On Meeting God

On Meeting God

Exodus 19:16-25

It’s a frightful scene that we see in Exodus 19:16-25. There’s thunder and lightning and a thick cloud of smoke on Mount Sinai. There’s a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people in the camp tremble. The mountain shakes because God has descended upon it. As the trumpet blast gets louder Moses leads the people out of the camp to meet God. Moses speaks, and God answers him in thunder. God summons Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses goes up alone. God tells Moses to tell the people “not to break through to the Lord” to look, otherwise many of them will perish. Even the priests must “consecrate” themselves, whatever that means, or the Lord will “break out against them.” Wow! A frightful scene indeed. Quite an encounter with God, wouldn’t you say?

This passage from Exodus is very ancient. It uses imagery for God that the Canaanites used for their storm god. This God is mighty and frightening. This God threatens to kill people if they don’t stay back. This God allows only Moses to come near. Anything God wants to say to the people God says to them only through Moses. A few verses earlier God has told Moses to tell the people that if they obey God’s commandments they shall be for God a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. Exodus 19:5-6. Now God threatens to destroy them if they get too close. I’ve got to be honest with you. The God of this scene is not the God I know, love, and seek to serve. Not at all.

So what are we to do with this passage? Throw it out? Ignore it? We really can’t do that. These verses are in the Bible after all. That doesn’t mean we have to accept them, but it does mean that we must take them seriously. Here’s one way we can do that. As I read these verses the thought that occurred to me was: Well, at least they raise the question of how it is that we do encounter God in our lives. That’s the question I want to address here.

For as long as there has been something identifiable as human culture, even very primitive human culture, people have experienced and tried to describe the presence of God. People have experienced the presence of God in more ways than I could possibly describe or even know of. All I can do is name some of the more common ways that people have met God including some of the ways that I have.

The first thing to say about encountering God is that for it to happen we must be open to it happening. It won’t happen if we deny the reality of God. It won’t happen if we at some level accept the reality of God but think either that God is too remote for any encounter or that we aren’t worthy of any encounter. God is not too remote, and no matter what you may have done you are not unworthy of meeting God. Being open to an encounter with God is the first step.

The next step is to do something to make an encounter more likely. Most of all that means pray. Prayer is the primary way that we initiate contact with God. Or perhaps better, it is the primary way in which we open ourselves to the presence of God that is always there but we just aren’t aware of it. It’s not that we will experience an encounter with God every time we pray, but sometimes we will. I have a personal story about encountering God through prayer. I imagine I’ve told it on this blog before, but I’ll tell it again here because it is a good illustration of how prayer can initiate an encounter with God.

Back in 2002 my first wife, the mother of my children, died of breast cancer. We’d been together for thirty years. I was devastated, feeling a pain I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. Three days after her death I was standing in the shower sobbing in grief. I started to sink to my knees. As I did I said “Lord, help me up.” Immediately, instantly, with the passage of no time at all, I felt myself lifted back onto my feet by a force I can’t explain but that didn’t come from me. It couldn’t have come from me. I had no force left in me. I felt myself lifted up by something outside of myself. I know that that inexplicable something was God. It had to be God. It couldn’t have been anything else. It was the most immediate and dramatic encounter with God I’ve ever had. It made all the difference to me in those unspeakably hard days. I knew that God is real and was holding me in my grief. That knowledge got me through a time of loss and pain I don’t know how I otherwise would have survived.

On that remarkable occasion      I said a few words of prayer, but prayer doesn’t have to involve words. Silence is often the most powerful kind of prayer of all. Sometimes we talk so much when we’re praying that God can’t get a word in edgewise. In silence we can sense the presence of God in ways we can’t if we’re spending all our energy thinking of something to say. Simply relaxing silently into the presence of God is at least calming, soothing, and that calm is itself is an experience of God.

There are many well-developed and effective prayer practices that can bring us closer to God, and the most effective of them all involve silence. Centering prayer is  a type of silent prayer that many Christians practice. It is a kind of silent meditation that uses words, actually only one word that you choose, only as a way to get back to silence. You can learn about it in the writings of Thomas Keating. Silent retreat is another practice that many find helpful. You may be able to find an Ignatian silent retreat in our area. Transcendental meditation is a type of silent practice similar to centering prayer that comes from the Buddhist rather than the Christian tradition. It involves the constant silent repeating of a mantra that you choose. There lots of books on it that are readily available. Many people find silently walking a labyrinth to be an effective form of entering into the presence of God. You may be able to find a labyrinth in your area by searching for one on line.

Not all effective practices for opening ourselves to the presence of God are silent. Worship and sacraments are another way of opening ourselves to the presence of God. I have felt myself to be in the presence of God on occasion when participating in the Eucharist. That experience has actually been rarer when I’ve been leading the sacrament myself than when I’ve just received it, but on occasion I have felt God’s presence in the elements of the sacrament even when I’ve been praying over and distributing them. Sometimes people feel the presence of God in the music of a worship service or in the common prayers. There are lots of ways worship can put you in touch with God.

Some people find communing with nature to be a way of experiencing the presence of God. Perhaps the majestic grandeur of the mountains speaks to you of the grandeur of God. Or perhaps the calm of a quiet lake or meadow relaxes you into the presence of God. Nature can indeed manifest the grace of God to us.

All of these ways of facilitating an encounter with God have something in common. They all connect us with God in ways that are very, very different from the way the Hebrew people encountered God in our verses from Exodus. They are all peaceful. They are all quiet. There’s no trembling mountain shrouded in smoke. There’s no God telling us to stay back and threatening us with harm if we don’t. There is rather a God of peace and love inviting us to come closer not stay back. A God who welcomes us and embraces us in divine arms of unfathomable love. This God can challenge us too, call us to action in the world; but God never does those things violently but always gently. Persistently perhaps, but always with a gentle persistence. I don’t deny that the ancient Hebrews encountered God in a different way, in something like the way our text here describes. That however is not how I encounter God. It’s not the way most people encounter God.

So if you want to encounter God, if you want to experience the powerful but peaceful presence of God in your life, open yourself to the possibility of God. Find a spiritual practice that works for you, then actually practice it. You probably won’t feel the presence of God every time you do, but you will feel closer to God and to God’s unconditional love for you and for all creation. That feeling, my friends, makes the effort more than worthwhile.