If you have interacted with anyone today it would have been in the form of conversation. It might have been as simple as “Good morning! How are you?” with the other responding with some sort of answer. Many of our conversations each day are short and to the point. Some of our conversations are with people we may never meet again, others are with people we see week to week at church or some other regular gathering of mostly the same people. We catch up with each other, talk about the weather, and get work done.

Conversations allow us to be in relationship with one another. Most people are sure to talk to those who are unable to speak because we understand that there can be something soothing about being known to another and the means that we most regularly connect with others is through conversation, even if it seems one-sided. As I write my sermons, I like to think of them as conversations, again, just because of the form, they feel like one-sided conversations, but I hope that it feels like you are in a dialogue rather than a lecture hall.

There is overwhelming amount of research on conversations primarily because it is the most pervasive way us humans interact with one another. It is complex, layered with meaning, and a key way to understand and study human behaviour. It is the basis for relationships of all kinds. People talk to their plants, their pets, and even inanimate objects, but the most important conversations are those with other human beings. We function together in our world through our conversations and when talks break down around a negotiation table or a dinner table, there are feelings of hurt and harm. When conversations are deep and filled with trust, relationships blossom, families flourish, and love grows.

It can take courage to have deep, difficult, and challenging conversations, even when you care deeply for another, and sometimes because you care deeply for another. It can take courage to make ourselves vulnerable as we share of or about ourselves, or are choosing to advocate for others.

I could go on about conversations, the kinds of conversations we have, the reasons for conversations, the layers of meaning that one might glean in a conversation, what can be at stake, and whose lives might be either lifted up or damaged by conversation. And the means by which we have intimate and group conversations has drastically changes over the last number of years. Just open a social networking app and you can nearly instantly see how harm and hate are free for all conversations, but so too are conversations of connection and building of community.

As I reflected on the scripture reading from Exodus 33:12-23 I came to realize more so than before the conversation that was going on between Moses and God. Many times the focus on this passage has been around the last portion of this reading where God promises to show Godself to Moses, but gives the warning that Moses cannot see God’s face for if he was to see God’s face Moses would die. So instead, God hides Moses in the cleft of a rock and covers Moses with God’s hand until God passes by, at which time God will take away his had and Moses can then see the back of God. The intention is that Moses will see God’s glory but will be safe in doing so.
What I noticed this time was all the times the scripture has the phrase, “Moses said to the Lord” or Moses repeats what the Lord has said, signalled with phrases like, “You have said…” There is a back and forth.
Now if you consider that in this passage God has said how dangerous it is to see God’s face you realized that there are layers of trust, care, and respect woven into this back and forth conversation between Moses and God. Listen again to even those first few verses hear the conversation,

12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you [God] have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.” 14 [God] said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And [Moses] said to [God], “If your presence will not go, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”[1]

The conversation continues. Just this little exercise has shown us that the two were in conversation, but more deeply we see that, for Moses’ part anyway, there is vulnerability, trust, questions, concern for himself and others, and insight. Moses questioned who God planned to send with him as he brought people toward the promised land. He asks for God to show him God’s ways so that he may know God more fully and find favour in God’s sight. There is vulnerability as he wonders aloud how others will know that God is with the people unless there is a way to know that God’s presence has gone with them on this journey and it is evident that they are distinctly the people of God.

Moses asked for God’s consideration of the people. He is not in it for himself. This conversation comes just after God has told Moses to take the people to the land of milk and honey or as they called it The Promised Land, and God has said that he will not go with them because they are a stiff-necked people. Meaning they have not loved, glorified, or honoured God with their hearts, minds, and bodies. But it is from this declaration of God that Moses goes before God in what was called the tent of meeting, and pleaded with God, to change God’s mind about the people. Moses knew they were imperfect, but he trusted God and it seems God had a soft spot for Moses because when it was all said and done, God changed his mind about the situation and was now going to go with the people after all.

But this conversation didn’t happen out of the blue. The relationship between Moses and God deepened over time and with experience. And it is not that God did not know Moses, he did. It was Moses that God called on to lead the people out of slavery to freedom. However, Moses spent time with God, in conversation, and it does not seem to be only prayer, it is like God is with Moses as an actual entity that is reachable and relational. God does not change, but God can change God’s own mind about a situation.

Now let me assure you that there is no formula here about how to be in relationship with God or to get God to change God’s mind, but the point is that God is not as unmoving as some might insist. God’s greatest desire, as shown in the relationships with people in scripture, is to love and be loved. The overarching story of the Bible is God’s love for humanity and all creation. Yes, there is frustration, anger, turning away, but that is only and always because of the way people rejected God first. Yet God never gave up on the people. Sometimes it took a Moses to do some mediation, but in the end, God provided his own mediator in Christ Jesus.

And that brings us to our hope and ability to be in relationship with God in ways that we to can talk to God just as Moses did. We might not hear God speaking to us directly, though that in some ways can and does happen through the work of the Holy Spirit in us and others. I say this because of the promise of Jesus in the Gospel of John 14:15-31. This is where Jesus promises the Holy Spirit, saying we will not be left as orphans, rather Jesus will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who God will send in Jesus’ name and teach us everything, and remind us of everything that Jesus said.

Why this is important is that just as Moses was the advocate for the chosen people of God that we read about in the Old Testament, Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit is still interceding for us with God. And through the Holy Spirit we can speak with God, trusting that God hears us.

Now it all seems pretty theoretical until one starts practicing being in relationship with God, that is when theory becomes lived experience. Over time we hear God speaking more clearly, not necessarily audibly, but through the words of others, through answers to prayers, through nature, and our own mind, body, and spirit. It takes deepening of relationship, the building of layers of trust, care, and respect woven into our lived experience of God.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul writes: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you”[2] I used to wonder what it meant to pray without ceasing, and I have come to understand that for me it means to talk with God throughout the day. Trusting that God walks with me in whatever circumstance I find myself. It can also be, and should include, times when I pause to spend time in prayer with God without distractions. We know that all good and healthy relationship are given time and attention. It is no different with God.

It also means having the courage to trust God with your life and your vulnerabilities, your fears, your hopes, your whole self and to use your relationship with God to respond to the needs of others, restoring them also to relationship with God, while we rejoice together that God goes with us and loves us. Thanks be to God for the gift of conversation that binds us to God and one another. Amen.

[1] New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the
United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. www.nrsvbibles.org
[2]Ibid.