God’s Back in the Midst of COVID-19 2020. 10. 18

Exodus33:12–23, 1 Thessalonians1:1–10, Matthew 22:15–22, Psalm 99 Yonsei University Church

These days we are experiencing a new way of life that we have never experienced before COVID-19. The global pandemic of COVID-19 is still ongoing. Currently, Korea is dealing well with the COVID-19 crisis within the first stage of distancing. However, times of uncertainty and anxiety that may spread even further over the coming flu season are testing the limits of our patience. We will cope well with this winter season, and COVID-19 will eventually calm down, Eventually, COVID-19 will calm down, but what is clear is that we will face a post-corona era that will bring a breakthrough in consciousness and way of life for all of humanity. The upcoming post-corona era will bring about a considerable change in the landscape of our lives in the social-cultural, political-economic dimensions, as well as religion-spiritual dimensions. Before and after COVID-19, there will be significant changes in the pattern of Christians' religious life, namely the way they pray, worship, and serve.

Today, I would like to meditate on the way we truly meet the living God in the post-COVID-19 era through the face-to-face and non-face-to-face worship offered in social distancing under the title of “God's Back in Corona 19.”

Living in the era of COVID-19, we are used to distance. The key to social distancing is the distance between me and the other. Other means anything other than me. This includes the other person, close neighbors and friends, and even parents and family. The banner “Prodigal Son is Coming”, which was talked about during this Chuseok, ironically expresses the distance between parents and children caused by COVID-19. The desire to meet their children is desperate, but for the health and safety of their children, it contains the love of the parents, who keep their parents away from their children. In addition, it expresses the love of the parents of the infidels who are desperate to see their parents, but must keep an unavoidable distance for the health of their elderly parents.

By the way, in reality, distance is an essential dimension of human life. With COVID-19, the distancing in our lives has only been clearly revealed. Here, the distance between life is an intersecting repetition of constant distance, absence and presence, meeting and separation. It is the essence and the way of life. As long as we are alive, when we meet the other, we have no choice but to part. Eternal presence, or eternal absence, eternal meeting, or eternal separation means only death.

What baffles us even more now is the fact that the forms of distancing in life are becoming more complex. How should we maintain and practice the distance between quarantine and economics, science and religion, progress and conservatives? You cannot choose only one of these two. If you choose one, the other is excluded. In general, progress chooses the former (defense and science), while conservative chooses the latter (economy and religion). But we can't live life so dichotomously and divisively. Such a one-sided choice may be easy, but it leads to a divisive and destructive life. We have a tricky task in which we must practice a tension balance through mutual encounters and separations. It's not easy, but it's never impossible. In the encounter and separation between quarantine and economics, science and religion, progress and conservatives, where is the wisdom of living a tense balance?

In today's text, we can meet that wisdom through the appearance of the distance between God and humans. First of all, Exodus 33 reveals God's existence and way of action through God's distance from Israel. Moses, the leader of the nation of Israel, receives God's command one day. It is an order to leave Mt. Sinai. The order to leave is an order of separation. In general, meeting leads to joy and peace, and separation leads to sadness and anxiety.

Moses fears and asks at God's command to leave the familiar Mount Sinai where he has stayed for a long time and go up with the people to the new promised land. Moses alone did not have the confidence to lead his people to the strange land of Canaan. Moses' fear! We understand enough. Even if it is the promised land, it would be scary to lead the people alone to an unknown land.

So Moses asks for a good leader to accompany him. The Lord says. “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” God is with us! How strong is the promise of the Lord? But Moses reaffirms the Lord's promise. Why is Moses reaffirming God's promise to “My Presence will go with you”? It wasn't that he didn't believe in God's promises, but it seems that Moses' fear and anxiety were great. Embarking on an unfamiliar and unknown journey is always fearful. Our anxiety in the era of COVID-19, which we have never been to, resembles Moses' fear.

So Moses asks God again. if your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here! God knows Moses' anxiety and speaks. Yes, I will do the very thing you have asked! Nevertheless, Moses continues to plead. If so, “Now show me your glory” The essence of this passage is in God's response to Moses' plea to “show me your glory.” “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.”

Here, theologically, there is a distance between Moses' petition and God's answer. God did not completely reject Moses' petition, nor did God fully accept it. It is neither rejection nor acceptance, but the distance between rejection and acceptance, that is, partial acceptance.

It is the answer of God who only partially heard Moses' request. As you pleaded with, I cannot "show" my glory, but I will "let me pass in front of you" my glory. There is a difference, or distance, between “showing” and “passing by.” This is a unique way of God's walk with man. The walk of God requested by Moses requires a human way of walking. He is asking God to walk closely so that he can see the glory of God himself. In our journey of life, it is the direct presence of the infinite God that finite humans endlessly long for.

But God cannot walk directly with us the way humans have requested. Because God is the creator, and man is a creature. This is because God is the infinite foundation and source of created life, and humans are finite beings who can only live on that foundation. The anxiety and fear of human existence essentially exist within the ontological gap between the creator and the creature, and between God and man.

As Heidegger said, it's human existential anxiety. An object as it is, is not anxious, but when it turns into being, anxiety and fear are involved. When we leave the familiar Mt. Sinai to the unknown promised land, humans move from an object to an existential being. Existential beings are always insecure. Humans are not just objects that repeat only familiar things, but a historical existence that specifically exists in a new relationship with others in society.

So, human beings as creatures are inherently anxious. In the journey of life, an unstable being seeks out God the Creator, the foundation of his life. Further, we beg God to show us the glory of God. It demands the direct walk of God. But God only allows His glory to pass before us. In other words, God walks indirectly at a distance from us.

The distance between God and humans culminates in the following. God does not show his face to us. Because, the moment you see God's face, no one can live. Humans cannot call on the holy name of God. We cannot face the glory of God directly. We just glance at the passing of the glory of God from a distance.

This is God's way of self-revelation in which the infinite God reveals himself to finite humans. It is the way humans experience God indirectly. The Bible declares this: “Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” God's covering his face and showing his back is a way of working God's grace toward humanity. The scripture speaks. Because the moment we see God's face, we cannot survive. At the same time, when we move away from the face of God, that is, the glory of God, humans suffer from existential anxiety and fear. Especially when you feel the absence of God in a moment of crisis in your life, anxiety and meaninglessness such as death come upon you.

The way we survive and live a life of salvation is to see God's back. God walks with us, covers our faces, and protects us by putting us in the cracks of rocks so that we can see his back. The way God and man walk together is not direct, but indirect. Human beings as creatures cannot directly experience God as the Creator. There is a strict gap, the distance between the creator and the creature. This does not mean that there is a complete separation between God the Creator and his creature. If so, we cannot see God's back.

We are human beings created in the image of God. Human beings as creatures want to see the face and glory of God the Creator. However, you can only see the back, not the face of God. The constant gap between God and man is also the distance between God's grace and man's sin and transgression. Sin and transgression humans cannot directly see the glory of a holy God. A sinful man cannot see for himself the glory of the holy God. God's way of accompanying man to see God's back is God's grace to forgive human sins and faults and allow a life of salvation.

The text of 1 Thessalonians 1 shows the true picture of the faith life of the Thessalonians, who praise and serve the God of grace who forgives human transgressions so that they can see their back. They say, "They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." It is an example of a life of faith that Christians should imitate in the era of COVID-19. The characteristic of their true religious life is "the act of trust, the labor of love, the endurance of hope." Christianity is an act of “trusting” God's promise that “my Presence will go with you” within the uneasy journey of COVID-19. It is a ‘hard work of love’ that is devoted entirely to God who shows his back and takes care of the lives and safety of neighbors. And it is patience to keep hope even in the midst of anxiety and despair. Today, in a religious journey of anxiety and uncertainty, the Thessalonians testify to us the act of trust, the labor of love, and the endurance of hope.

There is nowadays conflict within the tense relationship between science and religion, quarantine and worship, especially between some Protestants and society. There is a distance between quarantine and worship—the inevitable tension and conflict. You cannot choose between life and safety, worship and freedom. Today in Matthew 22, the gap between the two is well expressed in the tense relationship between God and the king. To trap Jesus in his words, the Pharisees ask in front of the Herodians: “Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” Indeed, it is a scene that shows the self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Jesus forgives and loves sinners, but he hates self-righteous and hypocritical people the most. Because, as long as they are unaware of their sins and transgressions and are in self-righteousness that they are right, they cannot be forgiven and saved.

Jesus sees their self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and wickedness, and asks them to show the money they pay as taxes. He sees the Denarion they gave out and speaks. Whose is the portrait on the money, and who is the written word? They answer. “It belongs to the emperor.” The words of Jesus' truth are proclaimed that they never predicted. “If so, return the emperor's to the emperor, and God's to God.” The Bible testifies that the hypocrites admired the word. It is truly the word of God proclaimed through Jesus.

The hypocritical question of the Pharisees could be changed as follows amid the current coronavirus outbreak. “Is it right to follow the quarantine rules? Isn't that right?” “Is it right to worship God? Isn't that right?” “Should I follow the rules of quarantine? Or should I worship God?” How would Jesus answer in this situation? Amid COVID-19, Jesus gazes heartily at the inevitable tension of quarantine and worship, and I wonder if he will probably say this. 'Leave quarantine to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and return worship to God'

In other words, we worship while following the quarantine rules. Many churches worship in the form of non-face-to-face and face-to-face. Here, the relationship between quarantine and worship is not in the exclusion of one choice and the other. There will be many ways to worship while following the quarantine rules, depending on the stage of distancing. The relationship between quarantine and worship is similar to the relationship between law and grace. Jesus says. “Grace does not abolish the law, it fulfills it.” Yes. “Worship does not abolish quarantine, but completes quarantine” Worship observes the quarantine rules, but is not subject to it. Rather, it completes the quarantine by offering true worship within the quarantine rules.

The way of worshiping God in compliance with the quarantine rules can take many forms. Depending on steps 1, 2, and 3 phase of distancing, we can offer worship face-to-face, non-face-to-face, or mixed. Whatever the way it is, what matters is “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24). There may be various ways of worship depending on the situation, but the essence of worship is the same. It is in the love of God and the love of neighbor. Jesus says. “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-39) Worship is total trust in God, It's true devotion, it's whole love.

Our full love for God is witnessed through specific love for our neighbors. In worship, love of God and love of neighbor cannot be separated. Worship that practices God's love and neighbor's love amid the COVID-19 crisis is to worship with spirit and truth while following the quarantine rules. In COVID-19, I hope that all of you will truly put full trust in the God of grace who show his back to us and love our neighbors.