Monday, July 19, 2004

Symptomatic 3

Text: Exodus 19:12-13, 21-25 20:18-19

"It will kill us!" said the Israelites.

This is entirely opposite of the way Moses responded to God. When Moses saw the burning bush, he turned aside and went to look. (Ex 3:3) Then the Lord called out to him by name. (Ex 3:4) And Moses simply said, "Here am I."

In verses 5-6, God tells him 1) do not come near, 2) take off your shoes, this is holy ground, and 3) I am the God of your fathers. And finally Moses flinches. He hides his face because he's afraid to look.

But he doesn't run away. He want's to be where God is. He stands his ground; he doesn't withdraw.

Why do the Israelites withdraw? They draw back from God instead of drawing near to Him. God didn't have their feet nailed to the ground, so they were free to do so. Moses was free to walk away also. We have that same option every day, but even if God had nailed the Israelites' feet to the ground, they wouldn't have really drawn near, so the withdrawing is just a symptom of something. Of what?

These people had been there in the thick of things. They'd been through the plagues, they'd been miraculously given all this jewelry by the Egyptians, they'd been across the Red Sea. They'd been fed manna, had bitter water sweetened, and received water from the stricken rock. They'd seen Amalek defeated strictly because Moses' arms were held aloft.

They'd seen God do for them repeatedly, and it did not produce the desire in them to draw closer. What condition could produce this result?

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Symptomatic 2

Text: Exodus 19:12-13, 21-25 20:18-19

The need to be careful became the excuse for what? For not getting in any deeper. And make no mistake about it, drawing close to God is deep water. Very deep water, the kind that can swamp you, overwhelm you. The kind of water that washes away not just your mistakes or your past, but even your (flawed) sense of self.

Here's what happened: the children of Israel flinched. And that's cool; almost everyone flinches. But they didn't just flinch; they withdrew. Backed up, fled, whatever. They evacuated that place of intersection where the Divine was getting all set up to touch the common, to render it ... abundant. In chapter 20 they tell Moses, "We'll listen to you. Go find out what we're supposed to do and we'll do it. But we don't want to hear directly from God. It'll kill us!"

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Symptomatic

Text: Exodus 19:12-13, 21-25 20:18-19

This is so much like the way the serpent deceived Eve that it's scary. The serpent took advantage of Eve's circumstances, because Eve had not heard the word of the Lord directly. Here in Exodus, the Lord is trying to get the people into the experience, allow them to hear God's voice - to have and hold the experience itself so that their belief could be that much stronger. But the people withdrew.

So they put themselves into Eve's dilemma: they didn't actually hear God's voice speaking His words, just something like a voice, noise and indistinct weirdness that time would allow them to explain away. But it's the why that's bugging me.

In 19:12-13, God tells Moses to set bounds around the base of the mountain. "Take heed," He says, warning that no one go into the mountain or touch the borders of it. Yet, when the trumpet blew a long blast, the people were to come up to the mountain. Just so far, and no farther.

All that seems a bit strange at first glance, but it makes sense when seen as events occurring at the intersection of the finite and the infinite.

God is too much for finite man to experience, to the point of death. So man has to be protected if he's to be in the same space. Hence the bounds set around the mountain.

After all the preparations the big day comes and God comes down on the mountain and the people come up to it and Moses goes on up to his audience with God. Once he gets there, God tells him to go back down and warn the people one more time not to break through the bounds lest they die. Moses says, like, they can't come up because we set those bounds around the mountain like You said, Lord.

But God insists, and so Moses goes back down to tell them. Was God over-estimating His own popularity? I don't think so. I think He was giving Moses the picture of what their reaction should have been. They should have been eager to draw near. But they had been instructed to be careful, and that became the excuse.