“God called unto him out of the bush and said,

‘Moses, Moses.’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’”

(Exodus 3:4)

 

The archaeologist is an interesting fellow. With a pick and a shovel he digs in the ruins and trash heaps of ancient cities. He turns up broken pieces of pottery, bits of fabric, moldy scraps of manuscripts, worn utensils, and artisan’s tools. From these cast-off relics of people dead and gone long ago, he reconstructs the story of ancient civilizations. But he does not try to keep house or open for business with these cast-off relics of primitive peoples.

I’ve met some Memphians who have become enthusiastic amateur archaeologists. Their diggings in the vicinity of former Indian villages have turned up valuable relics furnishing reliable information to reveal a few interesting suggestions about the manner of life in primitive tribes from remote centuries.

The work of the archaeologist has contributed greatly to our knowledge of the civilizations that once flourished in Babylon, Ninevah, Greece and Egypt. The ancient Egyptians, because of their preoccupation with the life after death, have turned out to be the archaeologist’s best friend. They filled their tombs with food and clothing and currency for their journey and even deposited household furniture and artisan’s tools for use in the life beyond.

Archaeological explorations in the Negev — the southern part of the Holy Land — have proved a remarkable source for authenticating the reliability of scriptural accounts of places, people, wars, and natural disasters. A multitude of archaeological materials has been dug up substantiating in a remarkable way the written record of the Bible.

The historian is also an interesting fellow. He searches the written record of the past. He sifts from the great mass of materials the significant facts, figures, and experiences of nations and institutions and personalities, and so constructs a clear picture of life in days gone by. In this centennial year of our denomination we have been turning avidly to the historian to see what he has to show us about the record of service achieved by the church we love.

Yes, the archaeologist and the historian are remarkable and interesting fellows, but in the realm of religion they are men to beware.

Although the archaeologist’s and historian’s work is exciting and remarkably valuable, it is too sad that so many people have adopted the archaeologist’s and historian’s method as their sole approach to religion. Their Bible study is beamed at sifting all the facts of the written record, learning carefully all that can be possibly discovered about Palestinian geography, the dates in the historical record, the names of the Kings of Israel and Judah, the major and minor prophets, the social and religious customs of the ancient Israelites, the philosophies and religious experiences of the great characters who figured in the history of those long gone days, as well as the past 100 years. They master these data to perfection and stop sharply there.

Now, of course, this is all intensely interesting and of fundamental value in the religious life of any man or woman. But it is not all there is to religion. In fact, such archaeological diggings and historical studies are only prelude to that most important aspect of religion which, in our day, is increasingly referred to as “Encounter,” where in a moment of time, in an intensely intimate and personal experience, the soul of man encounters, meets, confronts the Living God.

Jacob spent a restless night troubled over a personal and family problem. It was a night when he could not sleep for the immensity of sensations of guilt, through all his scheming years, which then fell heavily upon him in one heap. But in that uncomfortable, sleepless night God came to Jacob and Jacob was never the same again.

Moses watched the sheep of his father-in-law under the burning heat of the desert sun, and suddenly God was there, too, as close as the scrubby underbrush, and the voice of God was as loud and insistent as a thousand electronic loud-speakers in his ears, and Moses suddenly understood that God was already at work down in Egypt preparing for the deliverance of Moses’ oppressed brethren about whom Moses had been so worried. And Moses heard the command to go serve his God in that emergency.

Isaiah encountered God in the Temple and was impressed with God’s holiness, his own personal unworthiness, and the mission God had for him. As a burning fire, Pascal, at prayers, was encountered by God. The lukewarm John Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed at Aldersgate. The persecuting Apostle on a mission of vengeance, hot with anger, was struck down in the dust as God confronted Paul.

Yes, religion is not solely archaeological research and historical studies to reconstruct out of the dim past a picture and knowledge of a great God whom men once encountered and served, and then solemnly affirm that one believes all that has been dug up and reconstructed to have been a true fact and actual occurrence. To trace dim outlines of a life men once experienced with God in the long ago is nothing short of a musty museum piece compared with encountering a living person.

I had a dear friend whose father served in the Confederate Army under Jeb Stuart. She told me how she had been born during the war while her father was away, and she never saw him until the war was over and she was three or four years old.

But her mother told her about her father and gave her a picture of him and said: “This is your father.” So her best loved possession during those months and years of his absence was that photograph. She carried it with her always and would proudly show it to whoever came to their house, saying: “This is my father.”

Finally, when the war was over and her father returned, for the first time she was really confronted by her father the little girl was afraid and confused by the sight of this strange man. She ran from him crying: “No, you are not my father! Here is my father,” holding up the bedraggled photograph. But, after the initial shock wore off, she learned the difference and the relationship between the picture and the person.

So is it with many a man or woman brought up in our traditional Sunday school and church stereotype. It may be terrifying to experience the real encounter with the living God and discover the difference and the relationship between the bits we have pieced together here and there and the living God who has encountered us.

The arid weakness and sterility of an archaeological approach to religion is illustrated in Franz Kafka’s story, The Great Wall of China. One of the loyal subjects of the Chinese emperor speaks. He is a man who lives far to the south, hundreds of miles from the emperor’s palace at the capital, Peking. Neither he nor any of his fellows in the village has ever seen the emperor. In fact, travel is so difficult and slow, the messengers and mandates from the emperor so long delayed, he fears that the emperor they have heard about and read about and think still rules upon the imperial throne may have died long ago and another emperor may now be upon the throne. “In fact,” he says, “there is perhaps no people more faithful to the emperor than ours in the south, but the emperor derives no advantage from our fidelity . . . for our life is subject to no contemporary law and we attend only to the exhortations and warnings which come to us from olden times.”

This is the sorry fate of the man who has only an archaeologist approach to religion.

But what is the relationship of one’s archaeological diggings in the remote religious past and an exciting encounter with the living God? And how does one arrange for such an important confrontation? Is it enough for a man simply to say: “God, I’ll meet you next Sunday at eleven o’clock in church; or, “I’ll be glad to give you an appointment at my office on next Tuesday at ten?” No, that is not the way it is done.

Man cannot set up the encounter to suit his convenience and propose to give the Eternal a little remnant of his time as an important business executive might condescend to see at long last the salesman he has kept waiting for hours in his outer office. We cannot fit the Eternal into our pre-conceived schedule and expect a genuinely satisfying transaction, just when and how we set it up.

God may keep us waiting and unmet, though we wait patiently for Him hours and days and years and decades. Then He may burst upon us all unawares and sweep away all the treasures we have been assiduously accumulating and treat them as the trash they are and give us instead only Himself and make us unspeakably glad with the gloriously profitable transaction.

In his papers, Giacomo Nerone recorded the delicious, mysterious nature of his encounter with God: “How did I come to Him? He alone knows. I groped for Him and could not find Him. I prayed to Him unknown and He did not answer. I wept at night for the loss of Him. Lost tears and fruitless grief. Then, one day, He was there . . . It should be an occasion, I know. One should be able to say: ‘This was the time, the place, the manner of it. This was my conversion to religion. A good man spoke to me, and I became good. I saw creation in the face of a child, and I believed.’ (But) It was not like that at all (for me). He was there. I knew He was there, and that He made me and that He still loved me. There were no words to record, no stones scored with a fiery finger, no thunders on Tabor. I had a Father and He knew me and the world was a House He had built for me. After that, what else could I do, but say: ‘Here I am, lead me, do what you want with me, always.’”

No, we cannot manipulate the Almighty, but we can cultivate reverent awareness. This was what Moses was about keeping sheep in the Midian Desert. Mohammed said: “He will never be a prophet who was not first a herdsman.” “Look with wonder at that which is before you,” counseled Clement of Alexandria. “There are two impulses in man: one is to accept and to take for granted; the other to look with inquiry and wonder. Out of the latter impulse are born art and science and music and philosophy and a living religion.” (Interpreter’s Bible)

Moses watched reverently the burning bush and put off his shoes in humble acknowledgment of his awareness of God’s presence, because he had been cultivating reverent awareness. He was ready, spiritually, when the encounter came.

Also, we can treat as preliminary, all archaeological exercises of religion, and never confuse these bits and remnants of another’s encounter with God for the awesome possibility of our personal confrontation by the living God. We can treat scripture and doctrine as the stage on which the real drama may be enacted; we may treat them as the markings on the road map other men have traveled, always remembering that we must ourselves play our part and speak our lines when we are addressed: “Here am I. Send me.” We can strike out on the exciting pilgrimage when our orders come, clear and strong, even though we are anxious about the weakness of our limbs for so arduous a journey and fearful for our provisions over such a desert waste as we must travel.

But, above all, look about you now and see where God is on the march in your life and in your world. Look where He is now heeding the cries of the oppressed. See where He is now freeing the slaves. Watch as He brands the oppressors today and discredits the tyrants, and go to work there. And you cannot help but soon encounter Him. Where His work is now being done, He, Himself, will not be far away. Soon He will come upon you. You will know. If He is meeting you now in your burning bush and dispatching you to take part in some new deliverance He has planned, respond. Never fear because of your weakness. If it is His venture, you will never lack for supplies of His power and His grace.

 

 

ARCHAEOLOGY OR ENCOUNTER

Gabrid Marcel, in The Mystery of Being, makes distinction between “believing that” and “believing in.” “Believing that” is the result of archaeological and historical and biblical studies. “Believing in” is the result of an encounter with the living God.

PASTORAL PRAYER

Lord of men and angels, King of Kings, and Ruler of all history, as the nations assemble themselves in tumult and imagine vain things, and the trumpets of war are sounding, and the armies are mustering their men and machines, we lift up our hearts to pray to Thee for peace.

Confound the arrogant pretensions of rulers careless of their peoples’ rights and liberties. Strip to impotence the destroying armaments. Incline to reason and mercy the proud hearts of all rulers everywhere, that they may submit to Thy Holy Spirit’s leading in this hour, that peace may be established and righteousness may prevail in all the capitols and congresses, in all the factories and fields and families of Thy world.

Hear us as we pray also for the sick and the troubled who are in the thick of their own mortal combat; their struggle for physical or spiritual life. Give peace, O God, and triumph to them: that courage may rout fear, and life may be victorious over death, and that honor, righteousness, and truth may prevail over all the destroying demons set against them, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who taught us when we pray to say —

CALL TO WORSHIP

“And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.”