“Following God”
A Sermon Preached by the
Rev. Jean Niven Lenk
Sunday, October 16, 2011
First Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of Christ
Text: Exodus 33:12-23
A preacher[i] tells the story of a high school senior who was filling out an application for admission to a college she really wanted to attend. Her heart sank when she came to the question that asked, “Are you a leader?” Knowing that she wasn’t really a take-charge kind of person, and wanting to be honest, she wrote “no.” She completed the rest of the form and mailed it off, expecting the worst. A few weeks later, she received a letter from the college that read: “A study of the application forms we have received reveals that this year, our college will have 1,452 new leaders. We are accepting you because we feel it is imperative that they have at least one follower.”
The college’s response surprised the applicant – and perhaps us, too, because we live in a culture that prizes leaders and leadership abilities. We value take-charge kind of people who can engender loyalty and motivate others. In many lines of work, the leader’s ability to get people to follow him or her is one of the keys to success.
For instance, take the Red Sox – please! If we have learned anything from the debacle of their recent downfall, it is that success is hard to achieve when the manager loses the ability to motivate the players – when the leader is no longer able to lead and the followers are no longer willing to follow.
The entire Christian faith was built upon one leader – Jesus – and his followers. Jesus began his ministry with two words: “Follow me” – and he wasn’t talking about Twitter! It was in following him that people learned; it was in following him that they came to understand and their lives were changed.
That call to follow has roots in this morning’s scripture lesson from Exodus, in a conversation between God and Moses. Moses – now there’s a leader! He stood up to Pharaoh and not only led the ancient Hebrews out of Egyptian bondage but also led them to their faith in God. And they followed him both toward the Promised Land and God.
But somewhere along the way, the followers grew impatient with their leader, and while Moses was up on the mountain talking with God, the Israelites started to follow a new leader – Aaron. But unlike his brother, Moses, Aaron led the people away from God; rather than rebuking the people for their impatience and leading them back to God, he stooped to their weakness, and led them in creating and worshipping a golden calf.
In this morning’s scripture lesson, Moses isn’t sure God is willing to stick with the impatient, faithless Hebrews anymore. And so Moses asks God, “How shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us?” God assures Moses of God’s continuing presence, but Moses isn’t convinced, and so he begs God, “Show me your glory, I pray.”
What Moses is asking is to see God’s face – “let me see you as you are, God, and then I will believe that you have not deserted your people.”
Moses needs a personal encounter with God. Yes, he has witnessed God’s powerful presence in the burning bush, and in pillars of fire and mysterious clouds. But he needs a closer experience of God’s visible presence.. He wants to see God’s face.
It is important to understand that God does not literally have a “face.” But because our finite human minds cannot begin to grasp the glory and majesty of God, people through the ages have given God human attributes in order that we may comprehend God in terms we can understand – the hand of God, the heart of God, the eyes of God, and in this morning’s passage, the face and the back – in some translations backside -- of God.
I think it is a universal human desire to see God “up close and personal.” It is not enough that God shows up when we all gather together on Sunday morning to worship; we also want God’s presence personally, individually, in each of our lives – especially if we, like Moses, are overwhelmed by life, or in the midst of a transitional time, or are facing uncertainties ahead.
Moses asks to see God’s face that he might be personally assured of God’s enduring presence. And so God tells Moses to stand in the cleft of a rock, and when passing by, God’s hand will cover Moses’ eyes. Once past Moses, God will then remove the divine hand in time for Moses to glimpse not God’s face, but God’s backside. Because, God says, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”
Why would God not want Moses, a man of great faith, to see God’s face? Traditional wisdom holds that the experience would be too much for our frail mortal senses – that the encounter would be so overpowering that we fragile humans would fall prostrate on the ground. We could not endure seeing God in all God’s glory and splendor. And so we only see partly, slightly incompletely; we catch glimpses of God as God moves by, but we don’t get the whole view. In the words of my favorite scripture verse, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we shall see face to face. For now we know only in part; then we will know fully, just as we have been fully known” [1 Corinthians 13:12].
But perhaps there is another reason, another way to look at this passage. Moses is leading the Hebrew people toward the Promised Land, and to look into God’s face would mean that Moses was ahead of God, not following God.[ii] And when we stop letting God lead, when we stop following and start leading ourselves, we often lead ourselves right into trouble.
We see the tension between leading and following throughout the scriptures. In the Garden of Eden, God warns Adam and Eve “not [to] eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” [Genesis 2:17]. As long as they follow God and God’s commands, they will be OK. But along comes the serpent who leads Adam and Eve away from God. They eat of the fruit of the tree and, as the saying goes, the rest is history.
Later in Genesis, God calls Abraham to leave his country for a land God will show him, promising to make him into a great nation with many descendants [Genesis 12:1-3]. And Abraham faithfully follows God’s command, not knowing what he is getting into, but trusting in God to show him the way. The problem is, none of the promised descendants come along, and so instead of waiting in faith, instead of following God, Abraham and his wife Sarah take matters into their own hands. Their impatience produces much unhappiness for themselves and Sarah’s maid, Hagar, by whom Abraham has a son named Ishmael.
Throughout the scriptures, faithful followers of God decide somewhere along the line to take the lead themselves. And it’s our story, too. Sure, it’s easy to say that we too are faithful followers – of God, of Jesus. But too much of the time, we’d really rather lead – calling the shots ourselves, listening to our own advice, taking matters into our own hands. We might think we know where God wants us to go in our lives – but often we are hearing the voices of our own egos and desires.
So, the question for each of us is – who are we following this morning? Are we looking at God’s back, or at God’s face? Are we trying to be in the lead, taking charge, following our own path, or are we listening for God’s voice, following God’s call, letting God take the lead?
A pastor[iii] tells the story of, as a little boy, going on a walk with his mother and sisters. At one point, they needed to break a trail through some brambles, and his mother told the children to get in a line, pull their hats down, lower their heads, and grab the shirt of the person in front of them. "OK, now forward!" mom said, and they pushed through those prickers without a scratch.
Often, when life is going well for us, it is easy to think that we can manage fine without God, thank you very much. In those times, we feel confident, capable, in control. It’s all too easy for us to decide we know where God is going, and just charge off into the prickers.
And we might suddenly find ourselves lost in the brambles, we might find the prickly branches of life closing in us, and we’re not so sure anymore of the right direction forward – that’s why we need to be sure to keep God’s back in view, because that means we are headed in the right direction; we are following God. God will show us the way, and God will get us to the place God wants us to be. Amen.
[i] Paris Donehoo, “Who’s in Charge Here?” September 26, 2010, First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Elgin, IL
[ii] Quinn Caldwell, Stillspeaking Daily Devotional, May 14, 2010, http://act.ucc.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=26641.0&dlv_id=29161
[iii] Ibid.
