A Catechism of Our Faith

God Speaks

Exodus 3:13-16

¹³ Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

¹⁴ God said to Moses, “I am who I am.^[c] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

¹⁵ God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord,^[d] the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’

“This is my name forever,
    the name you shall call me
    from generation to generation.” 

The Bible contains many kinds of writings, and it does many things: conveys the history of Israel, gives practical wisdom advice, presents moral laws, etc.  But the first thing it does, throughout the sweep of its different books, is to tell the reader who God is.  It communicates His identity.  In the language of the Bible, it gives us his name.  It must do this, since human beings imagine who God is in a myriad of ways. Simply the word ‘God’ does not yet tell us this, and that word alone could be easily misunderstood. 

So in the pivotal chapter 3 of Exodus, God finds Moses though he tries to hide in the desert with his in-laws.  He appears in His creation, yet miraculously, in the burning bush.  He tells Moses that He cares for His oppressed people and means to act to redeem them in history.  He confirms that He is the same God known to their ancestors. Each of these facts says something about who He is.

But most of all, He tells Moses that He is YHWH, the utterly free God, alive, sovereign: ‘I am who I am.’  He alone constitutes Himself, and is subject to no necessity.  He chooses to give them His name. And this disclosure of who He is takes place not only in Exodus3, but throughout the whole Bible. This God of the fathers, of the Exodus, of Zion, the first and the last, is the God embodied and revealed in Jesus Christ.  We have already learned in our catechism that we can discern hints of who God is, but only as we read the Bible can we be taught who God truly is. In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. ³ The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.  (Hebrews 1: 1-3) 

But how do we learn who God is? He tells us. God speaks to us.  The ‘Word of the Lord’ that came to the prophets still speaks through the Scriptures.  In other words, they do not only convey information. As they do so, He Himself still speaks, through these words.

Now words tell the heart (unless the speaker is dissembling, which God does not do). The speaker has the initiative. They cannot be possessed and controlled in the same way things can be (though we try!) Now God is unique in that His Word actually brings about what He says. We have seen this in the very word “dabar”in Hebrew which can mean ‘word’ or ‘deed.’  ‘And God said ‘let there be light,’ and there was light.’  

 sMany things follow from what we have said. But this is the place to start: God speaks; we hear His voice through the Scriptures; in this hearing He conveys who He is; His Word can accomplish what it communicates.

Sing ‘Thou whose Almighty Word’

Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”

—Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Why The First Lesson Matters

There is an adage from the early Church, popular among Anglicans, that how we pray tells us how we believe. (Though it has problems,) it says something true about our faith. Most Sundays, the first lesson comes from the Old Testament, and at its conclusion it is acclaimed to be the ‘Word of the Lord.’   We are accustomed to this, but we might question it.  If I have the Iphone 6, what need have I of 5?  If we know the final answer (Jesus), what need have I of the people of God groping toward that answer?  Furthermore, there is material in the Old Testament which is problematic to say the least, the slaughter of the Amalekites, those bears who mauled the children teasing Elisha, or the wish of the psalmist to do in the children of his Babylonian tormentors, to name a few.  Why not move straight on to Jesus (though he had some harsh things to say Himself, but leave that aside for now)?

Marcion was a second century heretical Christian thinker, who advocated just such an abandonment of the Old Testament.  He found there a different God, vengeful and legalistic, a God unrelated to the Father of Jesus.  The Church decisively rejected Marcion’s thought, though sometimes our neglect of the Old Testament amounts to a kind of silent concession to him. It is worth noting that Marcion also denied that Jesus was crucified in the flesh - in other words, denying the flesh of Jesus, and denying the real, historical significance of the people of Israel went hand-in-hand.  Every time we hear the Old Testament read in church, we reaffirm our rejection of Marcion, and we reaffirm that all of the Bible, Old Testament and New, together, is God’s Word.  Figuring out what this means is an important task for us if we would see ourselves and the world through the lens God provides us. We will consider the outline of the contents of the Old Testament in more detail, but there are several rules of thumb which serve to sum up the relationship between the Testaments which is implied in our practice of reading and hearing the Bible every Sunday morning.  There is a saying, a version of which goes back to Augustine, that the New Testament is latent (hidden) in the Old, while the Old is patent (made open) in the New. To similar effect was the saying of the Reformer Martin Luther in the 16^thCentury that the Old Testament is the ‘manger in which Christ lies.’ (I found this in an excellent study of the Testaments, Richard Hays’ Reading Backwards, which title is itself another way to describe the relationship).

The relationship of Old and New is bolstered by the obvious fact that Jesus was a faithful Jewish rabbi of the First Century, for whom ‘Scriptures’ meant what we call the ‘Old Testament.’  But on the other hand, that collection of writings is itself varied, within which there are thematic cross-currents. And of course, Christians and Jews differ on how to read them.  Still, understanding the Old Testament as ‘Jesus manger’ and Jesus-in-the-New as the fulfillment of the ‘law and the prophets,’ provides a coherent way to read and understand, one reinforced every Sunday morning. 

Matthew 17:1-10

17 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. ² There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. ³ Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

⁴ Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

⁵ While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

⁶ When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. ⁷ But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” ⁸ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

⁹ As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

¹⁰ The disciples asked him, “Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?”

Luke 4:17-20

¹⁴ Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ¹⁵ He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

¹⁶ He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”^[f]

²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. ²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”