Of the many appearances God makes in the books of the Old Testament, the appearance to Moses shepherding his father-in-law’s flocks in near Horeb must be one of the best known and most dramatic.
Exceptional as this appearance in Horeb was, it shares many features with other divine manifestations in the Old Testament. The most obvious is perhaps the location; the desert or wilderness was the place where one might go to hear God. John the Baptist and Jesus himself follow a tradition set by the prophets, such as Elijah and Isaiah, of seeking or finding the voice of God away from the distractions of human society.
This removal from society may equally be vertical and mountain tops are also seen as being closer to God; sophisticated though the Jewish concept of God was, His meteorological character remained important, so imagining Him as being in the sky where the weather comes from, made sense.
Equally, mountains lift us out and away from the rivers and valleys where human civilisations start and tend to flourish.
It is the burning bush which catches Moses’ eye but it’s the voice of God that he hears. He approaches the burning bush in curiosity and wonder, but he turns aside from the sight of God. Only later, on Sinai he will come almost face to face with God, close enough to burn his skin. While invisible Himself, God’s appearances in Genesis and especially Exodus are accompanied by very visual signs; clouds, smoke and pillars of fire, but as Elijah later appreciates, God is not these violent phenomena of rushing wind and quaking earth, but the quiet voice that follows them. The cloud is evidence of His glory, but He is hidden within it, a voice heard but unseen.
These characteristics must in part at least be to distinguish God from the very visible idols of competing religions. Later, the Greeks and Romans were puzzled that the Holy of Holies contained no cult statue but was empty; God might be heard- but sound is intangible and evanescent, unlike a statue. God was not to be pinned down, nor worshipped as any object which He, ultimately, had created (still less the work of one of His creatures).
This was perhaps another reason why he favoured remote places, closer to the natural world of his creation and not the Civilisation which was the contrivance of his human creatures. In the desert his voice might be heard without risk of adulteration or dilution in the hubbub that men made, and it might be heard closer to pure world he created, where his powers overs wind and water were untrammelled by human activity and ingenuity.
I have, however always been rather sceptical about claims to find God in nature and suspected that “communing with nature” may just be an excuse for not going to church. But I am just back from time in in the Brecon Beacons which included a trip to Tintern Abbey. The landscape around the Beacons is beautiful, but largely manmade in the valleys; higher up wind and ice have sculpted the ancient hills into shapes worthy of Henry Moore and providing views, especially on a clear day after rain (and we had plenty of that) which take away any breath one has left after the climb. It’s easy to feel, with Wordsworth,
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Words which I’m sure you will recognise from his Lines Written above Tintern Abbey. The beauty of the Wye Valley is, like the Brecon Beacons a combination of man’s and God’s or nature’s work and its sublimity is, as Wordsworth suggests the combination of human and divine inspiration. This, I believe reflects the experience of God so often recorded in the Old Testament; the voice heard in the wilderness.
The motion and the spirit which Moses and the prophets experienced, and which we may experience faced with natural beauty is neither loud nor clear. The still small voice needs interpretation and the right response may not be obvious, but response there should be. God’s words invariably point to human action- momentous action in Moses’ case before the burning bush. We may not have tyrannical Pharaohs to persuade, but there will always be work for us in the valley to help bring about the Kingdom God there, inspired by the vision of God’s natural work seen from the hills above. Amen.