Then God said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” – Exodus 3:5This morning we are treated to the scriptural version of the Ten Commandments, without Cecil B. DeMille’s imagination and special effects.
The story contrast is worth noting because DeMille’s 1956 epic film of the same name has dramatically altered the way many of us understand the story. My spouse, the Rev Doc M, had a parishioner at North Baptist Church who was distressed by the fact that the story Martha read from the pulpit was not the same drama she had viewed in VistaVision. In 1956 wags would go the movie so they could tell their neighbors, “I liked the book better.” But in fact, millions who saw the film had never read the book.
I was ten when the film was released, and my mother took me to see it. But you don’t have to be my age to know the film. It resides on the cloud and on millions of DVDs, and networks and cable companies release it several times a year, usually on inappropriate holidays such as Easter.
Many of the film’s characters are absent from Scripture but the actors are well known. Yul Brynner displays a frozen scowl and emotions ranging from a little angry to a little angrier. Edward G. Robinson plays a thuggish Israelite, but we miss the cigar he made famous in Little Caesar. Vincent Price as Baka displays the cinematic creepiness that made him famous. John Derek’s sinewy body glistens with so much grease Debra Paget would have slid right off him. Yvonne DeCarlo previews the same character she brought to life in The Munsters. And Charlton Heston expresses the same righteous rage as when he defied NRA critics to pry a gun from his “cold dead hands.”
In fairness, I should say that Variety called Heston an “adaptable performer” who, as Moses, reveals “inner glow as he is called by God to remove the chains of slavery that hold his people,” and it considered Yul Brynner “expert” as Rameses. Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 32 reviews and reported 97 percent of critics gave the film a positive review: “Bombastic and occasionally silly but extravagantly entertaining.”
The climatic scene in today’s reading of Exodus also happens to be one of my favorite scenes from the movie. Here’s a bush that is burning but not burned, an adequate special effect by 1956 standards, although I wonder if the Disney studio couldn’t have done better. Heston approaches the bush cautiously as a voice tells him to “remove the sandals from his feet for he stands on holy ground.”
What kind of voice? When I was an undergraduate at Eastern Baptist College, some of us displayed a certain flippancy to distinguish ourselves from the overweening piety of many of our fellow students. We would ask ourselves what God’s voice sounded like. One of my friends said maybe God spoke in the nasally, lisping tones of Truman Capote. That seemed unlikely to most of us, and the impious student who spoke so heretically has recently retired as an Episcopal priest.
In the movie, if you listen carefully, the voice of God is Heston’s own baritone, inadvertently creating the illusion that Moses is talking to himself. That raises some Jungian issues that are far too complex to go into here. But it is a dramatic scene.
The most profound revelation in the scene – in scripture and on screen – is when God reveals his name to Moses:
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall day to the Israelites, “I AM has sent me to you … This is my name forever, and this is my title for all generations.” (Exodus 3:14-15)We know the name in Hebrew – Yahweh – is so sacred that Jews will not pronounce it aloud, some times substituting HaShem, “the name,” in conversation. One of our Diakonia teachers – now our Bishop, Paul Egensteiner – declined to pronounce the name aloud out of respect to Jewish brothers and sisters.
But when God revealed God’s name to Moses, the importance of this revelation is enormous. God is revealing to Moses that God is not merely present today, but present outside of time.
Referring to the past, we say, “I was.” God says, “I am.”
Referring to right now, we say, “I am.” God says, “I am.”
Referring to the future, we say, “I will be.” God says, “I am.”
This is no rhetorical exercise. It is a mind-boggling disclosure about the nature of God. It is a stunning revelation that our concept of God may be too small.
Because God exists in all of time. If, to us, the bondage of the Jews in Egypt took place five millennia ago, we must try to grasp the fact that to God it is happening and is always happening.
That is one reason events reported in the bible are so important to our lives. To our feeble frontal cortexes, the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage is a dim, distant historical event. But in God’s time it is happening.
To our feeble frontal cortexes, Jesus was crucified two thousand years ago, so long ago that it’s difficult for us to even imagine it. We rely on ancient scrolls and archaeological digs to remind us what happened, and sometimes it’s difficult to comprehend why the dusty past would have anything to do with us.
But in God’s time, the death and resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated historical event from long, long ago. In God’s time, it is happening now. It is happening yesterday, it is happening today, it is happening tomorrow, it is happening for all time, forever and ever.
What God and Jesus did on the Cross is not something done and done two thousand years ago, something lost in the mists of the past that has dubious residual impact on our lives.
In God’s time, it is happening now. It is happening yesterday, it is happening today, it is happening tomorrow, it is happening for all time, forever and ever.
And that is why we cannot ignore the impact of God’s sacrifice on the cross to overcome death, because the sacrifice is happening for all time, forever and ever. It is happening for us who are brought to faith by the grace of God, and whose lives are transformed from a mundane daily existence in temporal time to a glorious life abundant for God’s time.
In the gospel of Mark, Jesus provides an important commentary:
And as for the dead being raised, have you not read I the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, “I am the God of Abraham … He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” (Mark:12:26-27)Emphasis on is.
As a history buff, I like to keep in mind that God’s time and my time are different. If I read about Abraham Lincoln’s conversation with Frederick Douglass, or Harriett Tubman’s courageous acts to free slaves, I like to ponder that in God’s time, these events are not in the dusty past but happening, and are always happening. It somehow makes these events more real for me. My fantasy of heaven is that we saints may be permitted a God’s-eye view of time, and I can be an invisible witness at one of JFK’s press conferences, or when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
But more importantly, I think it’s good to remember what God’s time means for our lives abundant, our lives eternal.
Occasionally we meet an agnostic or atheist who cringes at the thought of living forever.
“I’ve lived quite long enough,” they will say. “I would hate to live another thousand or even another hundred years.”
But that is what “eternal life” is all about. Eternal life is not to be counted in years, despite what the hymn says:
When we’ve been there ten-thousand years
Bright Shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.
In God’s time, no one is counting the years.
God’s time is outside of time.
When God revealed God’s name to Moses, it was notice that the time will come when all of us will be freed from the tiresome and often painful bonds of human life.
Because of the ever-happening sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, our faith will lead us to a life made glorious by God’s presence.
We will be reminded that I AM has brought, is bringing, and will bring us to life.
And no one will be watching the clock or counting the years.
No comments:
Post a Comment