

A God who comes, and a God who speaks.

So, as we pick up today's reading. It begins with an insistence on careful preparation,  over a period of three days, with the washing of clothes and abstinence from sex. Why? Because the Lord himself was to come down upon the mountain visibly. Inward holiness, symbolised by outward ritual purity, is thus demanded if any are to stand in the Presence of God.

The mountain itself is delimited, we assume by some kind of boundary markers. It was forbidden for anyone, human or animal, except Moses and Aaron, to ascend it, or even touch the edge of it, on pain of death. For it was forbidden for either people or priest (a seemingly anachronistic reference to a priestly caste that had not yet been established) to break through and so to see God. The commandment was clear:

            Set limits around the mountain and keep it holy.

When the third day dawned, it seemed that the people were awoken by thunder and lightning, and thick was cloud was shrouding the mountain. Was this a mere storm? Well, it was much more than that because in addition, there was a trumpet blast.  But the narrative suggests that this trumpet blast was both moving in the sense that it was not static, and increasing in volume; in fact, it increased to such a level of noise as to make the people tremble. It seems that the trumpet sound actually designated the descent of the Lord to the mountain, as he descended so the sound increased, and so his presence on the mountain was designated.  So Moses brought the people from their camp to the foot of the mountain.

As they approached, the scene was one of fire and smoke, violent earthquake, ear-splitting trumpet blasts, terrifying and powerful, fearful yet compelling. The text seems to suggest that as well as the trumpet sound, fire also descended upon the mountain:  a God who descends in fire, the smoke of which veils the sight of the Holy One from mortal and sinful eyes.  And as Moses ascended to speak with God, God replied in thunder, and he spoke the Ten Commandments.

Of course, we recognise this as the classic stuff of theophany narratives, with their inbuilt paradoxes: God is near, and yet distant; he is seen and yet unseen; he is heard, and yet unheard, he is present, and yet apart. And only the most powerful and colourful imagery can do justice to the ineffable.

The stories are designed to inculcate absolute awe; God is not to be ignored, mocked, or treated with apathy or contempt.  He is not to be domesticated and reduced. Such stories are to prepare us to hear, in this case the Ten Commandments, to remind us of the fundamental seriousness of these defining words, which reveal God's character and his holiness into which we are summoned. They remind us therefore, that holiness is our calling.

To be sure, God did not abide on Mount Sinai for ever. The theophany was a temporary pledge of a permanent reality. It was therefore for the benefit of the ordinary days, the apparently non-theophany days, when God's Presence among his would still be as real, his words as binding, and his promises as sure:

I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself...you shall be my treasured possession, you shall be for me a priestly people, a holy nation.

I am going to come to you.

It is interesting that this passage from Exodus 19 is cited explicitly in the New Testament, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. There, the author makes a contrast:

You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.' Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.') But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven!

Hebrews 12: 18-25.

So two mountains are contrasted, Mount Sinai and Mount Zion. The point of course is to contrast the old covenant with the new, on the basis of God's absolute and complete theophany, his coming down to earth in the person of his Son, not in smoke, fire and tempest, but in our poor flesh and who through his death, has brought us into God's Presence. A great theme of Hebrews is that through Christ we have access into the Most Holy Place, and so in him, we stand in God's presence perpetually.

And I love the imagery of our standing with angels, who of course according to the Book of Deuteronomy celebrated the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, with the saints of the old covenant and the blessed departed of the new covenant, a redeemed humanity, in festal assembly in Christ our Lord.

On Friday evening I attended the concert here given by Sting; do watch it when it is broadcast on television at Christmas, because it draws on much Christian music and imagery. When he was singing the carol, The Angel Gabriel from heaven came, a brilliant beam of white light was projected from the back of the Cathedral, piercing the Scott Screen where St Cuthbert's cross is suspended. For me, it was a theophany moment; the radiant light communicated holiness, the magnum mysterium, the great and mighty wonder.

The memory of theophany is to inspire in us holiness, by seeking inner cleansing, by being prepared to hear the word of God in its comfort and challenge afresh, in re-claiming the promise

I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself...you shall be my treasured possession, you shall be for me a priestly people, a holy nation.

I am going to come to you.

It makes me pray more fervently in the apparently non-theophany, ordinary days of the coming week, in the words of Charles Wesley:

            The task thy wisdom hath assigned,

            O let me cheerfully fulfil;

            In all my works thy presence find,

            And choose thy good and perfect will.

‘In all my works thy presence find'; the Presence of the God whom we worship with awe.