Moses’ Failure

We just finished Deuteronomy in Morning Prayer in the Episcopal Church. It was an abbreviated, high-velocity race through the book, but even in rather abstracted form the displeasure of God with Moses comes through. I’m not going to write about that—what it was, what exactly Moses did wrong. The text always seems ambiguous to me. Suffice it to note that in the event Moses was angry.

Moses was often angry. The first time we become aware of him as an adult, he is in Egypt, a Hebrew living with the Egyptians but not under their oppressive yoke. He sees an injustice being committed—an Egyptian smiting (beating) a Hebrew—and he intervenes and kills the wrong-doer. (See Ex. 2:11-12.) A high-spirited, gut-level desire for justice seems part of his character. He could not stand for wrong to be done. Such anger is not necessarily a bad thing, indeed it can be the right thing. It is appropriate to feel the wrongness of injustice, and often the appropriate feeling is anger.

This, in Moses, I had seen before. But something new came through recently. (Do you know you can read the Bible for years and still find new things in it? At least, it happens to me.) In Exodus, after the Ten Commandments are given, God has much more in the way of laws to give. In chapters 21–23 he promulgates many judgments (rules or ordinances), most of them having to do with how people are to treat each other. After God tells Moses all these, Moses summons the people and repeats to them all the words and judgments that God had spoken. (This is told in Ex. 24.) The people agree to keep all that God has commanded. Then Moses writes the words down. Then he builds an altar, sets up pillars (one for each tribe), orders sacrifice to be made, and takes half the blood and throws it on the altar. Then: he reads the words he has written down, God’s laws, “the book of the covenant.” And again: all the people say they will keep all of God’s words. Finally, Moses takes the other half of the blood and throws it on the people.

You are wondering, perhaps, what’s new in this. What’s new is that this sacrifice was Moses’ idea. None of the ordinances that God had given him had told him that there was to be this sacrifice. The twelve pillars, the animals, the blood divided: all this was Moses’ idea. God had not asked for it.

Thus Moses joins the list. Cain and Abel made offerings to God—which God had not asked for, and with troubling result. Noah, after the flood, killed some of the animals that had been spared the devastation—a sacrifice God had not asked for. When God smelled Noah’s sacrifice, pleasing but not requested, God said he would never again send a flood because the human heart is wicked from the get-go. There is something twisted in us, something that is present in every human heart.

It is complicated in Moses. In part, Moses anger comes from his unwillingness for people to be complicated. He wants everyone to do the right thing, to follow and be faithful to God, to have untwisted hearts. He can’t stand it, in chapter 32, when the people worship the calf made out of gold (another instance when he was angry). And yet nonetheless there is in Moses’ heart that which was in Noah’s and Cain’s, something that rises from complexities deep inside us. Sacrifice embodies this twistedness because sacrifice is ever a paradox: We want to abandon ourselves to God, hence we offer him sacrifice, while at the same time by means of the sacrifice we are trying to control God. This is true, it seems, even of Moses, when he joins the line of those offering unbidden sacrifice.

In Moses’ case, to be sure, it was not a moral fault; it was deeper than that. And about it God is adamant: Moses may not enter the promised land.

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I don’t think I’m done thinking about God’s friendship with Moses. For it was a real friendship; the text repeatedly says that Moses was uniquely close to God. At the same time the text repeatedly emphasizes that Moses could not enter the promised land. I am eager for our lectionary to get back to Deuteronomy.

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 Out & About: This Sunday, July 21, I am preaching at St. John's in Corsicana, Tex.; the eucharists there are at 8 and 9:30 a.m. This is a change from previous announcements.

The next Sunday, July 28, I’m to be at St. Luke’s in Dennison, Tex., preaching at 8 and 10:30 a.m., and at 9:15 a.m. teaching a class on the parish as a school of friendship.

The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be Sunday, September 22, on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Note: a couple of weeks ago in this space a change of date was announced. That was incorrect. September 22, from 5 to 6:30 p.m., remains the correct date and time. Apologies for this confusion.

 

 

Two Old Popes

Age is on my mind—and blessed is the reader who doesn’t know why. The following has nothing to say to current events, but perhaps will point to some timeless theological wisdom.

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John Paul II was one of the most vigorous popes ever. He transformed the papacy into a center of dynamism through relentless travel. One recalls his plane landing on various continents and various climes, and himself, a man strong in body and spirit, descending in his fluttering white robes down the stairs, reaching the ground, and at once kneeling to kiss it. He had grown up under political oppression in Poland that tried to control minds and thoughts. He had been trained as an actor and wrote subversive plays and organized meetings where people could grow in solidarity with each other. He became a priest and taught interestingly about marriage and sex and prayer. He became a bishop. He became pope.

Then gradually his vigor left him. His body aged. He had one of the afflictions that come upon some of us in the evening of our lives. He trembled. He shuffled. And yet, he continued pope. He did not hide his infirmity. He prayed and he asked for prayer. And he remained extremely witty. Once he labored, slowly, to cross the room where church eminences were gathered to meet with him. He finally reached the far side, took his seat, and said in Italian, “Still he moves.”

In Italian, the same words mean “Still it moves.” They are the words Galileo is supposed to have said under his breath after the church had forced him to recount his view that the sun did not move around the earth. With John Paul, everyone laughed.

Of course it was awkward: to see this great man shuffling, sometimes drooling, and so forth. Wouldn’t it be better if he just went into a home, lived in private, and let someone else be pope? Yet in truth, it was precisely in his infirmity that he was pope. John Paul was teaching all of us how to age with dignity. He was showing us: This is what human dignity looks like sometimes. It’s okay. It’s human.

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In contrast, his successor, Benedict XVI, chose to resign as pope. This was due to a sense that he had growing inadequacies to carry out what the church needed. It was not an obvious decision, and it did not have to do with manifest physical ailments. It was, however, a breath-taking decision: no pope had resigned for centuries, and Dante had placed one who did resign down in the torments of the Inferno. To resign seemed unthinkable.

Yet Benedict did think it. And since he was the most brilliant theologian who had been pope for centuries, he deserved our giving him the benefit of the doubt. As an Episcopalian interested in ecumenical matters, I heard others say that by this resignation, Benedict had made the papacy much less of a stumbling block between our churches. He had made it clear that the papacy was a service and not an indelible thing like ordination. Bishops, priests, deacons: we can resign, retire, stop practicing; but we never cease to be the bishop or priest or deacon that we are. Our church believes that if you are ordained, you receive something that is indelible, it is with you forever. (We believe the same thing about baptism!) By his resignation, Benedict showed us that being pope is not something indelible, and thereby, possibly, he made it less of an obstacle to a future united church.

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So one pope showed us human dignity persisting in frailty. The other pointed us to unity with one another. In different ways, each was faithful to God’s call where he was.

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Out & About: Sunday, July 21, I am preaching at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas; the eucharists there are at 9 and 11:15 a.m.

The following Sunday, July 28, I’ll be at St. Luke’s in Dennison, Tex. I’ll be preaching at 8 and 10:30 a.m., and at 9:15 a.m. teaching a class on the parish as a school of friendship.

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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