Eyeh Asher and Me

Today’s note from the Geranium Farm posts about the Exodus 33 chat between Moses and יְהוָ֤ה wherein Moses seeks better to know this illusive Be-ing who from the Burning Bush'd attracted and conscripted him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness and on to the Promised Land. יְהוָ֤ה had introduced himself to Moses as אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה and I visualize that they were on a first name basis from then on. Not good ole drinking buddies like God and Abraham (among other reasons, because Abram was eager and trusting where Moses was reluctant and hesitant), but cordial enough to be first names. That was ages before the sound and sight of the Name so shivered the timbers that people feared to utter it and began instead to say Adonai still spelled יְהוָ֤ה. 

So, Moses and אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה then. And יְהוָ֤ה says to Moses that he, אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה, Adonai, יְהוָ֤ה cannot let Moses see his face or Moses will die, for one cannot look upon his face and live. So he puts Moses in a cleft of a rock and lets Moses see “not my face but אֲחֹרָ֑י my back parts.” The Geranium Farm shows it this morning as anonymous 14th century art, the long, shaggy back of God's head. On the left Moses praying to see God, and on the right God needing to visit the barbershop at Tyndall, $8.75 cheap enough these days, and the ten-spot is a generous $1.25 tip.

So here is this God who is so dangerous, awesome, fearsome fierce that if his people see him, if merely they see him (ἴδωσιν) they will die, what? incinerated? Or is He that horrifyingly ugly, that grotesque? Remember, was it “Lena” in Lil’ Abner who merely to gaze on her face caused men and boys to drop dead, she was that horrifying? Who besides me remembers Al Capp’s tittilating us for years, and then weeks and then finally days leading up to his graphic presentation of Lena the Hyena at whose sight so many innocent young men had dropped dead on Sadie Hawkins’ Day at the prospect of being forced to marry her: 

If such a horror would have confronted Moses, I see (ὁράω) why our loving God would not have let Moses gaze upon his face. That and embarrassing modesty. So if ugly or searing heat okay, but I don't believe God's ferocity or avenging fury would have killed Moses, because as the Bible says, "God is love." Perhaps counter to all I was told in Sunday School at East Hill Baptist Church in those classes, I do not fear God. And I will not rationalize “fear” as the Sunday School teacher did, to really mean not fright but our awe of adoration. Either The God loves me, or does not. I am going to say that The God of Love whom I see in the face of Jesus Christ does not mean to fill me with fear, dread, terror of being struck dead. I believe that "yet I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold." Moreover, I do not fear a day of judgment for my sins. I have no sense of being the sinner that our Penitential Office and Confession of Sin mean to instill in me, and in which the lately completed Season of Lent means to drown me. I am just a person, a person, just one more male human being. I little appreciate the church’s evolution from the loving Jesus through the medieval ages that drag me to the precipice of Dante’s caldera and threatens me with the Wrath of God. I am not afraid, don’t bother trying to scare me with God. To any extent I visualize myself and God, It’s All Good. I do not need to writhe in my sins, utter a confession, hear an absolution. I can sing, and that joyfully, lustily. I do not believe that יְהוָ֤ה is obsessed with counting my sins, jotting them down in some book so as to remember my sins to hold against me in some great and terrible Day. Like the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, I believe that I am meant to live and love joyfully in my here and now with which אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה has gifted me, speck on a speck that I am. I believe, “believe” is not the right word, I might say “wonder” but what the other side of my final moment of this living and loving, I will not simply be gathered back into the Image from which I was spoken, and there either with my individual consciousness or better as part of the Whole, resume as a dot or tittle of whatever Is. I don’t know, I just don’t know; and I am perfectly satisfied with neither knowing nor hypothesizing. I do hope that wherever or whatever, I leave with this sense of gratitude for what has been for me.

DThos+ somewhere in +Time+

This does not have to make any sense to anyone but myself, and even I am having trouble with it

Blogger rejoices in mixing around my cut and paste אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה so it may appear out of order on a hand held device such as iPhone. eyeh asherrrrr eyeh 

אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה

Top pic pinched from Barbara Crafton's wonderful post this morning on The Geranium Farm