Presence is Rest
Exodus 33:12–33; Matthew 22:15-22
A few months ago my son Rowan told me one night before going to bed that he really wanted to hug Jesus. We had been reading Big Feelings Days by Audrey Sampson, which is an excellent book, and it talks about how Jesus has big feelings just like us. And so, naturally, Rowan wanted to hug Jesus. “Why can’t I hug Jesus?”
What would you say to this simple question?
I wonder, in the simplicity of his faith, if Moses had the same feeling on the mountain of God. “I want to see your face. Be with me. Show me your glory.”
Rowan knows something really profound: if Jesus has feelings like me, he can express them like me, with a hug. Rowan doesn’t have to think twice or check himself; when he feels something he lets you know. He knows he doesn’t want to go to sleep alone and so asks me to talk about Jesus, because he knows I’ll never say no. He has the cheat code now.
The first instance of a human figure with a face archeologists have found dates from about 25,000 years ago, a figure of a woman carved in mammoth ivory in France after the last ice age. We’ve wanted to see another’s face, especially in their absence, for a very long time. And we’ve found all sorts of ways to make faces present to ourselves in our culture. Literally, the most consequential social shift in the last 500 years happened around faces: Facebook.
But Rowan’s question, and Moses’ desire, still remain. I would venture to say that this desire is invested in our very bodies: we want to see God so much we’ll make what we treasure most into the form of a god. Our physical selves long for a face to see, a divine embrace, the fulfillment of a promise we all feel but can’t name; maybe Job put it best. “Even after my flesh is destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”
But here we come to the paradox of God’s presence. Exodus 33:20 ”but you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” In Hebrew, presence and face are the same word, Perim. God’s presence will go with Moses, but no one can see God’s presence. Moses is here at the pinnacle of the possible: his desire that God go with the people of Israel, that they be together is so palpable that he wants to find the limit of death before God and stay there.
There is a promise in our bodies that cannot be fulfilled in their current state of existence. God says to Moses, “no one can see me and live.” Something must change. No one can see God and live as they are now.
What I’m pointing to here is a way of being in relationship with God that is beyond simply having the correct concepts about God in our minds. Is knowing Christian teaching important? Yes, of course. We do ourselves an incredible injustice by not regularly thinking about the Goodness of God–that which God caused to pass before Moses–that content of God’s moral goodness he has made known in the world and in scripture. But there is more. Psalm 105:4 says, “search for the Lord in all his strength; seek his face always.” The paradox of God’s presence draws us forward. God doesn’t tell Moses to stop seeking, he asks Moses to be transformed. We need a God who isn’t just the summation of our best thoughts. We need a God with a face we can look at and know we are at peace. Only God’s presence can truly give our seeking fulfillment and rest.
If Moses is willing to stand at the edge of his own humanity and go toe-to-toe with the transcendent God because he wants to see God’s face, when God the Word became flesh, no one seemed to recognize his face as God’s. Mary did (yes, she did know), but I think she’s about it. Fr. John Behr makes the point that if you were walking around Galilee in AD 15, you wouldn’t be able to pick Jesus out of a crowd and say, “That’s him, that’s God alright.” Because even when God is embodied and has a face, we’re dealing with the inverse problem of Moses: we’re seeing God’s face but don’t know it is God.
Matthew 22 lays out a series of tests and conflicts that Jesus has with religious and political leaders. A word of context about the social and political situation of Israel at the time of Jesus’ ministry is needed. Israel had been a buffer state between Alexander the Great’s rival generals and their respective empires in Asia Minor and Egypt (the Seleucids and the Ptolemies). Centuries of war left the land practically a burned over district, until it won independence during the Machabeean revolt. That short kingdom and its dream of independence was put down by Rome and puppet kings and priests were permitted to exercise authority under Rome’s watchful eye, and thorough tax policy. Rebellions were stamped out. Crucifixions were pedestrian.
In all this, the Pharisees were the good guys; they were for stability, upholding tradition, and keeping alive the worship of God under the dominion of the empire. I don’t have time to make that case in the detail it deserves, but our Christian narrative of “Pharisees=bad, Jesus=good” is neither historically accurate nor a good reading of scriptures. But as Matthew 22 records, Jesus had presented a radical critique of the authority of the Pharisees by his miracles, his prophetic ministry, and his entry into Jerusalem as king.
In the test over taxes, the disciples of the Pharisees have joined forces with the Herodians, the supporters of the Roman puppet governor; this is the conjunction of religious and political power coming to present Jesus with a dilemma on which to be entrapped: pay taxes or don’t?
But Jesus makes this test about something entirely different, and I want us to hear something different in his response than simply a statement on how Christians should relate to government and authority. He is not just answering their questions in a clever way. He’s shedding light on the core of the violence of empire and humanity’s love of power.
Jesus doesn’t pull any punches. He calls these testers hypocrates right out of the gate. And he’s calling their attention, and ours, to a simple fact: these men have two faces, one they show to the world, and one they hide. Their presence before Jesus is duplicitous, it is divided.
They have two faces. Maybe more. We do too.
People suffer from what we could call the Tom Riddle problem. The Harry Potter series is far from perfect, but it does provide amazing clarity on the nature of our divided humanity under the power of death. We divide to survive, a part of us here, another there, in that object, place, or person. A face, a way of being present, that prioritizes our power, our centeredness, our resourcefulness, our independence, our fundamental superiority to any other who looks to us for attention.
“I had seven faces, though I knew which one to wear. I’m sick of spending these lonely nights, training myself not to care,” sings the band Interpol in their song NYC. We are stuck with our dividedness and we’re doing our best to tell ourselves it doesn’t matter.
Jesus, God’s embodied face, asks the testers to reveal the subject of their question: the tax money. And in doing so, they reveal another face.
On a typical coin in this era, the denarius coin would have the profile of Caesar and his titles: “Tiberius Caesar, the Son of the Divine Emperor Augustus,” and “Pontifex Maximus,” or high priest.
The coin isn’t just about who owns the coin. It’s a projection of the empire’s false divinity, its cosmos-ordering power, its claim to authority over all flesh who trade in its economy. The coin is an idol. To hold it is to welcome its implicit thesis: this is your god.
In this encounter, we have three faces: the false face of the idol of empire, the face of God in Jesus, and the duplicitous faces of human beings. And what is Jesus’ response?
“Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and…and…to God the things that are God’s.”
“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our own image.”
We are the things that are God’s.
But we have two faces. We wear masks. We’re still divided by the powers of death, and we know our own presence as abiding in fear and anxiety. Something must change.
The challenge for these would-be testers of Jesus is not about paying taxes, it is about separating themselves from the power of empire they uphold in their different ways, through their religious practice and their financial power. “Put down the idol, give back the death coin, and turn your real face to God,” Jesus might say. You can’t keep maintaining two faces. You should be whole. You were made to face God, not your divided self.
The condition of hypocrisy, of having two faces, isn’t one we should bypass quickly. The testers were amazed, we might be too; but they went away. They turned their faces away from Jesus. Giving God the things that are God’s requires of us more than we necessarily know at first.
Saying something is God’s is a statement of judgment; this is God’s, and it is not anything else’s. To say that human beings are God’s image and are God’s will bring us into conflict with many things, many economies and currencies that will claim them as their property. I want to highlight one tonight because I think it is one of the subtlest and most potent coins we carry in our pocket: nationalism.
From its earliest inception, nationalism was a way of organizing faces. It was immediately concerned with identifying an essence of a people: a language, an origin myth, an ideal physique, and a border in which to house this ideal. The fact that early scientific racism, phrenology (the study of personality based on skull shape), and nationalism all get going at around the same time is not accidental. Nationalism classifies and gathers, separates and patrols, and locks people into a trajectory sold as national destiny but actually governed by the most powerful. The border for one nation becomes a prison for those on the other side.
I remember seeing a play in Dublin when I studied abroad in college by Brian Friel called The Home Place which explored the “scientific” power exercised by the Anglo settlers on Irish people (and many others) through phrenology. The play was set in 1878. I saw it in 2005. Today I can open up Twitter and see more memes that trade in phrenological types than I could count.
Far from fading away with the cold war, Nationalism now seems to be a more powerful force in the world than ever. And its long history is enacted on our tv sets and computer screens hour by hour; be it in the return of a nativist Christian Nationalism here in America or Hungary, or the fruit of settler-colonial structures in the Middle East between Palestine and Israel.
I can’t talk about these passages tonight outside of the incredible tragedy that is unfolding in Gaza and Israel. We see faces: faces wracked with pain, faces dirtied with blood and ash, faces of death instantly broadcast for the whole world to see. Faces with names we don’t know, faces that look like their mothers’, faces that have been categorized and judged. Pictures of faces that won’t be seen again.
The horrific attacks on Israel on October 7th, coupled with the brutal and disproportionate response by Israel, both show the nationalist logic of despair at work. A six year old Palestinian boy was stabbed to death by his landlord in Plainfield. The president of a synagogue in Detroit was stabbed to death outside her home. Not in the middle east, within driving distance of us. Jewish businesses and homes in Europe are being marked with stars, recalling the yellow stars of the ghettos. Protesters seeking a cease-fire and liberation for those suffering in Palestine are being arrested and their free-speech outlawed. Christian hospitals and churches, including the third oldest church in the world, are reduced to rubble for providing shelter for innocent civilians. This is the schizophrenia of nationalism at work. Dare we ask, “Whose likeness is on the coin?” that provides weapons and rockets? Who’s stock is going up because of this conflict?
This is war built on the denial of its own context, a conflict instantiated by wedge-issue thinking and zero-sum politics. Bombings happen as fast as it takes to hit “reply all” and entire discourses are reduced to mere words: Hamas. Israel. Terrorist. Settler. Hostage. And discourse is doing nothing to stop the indiscriminate death brought down on children and the starvation of civilians by Israel’s defense forces.
Nationalism has genocide as its handmaiden and anti-semitism as its foundational currency. The Jewish writer John Ganz has written with clarity and conviction about the current war. He says, “This is what I mean about nationalism being a doctrine of despair: ultimately, when you pull back the layers, nationalism is about desiring death, death for others and death for yourself. A warm, comfortable death for you, and a violent, cold, and terrible death for the other guy. It choses being subsumed in a mass to avoid the terrible difficulty of remaining human that rises to the fore in tragic moments like this one.” Put another way, Nationalism defaces human beings and excuses them from responsibility and recognition of another’s face.
John Ganz continues: “It is a deep temptation in moments like this to run and accept the embrace of nationalism. It seems to provide a sense of warmth and solidarity that compensates for the cruelty of the world on display. And it seems to offer the political means to answer that cruelty in kind and provide the appearance of safety. But it is just another trap: nationalism is the source of this all to begin with.
They hug you—”Brother, you’ve finally joined us!”—and then they hand you a rifle. I believe one must resist the temptation of what Orwell identified as the core of nationalism: “[T]he habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad” and “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” Above all, John Ganz writes, "I refuse to become an insect or look on others as insects.”
Giving to Caesar that which is Caesar’s means renouncing despair, rejecting death’s currency, and recognizing the divine dignity of another’s face that cannot be reduced to an object. And look, I don’t know how that change actually happens for people; the testers were amazed at Jesus, but went back to their masters. “Victory for me is to see you suffer” is what the world seems to be hell-bent on. I pray for Mr. Netanyahu’s resignation, and a more just and merciful government to be formed in Israel. I pray Hamas would release their hostages and throw their rockets into the sea. I pray for anti-semiticism to cease, and for Palestianians to live in peace. I don’t know how any of that is going to happen.
Here at Christ our Advocate, we’ve asked ourselves on many occasions, “What difference can one little church make in the midst of all this evil?” Mtr. Emily has consistently reminded us that God has ordained that the prayers of God’s people, no matter how small, influence the shape of the world. To that, I would like to add that we can give to God the things that are God’s. This is not a puzzle or an impossible task. If you think quietly for a minute, I think you’ll find that there is something, someone, that is God’s who you need to give back to God.
Prayer is giving people to God. Prayer is turning our face to God in direct address. Prayer is attentive seeking. Prayer is unifying. Prayer is presence.
God is inviting us to seek his face, always. Our seeking transforms us. It unifies our duplicity, it focuses our desire, and it gives us new eyes to see God where we couldn’t see him before: in my flesh, in your flesh, I will see God. Our bodies, our faces.
When Rowan said he wanted to hug Jesus, I said, “yeah, buddy, I do too, and we will someday. We’ll all give Jesus a great big hug. But until then, you can hug mommy and daddy and it’s like hugging Jesus.” He gave me a big hug.
Looking back, I realized I am not unified enough to say all that I could have; I still have two faces. I want to be like Jesus sometimes, but I don’t want to be Jesus for Rowan all the time, so he could point to me and say, “I’ve seen God in my dad.” Something must change, and it's me. I should have said, “yeah buddy, I want to hug Jesus too; and Jesus loves everyone so much that he wants them to become one with him. When you hug me, you’re hugging Jesus.” May God give us grace to be the face of God to each other as we seek his face always. Amen
