Exodus 33:12-end Matthew 22:15-22
At the start of all my favourite crime dramas, each episode begins with a recap. We would benefit from one today too, because before this conversation between Moses and God, we witnessed a spectacular display of human emotion. You may remember last week’s reading: the disaster of the golden calf. Moses has been up the mountain, and the people have grown tired of waiting. They want a god they can see. Something solid. Something manageable. So they make one out of their earrings, and worship it.
Moses comes down carrying the tablets of the covenant, written by the very finger of God. He sees what has happened and, in a furious rage, smashes God’s own handiwork.
I love the humanity of Moses here. The man entrusted with God’s commandments is so furious that he breaks the whole lot before he has even delivered them. He has led these people out of Egypt, argued for them, worried about them, carried responsibility for them. And now the tablets lie in pieces. The question is whether their journey with God can continue, or whether they have smashed their relationship with their loving creator along with the tablets.
God tells Moses to lead the people onwards. But Moses needs more than a destination. Moses needs relationship. Who is coming with us? How am I supposed to do this? You say you know me by name. Then help me to know you. Underneath his questions is a very human plea: please don’t make me do this on my own. God answers with absolute reassurance: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Presence. And rest.
God knows Moses needs rest. After the climbing, fury and smashing, after grinding down the golden calf and making his people drink the god they made, after all the conflict, broken relationships, and anguish, God offers rest.
But Moses cannot quite settle into that promise yet. “Show me your glory.”
Perhaps he needs something to hold onto when the next crisis comes. Proof that this God is worth following. A certainty strong enough to carry him through the wilderness.
God answers: “I will make all my goodness pass before you.” Moses asks for glory. God promises goodness. I wonder whether Moses hears that as an answer. I wonder whether we would. Because goodness sounds rather quiet when you are hoping for glory. Glory sounds like triumph. The roar of the crowd. Your name in lights. Something magnificent enough to leave nobody in any doubt. Goodness might easily pass unnoticed. Yet goodness is what God promises to show Moses, along with grace and mercy. Perhaps God is teaching Moses what glory actually looks like.
Moses is sheltered in the cleft of a rock, covered by God’s hand as God passes. He is allowed a glimpse. He must continue without possessing the whole picture. But he will not continue alone. Moses has smashed the tablets of the covenant, and God is already speaking about a future together. There is glory in that. God seems remarkably free of our human need to be seen succeeding.
We spend so much energy wondering how things look. Whether we are doing enough. Whether there is enough to show for our efforts. Churches do this too. We heard a lot about it at Synod yesterday. We count, compare, worry. And there is nothing wrong with wanting our communities to flourish. But here, as we discern where God is leading us, perhaps this passage gives us another question:
Where is goodness?
Who is finding the security of human connection? Who has tried the door and found it wide open, with space for them at the table? Where are people sharing, making peace, offering kindness, finding courage? Those things help us recognise God’s presence. We might want glory—I know I often do—and God draws our attention to goodness, offers presence, promises rest. The very things that sustain us.
Today’s Gospel puts another kind of glory before us: the emperor’s face, stamped upon a coin. His image travels wherever money changes hands, reminding everyone who is in charge. Jesus says, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The coin bears the emperor’s image. But we bear the image of God. Our lives belong to God.
In Jesus, we see what a life lived wholly for God looks like. He is approaching the cross. In the world’s eyes there is no glory in that. There is humiliation, abandonment, and a borrowed tomb. Even the resurrection happens unseen. Nobody witnesses the moment death gives way to life. God seems remarkably free of our human need to be seen succeeding. God does not need an audience to be glorious. God IS glory. And that glory is revealed in goodness. In mercy. In love that endures. In life where everything seemed finished.
Friends, we bear the image of this God, whose glory is revealed in goodness. May we seek that goodness, that presence, that deep relationship, knowing who we are and whose we are. And may others catch a glimpse of God’s glory in the goodness we share. Amen.
