Sometimes!

(Reflection on Exodus 33.12-23)

-- The Rev. Bryson Randall

Despite his success as a mediator between God and the people, Moses is running out of patience. Not just with the people, but with God. In fact, Moses even sounds a bit resentful here, resentful about how God is treating him. In the tradition which is long-standing in the Scriptures, Moses does NOT just keep silent and compliant. He complains, vigorously, to God:

Look here God! You said to me, "Bring up this people out of their oppression in Egypt", but now you are threatening not to go with us, and you have not let me know whom you will send with me.

The response which God makes to Moses, to us, is quite marvelous:

"You cannot see my face. ... But: go stand on that rock; and when my glory passes by, I will put you in a crevice, and cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

What happened here to Moses cannot be logically explained, or precisely analyzed. It is story; it is poetry.

But it does tell us that we cannot expect to "see" God, in the sense of having a direct, un-ambiguous certainty, about anything. In the time of crisis, the best Moses was given was to see the "back of God". As T.S. Eliot said, we can only take so much reality. We cannot see God's "face", the full reality of God. That is, we cannot see what is coming, what God has in store for us, what life is going to be bringing us. We cannot know or understand it ahead of time. We can, and must, deal only with what is before us at THIS moment.

But, we can, sometimes, see God's "back". That is, we can sometimes see a small part of what WAS going on. We can, sometimes, after the dust has settled, understand some of what was happening; and, maybe even some of WHY it was happening; why this particular (apparent) blessing, or this particular (apparent) curse, was given to me, or us.

Sometimes!