Moses said to the people: “Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live? Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, with strong hand and outstretched arm and by great terrors, all of which the Lord, your God, did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?” (Deut 4.32-34)
Writing in a newspaper some years ago, a woman explained how she often heard her mother’s voice, although her mother had been gone for years. Certain events triggered the sound of her mother’s voice, the woman related, often accompanied by some of the things her mom had said to her.
With the many years now separating her from her mother’s voice, she claims it stays with her, bringing a smile to her face, sometimes challenging her, and other times reminding her to be her best self. The woman, grateful for that loving voice that revisits her regularly, says she finds herself sounding a lot like her mother now.
While she cannot physically see her mother anymore, her body no longer before her, she can hear her voice, and in hearing her voice, she can feel her mom’s presence again, finding assurance in the voice that penetrates through the veil, a voice that strengthens, consoles, and guides her, a voice that is still with her, even if her mother’s face is not visible in the cloud.
Today, the scriptures offer us a text from one of the historical books in the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Deuteronomy. The book, for the most part, is a collection of sermons that Moses, the heroic leader of the Hebrew slaves, gave to the band of slaves as they prepared to enter the Promised Land. The trials of the desert are in the past, but Moses does not want them to think that the worst is behind them.
He cautions them about backsliding, turning their back on the God who had freed them, and following false gods as useless and as powerless as the golden calf they foolishly worshipped in the desert, in this way making these slaves again. In this early part of the book that we hear today, Moses presents the incomparable good deeds that the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had done for this people peculiarly his own.
“Did anything so great ever happen before?” he asked them. “Was it ever heard of? He continued to ask specific questions about the manifestations of the greatness of this God. At the end, the answers are obvious, or they should be, to the Hebrews hearing Moses. Pausing as the truth became clear, Moses offered this conclusion, “This is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.”
Truly, it is a beautiful passage as a whole and a wonderful image of the God of the Hebrews in particular, a God who has done great and mighty things for them, a God unlike any other. One image that stays with us today, as we celebrate the Christian Feast of the Holy Trinity, is this question Moses asked, “Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you did, and live?”
While it is impossible for us to comprehend the incomprehensible God, one God in three persons, as the Christian understanding of God proclaims, an everlasting mystery that defies easy explanation, the image of the voice of God that Moses speaks of to the newly freed people is one that allows us a metaphor for the indivisible God who presents himself in human history as Father, Son, and Spirit.
The Biblical canon is replete with reference to the voice of God. So already in Genesis, Adam and Eve hear the voice of God when he asks them why they have eaten of the forbidden fruit. Moses hears a voice come from the burning bush, a voice that tells him to go to Pharaoh, commanding the Egyptian to free the Hebrews because they do not belong to him, but to the One who speaks from the bush. “Let my people go,” the voice said.
During the period of the prophets, the voice again spoke to these individuals, called by the Most High God to hear what he had to say and to speak his word in turn to the tone-deaf Judeans. Jeremiah explained his calling in this way, “The word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb, I set you apart and appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Similarly, Ezekial said, “And it came to pass at the end of seven days that the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Son of Man, I have made you a watchman for the House of Israel.” His contemporary, Isaiah offered a similar experience, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will speak for for me?”
Later, in the Christian texts, John the Baptist is introduced as “a voice crying out in the wilderness,” evoking words from the prophet Isaiah to place the Baptist in line with the prophets of old, men who heard the voice of the Divine One and spoke his word to a people too often unruly and unbending in their ways. “Make straight the way of the Lord,” John urged the people gathered at the Jordan.
While the invisible God chose not to show himself because, as Moses said, no one can look upon the face of God and live, he spoke often, his voice telling the people of Judea who he was, informing them of his long relationship with them, already speaking to their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in ancient times. If they did not know his face, they should know his voice.
Perhaps it is for the same reason that the Book of Genesis begins, not with the face of God, but with the voice of God. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’” As the days of creation proceed, it is always the voice of the Most High God that is heard speaking into the abyss, ordering creation to unfold. Again, we do not see him, but we hear him.
It is with good cause and with similar intent that the writer John in the gospel, introducing his story of the Son of the Most High God, speaks of the Son at the start as the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” As he presents the story of the Word made flesh, he has John the Baptist remind his listeners, “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.”
The Son, then, reveals the Most High God in this gospel through words and works, as creation had revealed or unmasked, so to speak, the same God by his words and with his works. As then, so now, his voice enters the darkness of the world, brings to life what was dead, and makes new what was old.
As the writer of Genesis had the voice of God speak words of life into the seven days of creation, so John the writer has the Word made flesh speak words of life into the seven signs or wonders, beginning with the changing of the water into wine at Cana, when he tells the servants to fill the jars, continuing to the healing of the official’s son, saying to the man, “Your son will live.”
As the seven signs unfold like the seven days of creation, the world is recreated, made new, as the Word made flesh heals the blind man, saying to him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam,” and as the Word restores life to Lazarus the dead man, speaking into the tomb as the word had been spoken into the abyss, “Lazarus, come forth.” And the dead man stood up and left the tomb, breathing again.
It comes as no surprise, then, that when the Spirit is sent upon the apostles after the Word made flesh has returned to the side of his Father, its presence is made known by “a noise like a strong driving wind coming from the sky,” recalling “a mighty wind sweeping over the waters” at the dawn of creation, signaling the same divine breath being uttered into the world as it had been done when there was nothing. The presence of the Spirit is again made known by something being heard, not by something being seen.
And it follows, then, that the first act of the apostles after receiving the gift of the Spirit is to step into the streets of Jerusalem and “to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” The Divine Presence once again is heard, not seen, for no one can look upon the face of God and live, as Moses had told the people in past ages.
And it is the same for us, as it was for those apostles. While we cannot see the Spirit standing before us, we can hear the voice of the Spirit speaking to us, sometimes like a rushing wind, other times like a soft whisper, but always calling forth light where there is darkness, summoning life where there is death, making new wine where there is nothing but empty jugs.
It is the voice that continues to speak across the abyss, never ceasing to create, never silent for a moment, for if it were silent, the world would descend into darkness, and the ordained order would return to the primordial chaos. So long as the voice speaks, the world exists. So long as we listen to the voice, the world thrives.
At the end of the book, Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom tells of one of his last conversations with his college professor, a man he has admired all his life, but who is dying of ALS. Morrie, the beloved teacher, says to Mitch, the lifelong student, “Mitch, all this talk that we’re doing? Do you ever hear my voice sometimes when you’re back home? When you’re all alone? Maybe on the plane? Maybe in your car?” Mitch admitted that he did. “Then, said Morrie, “you will not forget me after I’m gone. Think of my voice and I’ll be there.”
On this day when we honor the Holy Trinity, it is the voice of God that we want to recall, a voice that created, that redeemed, and that recreates the world. And while we cannot see the triune God face to face, not this side of the chasm, we can hear his voice. And it is enough because the divine voice always speaks words of life, words of love, and words of light.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 