Dionysus on a Bike

Exodus 19:16-25 – 5/22/2026

Moses bought the people… to meet God. Poetic in its straightforwardness, we are given a picture of the immediate presence of God being discerned by an entire people gathered together. Even though only Aaron and Moses could approach God’s presence close enough to hear God’s voice directly, God’s presence was palpable, physical, and visible to the entire assembly of the descendants of Jacob.

So too, the disciples, the miscellaneous bunch of nobodies who followed Jesus around, could say that they were in the immediate, palpable presence of the deity, and like Aaron and Moses, they could hear God’s voice. Not only that, the 12, Mary, and all of the other followers of Christ ate with God, touched God, and followed God, literally on foot.

What the Israelites experienced with a mixture of awe and fear and what the disciples experienced with a mixture of loving affection and average everyday-ness, we do not experience at all today. We do not receive the palpable presence of the living God in our lives in the same way the ancients did. We live in a disenchanted world. God is dead, and we are the ones who killed him. We no longer require recourse to the supernatural to explain the natural world. We no longer experience God’s immediate presence in an unambiguous way. Those who claim to have experienced such presence are treated with skepticism and rarely taken seriously outside their narrow religious tradition. In short, even for the most fervent believer in the existence of God, this world is not imbued with God’s immediate, directly discernible presence as it was in ages past and in the record of Scripture.

In the lectionary and the cycle of the church year, we are approaching Pentecost, the celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit descending on and constituting the church. For us, God’s presence is softer, quieter, the Holy Spirit and the presence of the other in a communion of fellowship, solidarity, and love. Awe inspiring presence that changes lives and reminds us of our smallness, as well as the greatness of God is found not in a God you can see directly or who shakes the ground like an earthquake. God is in the stillness of the quiet moment and the connection of love with others.

Today, in 2026, we are unlikely to have that kind of direct encounter with God that kills you if you get to close or with Jesus in the flesh whom you can eat with and drink with while you hear his physically present voice. Those moments of gratitude and connection with others are not nearly so dramatic. This difference between how we experience God now and how the ancients did is a difference that makes a difference. We have to keep this difference in mind when we interpret the ancient texts of Scripture. What makes sense before the burning bush where the I AM tells you to remove your sandals is not the same as what makes sense when sharing a meal with a new friend in need. The Christian affirms that both are equally the presence of God, but they demand different kinds of comportment and different attitudes. Reverence before God is a different set of acts in the one case and the other.