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.