Richard Mallory
Dear Friends in Christ,
In Friday’s Bell and Tower, I thought I was commenting on Sunday’s Old Testament lesson but that was from a different lectionary track. Today’s Old Testament lesson is from Exodus and not Genesis.
Exodus 32 is not so easy. This is certainly from the very old Old Testament which is to say that an archaic folk tale of God and Moses in conversation was included in the Torah (Pentateuch) hundreds of years after the conversation occurred. Was this a literal conversation that transpired on a particular date in time? I think not.
Moses has been atop Sinai getting the 10 Commandments down, taking dictation from God.
God doesn’t like what the Hebrews were doing down in the valley so God dispatches Moses to get down there to reprimand. In Moses’ absence, the crowd has found their way to idols (substitutes for the Real Thing).
In today’s reading, God is apopleptic and ready to blow God’s stack. Moses appeals to God and tries to talk God down from God’s wrath. He actually appeals to God’s investment in God’s reputation: “If you follow through on genocide of these rebellious people, then the Egyptians will accuse you, God, of luring those people out here in a set-up for their liquidation.”
The conclusion is that God changed God’s mind. Moses had a calming influence on the Divine. God withdraws from God’s plan of wrath. I submit to you that all religions of the ancient world attributed wrath to divinity. Sacrifices were offered to assuage and to gain good favor, imploring a god not to be so angry. What else could people do so long ago than project their own wrath and anger onto the deity?
The Bible is itself on an exodus away from belief in a wrathful God to a God of mercy, love and forgiveness. The God of Christ Jesus is one of imploring and inviting, never punishing: “Oh how I would have gathered you around me the way a mother hen gathers her chicks (paraphrase).”
The New Testament never rises up in pride to say to the Old Testament, “You got this wrong.”
The violent passages are simply sloughed off. When Jesus read from Isaiah 61 in synagogue, he left off the part about “the day of vengeance.”
For me, another take away from this passage is what I regard to be true of God. God is affected by humans. God does change God’s mind. There is an unseen partnership that is either nourished and fostered or allowed to remain fallow. God wants and needs us humans in partnership to bring about God’s dream for us all.
Your fellow traveler,
—Richard
