Note: This reflection is the fourth in a four part series of reflections I’m writing for my final in an exegesis and preaching course in seminary. As such, these reflections may have more of the cadence of a homily than my usual material does. The text we used for study was Exodus. This fourth and final reflection is based on Exodus 24:1-18.
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil
[…]
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things
[…]
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
world broods with warm breast and ah! Bright wings.”*
In this poem, Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins gives praise for the splendor of God’s glory. The glory of God takes many forms. Saints from all ages have been blessed to see the Uncreated Light of God’s presence. To see it flame out, to feel it refreshing and restoring, to see the flash of the Spirit’s brightness in motion. But what can this glory tell us about the character of God, and about what God might be calling us as followers of Christ to do? In today’s texts, we are treated to revelations of God’s glory, revelations that paint a beautiful picture of what it means to seek God’s Kingdom.
On Pascha, we chant that triumphant hymn, “Come, receive the light that is never overtaken by night, and glorify Christ!”** In so doing, we recognize not just the Resurrection, but that the history of God’s people has been a history of God leading us into God’s never-waning light. We see this in today’s text especially. The Israelites have emerged from the wilderness, through their trial with Amalek, and have come to Mt. Sinai. They have heard the new life that God is calling them to live. A life marked by a covenant of closeness with God. The people ratify the covenant by a liturgical act of sacrifice. Moses and the priests sacrifice livestock, sprinkle the blood of the livestock on the people, and share the food with the community. In the life of Israel, the blood of an animal symbolized the force of life itself. The sprinkling of blood suggests that those who follow God and walk in God’s ways will be blessed with the new life. God invites all of God’s people into new community and new closeness with God. God begins a covenant here with Israel which will in time be expanded to include all the nations. The covenant is founded on justice, love and liberation, and the inseparable praxis of the two. Closeness with God looks like hospitality, welcome, justice and liberation, as evidenced by the elders’ audience with God in the “throne room,” an encounter which is marked symbolically and literally by these virtues.
Moses and the elders are invited to see the light of God’s presence. They are invited to see a vision of what their new life with God will look like. Sitting on the mountain, in the throne room of God’s presence, they see a “sapphire pavement,” as dazzling blue as the sky itself. Ancient interpreters both Jewish and Christian suggest that this blue pavement is a symbol of God transforming hard circumstances into life and freedom by God’s grace and power. St Ephrem the Syrian, and the Aramaic Targum tradition both suggest that the sapphire color was a reminder of the sea that God had parted for the Israelites to cross on dry land. The bricks were a reminder of the bricks they were forced to make in their slavery in Egypt. What were once obstacles to freedom are now symbols of its presence in their midst.
And before the throne of God, in the midst of this wondrous light, they eat a meal with the Creator. God invites Israel to eat together, in an act of sacred hospitality. They cannot see God’s face, but they are ushered into God’s presence. The light of God’s glory is mysterious. But it is also warm and inviting.
If we examine this moment of divine-human fellowship, we may remember the hospitality of Abraham in Genesis. In Andrei Rublev’s brilliant icon of this scene, the artist depicts the three angels as a theophany, a manifestation of the Holy Trinity. As with many icons, this one is meant to be looked through, to be participated in when we see it and are reminded of the truths about God’s character that the artist wishes to make clear to us. In this icon, Rublev reminds us of the truth of God’s hospitality. The Trinity are seated around a table with an empty seat. They gesture to one another, indicating God the Father sending Christ and the Holy Spirit. The staging of the scene invites us to be the fourth person at the banquet. This icon reminds us of our ultimate goal. We are to be deified, to participate in the life of the Trinity. God is inviting us into God’s light. The light of God is sacred hospitality, community, and communion.
In the Gospel According to St. Matthew, we see Jesus continuing to invite us into the light. In an echo to the ratifying of the Hebrew covenant, Jesus shares a meal with his apostles. The apostles share bread and wine with God in the flesh. And just as blood was poured out to establish God’s covenant with a particular nation, so now a second covenant is established by the pouring of Christ’s blood. One which is “poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins.” The blood brings life. It would be easy to simply say that Christ’s death on the cross sanctified death, brought the forgiveness of sins, and stop there. These are all true, but just as the sacrifice in the Israelite covenant returned as sustenance and new life for the community, Christ rose from the dead and returned to be with us as the resurrection and the life of all. God invites all of us, in our particularities, into a life characterized by freedom, hospitality, liberation, justice, and love. We are called to practice these virtues as the way of discipleship. But ultimately it is God’s light within us and within each other, God’s grace shed as energy in the world, that enables us to be made whole and made fully alive in God.
This text teaches us to hope for liberation for ourselves and one another, and to hope for the positive transformation of our communities through God’s justice being made known in our midst. Though Christians do not follow the mitzvot word for word, we can be encouraged that in the giving of the Torah, we see also God making Godself present to God’s children, a presence that brings wholeness. Jesus himself said that he did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. To bring to us as Gentiles a way to covenant and relationship with God. St James the Brother of our Lord teaches about the royal law of liberty. From the Old Testament to the New, though the specific practices of faithfulness may differ from community to community, God is always inviting us into freedom. Inviting us into God’s light.
The saints across time recognized this light. St. Dionysus the Areopagite wrote about the hiddenness of God. In an experience similar to the theophany at Sinai, St. Dionysus encourages the follower of Christ to “make our way straight to the topmost peak, beyond knowing and light, of the mystical scriptures—there where the simple, absolute and unchangeable, mysteries of God’s speaking lie wrapped in the darkness beyond light of secret—hidden silence.”*** Several centuries later, St. Gregory Palamas wrote with joy about the Uncreated Light that we can experience in intimate prayer and a life of holiness with God. And so we see God’s invitation echoed throughout the ages. Work for justice. Work for the flourishing and freedom of your neighbors. Invite one another to the banquet table. And perhaps most importantly, come to the table yourself and sit down to be renewed by the welcoming light of Christ.
*Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur. Accessed October 21st, 2020.
**Public domain hymn, cf. “Great and Holy Pascha,” https://www.goarch.org/pascha . Accessed November 23rd, 2020.
***”Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/#SouIdeChaWriTerChrNeo. Accessed November 23rd, 2020
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