AN ADEQUATE GLIMPSE OF THE TRUTH
February 12, 1989 |
8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Exodus 33:17--23
Luke 9:28-36

"Then J will take away my hand, and you shall see wy back;
but my face shall not be seen." -Exodus 33:23

Among the wisest words. ever. said to me are these..;
"What the Christian Church needs is more belief, not more beliefs."

It was said to me by a retired Presbyterian minister on an auspicious
occasion in my life. I had traveled from Chicago to my home in Central
Pennsylvania at about this time of year to be examined by my Presbytery for
ordination. Among the requirements in those days, along with preaching a
sermon to the Presbytery and presenting a paper to-demonstrate that you
knew something about the Bible and how to use it,- was a statement of faith
which the candidate for ordination read, and then defended orally - in
front of the entire Presbytery. It was a harrowing experience. Preparing
that statement of faith was a harrowing experience, realizing that at this
point one had to stop discussing, studying, writing papers and "stand and
deliver." For the purposes -of showing fitness-for ordination, 1 did what
most candidates do, I have discovered - particularly younger ones. Namely,
cover a lot of ground, touch every base from creation to human sin and
salvation, from Bible to Church History to Eschatology, illustrating each
point with a broad range of historical references, from the early church
fathers ~ Jerome and Augustine - to the big B's of the 60s - Barth,
Brunner, Bultmann and Bonhoeffer.

Now the saints in Pennsylvania were not at all sure why I was
preparing for: ministry in the Midwest instead of Princeton or Pittsburgh,
where most of them had matriculated. Particularly, since this school was
more noted for John.Dewey's progressive ideas about education, and: Enrico
Fermi's atomic bomb than for turning out theologically sound preachers. - I
recall hoping that I could dazzie them and in fact, they were generous and
did vote me in. I was feeling pretty good when among the well wishers
afterward there was this retired minister who lived in State College and
had taught a little philosophy at Penn State. Ihave remembered what he
said with more gratitude than anything else that happened that day. He
said he liked my statement of faith - but thought it was actually too big.

He said that it was his experience the longer he lived, that he
believed fewer things but believed them more; that his life had been a

refining and sharpening.. “Your statement of faith was good," he said, “but
you don't have to believe all that. Focus on a few things and really
believe in them... What the Christian Church needs,” he said, “is more

belief and fewer beliefs."

I have found his advice to be true. There's a sense in which If
don't know nearly as much as I did about a lot of things twenty-five or
thirty years ago. To be twenty years old is to know what's wrong with the
world and how to fix it. There's a wonderful incident in Woody Allen's
movie Radio Days, in which a young man, passionately in search of meaning
and purpose wants to discuss the Holocaust with his father. "What does it
mean?" he asks. "How should I know?" his middle-aged father answers. "TI
can't even understand how to operate the electric can opener. How am I
supposed to understand the Holocaust?" I read somewhere that Saul Bellow
moved from New York to Chicago because "he was fed up with intellectuals
who had to have an opinion on everything." [See. Leonard Sweety, in Liberal
Protestantism, Michaelson & Roof, p. 253.) ,

There is in religion an almost irresistible inclination to explain
everything, to reduce the infinite to finite, understandable terms; to
reduce the great unknowns, the unfathomable mysteries of our existence to
‘manageable dimensions. That is the theme of a wonderful story in the Book
of Exodus which is delightful in its playfulness but profound in its
humanness. and its integrity.

The scene is Mt. Sinai in the middle of the wilderness. The
children of Israel recently have escaped from Pharach at the Red Sea. Now
they are on the move, wandering through the Sinai desert. When they come
to the mountain, God and.Moses meet and talk. For thirteen chapters or so
God and Moses converse and negotiate. Moses receives God's law in the form
of. Ten Commandments.. When he takes the two tablets on which the law is
inscribed down to the people, he discovers them worshipping an idol, a
golden calf. Ina fit of rage Moses dashes the tablets to the ground,
goes back up the mountain to resume the conversation with God and makes a
Simple request: Give me some proof that I'm on the right track. I badly
need some credibility with these people. Do something to show how serious
you are and haw legitimate I am. At least tell me your plans. God's
response to. Moses is "I will go with you, and I will give you the victory.”

That wasn't the question. So Moses tries again and gets an equally
evasive answer. Moses is nothing if not determined, so he tries again but
reduces his demands a bit. If you won't do something to give yourself -
and me - some credibility, at least give me something to hold on to, some
certainty. Let me see.your. glory —- which the translators tell us means
“the dazzling light of God's presence." And then Moses gets an answer — of
sorts...

"I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim

before you my name, but you cannot see my face.". And then this wonderful
little vignette, which can easily be missed —-

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“there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock;
and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft in the
rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by;
then I will take away my hand and you shal} see my back; but my
face shall not be seen." [Exodus 33:21-23]

It wasn't such an unreasonable request, really... not unlike what we
want from our religion. A little certainty. He simply wanted a clear
picture of who he was following and obeying. He wanted to be sure of
himself at least before he pushed ahead into the wilderness at the head of
that Jong column of griping, whining, golden calf-worshipping—people on
their way to a promised land none of them had ever seen. It wasn't to be.
No face-to-face encounters with God for Moses - yet. Moses was going to
have to settle for the back side of God... a less than complete theology.
Moses was going to have to be content with some poor symbols of the reality
of God instead of the real thing - the memory of. a burning bush, two tablets
of stone, a voice that was maddeningly silent when he wanted to hear it...

There is in religion an almost irresistible inclination to try to see
God's face, to reduce the infinite toe the finite. In theology the name for
it is “anthropomorphism" which means making God look like a human being.
Michelangelo painted the God of creation as a muscular Zeus stretched
across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; and the soaring rhetoric of the
Westminister Assembly which wrote the basic theology of Presbyterianism
back in the 17th century - and came up with the rhetorical equivalent af
the Sistine Chapel... “There is but one only Living and true God,
invisible, immutable, immense, eternal, and incomprehensible," etc., etc.,
as if the mystery of God can be contained if we can just find art
beautiful enough or words superlative enough.

Reinhold Niebuhr once noted that there is more religious confusion a
generated by "those who claim to know too much about the mystery of life
than by those whe claim to know too little." [The Essential Reinhold
Niebuhr, Mystery & Meaning, p. 237} Niebuhr went on to observe that people
who claim ta know too much fall into two categories, the scientific
rationalists who don't believe anything that cannot be weighed, measured,
tested, and proved in an equation - and religious people who know
everything there is to know about eternal mystery.

“They banish the mystery," he said. And then, with a twinkle in his
eye, I am sure, "They know the geography of heaven and hell, and the -
furniture of one and the temperature of the other."

There is, of course, great appeal to a rational religion which has an |
answer for everything.

Tn John Updike's novel, Roger's Version, a young computer whiz kid

comes to a divinity school professor with a peculiar request. He wants a
divinity school grant to prove the existence of God on a computer, He
believes that if he can just crunch enough numbers, ultimate mystery will
be revealed. "God is breaking through," he says. "They've been scraping
away at physical reality all these centuries, and now the layer of the
little left we don't understand is so fine God's face is staring out at
us." [p. 20]

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The Professor, Roger, responds - "I find your whole idea
aesthetically and ethically repulsive. Aesthetically because it describes
a God who lets himself be intellectually trapped, and ethically because it
eliminates faith from religion, it takes away our freedom to believe or
doubt. A God you could prove makes the whole thing immensely, oh,
uninteresting. Pat. Whatever else God may be, he shouldn't be pat."

“But sir, think of the. comfort to all those who want to believe but
don't dare, because they've been intellectually intimidated. Think of the
reassurance to all those in trouble or in pain and wanting to pray.”
fp. 24] ,

There is enormous appeal to an ethic with simple resolutions to
complex dilemmas. How lovely if the Roe versus Wade debate about abortion
would submit to biological and moral certainty. But it will not. People
of good will, distinguished people, disagree about the definition of even
the most basic terms - life, conception, viability. We are in the presence
of mystery here and shouting our position through a bull horn does not
alter that fact.

There is enormous appeal to a religion that reduces mystery, makes
the infinite finite and encompasses the whole terrain of our humanness in
' a sequence of formulas everyone can understand.

A youngster standing outside the Art Institute yesterday was handing
out literature for the Church of Scientology... I was prevented from
stopping for an exchange of opinions by the person I was with — and it's a
good thing because the cults have all the answers. There is no mystery.
That's why people join them.

One time Woody Allen and Billy Graham were on the same television
talk show. Allen was asked if he might convert on camera.

“I'm open to it. Life, it seems to me, is much easier if you're a
believer. You can always come up with easy answers.” [cited by Martin E.
Marty, Context, Feb. 14, 1989, from Free Inquiry]

But it doesn't work. There is a mystery about us that defies
explanation. If you have been in love you know that the experience is not
adequately described as “hormones calling to hormones." If you have been
privileged to witness human birth or human death you know that there is a
moment when science is no longer adequate and that you are in the presence
of mystery. Human nature, capable of exquisite beauty and the grossest
evil, cannot be explained simply. Part of our fascination with the Nazi era
is that there is a mystery to it. Seciology, psychology or simple
religious platitudes. don't adequately explain how the same culture produced
Beethoven and Hitler, the Magnificat of J. §S. Bach and Dachau.

I was reminded earlier this week of an entry in Robert Cole's Harvard
Diary, the point of which was that if religion that "knows it all" isn't
adequate to the mysteries of life, neither is an absolute commitment to
scientific objectivity. Coles tells about visiting a medical school
classmate who was terminally ill. He found his friend furious because he

2/12/89

had just been visited by the chaplain who was obviously a skilled
practitioner of the latest psychological {and therefore scientifically

respectable) methodology. “How was the patient feeling... How was he
‘managing’ in view of the 'stress' he had to 'confront.'. Did he want to
‘talk about! what was happening?” “The priest," says Coles, “no doubt

believed himself to be tactful, respectful and considerate, but my friend
was annoyed and later enraged. He had wanted to talk with the priest about
God and his ways, about Christ's life and death, about heaven and hell: -
only to be approached with psychological words and phrases. ‘Here he comes
with a Roman collar and offers me psychological banalities as God's word.'"
Ip. 16-12}

My memory of the last funeral I attended as a worshiper and mourner,
not as the presiding clergy, is one of irritation at the minister, a friend
of mine, for talking too much. He said so much more than he had a right to
say, I thought, much, much more than I wanted to hear. What happened was
not simple. The life we were remembering was anything but simple. What
the mourners were experiencing was not simple. It was offensive to be told
that it is all really uncomplicated ~- when one knows one is in the presence
of mystery.

The stuff of your life and mine is loving, yearning, : hoping,
dreaming, stretching, reaching beyond our grasp, sometimes.succeeding and
sometimes falling flat. on our faces, suffering, doubting, despairing, but
also rejoicing, celebrating, praying, dying... Mystery, all of it; none of
it. able to be reduced to simple, understandable formulas or platitudes.

And that is consistent with our religion. Popular religion may try
to know too much, but Biblical religion doesn't let you see God's face.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, says the Lord." [Isaiah 55:8]

is the way the prophet Isaiah. put it.

The God of the Bible makes a point of it, it would seem. God doesn't
give Moses a good look for. Moses' own sake. In the Bible, if you see too
much of God you die. If there is no mystery left you are no longer human,
it would seem. If there is no mystery left you no longer have the option
of faith.

During Lent we are invited to draw near to the mystery, to approach
the unanswerable questions of life and love and sin and death and
resurrection once again, not in hopes that this year we'll get it right and
have the answers, because we will not. We are invited in Lent to approach
the mystery because to do so is important. In Lent we look intently at the
one who came as God's good and loving ward to the human family - but always
stood apart from that family, never fully understood. Today, it is to
_ follow those disciples up the mountain of transfiguration, where - if
unyone ever had a chance to look into the face of God it was them - and to
know with a terrible finality that they didn't do it either. When
whatever happened on that mountain ~ Jesus' face shining, his appearance
altered, his clothing dazzling white - whatever it is Luke is trying to
tell us about Jesus, what he ends up telling us is that the disciples were

oa)

distracted, bored, sleepy through most of it; and what they catch of it they
completely misunderstand. The mystery remains as a'cloud descends over the
whole scene. :

And so it goes throughout, until this one, against all the common
sense advice of his best friends, follows his: sense of God's will and walks
into the valley of the shadow of death and literally climbs up onto a cross
and dies. There, this faith of ours proclaims, at that final mystery, the
death of Jesus Christ on the cross, there the reality of God is unveiled,
the truth about God and about us is disclosed.

In Lent we approach the mystery... and at the cross of Christ we stand
in its presence...

In this life we may never see clearly. St. Paul, who was more sure of
some things than anyone - confessed the mystery with a poignancy and
integrity we have come to love...

"Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully,
even as IT am fully understood." [1 Cor. 13:12]

The promise of the Gospel is not that we will have answers to all our
“questions and that all our quandries and dilemmas will be salved. The
promise of the gospel is that: ultimately we will see God...

In the meantime, like Moses, we'll have to do with the back side of
God, a glimpse of the truth, a hint of the glory. In the meantime, there is
this man who lived and loved and died for us. And until that day when you
and I see face to face, it is an adequate portion of the truth simply to
allow him to-love us, and to hold tightly to him. Amen.

Give us prace, O Lord, to live with

the mystery of our own humanity and

the mystery of your love for us. Give
us the will to believe and the courage
to live in the'midst of uncertainty; and
@ portion of the truth as your faithful
people:: through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

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