Justin Appel

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Bible lessons furnish us with an astonishing picture of God’s presence.

Given our complacency with certain religious forms, speech patterns, reasonable opinions, and perhaps, a certain social respectability within our faith, the Old Testament story feels alien to our experience.

In this scene, Yahweh descends to the heights of Mt. Sinai in overwhelming fire, the smoke of his presence rising from the mountain “like a kiln.” Thunder and lightning encroach, a thick cloud, the blast of a trumpet, and a border over which neither priest nor layman could pass: this scene doesn’t sound very much like our churches today.

Having attended many a church service during my Protestant upbringing, with elaborate to bare liturgies, high Eucharistic piety to low austerity, with attendant theological perspectives and approaches to biblical interpretation, one tendency emerges through each: we all seem willing to paint a comfortable picture of God that fits into our systems.

This is why we still need Exodus: to teach us of God’s power, majesty, and otherness. This story, such a vital part of our history as Christians, warns us that God isn’t comprehensible, reducible, tame, or safe.

And lest we imagine Jesus as a warmer, safer person in the Godhead, St Paul reminds us that in him, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

How should we reliably think about God? The early Church’s negative theology will prove a safe starting point—describing God by what he is not. Also, we may trust the words, whether on theology or the spiritual life, of those who have real experience of God’s presence: the saints and elders who speak consistently within the living tradition.

Unity with God remains our goal, but we cannot yet imagine that reality in its fullness.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin