“40 years – 40 days:  Toward a reborn faith … Who?”
2 Lent old lectionary
Exodus 33:12-23 / 1 Thessalonians 4:1-7 / Matthew 15:21-28
28 February 2010


“Who are you?”
It’s a universal human question … one we ask of others, and sometimes, of ourselves.
It’s a musical question, one which, thanks to the TV show “CSI,” has become familiar to a whole new generation of people … through the Who’s theme song over the opening credits …  people who don’t know the 60s supergroup except perhaps for their recent Super Bowl halftime “geezer rock” appearance.  
And it’s also a Biblical question which gets asked of God quite often … now, and then, by the both the great and the unknown.
No less than Moses gets two opportunities … two times, he asks God, “Who are you?”
The first time, back at their first introduction, before the burning bush, God gives Moses something of great significance as the answer to Moses’ question … “Who are you, Lord?”  
God gives his name.  
Haya asher haya.  
I am who I am.  I will be who I will be.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Your God, Moses.  The God of your brother and sister Israelites.  
And then God says, “Get to know me!” and that answer to the question “Who are you?” is fleshed out, in Moses’ relationship with the Almighty.
In our Old Testament reading today, from a little later in the Exodus story … the Israelites have already rejected God, made the golden calf and danced around it … Moses has come down the mountain, smashed the calf, set them straight, and gone back up the mountain to get a rewrite on the Ten Commandments (which he also smashed in anger when he saw the golden calf - idol that his brother Aaron helped make).
Some ugly stuff has gone down.  And Moses once again wants to know of God, “Who are you, Lord?”
But this time, Moses’ request is more urgent.  More imploring.  
“Show me your glory, I pray,” Moses asks of God.
Though it may not sound like much of a request, in reality, this is the Big Kahuna.  The mother of all requests and questions of God.
It’s sort of … kind of … like asking for the whereabouts of Amelia Earhart, the meaning behind the heads on Easter Island, and the list of ingredients in Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken, all at once.  Kind of.  Sort of.  But … even more.
To see God’s glory is to have all the answers, and I do mean ALL the answers.  To see God’s glory is to know, precisely, where and how God is moving, living and active, doing and being, right here, right now.
No wonder God says to Moses, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”
This side of paradise, in this NOW part of eternity, no one gets to see God’s glory, the essence, the pure face of God, in real time.
What Moses does get, though, is very fine.  Wonderful, in fact.  And actually, better.
Moses gets to see God’s back.  Where God has been, and where God is going.  
Moses gets to see the continuity of time … the past of God, and God’s future … his-Moses’, past, and his future … where God has been and where God is going, so that he … Moses … can lead his people … into that same future, together, with God.
Once again … it’s all about relationship.  God is known to Moses, to the Israelites, and ultimately, to the rest of the world, through relationship.  Which is a better deal, than seeing God’s glory, God’s face, to face.  
Knowing God directly – here – face to face – is too much for humans to bear.  We can’t handle this truth, we aren’t supposed to be privy to the inner workings of God.  
It’s like when one of the people back at First Lutheran in Ellicott City, Maryland … who worked for the National Security Agency … when I asked Vince what he did, he matter of fact replied, “Well, if I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”  
Now, God doesn’t make that same veiled threat … God just veils himself, because to see God’s glory would kill us, in that, we would cease to be human … we’d be God ourselves.  
And that prospect … people … you and me … being God … I so do NOT want to face … the episode with the golden calf just being a sneak preview … the beginning of the slippery sinful downward spiral … of what happens when people begin to think themselves God ….  Ooooh (shake shiver).
So, instead … Moses gets to see God’s back.  Where God has been, and where God is going.  Plenty to work with, to discuss, to meditate on, to be motivated into action, for Moses, for the Israelites, as they made their way to the Promised Land.
It’s all about relationship.  God is never known purely in the essence of God.  God is only known in and through relationship with others.
And the great thing about that is that it makes God … nimble.  Active.  Able to hear and respond and act.  Able to change … but change to always remain the same … always desiring to stay in relationship with us, no matter how many times we turn our back on God.  
Or try to tell God what to do.
Which is, unfortunately, what is happening in the Gospel reading today, as Jesus, moving with his disciples through a non-Jewish area of their region, encounters a foreigner.  And an annoying one, at that.
The disciples, those close enough to Jesus to have the dust Jesus raised in his wake, walking on the highways and roads of Tyre and Sidon, close enough to have the dust of Jesus clinging to them … they once again are clueless.  So out of it.  So much … like us.
They want to tell God what to do.
“Send her away, Jesus, for she keeps shouting after us.”
Now … Jesus does a strange thing here.  It’s one of those “double take” places in the Bible, where, when you read it, or hear it, you want to (neck snap back) and say, “what?”  
It sounds like Jesus wants to get rid of this woman, too.
Or does he?
Even though the disciples have the very dust of Jesus clinging to them, even though they are as close as close can be to him, so close, you would think that of all people, that they would truly “get” Jesus … no, here, it’s the woman … the Canaanite woman, the foreigner, the outsider … she is the truly observant one, the one who sees God’s back in Jesus, where God has been and where God is going … so she trusts … in him.
Now, when we last heard this story in worship, during the summer of 2008, I noted to you that the exchange which follows, between Jesus and this woman isn’t at all as mean as it sounds.   They are using some playful language here … when Jesus says “dog,” think little Ruadh here … a sweet little house dog … this is a word of relationship and care, not a curse.  
It is a relationship of faith and trust.  “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And the woman’s daughter was healed.
The disciples were, no doubt, left there, in the dust, scratching their heads in wonder.
But before we, like them, walk away from this scene, let’s be reminded of last week’s texts and stories … and what Jesus is and isn’t saying here.  
He isn’t making a quantifying comment about the woman’s faith, in a measurable sort of way … like, she got past the ¾ full of faith line, therefore, she would be heard and her daughter healed.  As I said last week, too many people’s lives have been ruined, too many seeker-steps toward faith have been squashed in their tracks, because the face of God that these brothers and sisters have seen through the face of the church … other brothers and sisters, and sometimes, yes, US … is one which has constantly been after them to believe more and trust more, do more “holy” stuff, live church as “holy ship” in the corrupt sea of the world.  
And once again this week, the news ever so kindly dumps a fine example of this on our doorsteps … many of you have probably heard or read the story that the lead pastor of a very large church here in the Seattle area has labeled “Avatar,” now the highest grossing motion picture in history, “the most satanic movie” he’s ever seen.  
Now, I haven’t seen “Avatar,” and I probably won’t, not because I believe it’s satanic, but just because I’m personally not interested in it.  I did see James Cameron’s other big movie, “Titanic,” and I thought it was, well, less than titanic.  
But much of the world has seen “Titanic,” and “Avatar;” and moreover, far more of the world today finds spiritual messages and points of connection to larger truths in movies, and songs, and popular culture, than they do in corporate worship.  In any church, whether that’s Nativity Lutheran Renton or Mars Hill Ballard.  
When people who are seeking … searching … hoping … for connections with faith, looking everywhere for them … and, perhaps, finding them in the message of a movie … but then, they are hit over the head with the hammer of “Satannnnnnnnnnnnnn!” … well, that kind of talk does wonders for building relationships where faith is grown and nourished.
NOT.
I wonder … if Pastor Mark had instead engaged people on a conversational level, to talk about what they saw in the movie, had bothered to hear how others saw or felt it connected God and themselves … and then, like St. Paul in Acts chapter 17, standing on the other Mars Hill, in Athens … if, like Paul, he had engaged people in their faith-seeking moment, rather than flat-out dismissing them …. I wonder … if more doors to faith would have opened in Seattle … instead of the collective “slam” I heard when I read through the four-plus pages of comments on the PI’s on-line news site, from people who now think that Christians are a bunch of bone headed Puritanical idiots.
Let’s be clear … Our God is a God whose primary concern, in life, with and for us, is relationship.  
“You cannot see my face;” you and I are not God, thanks be to God, so we won’t see God’s glory in the absolute purity of the moment, we can’t and won’t be God.  
But we get something better.  Relationship with God.  “You shall see my back;” we get to see where God has been, and will be; leading us, into a relationship of faith and trust with him …
… a relationship which is not all serious and dour, like the disciples assume … no, it’s playful and hopeful, as Jesus and the Canaanite woman exemplify.  This life of faith is supposed to be joyful!
And it’s a relationship that is inclusive, and not exclusive, as Jesus and “that foreign woman” also exemplify.  Much to the puzzlement of the disciples … but that is where God is.  
In the place of pursuing relationship … with and for all of us, his beloved creation.  
Stopping at nothing … not even death … to be with and for us.  
In the past where God has been, in the future where God’s going … and in the present, where God is, in Jesus …
… and that’s where we come in.  
Because it’s in the present where we’re called to show God’s face, through ours, to the world.
The only answer to the question of “Who Is God,” the only answer which the world will hear and see, will be the one which comes through us.
Who comes through us.
Who … comes through … us.
Us!
Forgiven, freed, and sent, to show God’s face.  
US!
Our God must think a lot of us, to entrust his face, the face of God the world sees, to … us.
From … us.
Through … us.
Indeed.  Indeed.  Amen.