Dr. John Tamilio III
© 2023, Dr. Tamilio
Our most recent Bible Study series comes to an end this coming Tuesday. We will take a couple of weeks off and then start our next session, which will lead us into Advent and Christmas. (Yes, the Yuletide is right around the corner!) Over the past six weeks, we have been examining some of the difficult passages in the Bible — the tough ones that make you cringe. Here’s a sample: Psalm 137:9, which reads, “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” See all the fun you missed!
Someone in the group remarked, “Gee, the God of the Old Testament was quite violent!” This aligns with something I hear quite a bit: “I love the God of the New Testament because he’s all about love, peace, and forgiveness. The God of the Old Testament, though, seems to be about punishment and wrath.” You have to read all biblical passages in the historical and literary contexts to grasp what the writers were saying. You also have to consider how different life was when the Old Testament was written compared to the New. The oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible date back to roughly 1200 BC. The New Testament was written between about 50 and 100 AD. Can you imagine comparing a text written today to one written in the eighth or ninth century and wondering why they are so different? We struggle with Shakespeare, who wrote his plays a little over 400 years ago. Try comparing something hot off the presses today to a manuscript from the 800s. You’d get a different view of everything, let alone God!
Just the same, the God of the New Testament seems more relatable to us, but that is mostly because of Jesus.
I love the passage that Joe Kendall shared with us a moment ago. Moses wants to see God face to face. God responds, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” Some find this passage troubling. Walter Brueggemann acknowledges that God’s refusal to be seen “comes upon us abruptly” and “is an exceedingly odd statement.”[1] Other scholars note that we have seen God face to face in the visage of Jesus. That is true, which is why we have images of Jesus in paintings, statues, icons, you name it. Plus the people of his day saw him.
But what does it mean to see God face to face? If you look up the phrase “face to face,” you get two definitions:
- within each other’s sight or presence
- in or into direct contact or confrontation
Face-to-face is not just about us looking one another in the eye. It is also about being in direct contact. We are in contact with God through prayer. We are in contact with God through reading the Bible. But even then, some might say, we are not in direct contact. Many believers would disagree with that. They would say that when they pray or read Scripture they are in direct contact with God. But what about that? Are there ways of encountering God when you’re not meditating or thumbing through the pages of the Good Book? Back in 1941, Thomas Kelly, the author of A Testament of Devotion, wrote the following:
The sense of Presence! I have spoken of it as stealing on one unawares. It is recorded of John Wilhelm Rowntree that as he left a great physician’s office, where he had just been told that his advancing blindness could not be stayed, he stood by some railings for a few moments to collect himself when he “suddenly felt the love of God wrap him about as though a visible presence enfolded him and a joy-filled him such as he had never known before.”
Amazing timeliness of the Invading Love, as the Everlasting stole about him in his sorrow. I cannot report such a timeliness of visitation, but only unpredictable arrivals and fading out. But without [a] doubt it is given to many of richer experience to find the comfort of the Eternal is watchfully given at their crises in time.
In other words, in times of trial, many people have said that they felt the peace of God literally wrapped around them, bringing them comfort when they are in pain, hope when they are in despair, and peace when all of life seems to be in discord. But even then, the encounter isn’t exactly face-to-face. Metaphorically it is, maybe, but it isn’t literal.
I like what Terence Fretheim says about this. He claims that this passage speaks to the necessity of God’s separateness from humanity. He writes, “For God to be fully present [to us] would be coercive; faith would be turned into sight, and humankind could not but believe.” Fretheim continues, “God’s presence cannot be obvious; there must be an element of ambiguity, such that disbelief remains possible. A sense of God’s mystery must be preserved. This text shows that even for Moses there is an essential mystery in the confrontation with God.”[2]
Personally, I do not have a problem with the ambiguity that is associated with God, let alone faith. There are some things that we cannot fully understand — even in terms of science. We have not cured every disease. We have not colonized the stars. We cannot even live together in harmony, and Jesus was pretty clear in his desire for us to love one another! If we can’t even understand ourselves, how do we think that we are going to fully understand God?
God is right regarding what he says to Moses. He says the same thing to us. You cannot survive seeing me face to face. God is the ultimate transcendent being. He is above all. We cannot even begin to measure the height, the depth, or the intensity of God. This is why faith is so important. If nothing else, it makes us humble. We are not God, and the desire to fully know God is another way that humanity tries to be masters of the universe.
This is not a theological excuse. “You cannot fully know God so don’t try to.” It is a theological statement. “Life is filled with all kinds of mysteries. God is the ultimate mystery, that which we know but will never fully know (at least not in this life, and I doubt we will fully know him in the next one).
Be comfortable in the unknown. Embrace the mystery that is God and surrounds God. Bill Johnson astutely said, “The ability to embrace mystery is what attracts revelation.” It is a sort of dialectic: God becomes known through God’s hiddenness. God reveals God’s self to us, but not completely. We would not be able to handle God’s complete revelation any more than Moses could. But let me leave you with this: just because you cannot see God face to face, does not mean that God is absent. God is always present, giving you the support you need, surrounding you with his love, and holding you when you cannot hold yourself. God is always with you. Always.
Amen.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, “Exodus” from The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 940.
[2] Terence F. Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville: John Know Press, 1991), 301.