For today’s readings go to http://bible.oremus.org
What is the true nature of God? Compassionate and forgiving? Severe and punishing? No question matters more, because we are asking about the basic character of reality. What is the ultimate context in which we live out our lives? How can we know? A good bet is to turn to the Bible, and yet even here the testimony does not speak with one voice. Today, for instance: suppose we had to live with the God portrayed in this reading from Exodus or from the Gospel. They present a wintery spiritual landscape. In the one, God says, “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.” And Moses replies, “Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.” In the other reading, Jesus’s parable, God says, “Bind [the wedding guest] hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” If these were our only intimation of God’s nature life would be bleak indeed.
Let’s consider the episode from Exodus first. Imagine yourself up on the mountain top with God and Moses, looking down at the Israelites’ camp. From this distance, we could describe the people as looking like little iron filings dancing around chaotically on sheet of cardboard. You have probably done that science experiment, where you bring a magnet up under the cardboard and the filings move toward the magnet and form into patterns. Part of the awe we feel as we watch comes from the exquisite beauty of the patterns. God was used to seeing that beautiful pattern when Moses was in charge. Now, with Moses beside him on the mountain top and Aaron in charge, God saw no pattern at all. What had gone wrong?
Leadership. Leadership means more than being the person who decides; though we often call the person in charge a leader. The marks of a true leader show up if we compare Moses and Aaron. The readings suggest four points of comparison. First, motive. Moses led the people, not in order to please them, but to keep them healthy and safe and moving in a positive direction. Aaron wanted only to placate them. Second, mentality. When we run into trouble, where do we look for help? A true leader knows that real help, lasting help, comes from within – from our faith, our vision, our deepest yearnings, our ingenuity and ability to work together, from our capacity for sacrifice and endurance, from our love for each other and what we stand for, our mission. A true leader has a can-do mentality. In contrast, Aaron led the people to look outside of themselves, to a golden calf. In other words, he instilled passivity and the fatal attitude that in times of trouble some one or some thing will come along and save me. Third, mobility. When we face a challenge, do we leap on a wooden rocking horse or a living prancer? A true leader meets new challenges with creative new solutions. Aaron simply repeated the age-old formula: build an idol. It takes no thought, no analysis, no imagination, no effort. Like an ideology, an idol is a dead solution to a living challenge.
The fourth point in comparing Moses and Aaron is well-illustrated in Jesus’ parable, with that puzzling detail about the wedding guest who was thrown into outer darkness. We are told he was thrown out because he did not have a wedding robe. What did that signify? Clothes stand for identity. If you wore a wedding robe you took on the identity of a wedding guest, you said, in effect, I shall pour myself into this celebration with all my heart, as if it were my own son’s wedding. I’m in, 100%. So the fourth point of comparison is making a commitment. A true leader makes a commitment to be one with her or his people. Moses had so committed himself to his people that if God intended to kill them, then he, Moses, said he wanted to die with them. Aaron was a maverick, a wedding guest without a robe. He wanted only to stay in office; he gave no thought to the good of the people. He could make a calf but he could not make a commitment.
Now what can we say about the true nature of God? What is the basic character of our ultimate reality? I suggest that we put ourselves in the place of the people who wrote the passages we are concerned about today. They portray a fearsome God; and this is in keeping with the words of the psalmist, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” What is there to fear about a loving, forgiving, merciful, generous God? The fear, and the only legitimate fear in life, is the fear of being cut off from God – cut off from life eternal, cut off from unshakable peace and joy everlasting. Compared to this, nothing else matters. Would God cut us off? Never! God can only love us. However we can cut ourselves off. We actually have the capacity to condemn ourselves to life without God, eternally. We should carry this awareness the way we would carry nitroglycerine – never forgetting it for a second. Yet, how seriously do we take it? Would we take it more seriously if we thought God would punish us? If we thought that a fearsome God watched us, score book in hand?
It takes spiritual maturity to realize that my own behavior serves as the rudder of my life. I am like a child who wants to push a screw driver into an electric socket. Tell me not to, and explain about electricity, and how I will only hurt myself, and I carry right on. Get fierce and tell me, “Because I said so!” Then I drop the screw driver. Is that not what lies behind passages such as these? In time I may come to do God’s will, simply because I can see that anything less brings me suffering. In time God’s will and my own will shall be one and the same. In the meantime, I do not really get it. I need the Ten Commandments; I need a God who can be fearsome; I need whatever it takes to live in a way that steers me toward unshakable peace and joy everlasting. In this light, passages that portray a fearsome God are every bit as loving as those that tell of God’s patience and mercy.
In the midst of current events, I could not help but see a parallel between our situation and that of the Israelites. I pictured God looking down on our nation from a heavenly mountain top, and seeing a great mass of iron filings jigging around in chaos. Perhaps we need to take the fearsome image of God seriously and make sure we choose a true leader in November, bearing in mind the four M’s: motive, mentality, mobility and the ability to make a commitment. The passage from Exodus has shown us how the people suffer for the leader’s faults. It is written as if God will make them suffer, but in truth we cause our own suffering when we choose the wrong leader. In a nutshell, then, the basic nature of reality is unconditional, personal love and bottomless compassion for each one of us. That never changes, though if it helps us to imagine otherwise, that too is love in action.
