Sermon for October 16, 2011 - Venting

Scripture Passage: Exodus 33:12-23

There is something incredibly endearing and human about so many characters in the bible.  Anyone who tells you the bible is full of saints and angelic people, probably hasn’t read it too closely.  On the other hand, anyone who tells you it is chock full of humanity, I think, gets it.

Moses is one of those humans, and as I read this passage over and over, I find I like him more and more.  I like him, because there is so much truth to him, he is very human, just like you and me.  I love Moses.

So how did we get here?  The Hebrews had been wandering around the desert for three months since being liberated from Egypt.  They are eating manna and quail, they are drinking water that flows from rocks, and they arrive at Mount Sinai.  Moses, their leader, heads up the mountain, and receives a number of laws from God, most notably the ten commandments.  Moses receives the two tablets with God’s testimony on them, inscribed into the rock by God’s finger, and he begins to head down the mountain.

While Moses was up on the mountain, his people began to get nervous.  They worried about what was going to happen.  He’d been gone so long, was he ever coming back?  Mumbles and grumbles began to work their way through the encampment.  Those mumbles and grumbles grew louder until they became a cacophony of noise.  “Oh we’ve been abandoned! We need new gods to lead us now that Moses has obviously been lost to us!”  Aaron, Moses’ brother and the high priest, appeases them with a Golden Calf.  And that’s when everything goes Kaput! 

Violence, disease, punishment, and abandonment.  God sends them away from Mount Sinai, with the words of an angry parent “I’ll decide what to do with you, later!”  Eventually going with, “I will no longer be leading you.”  And that’s when Moses turns to God.

“God, where are you?  Don’t stop leading us now, we need you so much!  We’re lost without you!  I thought I was your friend!  You keep promising things, so what’s the deal?  Show yourself to me!”

This is what I love.  This is the humanity of Moses, as the voice of the people, a voice that we can recognize really carries a strength with it.  “God, where are you?”  This is a question that resonates throughout the human consciousness spanning our history.  “Where are you God?  What’s going on?  Just show me where to go and I’ll go there! Lead me!”

This pleading is at the heart of our religious experience.  It is at the heart of our search for meaning, the heart of our greatest existential questions as people of faith.  “Where are you God?  Please! I don’t know what to do!”

Who has not faced great times of trial and tribulation in their lives?  Who has not been confronted by a difficult decision, a decision they long for guidance in, but when we ask, we find only silence?  It is entirely human for us to turn to God, and say “Hey God?  Where are you in the midst of all this?  I need you!”

This pleading, and yelling, this questioning and venting is present across the biblical narrative.

Not only Moses, but Elijah too.  Alone and lost in the desert, hunted by his enemies, Elijah throws up his hands and says to God, “That’s it!  I’m done!  I’ve done everything you ask, and look where it has gotten me!”  Elijah is mad, and tired, and sad, and afraid.  He’s had enough!

Jeremiah, similar sentiment.  “You know God, everyone says you’re so righteous!  That you are just and good!  But looking around, I have some serious questions about how just and good you are!  Where are you God?”

Even Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying to God, asking not to be in the position he finds himself.  Then on the cross crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Where are you God?  I need you right now!”

These are the voices that join with us, when we cry out, “God just speak to me!  I want something solid and tangible.  I want to know where you are in the midst of all of this!  Because right now, I can’t find you!  I can’t hear you!  Give me a sign!  Show me a direction!”

These are not only human questions to ask, human cries to make; they are GOOD questions to ask, they are GOOD cries to make.  They are cathartic!  They help us pour out those emotions that have been created into us.  They are a form of prayer.  But more than that, in asking them we are saying we trust God’s grace, we trust our relationship with God.  When crying out we are saying we trust that God can handle our venting.  And trust me, God can!

Being angry, or afraid, or sad, or lost; and venting that towards God is a Holy Experience in itself.  It was when Moses put his questions to God, that he came into the divine presence, and that the covenant between God and the Israelites is renewed.  It is when Elijah cries out, that he was invited to encounter God at Horeb.  It was when Jeremiah laid into God, that God speaks to him.  It was when Jesus cried out, that he died and the curtain in the temple was torn in two; and the world saw there was no division between God and creation.

Now, none of them got exactly what they want.  Moses only saw the divine presence from a distance.  Elijah encountered God, not in an storm or an earthquake or a fire, but in a whisper. Jeremiah was essentially told, “All those promises you’re waiting to be fulfilled, I’m just going to make those same promises again.  Deal with it.”

God is never what we expect.  Actually, God is often never what we really think we want.  But during those times in our lives when we are overwhelmed;  During those times in our lives when we are lost, or afraid, or angry;  During those times in our lives when we are without hope, without direction; Offering that up to God, in any way, is a sign of our tremendous and awesome relationship with the Holy One, in whom we live, and breathe, and have our being.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.