Sermon at the opening service of Porvoo Theological Conference in Cardiff, 7th October 2025

”You cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.”

Thus said the Lord to Moses. God is hidden from man. He is holy, and no human being can bear the radiance of his holiness.

But how we would love to see God! How we would love to understand his secrets! How we would love to comprehend why he acts as he does! As human beings, we thirst for knowledge and understanding. This is a trait that God has instilled in us. He has made us thirsty for knowledge and able to rule the world with knowledge. We know and understand a great deal, and we have taken control of creation through knowledge, understanding, and technical expertise.

But God, we cannot comprehend Him. He remains hidden from us and does not reveal His face to us. We would like to know why He allows misfortunes in the world, or why He does not right all wrongs, if He is capable of everything. We would like to hear what kind of just solution he would give to the wars and conflicts in the world. We would hope that he would put an end to the violence, killing, and destruction in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as in countless other places around the world that do not make it into our news feeds but which we believe he is well aware of. All the billions of people around the world belong to him, and he loves them all, including those whose fate does not interest us enough.

God does not allow us to see his brightly shining face; instead, he hides it from us. There is a simple reason for this. God’s holiness would destroy us, who do not follow his holy will. His wisdom and light would blind and burn us who are unable to take care of the world He created. He would drive us out once again from the paradise He created, namely the earth He once entrusted to human care. Finally disappointed in us, he would destroy all of humanity with a single blow. Wouldn’t that be just, considering God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness and the complete incompatibility of the two?

Instead, God acts differently. He protects us from his own holiness, glory, and honour. He loves human beings, those insignificant specks of dust, and allows them to experience his protection from his own perfection, holiness, and even wrath. On the contrary, he surrenders himself to converse with man, comes close and promises to walk right beside him. He hides Moses in a cleft in the rock so that he cannot, out of curiosity, try to see God’s glory in his revealed face. He covers the mouth of the cave with his palm so that his dazzling holiness does not harm Moses, the man whom he has allowed to come close to him and entrusted with the task of leading his people. God has taken this man as his prophet, as a mouthpiece through which he intends to speak to the world.

But this poor man who has received mercy must be protected from God’s glory, honour, and holiness. “I will pass by, and you shall not see my face.” God allows Moses to see him only from behind, as one would only see someone’s back, like a person whom one has missed meeting and who is already going elsewhere. It is as if God does not care about man but, disappointed in waiting for him, is walking away. But this is not God’s intention. His intention is to reveal himself to man in such a way that man can know and receive him.

God reveals himself from the back, different from how people would like him to appear. God does not reveal himself to people in his glory, because he loves them. God is close, even though he does not seem to fulfil the wishes that people set for him, he does not remove the pain of the world, neither does he end wars, feed the hungry, or stop other global problems. To resolve these issues, he keeps to the task he has given to people. He has entrusted the affairs of the world to humans, created them, and equipped them with his power, wisdom, and discernment. God has given humans the ability to judge what is good, true, and right. He has made humans part of his own wisdom and all-pervading reason.

The Reformer Martin Luther explains that God reveals himself concealed in his opposite. By allowing Moses to see him from behind, God shows that in his dealings with human beings, he does not choose the path of glory but the path of the cross. He does not reveal himself to us as a majestic ruler, but as a human being who submits to suffering. He does not come to us in his power and glory, but as a humble servant. According to Luther, cross is the hallmark of all God’s actions. Luther calls this the theology of the cross, as opposed to the theology of glory. God reveals himself to people hidden in the cross. This is not what people expect from God; rather, they expect God to reveal himself in a manner befitting his glory. People expect God to intervene powerfully, to remove evil, to enforce justice, and to punish the guilty. God will do this at the end of time, but in this age he deals with us hidden in the folly of the cross. God shows us his eternal fatherly face in his Son, Jesus Christ.

God sent His Son to be born as a human being. By becoming human, God’s Son takes on human weakness, their temporality and limitations, their hunger and thirst, and their suffering. God enters into human life and even accepts their mortality. This is the opposite of what humans think would be fitting for God. Surely the eternal, holy, and almighty God cannot become weak and surrender himself to be killed by his enemies? Shouldn’t he rather destroy them with a single breath, remove the evil rulers from power, take dominion himself, and correct all injustice?

But God does not do this, for he has a different way of dealing with people. He hides himself in his opposite, reveals himself beneath it, sub contraria specie, as Luther writes in Latin. God is known through the theology of the cross, not through the theology of glory, even though that is what people would like from him—though man himself could not bear it without being destroyed. The cross defines all of God’s revelation. He acts in the opposite way to what humans imagine. We seek God in glory, but God comes to us in lowliness. We strive for the holy and the high, but God bends down to sinners.

God created everything with His Word. The wisdom of the cross was already hidden in it. In the beginning, God only spoke the Word. But before the beginning of time, He already had the Son, the eternal Word, Logos in Greek. In Him, everything was created, and in Him, everything is bound together. God’s eternal Word permeates everything, for it also contains God’s eternal wisdom. In a paradoxical way, it includes both the logic of God that is comprehensible to humans and the cross that is incomprehensible to humans, as revealed in the suffering of His Son. Without faith, God’s plan of salvation is foolishness to humans, as St. Paul described it (1 Cor. 1:18).

Dear colleagues, at this conference we are discussing the Nicene Creed. We are asking ourselves, what does it mean for us today to believe in one God, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit? What is our mission emerging from this faith today? How do we witness to God’s love, and how do we testify understandably and in a credible way to the salvation in Christ? What is our message to the world, desperately yearning to know God has not forsaken the world he created? The answers to all these questions must be firmly rooted in the faith we confess in the Nicene creed.

As is well known, the main issue at the Council of Nicaea was the relationship between the Father and the Son. The creed formulated at the council emphasizes that the Son is of one Being with the Father (homoousios too Patri). He has been with the Father from the beginning, one and the same God as the Father, but a different person.

The Council of Nicaea was convened to address the claim that the Son cannot be as eternal as the Father, but was created separately by the Father before anything else. According to this view, there was a time or state of affairs when the Son did not yet exist. But it was pointed out that God the Father could never have been without His Word and wisdom, and if the Son is called the Word, He has been as eternal as the Father from the beginning. If the Son were not one with the Father, he would not fully know the Father and could not reveal God’s will to us. If the Son were not God born as a human being, he could not bring humanity into communion with God.

The unity and trinity of God is folly to human reason. It is a paradox that can only be understood through faith. The Son, who is the eternal Word, binds everything together. He is the Logos, the all-pervading reason that makes everything logical. Therefore, everything can also be studied and understood by humans. God’s eternal Logos permeates all of creation. Everything, both visible and invisible, was created in him, the Son, the eternal Word.

In this Word, born as a human being, all things find their place. God’s secrets are revealed to humanity in him. God speaks to us through his Son, who was incarnated as a human being and submitted to death on the cross. Committed to human weakness, he identifies with the suffering of all people. His commitment to the hunger, thirst, and mortality of all people in the world shows that God has good will toward the suffering human race.

Everything belongs together in God’s eternal Word. In God’s Son is the beginning and end of all things. From the smallest particles of the universe to the largest galaxies, from the shortest distances to the most distant light years, God’s Logos connects everything. The joys and sorrows of life, but also the grief, pain, and disappointments, things incomprehensible to humans, everything is bound together by God’s eternal Word, who became human.

The Logos permeates everything, but ultimately it is God’s Logos and God’s wisdom. Although He has made us partakers of the all-pervading rational principle and capacity for logic, He does not reveal His face to us but hides Himself from human reasoning. He can only be known through faith, hope, and love. God’s logic and secret plan can bring people to weakness and even to the gates of perdition, but there too He is present. There He protects us with His hand, comes right beside us, and walks by our refuge. We imagine that he is leaving and cry out after him: Don’t leave us, we need you! Don’t turn your back on us! Father, why do you abandon us?

But at that very moment and in that very cry, he is with us, letting us know that we are safe despite everything. It is precisely in the most difficult questions and deepest problems of our lives that the Son of God cries out with us. He who is one with the Father in a way that is incomprehensible to humans prays with us. Reasonable logic and folly to man – God’s mystery, but humanity’s only hope. There is also the hope for us who are called to lead God’s people in this time.