Daily Archives: October 27, 2026

Buried by God: A sermon for Proper 25A, 2026

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Proper 26A
October 25. 2026

Maybe it’s because I spent this week at the Society of St. John the Evangelist, in silence, praying and chanting the daily office with the monks. Maybe it’s because of the books I was reading as well—about mysticism, prayer, doubt, and despair. Maybe it’s because of where I am in my life, or because it’s fall and the beautiful weather, the riotous color of the trees, the luminous sunlight  and with it all the encroaching darkness of winter.

Whatever the case, when I turned today’s readings a few days ago and read again the familiar story of Moses’ death and burial, and the author’s description of him as one “whom the Lord knew face to face,” that brief comment prompted reflection on Moses’ biography and the contours of his relationship with God.

Over the past weeks, we’ve heard readings from Exodus that begin with his birth and rescue by Pharaoh’s daughter; his murder of an Egyptian slave master and flight into the wilderness. We have learned of his call by God to lead the Hebrews out of bondage and to the Promised Land, the dramatic deliverance of the Hebrews at the Red Sea. We were told of his struggles with the Israelites in the wilderness, and the giving of the Ten Commandments.

Through it all, and not always foregrounded, has been Moses’ complex and changing relationship with God. There was his dramatic, paradigmatic encounter with God at Mt. Horeb: the burning bush; Moses’ call, and God’s self-revelation: I will be who I will be.

There was the later encounter with God when the whole of the Israelite people came to the foot of Mt. Sinai, also known as Mt. Horeb. When God spoke out of the earthquake, wind, and fire, the people recoiled in fear and asked that God speak only to Moses as their mediator. He went up the mountain and was enclosed by a cloud from which God spoke to him and dictated the 10 Commandments and other laws. When he came down the mountain, we’re told his face shone, and he veiled it so that the people were not frightened by it.

But what prompted all of this reflection on my part was something that hit me while I was reading this verse from today’s Deuteronomy reading: “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom  Lord knew face to face.”

Remember last week’s reading from Exodus? Moses asked to see God’s glory, and; God responded: “no one can see my face and live.” Instead, God showed Moses God’s backside. That’s quite a contradiction, isn’t it, and I’m curious if it has puzzled commentator over the centuries as much as the reference to God’s “backside” has. But I think, and this may be only because of what I’ve been doing, and reading, over the past few days, that it’s one of those contradictions in scripture that points us to something much deeper, something that deserves our closer attention.

You may well wonder why I’m going on about all this, especially because of the language that’s being used and the imagery it invokes. We’re meant to imagine a God very like us, with a face and a backside at least. It conjures up pictures of the old white man with a beard in the sky, and we’re all quite beyond that. Our theologies are much more sophisticated. We know better.

But beneath the homey, earthy imagery lies deeper truth. It points to the intimacy and depth of the relationship between Moses and God. Perhaps there’s no better example of the power of that imagery than in another detail that fascinates me in the Deuteronomy passage. We’re told that when Moses died, God buried him.

Here, we have an allusion to one of the most intimate, heart-breaking, universal actions that humans experience. Indeed, burial may be one of those things that sets us apart as humans from other animals, that we take care of our dead. It is attested in the archaeology of the earliest human cultures. At the same time, it is an experience from which we moderns are insulated—by the funeral industry and the depth of our own emotions. I’ve had the experience many times of being in a room where someone has recently passed, and their loved ones, or even professional caregivers have been reluctant, or even refused to touch the body of the deceased. And at cemeteries where the space in which the coffin, or the urn will be placed is carefully concealed by a carpet of fake grass. It’s even the case, that the funeral director will hand me a vial of (presumably antiseptic) sand to cast on the coffin when I say “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” rather than offend sensibilities with clumps of earth in the pile concealed under the blanket of fake grass.

To image God, the Creator of the universe, deigning to pick up a shovel, dig a hole and bury the body of his beloved servant and prophet Moses, is at it once cringe-worthy and deeply moving. What does that intimate gesture tell us about their relationship?

If you find that image troubling or offensive, that’s ok. You’re not the first to do so; we’re not the first Christians to struggle with that image. It’s been a problem since the beginning of our faith. Theologians and ordinary Christians have found ways to reinterpret and reimagine such imagery to make it meaningful for their lives and s faith. WiWhat sort of imagery from your personal experience might you draw on that could help you enter into as intimate a relationship with God as that of God burying his beloved servant Moses?

But such language can offer us comfort and strengthen our faith. To imagine a God so intimately involved in the lives of those God loves, a God whose concern and care extends to the clothes on our back or the disposition of our final remains, a God who knows us face to face, can be a source of strength when we struggle or stumble.

And it also, I think, helps us reflect in a new way on the story from the gospel, in which a lawyer asks Jesus to prioritize the commandments. Jesus’ response is hardly revolutionary.  His words are quotations from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, straight out of Moses’ law,Moreover a contemporary of his, Rabbi Hillel, is remembered to have said in response to a similar question, “What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary; go and learn it.”

We have compartmentalized so much of ourselves, so much of our lives. We place our faith in God in one small sphere of our lives, for Sunday mornings, for example, or for those quiet moments of prayer  and meditation. We think of love as an emotion, we talk of falling in or out of love, or we say, we love this or that food, or activity. We are commanded, in Deuteronomy, here in Jesus’ words, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and mind—we might say “with all of our selves, with our whole being.” I’m not sure I can even fathom what that might look like for me, what that would be like to love God with all of myself. And then, on top of that, we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourself. Is that even possible?

Here’s where I think the earthy, intimate image of God burying Moses might be of help. For in that very human, incredibly intimate action—I bet most of us are turned off by it, by the idea of the transcendent, immortal, invisible, omniscient, omnipotent, being though of performing that very intimate even offensive act, who of us could imagine, in this day and age, actually burying a loved one with our own hands—in that incredibly intimate action, we see a parable of God’s love for us. Imagine God lowering Godself to care for us so intimately. Imagine that love. If God can love us so powerfully and intimately, how can we not love God with the same intensity, with our whole selves, hearts, minds, and souls. And if God can love us, how can we not love our selves? And how can we not love our neighbors, and the stranger with our whole being, loved, as it is, by God?

Gotcha Questions and the Image of God: A Sermon for Proper 24A, 2026

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October 18, 2026

Picture the scene. It’s the week before Passover in Jerusalem. Tensions are running high, as they always do in this season. It’s Roman practice to bring additional troops down to Jerusalem to help with crowd control and to be close at hand in case the usual disturbances break into open revolt.

On Sunday, a small group of ragtag peasants and fisherfolk from Galilee, led by their rabbi, had entered the city. They staged some sort of public display. It’s not clear how many of them there were, but there was a donkey and palm fronds. It was clearly drawing on imagery from Jewish scripture and history—this was imagery associated with the Davidic monarchy, and it’s likely that the leader was making some sort of messianic claims, interpreted by his followers and hangers-on as a call to rebellion against Rome.

The first thing they did after entering Jerusalem was to go to the temple. Most tourists did that, for Jews, the temple was likely the reason they had come to Jerusalem. It was spectacular—rebuilt by Herod the Great, still under construction. It gleamed with marble and gold in the distance. But this group didn’t go to the temple to worship or offer sacrifice. Their leader entered the temple courtyard, headed straight for the tables of the moneychangers, and again, caused some sort of disturbance, overturning the tables, crying out against their presence in this sacred space.

They left the city, it was evening, and went to the nearby town of Bethany, where they spent the night (either with friends, or because the accommodations were cheaper there than in the city during a high tourist season).

The next day, they came back in and headed straight for the temple again. And over the course of that day, their leader, Jesus taught and engaged in conversation and debate with various religious figures and groups. Over the course of this day, things get more pointed, as Jesus directs his attention at the religious elite, criticizing them for their actions and telling parables that are clearly directed at them. At one point, Matthew reports that the chief priests and Pharisees wanted to take action against him, arrest him, but they held back because of the crowds that were listening to him. It may also have been that they weren’t sure what charges they could bring against, whether those charges would stick, and whether they could convince the Romans that Jesus was enough of a threat to go after him.

So, some Pharisees and Herodians got together. That in itself is quite interesting. They were two groups that had little in common and were political opponents. The Herodians, as the name suggests, were supporters of Herod’s family, who had come to power through their connections with Rome. While they had done things to ingratiate themselves with the Jewish populace, like rebuiliding and expanding the temple, they were despised because of their support for Rome. The Pharisees were generally opposed to the Roman occupation, though they were unlikely to support armed revolt.

So when these two groups come together to ask Jesus this question, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor,” they think they’ve got Jesus trapped. The Herodians would say yes, the Pharisees likely would say no (but pay anyway). And if Jesus agrees with either of them, he’s in trouble. If he says “yes” he would likely lose whatever popular support he had. If he says “no,” they can have him arrested for sedition.

A classic “Gotcha” question. We see them all the time; especially now, in the midst of the campaign for midterm elections, with so much at stake. Journalists, influencers, and the like, try to get candidates to say embarrassing things, confront them with past statements, seek to create soundbites that will go viral.

But, as is usually the case in these dialogues between Jesus and his opponents or questioners, Jesus turns the question back on them. First he asked them for a coin. Then he asked them a question, Whose image and title is on the coin? Caesar’s was their reply.

Already, there’s a great deal of interesting stuff in this story. Jesus asks for a coin, and out comes from someone’s pockets, a denarius. In the Roman Empire, coins were minted with the image of the emperor. Because of the commandment against images, however, most Jews considered Roman coinage, with the emperor’s image and an inscription alluding to his divinity idolatrous. In fact, special coinage without an image of the empire was minted and used in the Jewish temple precincts, where this conversation took place. It would have been embarrassing, to say the least, for one of Jesus’ interrogators to come out with such a coin.

Jesus asks them a question when the coin is offered: “Whose likeness does it bear?” The Greek word Matthew uses here is “ikon” It’s the same word used in the Greek translation of Genesis 1:26, when God says, ““Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” And I suspect that Matthew had that connection in mind. He wanted his readers to reflect on the significance of what it means to bear the “image and likeness” of God.

Jesus may have avoided the trap that the Pharisees and Herodians laid for him. But he has left us with important questions. What does it mean to be created in the image and likeness of God? It’s not just that as we humans we all share that same nature, being created in the image and likeness of God—that we need to remember that all of us, whatever our ethnic background or nationality, whatever our sexual orientation, gender identification, whatever our political views, our economic status, we are all created in God’s image and likeness. It’s also that remembering whose image we bear ought to make a difference in the way we live our lives, in our actions, in our goals and aspirations. What difference would it make, if, as we think about decisions we have to make, the choices we’re faced with, we paused for a moment and asked ourselves, Will what I do, what I choose show to myself and others that I bear God’s image and likeness?

Think for a moment, about how you might make sense of Jesus’ next sentence, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, give to God what is God’s,” if you approach it from the perspective of being created in God’s image and likeness.

This little sentence has become one of the proof texts for a certain understanding of the relationship of church and state, the relationship between the competing demands of the government and our Christian faith. Most of us view it somewhat simplistically. As citizens of the US, we are obligated to obey the government, pay taxes, and the like, and our faith is a largely personal, private thing. But if we are created in God’s image and likeness, if we bear that image and likeness, and if we are called to shape our lives, remake our image and likeness according to the model of that image and likeness revealed to us in Jesus Christ, then limiting our faith to a private, individual corner of our full and busy lives, seems like quite an inadequate response to the God who created us.

And so it may be that as we live out our lives, seeking to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, bearers of God’s image and likeness, these two questions—what does it mean for our daily lives that we bear God’s image and likeness, and that second question, how do we embody, live out, that command, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, Give to God what is God’s,” are the most important questions we face.