Dear Friends,
I asked Sam Chaise, Executive Director of Canadian Baptist Ministries (CBM) to describe a process they are engaged in at CBM. It includes a weekly bible study reflection, and as Sam writes, it goes like this:
On a weekly basis the CBM senior leadership gathers on Wednesday mornings to read through the past Sunday’s lectionary selections and to read a short piece written by a CBM staff member that engages the Scripture readings. We then spend time sharing our own reflections as we sit with the Scripture. Our international staff share in this practice via an online webpage. One of our goals for this practice is that even though we are spread out over the globe, we share at least one practice together and are formed by it.
On the day I joined other Executive Ministers with Sam in Mississauga, ON on Wednesday 22 October 2014, they were engaged in just such a process. The passage that day was Exodus 33:12 – 23.
Moses’ Intercession
Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favour in my sight.’ Now therefore, if I have found favour in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favour in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favour in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favour in my sight, and I know you by name.”
Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
Suzannah Nacho wrote the following commentary:
I found myself deeply moved as the passage was read, almost in tears, and felt that God had wanted me at these meetings, if only just to hear these words (they meetings were excellent by the way). I let you explore this passage for itself, but I do need to say three brief things which were important to me:
I often ask God, just as Moses does, who will go with me…sometimes in the loneliness of the task, sometimes in personal worry, sometimes because I fail to see the wonderful collaboration and community that is around me.
I stand with Moses and think of the Lord, before you as CBWC. If the Lord does not go before us, and with us, we do not go. I love the assertive, analytical, blunt way Moses speaks. I love the whole expanse and in many times in my life, where vibrant, robust, intellectually sound apologetics were the order of the day. But, I have always needed mystery and wonder in my life. It has often come to me in music.
The third observation I make of this passage is that after all of the back and forth between Moses and the Lord, the Lord says “I will show you my power, but you can’t look upon it.” There is a mystery and a wonder, which is often missing, but found in this passage. There is an irony, a coincidence, whatever you might call it.
But the theme of the Banff Pastors Conference this year is from Psalm 115:1 – Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
Loralyn Lind is teaching the bible studies, and she focused on both passages from Exodus and Psalm, and spoke the first day on glory. I will leave it there, because I know that you will enjoy listening to her online in a few weeks when we have the conference talks available on our website.
God be with you.
Warmly,
In Christ,
Jeremy