SERMONS
Sean Gilbert – 31/8/08
Christ Church 31/8/08 Exodus 3:1-1
It was 25 years ago. My first semester of a Bachelor of Theology degree and myvery first tutorial paper. The subject was Introduction to the Old Testament,the passage or text in question, Exodus 3:1-15, that which we’ve heardtoday. Here was my first chance to exegete, or in other words, to read a lotof commentaries about the text and arrive at my own tentative conclusions!
Well, to be honest, I don’t remember too much about those (profound asthey must have been), but what I do recall is the curious expression, Tetragrammatonor tetragram which describes the vowel-less designation for God used here inthe Hebrew – a deliberately veiled, cum mysterious definition of God thatis always worth re-exploring, given our human need over the generations to name,pin down, if not control such things.
Give me your name says Moses, so I can say who sent me, to which the hidden voicesays, Tell them “I am” has sent you. Or it could be equally welltranslated, the One who is, the One who will be. A quite ‘verbish’ oractional experience of God rather than a proper noun which would be a distinctand concrete sense of person, quite separate to Moses and above the creationitself.
“I am who I am, tell them I am has sent you.” Now, one would havethought Moses is already behind the 8 ball with his speech impediment, this lessthan clear greeting card making his task all the more difficult!
To try and put it succinctly, this pivotal revelation of the divine, of the holy,of God (if we must use that overworked term), places it not only in the presentmoment, but in all things and therefore in material reality itself. God is, Godwill continue to be... The “isness” of God as some have put it, MarcusBorg one of them:
“Theword ‘God’ does not (here) refer to a particular existing being (thatis the God of supernatural theism). Rather the word’ God’ is themost common Western name for ‘what is’ for ultimate reality, forthe ground of our Being, for Being itself, for isness...”
In other words, taking our understanding or perception of God outof the clouds, out of the supernatural realm of impossibilityor wistful thinking, and earthing (planting maybe) our experience of the divinein our experience, in our daily encounter with created life.
Parker Palmer says it so well when he writes:
“I had always imagined God to be in the same general direction as everythingelse I valued, up. I had failed to appreciate the meaning of some of the wordsthat had intrigued me since I first heard them in seminary . Paul Tillich’sdescription of God as the “ground of being”. I had to be forced undergroundbefore I could understand that way to God is not up but down.”
Parker Palmeris here personally referring to a 4 year period of depression, but my feelingand lived experience would also suggest that the principle he enunciates standson its own, the way to God is not up, but it is down. Itis the rude shock, the unnerving discovery, that we can no longerafford to project our need and longing for a God into Cathedral spires, or sovereignnotions of an Almighty in heaven, or a pristine and soul-less Christ, nor a workingunderstanding of the Christian life as being pure and totally unaffected withcommon human realities. To withdraw those projections is to see and name thedivine aglow in the thorn bush, alive in the ordinary, at home (and well) inthe human community. God in you, God in me. God being you, God being me. It isa somewhat radical thought isn’t it? But I also suspect our hearts leapa little when we hear it; A sigh of relief, an inspiration for the living. Nomore steep ladders to climb, no more religious hoops to struggle our way through,trying to find, trying to touch this elusive reality.
Rumi, theSufi poet I have quoted of late writes this in relation to the all-encompassingreality of God.
“Iam dust particles in sunlight
I am the round sun
I am morning mist
And the breathing of evening
I am wind in the top of the grove
And surf on the cliff,
Mast, rudder, helmsman and keel, I am also the coral reef they founder on
I am both candle
And the moth crazy around it
Rose and the nightingale lost in the fragrance
You are what is and what isn’t
You who know, You the one
In all, say who I am. Say I
Am You.”
The longing of every human heart is to be loved and held by that love. It occursto me that we all have much growing to do in our appreciation and experienceof the one we call God, the Ground of our Being, the heart of our soul; An all-encompassinggift of life and grace, holding us, sustaining us, encouraging us in the journeyof being. For Parker Palmer and certainly myself of late, a firm, hidden handpushing me down to the ground (past the sub-soil at times), so as to reconnect,to re-earth, to return to this our common, always available, grounded love whichfinds us as we are – broken as we may be – and beckons us to be whowe truly are, and not just for our own sake but for the integrity and well beingof the whole.
I guess in many ways this doesn’t sound much like the heady and excitingnotions of conversion and conversion growth. But truly converting theexperience of God, it is. And as we have been sharing in the last month, thiscommunity has come over time, to appreciate more and more, the invitation tobe found at home in God, to find our common life and vocation arising out ofthis holy meeting and not out of a religious expectation.
In the words of another good writer,
“The spiritual life is not a matter of obeying or breaking rules. It’sabout breathing into and being broken open by a wayof transformation.”
So, not unlike seed placed in the ground in mid-late winter, our journey intothe God who is and who will be the very ground of our being, finds us sheddingwhat is no longer real and true, a stripping back, indeed a simplifying of soul,all for the sake of the rising; the coming to life in authentic, new and surprisingways, the sharing of this grace and goodness with all...
And so let us take a few moments for our own reflection and prayer….
