Sabbath Day Thoughts — “With Us” Exodus 33:12-23
On October seventh, the world was shocked by news from the Middle East. Rocket attacks and a violent incursion had been launched from Gaza into Israel by Hamas militants. 1,400 Israelis have been killed. More than 100 have been taken hostage, to be used as bargaining chips for the release of Hamas prisoners. The Israeli Defense Force was quick to respond by bombarding suspected Hamas strongholds in Gaza. 6,000 bombs were dropped in six days. Gaza’s dense population has put civilians in the crosshairs. At least 4,385 Palestinians have been killed, including 1,756 children and 967 women. A further 13,500 Gazans have been injured. The world watches and weeps. We worry that the conflict could spill over to the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, and beyond.
There are Christians in Gaza. The Book of Acts tells us that Philip the evangelist shared the gospel with the Ethiopian eunuch on the Gaza Road. In the fourth and fifth century, the monk Porphyrius made it his mission to share the good news with the people of Gaza, winning converts from traditional pagan and Roman spiritualities. The church that bears his name, St. Porphyrius Church in Gaza City, dates to the fifth century, one of the oldest Christian institutions in the Middle East. Today, there are about 1,100 Christians in Gaza, only 1% of the population. Many of them are now seeking shelter in the church or its sister institution, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate School.
The war between Israel and Hamas may be viewed as a Muslim/Jewish conflict, but Christians are not immune to the suffering. The Al-Ahli Hospital, founded in 1898 by the World Anglican Communion, provides free medical care and food for residents of nearby villages. On Tuesday, the hospital was bombed, killing 471 people and wounding a further 300. On Thursday, the ancient St. Porphyrius Church compound was also bombed. The blast hit two church buildings where refugees, including children and babies, were sleeping. 18 were killed and twenty injured. The attacks were condemned by both the Anglican Communion and the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem, who have called for prayers for that volatile region where Israeli Jews, Palestinian Muslims, and the frail Christian minority ask, “Where is God?”
In our reading from the Book of Exodus, Moses was worried. God had accompanied the Israelites since their escape from Egypt. The divine presence was manifest in a tower of cloud by day and a fiery pillar at night. God had even given the Israelites detailed instructions for building the tabernacle as a portable place of worship and communion with God. But things had not gone according to plan. The Israelites had complained against God and threatened mutiny over the scarcity of water and the monotony of their diet. Then, when Moses was delayed on the mountain with God, there had been outright rebellion. The people turned their backs on God and coerced Aaron into casting two golden calves – idols to the pagan god of storm and war Baal. Warned by God, Moses hurried down the mountain to find the Israelites bowing down and worshipping these gods of their own making.
It was a near thing. God Almighty, notoriously jealous, resolved to destroy the stiff-necked and rebellious people. Only the audacious intercession of Moses saved them from utter destruction. Although Moses talked God out of catastrophe, the ardor that God felt for the Israelites cooled. As today’s reading began, Moses learned that God would no longer go with Israel. Instead, an angel would serve as a poor substitute. Moses took a look at his recalcitrant people. He turned his eyes to the harsh landscape of the wilderness. He knew that, without God, he and the people wouldn’t stand a chance.
Our own experiences of suffering and adversity can lead us to question if God is with us. Our families seethe with generational strife and marital tension, and we say, “Where are you God?” Our health suffers, the tests begin, the medical bills mount, and we wonder, “Are you with me, Lord?” The chaos of our American political landscape leaves us fearful about the future, and we plead, “We need you, God!” We know what it is like to feel stressed, worried, anxious, and alone. We know that, when left to our own devices, we do not have what it takes to meet the challenge. We know we need holy help. “Where are you God?”
It would take some fast-talking by Moses to change God’s mind. Moses reminded God that the Israelites weren’t Moses’s people—they were God’s people, all the way back to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God might have called Moses to lead that troublesome bunch, but he could not do so without the abiding presence of God. Fortunately, the Lord relented. But that wasn’t enough for the plucky Moses. He wanted tangible evidence. As a sign of good faith, God granted Moses’s request, sheltering the prophet in a cleft of Sinai and granting him a glimpse of the divine back. Assured of God’s faithfulness, Moses found the courage to lead a difficult people across the wilderness to the edge of the Promised Land.
We would all like what Moses got—a peek at God, a revelation that convinces us without a doubt that God is with us in our times of suffering and adversity. I think God knows that. God understands that even the most faithful among us can feel frightened, hopeless, and in need of personal reassurance. That’s why God sent Jesus to be Immanuel—God with us. In Jesus, God faced head on all the places in our lives that make our hearts tremble and question the presence of God. Jesus faced fraught families and responded to intractable medical concerns. Jesus and his followers knew the hardship of big taxes, limited resources, and poverty. Jesus and his friends faced difficult political realities that created fear and hardship for everyday people. In Jesus, God faced it all, with the power to help and heal. In Jesus, God revealed that we are not alone as we face what makes us despair. We don’t need to see the backside of God because in Jesus we saw God incarnate. We learned that God is with us, always with us. Thanks be to God.
In Gaza City this morning, Christians are worshipping at St. Porphyrius Church. Services resumed there the same day as the bombing, with a time of solemn worship for those who were killed and injured in the blast. A Palestinian American woman, who left the church in the early 2000s when she moved from Gaza to the United States, said in an interview with the Washington Post that the church is close-knit and family-like, a lot like our church. She says that amid the falling bombs and likelihood of further violence, “They’re terrified. They’re shaken. They don’t know what to do, and they don’t know where else to go.”
Maher Ayyad, a seventy-two-year-old church member of St. Porphyrius, is the medical director of that Anglican hospital, Al-Ahli Hospital, that was also bombed this week. Maher Ayyad says that he and his fellow church members are praying, always praying. “We pray for a cease-fire all the time,” he says, “It’s too much for Gazans.” As the bombs fall and the people St. Porphyrius Church brace for an Israeli invasion, may they remember that God is with them.
Resources
Vanessa Lovelace. “Commentary on Exodus 33:12-23” in Preaching This Week, October 18, 2020. Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.
Dennis Olson. “Commentary on Exodus 33:12-23” in Preaching This Week, October 22, 2017. Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.
Kathryn Schifferdecker. “Commentary on Exodus 33:12-23” in Preaching This Week, October 16, 2011. Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.
Kelsey Dallas. “Relatives of a former U.S. representative were among those killed in Gaza in church hit by strike” in Desert News, October 20, 2023. Accessed online at https://www.deseret.com/faith/2023/10/20/23926074/st-porphyrius-church-gaza-destroyed-justin-amash
Miriam Berger, Evan Hill and Kelsey Ables. “Historic church sheltering civilians struck in deadly Gaza City blast” in The Washington Post, October 20, 2023. Accessed online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/20/gaza-church-strike-saint-porphyrius/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
Michelle Boorstein and Ben Brasch. “Gaza hospital where hundreds were killed is owned by Anglican Communion branch” in The Washington Post, Oct. 17, 2023. Accessed online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/17/israel-hamas-gaza-hospital-anglican-church/
AJLabs. Israel-Gaza war in maps and charts: Live Tracker. In Aljazeera News, updated October 21, 2023. Accessed online at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker
Exodus 33:12-23
12Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said 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 favor in my sight.’ 13Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. 16For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.” 17The Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” 18Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” 19And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” 21And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22and 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; 23then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Joann White 