Between a Rock and a Holy Place

Between a Rock and a Holy Place

Rev. Lynne Taylor Clements

October 22, 2017

Westminster Presbyterian Church

I have always liked when the seasons change - in particular,the change from summer to fall - to watch with wonder the autumn horizon shift as leaves burn with red and orange fire against the deepening light of the afternoon sun.

But as much as I enjoy the brilliant colors, I lament the shortening of the day's light. The darkness creeps in until suddenly, I am aware that the day's end comes long before I am ready. Even knowing it is coming, I am caught off guard, filled with a wistfulness of brightness lost.

As a kid, I only knew that this changing of the light was a precursor to fewer hours after school to play outside, of having to keep up with a jacket and to trade bare feet for socks and shoes. As a teenager, it meant cooler nights for marching band practice and an excuse to hold hands at football games. As an adult, it has meant driving home in the dark. And now, it shall also mark the time of year that my mom died.

There can be something heavy then about this time of year. When I begin to feel my heart sag under the weight of the shadows, I remember that the other side of this pressing darkness is the breaking light –

I imagine that Moses had a similar sense of pressing darkness. As we enter the text from this morning, Moses has had his share of dark times. After all, he has experienced an oppressive regime in Egypt, a harrowing escape from Pharaoh’s army (remember the wilderness from a few weeks ago?), a soggy, muddy crossing of the Red Sea, a stiff necked people grumbling and stumbling in the desert, and on his return from a holy retreat with God on Mt. Sinai, the revelation of the people’s sinful idolatry, and an angry outburst that ends with broken shards of stone tablets littering the ground.

Moses has been on the mountain, but now he’s among the rocks. Disappointment in his people, anger over their sin, worry over the future, questions about God’s presence. It’s all too much for one person, isn’t it?

Rocky places bring us to our knees. They cause us to lose our balance and dash our feet. We are bruised by their hardness and sharp edges. We slip on the loose gravel and pebbles infiltrate our shoes. Rocky places deplete us. We expend all our energy climbing and navigating and trying to find some place safe, some place of peace, some place of hope. Rocky places block the light and create shadows. They are dusty and grimy and gritty and harsh.

We can imagine Moses with his shoulders bent under the strain.

We can imagine Moses stumbling around.

We can imagine Moses wondering what happens next.

Moses is about to find out he is between a rock and a holy place.

As the leader of God’s people, a human intimate with God, Moses knows that Israel’s future and well being depends on Yaweh’s promise and presence. And so he boldly asks, “Show me your glory! Cause me to see your awesome, shrouded, magisterial presence! Let me see who You are.” In Moses’ time of fear, in the craggy, unevenness of the rocky place he finds himself in, his impulse is to draw even closer to God. Like all of us in the crisis moments of the rocky place, Moses gropes for a certain reality, grasps for a greater assurance, reaches out for a hold on God’s presence. Moses’ plea indicates his need to know that God is indeed still close, still protective, still interested in him and in God’s people.

For what has brought Moses to this rocky place is brokenness. The brokenness of God’s people, the broken covenant with God. And God responds to this brokenness by breaking a place in the rock, gouging out a new rocky place where God places Moses, covering him with the tender most part of God’s hand.

From the dusty recess of that rock, I imagine Moses - his eyes filled with the grit of dust, his mouth dry from crying out, his breath held in anticipation for what was coming, peering into the short sighted darkness, and wondering, How will I see anything from here? Moses is seeking assurance and confirmation of God’s presence despite the darkness caused by and brought about the people’s sinful idolatry.

Moses is about to learn that God’s presence makes rocky places holy.

To Moses, God answers: “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name: The LORD: and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.” Goodness – all the goodness – in Hebrew, the most all-encompassing word in the language, including but also going beyond all more specific qualities. All that is lovely, all that is beneficial, all that is gracious. In other words, “an even fuller sense of who I AM than you have been able to grasp.”

God goes not only with Moses, but by Moses, leaving Moses with a clear view of where God has already been.

The same goodness that had

Sustained the people in Egypt

Delivered them from bondage and death

Graciously provided for them in the desert

Led them by day and night

Entered into a covenant

Given them direction on how to live and

Dwelled with them in fullness

From out of the pressing darkness, a breaking light.

In Jesus, we have a Savior who knows about rocky places – who knows what it means to be broken, who out of gracious love was broken for us, who invites us to lean in to him and find peace. Jesus is our cleft, our place of refuge.

You and I know that rocky places and holy places coexist; we stand between them all the time. I experienced this tension while keeping watch by mother's bedside as she lay dying and watched her eyes gaze upward at glories I couldn't see. And in the moments after her death, I felt a deep peace mingle with sadness and grief.

Rocky.

Holy.

Places where I know God dwells.

May you know it to be so too, beloved.

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