 Dr. Carl Price |
Glimpses
of God
Sermon:
Scripture: |
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As
I wrote in Steeple Notes, when I hear this passage of
Scripture, I think of a mountain called Karkom in southern
Israel where, a few years ago, I stood before a small cave on
the summit and heard this passage read. A couple of hours
earlier I had stood on the valley floor beside the ruins of an
ancient altar and counted twelve large stones and listened to
the passage in Exodus about the people of Israel building an
altar of twelve stones before the mountain where Moses
encountered God. We saw no smoke or fire on the mountain; no
bushes burst into flame; we heard no thunder or heavenly
voices. But looking at that little cave and hearing those
words sent a tingling up my spine. I could not help but
wonder: Was this the place where Moses had his glimpse of God? The
Bible is clear that taking snapshots of God is not something
that humans should expect to do. You have no doubt heard the
old story about the little girl who was busily engaged with
paper and crayons on the floor of the dining room one Sunday
after church. When her mother asked what she was doing, she
replied that she was drawing a picture of God. Her mother knew
her Bible pretty well and she told her, “But, honey, no one
knows what God looks like.” Not even bothering to look up,
the budding artist replied, “They will when I get done!” Of
all mortals, Moses seems to have come the closest to having
had that opportunity. As I have thought about this story, I
have concluded that glimpses are still the way in which
God reveals himself to us. Mind you, I understand that Jesus
Christ is the Christian’s truest revelation of God.
John’s Gospel makes that quite clear. But Jesus lived
a long time ago and we no longer see him in the flesh. And
there are times when, like Moses, we wish we could. My
almost-fifty years of ministry has led me to affirm that I
think we do get glimpses now and then. The trick is learning
to recognize them when they occur.
Some
years ago, I decided that there is a sense in which looking
for God is a bit like deer hunting. Walt Disney
notwithstanding, deer that do not want to be seen blend so
well into their surroundings that they can be very difficult
to spot. In that setting, you do better by looking for parts
of a deer—the line that runs horizontal amidst the vertical
lines of the trees that turns out to be the line of the
deer’s back; a flicker of light on what, on closer
examination, is the tine of an antler; the glow of sunlight
coming through the hair on its coat when the sun is behind it;
the flick of an ear; the shine of a nose. That is how the
successful hunter sees more deer. They don’t expect to see
the whole animal at first. They look for glimpses. When
you study on it, you find something like this happening in
Scripture accounts of encounters with God. If you remember the
earlier part of the story of Moses, you may recall that his
first encounter with God came when he saw a bush that appeared
to be on fire, but was not being burned up. We read, “And
when the Lord saw that (Moses) turned aside to see, God called
to him out of the bush.” Moses hadn’t seen God, but he saw
enough to make him stop and look more closely.
Time
and again, we find people discovering God like that—almost
as an afterthought—in looking back, as it were, and seeing
the back of God. Remember the story of Joseph? Joseph was the
lad with the coat of many colors, given to him by his father
who evidently let his favoritism show a bit too much and
neglected to give his other eleven sons a special cloak as
well. The brothers resented Joseph so much that they plotted
to kill him. Then, at the last minute, they relented and sold
him into slavery instead. Wondrously, he rose from slavery to
a position of high
trust in Pharaoh’s court. When he met his brothers again
years later, he had come to great power in Egypt and could
easily have taken his vengeance on them. But he did not do
that. He didn’t do it because he had looked back at what had
happened to him and had a glimpse of God. He said to them,
“You meant it for evil, but God used it for good.” Then
there was Jacob, looking back on the night he had spent in a
dark and fearful place, weighted down with guilt and fear,
musing on his dream of a ladder reaching up to a heaven and
saying, “Surely the Lord was in this place and I knew it
not.” Another glimpse of God.
That
sort of thing happens time and again in Scripture. In fact, I
have concluded that the reason we encounter so much of what
smacks of predestination in the Bible is because the writers
are looking back across their history and seeing events that
they were sure were glimpses of God. I may want to argue with
them now and then about which part of God they saw, but that
they had a glimpse, I do not doubt for a moment. But
what about us? Are we consigned to glimpsing God solely
through the experiences we read about in the Bible? I think
not. I think we get glimpses, too. I know I have had a few. As
I said a moment ago, like the hunter, the trick is to
recognize them for what they are.
One
of the joys in many years of my ministry has been sharing some
of the wonders of our natural world with others, first with
youth on backpacking trips, and later with adults and families
when Pat and I began leading day hiking trips. We have hiked
mountain trails, viewed scenes of incredible beauty and
majesty, stopped to look at wildflowers and wildlife and
cascading streams and reflected on the wonders of God’s
creation. I suppose that some may do that without a thought of
God, but we can’t. And we have found that in those settings,
time and again, people who go with us—young and old—get a
glimpse of God. An
experience on one of those early backpacking hikes, while I
was on the staff here the first time, stands out for me as a
testimony for many of them. We were hiking a section of the
Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania and stopped at a magnificent
overlook on a ridge above the Lehigh Valley. It was a glorious
summer day and you could see for miles. One of the youth stood
on a rock outcropping in utter silence for quite a while. When
he turned and saw me watching him instead of the view, he
said, “It makes you feel real small, but a part of
something.” And I thought, “He just had a glimpse of
God.”
But
you don’t have to go out and hike mountain trails or stare
into the hearts of tiny wildflowers to get a glimpse of God.
God reveals himself in many ways.
Tony
Campolo tells of a time early in his ministry when he was a
counselor at a junior high camp. There was a boy at camp by
the name of Billy who had cerebral palsy. As you may know,
junior highs can be cruel sometimes, and Billy was picked on
and made fun of by some of the other kids.
Billy’s
speech was slow and slurred and Mr. Campolo says that he was
particularly angry when some of the other kids mimicked the
way Billy talked. When Billy asked for directions, he would
say, his mouth contorting, something like, “Which ... way
... is ... the ... craft ... shop?” And some of the boys
answered him in the same awful manner, twisting their mouths
and drawing out their words: “'It’s ... over ... there ...
Billy.” And then they would laugh.
But
he says that his fury reached its highest pitch when he
learned that they had signed Billy up for a turn to give
devotions. He knew that they had done it to make fun of him.
But Billy was going to take his turn, just like anyone else,
and the counselors thought it would hurt him more to tell him
that he couldn’t to it. As he dragged his way to the front,
you could hear the giggles rolling through the crowd. He said
that it seemed as if it took Billy five minutes to say just
seven words: “Jesus ... loves ... me ... and ... I ... love
... Jesus.” Mr.
Campolo writes:
A
glimpse of God? You’d better believe it! It is the kind of
glimpse that makes you want to hide behind a rock when it
passes by, because you are afraid of what the full view might
do to you. The
Bible says that “No one can see God and live.” (I John
3:2-3) One translator suggests that this verse really ought to
read, “No one can see God and stay the same.” (Martin
Smith, The Word Is Very Near To You, p. 131, quoted in
New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1, p. 883) I like that. It has
the ring of experience. Each
of the eight churches on the circuit I served while I was in
college had a tradition of two weeks of evangelistic services
every year. That meant 16 weeks of preaching every night, so I
always scheduled at least a couple of them before classes
started in the fall. The Creston church was always one of
those because it was the farthest from the parsonage. Besides
that, it was on the far side of the river and there was no
bridge, and there were times when the ferry didn’t run after
dark. One of the families in the church offered the use of a
spare room, so my wife and I would move in with them for part
of that time. During the day, I could visit some of the people
in the community. One
of my calls was to a man named William Dawson. At the time, I
guessed that he was in his eighties, but I am not sure about
that now. I have learned that people looked older earlier in
those days than they do now. Everyone called him Uncle Billy.
He lived as a boarder in one room in someone’s home. He had
arthritis so bad that he couldn’t even sit in a chair. He
was all drawn up in a ball, so I sat beside his bed for my
visit and our prayer together. When I was ready to leave, he
asked me if I would take his offering envelope with me since
the lady at the house where we were staying happened to be the
church treasurer. I said I would, and when I gave it to Peggy
Cooper, I commented that as little as he obviously had, we
should be giving to him. I will never forget her answer. She
said that I was right about his poverty, in that all that he
had for income was what they called an old age pension. But
then she said, “But you see, Preacher, Uncle Billy is a
tither; and every month a tenth of what he gets comes to the
church.” I thought of Jesus and the widow in the temple
court, and my feeling about the meaning of stewardship has
never been the same. The
Midland church, where Pat and I spent the last 25 years under
full time appointment, had included the indebtedness for the
latest renovation in its annual budget. As the end of that
debt was approaching, the church was challenged to maintain
that level of giving and put the money into new outreach
projects. I still cherish the meeting of the Administrative
Board when a layman named David Rooke stood up and made the
motion that we undertake the full support of an agricultural
missionary as a response to world hunger. A few months later,
Pat and I found ourselves in what was then Zaire, where Dan
Hammond was scheduled to begin his work. It was the rainy
season, and we bounced and crept our way by Land Rover to one
of the villages
where Dan would be working. As we waited out the rain, we saw
children catching the water running off the metal roof of the
building that housed the church-supported pharmacy. It was the
only roof in the village that wasn’t thatch and the children
came with their jars and pots to catch the water for their
households so they wouldn’t have to carry it from the stream
that was some distance away.
We
waited in the home of the pastor and watched his wife cooking
the meal over a charcoal fire in the back of the hut, the pots
sitting directly on the hot coals that she pushed together
with the edge of her hand every now and then, a hand as hard
and calloused as the sole of my shoe. They used a wooden drum
to call the people together in the village church to welcome
us and tell the people that our church in the United States
would be sending a missionary to help them grow more food.
They had known we were coming, and after our visit and
exchange of greetings, they presented me with a carving from
the tusk of a wild boar, depicting a bent over farmer with his
hoe and telling me how this man was rejoicing now because Dan
Hammond was coming to help them grow better crops. Then we
went back to the pastor’s house, where they had carried in
two more chairs from their neighbors and borrowed glasses and
silverware so that they, who ate meat perhaps once a week if
they were lucky, could put on a chicken dinner for three white
people, two of whom they had never seen before. A
glimpse of God? It was for me, and my feeling about missions
and their place in a church’s life has never been the same
again. Not
all my glimpses of God have been in unusual or exceptional
events or long ago or far away. I have heard Him in the notes
of the organ, in the voices of the choirs, in the pealing of the bells. I have heard his
whisper in discussions in Disciple classes. I have felt his
presence in the planning of programs, in the setting of goals,
in the struggle with decisions. I have seen Him in the glimmer
of tears in eyes when people have come forward for some of the
special commitment times. I have glimpsed Him in the baptism
of children (a special glimpse today, perhaps?), in the joy of
weddings, in the heartache of losses, and in those awesome
moments when I have put my hand on the heads of those who are
being confirmed in the faith. Glimpses of God? They have been
for me! And before I see him face to face, I expect to see
some more. They are what has kept us hanging around here so
long! No
one really knows for sure where the real Mt. Sinai is located.
Archaeologists are still debating that. That little opening in
the rock on the top of Mt. Karkom may not be the place where
Moses saw the back of God at all. And no one has seen the
fullness of God’s glory, but those with eyes to see do get
glimpses now and then. So when you go home today, look back
across your life and see if you can’t recall a few yourself.
And
while you are at it, remember: you may have the
opportunity to be someone else’s glimpse of God. Some
of you have been for me. Benediction: May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
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