Dwelling Between Faith and Fear

by Cynthia Jarvis

A sermon preached at the Fall Polity Conference
November 1, 2003

Texts: Exod. 3:7-14; Matt. 14:22-33

“But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I…’”

“Fear,” said Karl Barth, “is the anticipation of a supposedly certain defeat.” These days, you and I are not driven, but seem to be dwelling in a nether land between the supposedly certain defeat of division and the ambivalent hope that the peace, unity, and purity for which we were made awaits us beyond the wilderness ahead. In this land between fear and faith, we wait together for a bush to burn or for the storm to subside. Apparently, we have set foot into the strange world of the Bible and, in spite of our distrust of one another, we begin to read our common story together.

From the beginning in a garden to the far edge of Egypt’s wilderness, we listen to the story of God’s saving purposes in human history as told us, primarily, by the writer known to biblical scholars as “J.” J is writing down these stories—stories of exile and murder, of rising waters and confused voices, of faith and fear played through generations of God-fearers, beginning with Abraham. J is writing during the end of the reign of Solomon, the king who built the temple in Jerusalem as the dwelling place for God on earth. In other words, religion in J’s time had settled down to a comfortable and elaborate routine sanctioned by the royal consciousness. One could liken it to the time when Christianity became the religion of Constantine’s empire…or to the period of the Roman church before Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg (486 years ago tonight to be exact)…or one could even liken it to the time when mainline Protestants were booming in America prior to what some would consider the hell of pluralism breaking loose. The point is that J was writing in a time when religion had God where God belonged: defined theologically, contained ecclesially, co-opted politically.

Noting not only the historical context, but the ironic tone of J’s narrative, one literary critic characterizes J’s stance toward God as “appreciative, wryly apprehensive, intensely interested and above all alert.” Moreover, this critic notes, J is “perhaps a touch wary” of God himself, “always prepared to be surprised.” Again, imagine him writing these stories of Bedouin tribes and their itinerant God in a time when the power arrangements seemed to be set, the law written in stone, and the future of God’s people secured in the land God had promised. His initial description of the Israelites in Egypt under Joseph—fruitful and prolific, multiplying and growing strong—must have been written to ring bells with the self-satisfied subjects of Solomon…written to ring bells with any and every religious community throughout human history fearlessly claiming God’s truth as their own.

To the alert reader, J’s ominous announcement of a new ruler over Egypt foreshadows a dark turn not only in the tale he is telling, but in the history he was living. The new king “knew not Joseph,” by which J means to say, knew not the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Hence the Pharaoh who once trembled before the power of Israel’s God now has been succeeded by one who knows only his own power: the power not of life but of death. When read through the lens of 922 B.C. and Solomon’s soon-to-be-crumbling court, this story of Israel’s impending exodus from the fleshpots of Egypt reverberates with the reality of the unified kingdom’s impending division; when read through the lens of 2003 A.D., this story reverberates with the anticipation of our own supposedly certain defeat.

Moses is born into this situation as a creature caught in the middle. Saved from Pharaoh’s murderous order to kill every boy born to a Hebrew woman and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses soon must decide to whom he belongs. Murderously he decides for his people, who thank him for the effort by telling Pharaoh of his offense. In fear, Moses flees. “When the actual situation becomes deathly oppressive,” asks Gerald Janzen of this text, “is the actual the limit of the possible? Does the actual present strictly define and determine what the future shall be?” For Moses in Egypt, it seems that the future had been fatefully defined by this deadly and oppressive present. In the anticipation of a supposedly certain defeat, all he thought he could do in the situation was split—run for his life.

Not by chance, given J’s stance toward God, we next meet Moses in the wilderness, in the place according to the biblical narrative, “where present reality is suspended such that the future no longer depends upon the rigid determination of the actual.” In the wilderness, this God—of whom we should be wary—appears far from the places we have built for God to dwell. Rather, God addresses us where the future no longer depends on the rigid determination of the actual. Here the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob is bound to what God has done, but God’s future, says Paul Lehmann, is not bound by what God has done.

The story of the burning bush is called a theophany—a story of an appearance of God. Moses turns to see and from out of the bush, God first identifies himself to Moses as the God of his father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Here Moses’ fear is met not first with comfort and consolation, but with a word that turns anticipation to actuality: God intends to keep God’s promises and continue the story of God’s redeeming purposes by sending Moses to Pharaoh.

In a sense, Moses has already been there, done that! “He knows the actual situation: he knows himself, he knows the Israelites, and he knows the power of Egypt.” So he counters with what we take to be a fearful question: “Who am I…?” It may be a dodge, but it also may be a question that issues, in the presence of the living God, from a different order of fear: from the wariness of J before this God of surprises, from a doubt opening out toward the living God, as settled reality and budding possibility vie within us. This is not the question raised in the courts of religious certainty where believers are settled and unafraid; it is the wilderness question dared by those whose trembling may rather be the stirring of the trust for which we were made.

There is a sense in which the dwelling place of God—or the place God chooses to dwell—is now the space created by Moses’ fear and self-doubt. God’s presence mediated through words alone, God says to Moses, “I will be with you.” “Who Moses is can no longer be [understood] merely in terms of who he had…taken himself to be, or in terms merely of the actual situation” from which he was running. Rather, from this encounter on, who Moses is can be understood only in relation to “God with us.”

Moses must now return to the place where present realities oppress and to the people for whom trust has become all but impossible. What can Moses say of the God who is with him that will be heard and believed, not first by Pharaoh, but by the Israelites? I think this is J’s question asked in the midst of the sedimented religion of Solomon’s temple and in anticipation of the divided kingdom; it was Luther’s question in the face of Roman authority and on the cusp of the Reformation; it is our question soon to be sent back to a church threatening even now to break in two.

God is surely still the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Yet the God who promised Abraham his presence must have seemed strangely absent in the land of Egypt. “What shall I say to them?” Moses asks, pressing God for more. God’s answer to Moses begins, “I will be….” It is a blank that religion rushes to fill in, from the right or the left, with words meant to secure our grasp on God. But this God of whom J is wary and by whom he is ready to be surprised says, “I will be who I will be.” That is to say, take heart: I am not in your control! The future of those with whom this God is, now is held in the mystery of God’s intention, the limitless possibility of God’s promise fulfilled no matter the actual limits of the present situation. In faith, Moses returns to Egypt as witness to the God who will be who God will be.

Israel ultimately trusts Moses’ witness, with the help of a few signs, but Pharaoh resists the power of the living God in favor of his own. “Egypt learns to its grief,” says Janzen, “that where the actual seeks to continue as an unchanging definition of the possible, that equation spells death, not for the oppressed, but for the oppressor; and this is not solely by an arbitrary…judgment, but by its rigidity, which is its own form of rigor mortis.”

These ages and ages hence, we are those who listen to these stories not finally through the lens of 922 B.C. and an author known as J, but through the life, death, and resurrection of the God who has come to dwell with us in Jesus Christ. He addresses us in the wilderness where our fears have driven us and we tremble. Who are we, we ask? For who we are cannot be known apart from him. The question is as a stable and by grace he enters in. Our trembling turns to trust. Follow me, he says, and sends us back to the place where the community anticipating supposedly certain defeat seeks a name and a sign.

We have only this story to tell them. It is, I promise you, a veritable burning bush from beginning to end! In its pages, the living God will lead us out to the place where present reality is suspended such that the future no longer depends upon the rigid determination of the actual…such that the future depends only upon the God who has chosen to dwell with us in Jesus Christ. “Only here,” says Barth, “with all due respect to our fear of life [only here before the revelation of the Living God] is it worthwhile to be afraid. Here hearts and reins are tried. Here the question is awe and not agitation. Here no one can escape and no one can console himself. Having reached the ultimate limit of all that we fear, where God is revealed to us, we are no longer afraid of this or the next thing, but of God alone.” Thanks be to God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

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