Knowing God Face to Face

The last few weeks the Lectionary readings from the Hebrew Scriptures has taken us through the career of Moses. This coming Sunday, we read that Moses died at the Lord’s command (Deuteronomy 34:5). Then comes this amazing summary of Moses’ life, “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” (v. 10).

Let me get out of the way one of the least important puzzles in this line: the timing of the writing of Deuteronomy, as scholarly debates over timing and Mosaic authorship have been a battleground and test of theological pedigree for generations. Taken at face value (literal interpretation for those who insist on that terminology), this means at least that Deuteronomy took the shape we know after Israel had accumulated some history with prophets with whom Moses could be compared. If that line was written after the Exile or Return to compare Moses to Elijah or Elisha, Isaiah or Jeremiah, Ezekiel or Daniel is remarkable. I don’t wish to get sidetracked into the arguments about Deuteronomy, except to point out the supreme uniqueness of the Lord’s face to face relationship with Moses that set him above all of the writing and speaking prophets with all of their revelations and visions and explore what Jesus meant when he said that the pure in heart would see God (Matthew 5:8) and what kind of relationship Jesus’ disciples can expect today.

Also, let me be clear that I know we are talking about metaphorical language. Psalms 115:4-8; 135:15-18 mock pagan idols with their anatomical body parts. From creation and the burning bush to Pentecost, the presence and power of God are compared to wind and fire (those images are worth pursuing all by themselves) which are real but mysteriously untamable – both benevolent and dangerous. Even with all we know today about meteorology and chemistry, they evoke mystery. Often (especially in the Psalms) the face of God is used as a way of speaking of God’s attention and protection for the covenant community. But the Lord’s face to face relationship with Moses was singular.

One of the conundrums here is that in Exodus 33:18 Moses asked to see God’s glory, and God responds by saying that “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” (v. 20) Yet with anthropomorphic images of hand and backside (v. 23), God’s goodness passes by Moses. When Moses came down from the mountain with the second tablets of the Law, his face glowed after having been in the intimate presence of God. (vv. 29-35). Apparently this phenomenon recurred whenever Moses went to speak before the Lord (often assumed to have been in the Tabernacle, though that is not specified in this passage). Interestingly, somewhat in contrast to the tone of Exodus, 2 Corinthians 3:13 suggests that Moses wore a veil on his face so the people would not see that the glow was fading, rather than in awe of the unapproachability of God’s glory.

 As I prayed through Psalm 27 yesterday, I came to verse 8. “‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, do I seek.” And I remembered Psalm 42:2. “When shall I come and behold the face of God?” These seem to me to express a deep longing to for intimate encounter with God that goes beyond the way the face of God is used to indicate God’s attention elsewhere in the Psalms. While Jesus didn’t use “face,” his Beatitude from Matthew 5:8 also expresses the intensity of this yearning. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” In his book Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, Søren Kierkegaard explores this in great depth. Purity of heart is not some moralistic achievement but to have a heart in which the will to see God has purged all other desires. Such pure hearted folk will see God.

This yearning to see the face of God is at the core of all Christian mysticism and contemplative life. Spiritual disciplines and practices do not achieve a glimpse of God’s face. They only prepare us to recognize it when God’s face is turned to us. So what do we see? Some have ecstatic visions such as described by Teresa of Avila and portrayed in Gian Lorenzo Bernin’s sculpture. Others, such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta looked for God in the faces of suffering people. Father Peter Sylvester of the Society of the Divine Word (Bordentown, New Jersey), was my personal spiritual director from 1992 to 1997. He encouraged me to get a standard wall calendar and write in each day’s block a line or two at the most identifying when I was most aware of the presence of God that day. I have continued that practice, though now I add it as a note in the calendar on my phone.

This has been a beneficial tool for keeping me alert to God who is present and active whether I am paying attention or not. While I am hardly a Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross, occasionally I am overwhelmed by an ecstatic awareness during the silence of my centering prayer. At other times, thinking back over a day’s events surprises me with the realization that God was right there in the turn of ordinary activities. Each day I do ask if God has brought someone who is in pain to be an icon for me through whom I can see Christ. More often than not, I am aware of the merciful God forgiving my failings and protecting me from my own foolishness and desires that contaminate the purity I long for in my heart.

I don’t know what Moses wanted or expected when he asked to see God’s glory in Exodus 33:18, but it must have been spectacular that left him glowing, which glow was refreshed when he went to speak with God (vv. 29-35). Deuteronomy 34:10 suggests that this was unrepeatable. Yet, Jesus suggested a real seeing of God to the pure in heart. And even the usually coolly rational Apostle Paul had his own ecstatic vision that he was not to describe (2 Corinthians 12:1-7) and he wrote of the Spirit interceding for our inadequate prayers with sighs too deep for words (Romans 8:26). But most of the time, even for the great mystics, we see may the face of God in the ordinary present moments of our lives. Jean-Pierre de Caussade described this so eloquently in The Sacrament of the Present Moment (originally titled Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence). He used the word “sacrament” in the sense of revealing the presence or reality of God or Christ. He suggested that if we focus on some glorious past experience, either historical or personal, or if we concentrate on anticipating something coming in the future when conditions will be more amenable, we will miss seeing that God is present to us in the present moment. So, don’t live with nostalgic longing for some time in the past we thought was better than now or with regret and shame for a past that still haunts us. And don’t live as though something better will come along before the eternal Kingdom, as though the present is too mundane or corrupt for God to be here. No! Live in the present moment, and be alert to how God will come to you, maybe even surprise you.

Just a last note. I know some of my Protestant friends will be uncomfortable with my allusions to Roman Catholic mystical and contemplative thinking. My experience suggests to me that many if not most Roman Catholic folk are as uncomfortable as Protestants are. We have all been shaped by the rationalism and empiricism of the Enlightenment that robs us of the wonder of mystery. Most of my relationships with others who share my contemplative aspirations are Protestants, though I have found great spiritual fellowship with many Roman Catholic folk. In our time many Protestants are writing and teaching along these lines. Having said that, just as monks and nuns preserved the manuscripts of the Scripture through the darkest centuries of the Church’s history, they have also preserved the classic literature of Christian contemplative living, for which I am deeply thankful. Theological disputes will go on, and all expressions of Christianity are susceptible to distorted, corrupted thinking and practices. I must say I grieve what seems to me to be a loss of integrity in much of the Evangelical tradition in which I was raised and educated. Nevertheless, I am finding joyful, authentic followers of Jesus in diverse Christian traditions, and we grow stronger as we recognize and affirm each other.  Again, as with the scholarly issues around the timing and authorship of Deuteronomy, I do not wish to get sidetracked into arguments about which Christians are safe to relate to, but to encourage and nourish all of us who long to see the face of God and experience the presence of Christ.