9/11/25
The Air is Thinner in the 7th Dimension.
Today’s story really begins on Mt. Horeb, where a naive Moses turns aside out of idle curiosity to see a bush that is in flames and yet is not being consumed by the fire.
Mt. Horeb is not a remarkable place. Just your average rocky elevation with scant vegetation. It has an average annual rainfall that would make the most tenacious farmer quiver with fear and steal them of sleep. Nevertheless, it is on this rocky outcrop that Moses is about to discover that Mt. Horeb is where you encounter the Living God.
Moses politely takes off his sandals and then the Lord introduces himself, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”.
This title of God is the same one that the Master will refer to in today’s gospel in his cantankerous encounter with the Sadducees.
What’s the connection between Moses and these scurrilous Sadducees?
The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection. That's when our earthly clay exhales its last breath; that’s it. Life is over, and instead of the white light at the end of the tunnel, visions of angels and departed loved ones; there is absolutely nothing. That’s it, kaput!
The Master points out to this misinformed mob that this is not the Jewish faith at all. Come on, chaps, remember in sabbath school the story of the burning bush. God introduces himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. You silly Sadducees, if we believe in a living God, then Abraham, Isaac and Jacob must still be living. Thus, life does go beyond the grave, but it is a completely different life from the one we know and enjoy now. Clearly, gentlemen, we love, worship and believe in a God who is timeless. There is a sense that when we are at the altar, we are also in that first upper room, as well as at the heavenly wedding reception, as well as being in our parish church all at the same moment. Yes, the 7th dimension is a boggling place not to be academically understood and disappear in a puff of logic, but to be lived in and experienced and relished.
Beyond the grave and in that dimension, there is no marriage because we shall be like angels. This is not to belittle the sacrament of marriage or disparage it. Marriage is great for this side of the grave, but as any married couple will tell you, it is not quite perfect. You do get a human being after all, and they come with their own glitter and they come with their slicing irritations. What’s more, marriage is always for a finite period of time. It doesn’t last forever. All marriages end in divorce or death. Sorry to be so brutal, but that is the reality; but sometimes, just sometimes, even in the most flawed of spouses, we glimpse something of the other. Those moments when we know that we are cherished, forgiven and enjoye,d and we wish that moment could last for eternity.
Interestingly, the most unlikely places and the most unlikely people (take Moses, for example, a murderer and a refugee) are exactly the places and people that are the very interface for divine encounters.
And there is a disquieting question for us to ask the person in the mirror. What if I am the icon, the face of the divine? Tarnished and bruised and lined but all the more beautiful and exquisite because of my blemishes. If God sees in me something of the beloved and rejoices in that, in my quirky nuances and silences, in my inextinguishable jocularity, I learn again that the Master can choose any complexion, any scar, any beauty to give us a glimpse of ‘the other’ and if He can see it in me, then I must take the time and put in the energy to see what He sees in others.
Something also needs to be said about our Mt. Horeb. There are places where the shroud between this dimension and the other dimension, maybe the 7th dimension, is incredibly thin. Your parish Church might be one of those places and it’s worth asking yourself from where is your Mt. Horeb? Where was, where is, that place where you are most centred, most you and He is most present for you? The place where without any fanfare or prior warning, all of a sudden you find yourself ‘there’. It’s not something you can book online. Sometimes, like Moses, we are just idly minding our own business in a geographical place that we know well, which is boringly familiar to us and then we slip through the veil and we find ourselves rubbing shoulders with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They find us, not vice versa. Or maybe we have just given ourselves the space to realise we were always surrounded anyway. Then there is no need for trick Sadducee questions about brothers with a genetic heart disposition who keep on dying and leaving a distraught widow. We won’t need to ask the hypotheticals or shake our fist. Our tears will come not from the bottomless well of deep sadness, but spring out of a fountain of measureless joy.
Perhaps this is why the Sadducees no longer dared to ask him any more questions. Because they were in his presence, looking into his eyes and they found themselves in the presence of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac. The air had become thin and they were in the 7th dimension.