October 15, 2023
Loved and Missed
Exodus 32:1-14
Rev. Margaret Torrance
A few weeks ago my husband and I had a chance to go away for the weekend. I was ready for a good novel, so I grabbed a last-minute recommendation, and off we went.
Susie Boyt’s latest book is about a woman, Ruth, who is raising her granddaughter, Lily, because the daughter who gave birth to Lily is mired in addiction. Toward the end of the book Lily describes the day her fragile mother showed up unannounced, just as school was letting out. Lily knew that she couldn’t go with her mother, but she later remembers the encounter this way:
“All I could think was that I wanted to give her a present, suddenly. Or to say something amazing. I wished I was wearing a special piece of jewelry I could take off and put into her hands, lift up her hair and fasten round her neck. In the end though I just said I was sorry I couldn’t go with her this time and I gave some excuses and she gave me a hug—at least her arms wrapped me ‘round, but they felt so stiff and strange.
Lily continues:
It made me think of a time Ruth and I were having a picnic in a church garden on one of our walks. I stopped in front of a grave, a small ancient one. There was flaky grey stone with moss in the cracks and long grass growing all around. I started to laugh and Ruth asked me why.
“It says Loved and Missed,” I said.
“What’s funny about that?”
“Well it kind of sounds like the person tried to be loving, but the target moved, or the aim was wrong and the love didn’t quite get through, it didn’t hit home? It didn’t work out for whatever reason. Or…or…they maybe just weren’t very good at it.” [1]
Loved and Missed.
Truth be told, isn’t that descriptive of most of our relationships?:
The child whose needs you don’t quite understand?
The parent who clearly hoped for something else?
The sibling whose craving overflows?
The friend who pulls away?
The neighbor whose ways are strange to us?
How hard it can be—even with the best of intentions—to offer the kind of love that’s needed—and to receive the kind of love that’s offered. In the confusion of daily living, how hard it can be to trust.
In today’s reading, when we come upon the Hebrew people in the desert, they are having a hard time trusting.
Yes, God heard their cries when they were in bondage, raised up their leader Moses, brought them out of slavery, fed them in the wilderness—but there was a lot of suffering and fear and thirst along the way—and they’d never had more than a day or so’s worth of food at any one time.
There are a lot of ways to tell any story. The people are weary, they don’t know what lies ahead. They’ve been stalled at the base of this mountain for a long time. Moses must have been gone for forty days.
They imagine they might feel better if there were something to hold onto—take with them, if need be. If there were something dependable they could gather around, maybe they wouldn’t feel so alone, so vulnerable.
They ask Aaron to make gods to bolster their courage, help them feel more confident of the future. They tell themselves it will all be part of their worship of God.
Now as readers, we know something the people don’t. The people don’t know that even as they are feeling abandoned, taking matters into their own hands, God and Moses are up on the mountain, sketching the boundaries of the life they all will share—imagining how a holy God might travel with a fearful people in a way that would allow them all not only to survive, but to flourish. The people don’t know that even in their moment of anxious plotting, God is providing for them. The people don’t know that what they are about to do will break God’s heart.
The people just forge ahead, swapping an object they make—an object that cannot speak or act, guide or care for them, for the living God whose creative, liberating, sustaining love offers them life, in all its fullness.
It’s a limited analogy…but imagine if the person you’d married let you know before you even got settled in your first house that really you didn’t need to move in after all—they were just going to sleep with a stuffed animal and pretend it was you…
(Pause)
When God sees what the people do, what they settle for, God’s grief erupts in anger. God imagines changing course—using Moses rather than this wayward people to bring about the blessing God intends for the world.
It is a harrowing moment in this origin story, but in the words of the psalmist, Moses steps into the breach of this ruptured relationship. He does not try to defend the people’s actions. But neither does he abandon them.
Instead, he appeals to God’s own integrity and faithfulness, reminding God of ancient promises. Moses asks God to be who only God can be. For by this time God has schooled Moses in real relationship, in the kind of prayer that aligns hearts and wills.
And in the fullness of time God will find a way to dwell with the people that will compromise neither God’s holiness nor the people’s need for a companion they can touch and see. God will be present in their midst not just in the cloud and fire but in a human being who will feed them and teach them, lead them and heal them, be their rabbi and their friend.
And because we bear that Rabbi’s name, we also share his calling. How that plays out though, it will be different for each community and each follower.
Here is just one story that I was given permission to share with you.
The background is this: for the next couple of years I will be serving as the co-moderator of our presbytery’s Examination Committee. I’d really like to find a different name for what we do, but we are charged with having searching conversations with pastors who have received a call to ministry within the bounds of this presbytery.
Earlier this month we met with a young pastor who is coming to serve at a Christian camp. He told us he had first sensed a call to ministry while working in remote wilderness settings. He sensed God’s nearness in the beauty and regenerative capacity of the creation, and he often found himself deep in conversation with persons who had been hurt by the church. He found himself thinking, “I could be a pastor to these people.” Ultimately, he found his way to seminary.
Our committee’s conversation meandered along a variety of paths until one of us asked him how he understood God’s power.
He responded “Well, first of all, not very well,” (for which I gave him points).
He then went on to elaborate. His first call was as an associate to a church that was seeking to do ministry in fresh ways. He was quickly ordained, just in time for the senior pastor to go out on family leave.
Shortly after she left, he received word that a family from the church vacationing in Florida—had been struck by a lightning bolt. The father was dead, the mother initially was left blind. There were two little girls.
The pastor said he had no idea what to do—no idea what to say. He hadn’t even met the family. He just got online, bought the first plane ticket he could find, and went to Florida, ready to stay for as long as he was needed.
He told us he wanted to be very careful about ascribing God’s power to those events. He didn’t believe God caused that lighting strike.
We talked for a bit and then I ventured that, from where I sat, it seemed to me that God’s power was most evident in his impulse to buy the ticket and go directly to where the suffering was.
Because in the end it’s much less about what we will say or what we do and so much more about whether we will show up.
Yes, we will “love and miss” each other over and over again, but God know how we are made and God can bring life from that.
The world is full of people who feel alone even when they are surrounded by others. On this cool October morning, from the comfort and safety of this room, whose need weighs on your heart?
Kids who don’t feel seen by the adults in their lives?
Inmates who have no visitors?
Neighbors who don’t know where they’ll sleep tonight?
Captured Israeli children serving as human shields?
Gazans fleeing with nowhere to go?
Afghanis who are afraid the earth will shift again beneath their feet?
The myriad persons whose tragedy did not make this morning’s headlines?
Who needs us to stand in the breach of a ruptured relationship?
Who needs us just to come?
May we have ears to hear and hearts to respond, as the Spirit leads us.
[1] Susie Boyt, Loved and Missed, 2023, New York Review Books