Exodus 33:12-23

For our ancestors in many of the branches that came to form the UCC the issue of election was a big one. For John Calvin, certainly, it was huge. But also for theologians since him, and not just theologians but church-goers too, it was an immensely important idea. This concept that God had a chosen people, a specially selected population that was to form the family of God, was an incredibly relevant principle for the faiths of Reformed tradition Christians for the centuries that followed Calvin.   Many even had to confess in believing it if they wanted to become members of the church. Of course, the goal was to discover that you were a part of that special group of people. You were among the elect.

While election and pre-destination aren’t necessarily the same concept, the two share a close relationship. Certainly, since God was all-knowing God knew from the beginning who God elected and who God didn’t. This, of course, meant that from the beginning some were saved and some were damned. While this dynamic strikes many of us as being unfair, and not much like the God of our faith, Calvin took great comfort in it. For him the alternative was having a lesser God, a weak God, a God who was limited, a God who couldn’t possibly be in charge of everything that is, ever was, or will be. Calvin’s God was sovereign and that was the only God worth finding any comfort in (even if it meant that some were elect and some weren’t.)

In the past I always looked at this from the outside. Methodists came along later and weren’t nearly as concerned with this cluster of issues. It seemed like a Reformed hang-up, which in all likelihood actual Reformed Christians probably didn’t care much about. Maybe it was just an academic Reformed hang-up, kind of like Yale Divinity School’s hang-up with Jonathan Edwards, whom I had somewhere along the way heard mentioned in relation to revivalism and fire and brimstone preaching. “Sinners in the hands of an angry God!” – that much, I knew, was the title of his most famous sermon, a title that further disinterested me in learning much more about him.   Who were these people holing themselves up in the Jonathan Edwards room all the time and why would they do such a thing?, I wondered in my years at YDS.

So, it’s nice now to be back at YDS taking this UCC course with future UCC leaders and learning things that I probably should have learned a long time ago. Edwards, it turns out, was a Congregational minister, a brilliant preacher, and a profound voice for a passionate uniting of “head faith” and “heart faith.” Here are some of his words, “I love to think of coming to Christ and quite empty of self, humbly exalting him alone; cut off entirely from my own root, in order to grow into, and out of Christ; to have God in Christ to be all in all. I want to lie in the dust and be full of Christ alone.” The author who quotes him interprets, “In the moment that he accepted God’s sovereignty, he simply ceased ‘seeking himself’ and sought God.”[1]

This moment of accepting a God who held all things, even if this implied some challenging theological implications, was a remarkably liberating moment for Edwards. In hopes of finding himself among the elect he learned that the only way to do it was to release his desire along with everything else to the God in whom he could alone trust. The way to know and experience election, or perhaps salvation, was to stop striving for it and to instead strive for God.

I blame all of this reflecting on Moses. In today’s scripture God is instructing Moses to take the people to the land of Canaan. But, Moses isn’t so sure. “What’s the point if we aren’t YOUR special people? And how are we to know that we really and truly are?” Moses is concerned about election, you see. And, God replies, “You’ll know because I’ll go with you.” That’s how your election will be made clear. It will be made clear by my presence with you.

Of course, the Christian confession is that Christ is “God with us,” Emmanual, God in the flesh as close to us as could possibly be. While this makes it difficult for me to accept election as Calvin might have conceived of it, it makes another Reformed theologian’s view all the more relevant. Karl Barth, I think I may have mentioned previously, said it something like this: “Jesus Christ is God’s eternal ‘YES’ to a world that says ‘NO’ to God. Jesus Christ is God’s election of a sinful people, our salvation and our hope.” We’ve been given “God with us,” the same assurance given to Moses.

It’s a beautiful thing to see what happens when a person consents to their own election. In a way I think that’s what Jonathan Edwards did, and the relief and freedom I hear in his voice reminds me of friend of mine and neighbor who has learned something of the same kind of surrender.   She lost her husband – her soul mate – three years ago. Since then she’s grieved and suffered her own solitude, she’s picked up the pieces and discerned a new career for herself in the twilight of her working years, she’s earned a new education, while sending her children off on their own. She’s failed to sell her home and she’s longed to be with her newborn granddaughter off in another state. She wants but she’s forced to wait, and when I talk to her about the great mix of intensities that’s become her life she tells me how she keeps giving it over, trusting in God, trusting in God’s way, believing in the reason behind it all when she cannot see it.

It’s an effort for her, I know. She’s both succeeding and failing, but even her failings she’s giving over to God. And, what I see in her is a wonderful kind of peace. The peace of accepting God’s sovereignty, a peace that’s opened her to seeing signs of her husband’s love and knowing them as gifts from God, a peace that sustains her as she longs for her granddaughter by at the same time cultivating the love behind that longing. She keeps saying, “I keep trusting that God is working in all of this,” and I can see her trust, and I can see how blessed she is by it.

By the way, some renters called her somewhat out of the blue. They want the place for 18 months, which corresponds almost exactly to the time she would be most needed to provide childcare for her granddaughter. So, suddenly, she’s gone. She’s moved out, just like that. After the 18 months, she and her daughter’s family will move back home. That’s the plan for now, but I’m pretty sure she’s open to another plan, should God have one in store.

Let’s end it with this: What do I want you to know? I want you to know that you are among God’s very special elect and cherished people. What do I want you to do? I want you; I want us together, to make a practice of surrendering to our own election, to finding a peace and a plan that is better than our own. Amen.

[1] Young, The Congregationalists, Kindle Edition, Location 1588