February 7, 2016
Today’s old testament reading offers us a curious description of what happened just after God entered into the first covenant with Israel—Moses' encounter with God had given him a radiant face, and, to manage his relationship with both God and Israel, Moses began a practice of veiling and unveiling his face, depending on who he was with, and what he was doing.
To provide context, in Exodus chapter 32, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God on two tablets, which he destroyed in anger when he discovered that the Israelites had made a golden calf to worship instead of God. Several commentators suggest that this was done in order to save the Israelites from God's wrath, since they did not deserve a covenant relationship with God because of their sin.
To interpret the remainder of Chapters 32 and 33, I turned to Wes Howard-Brook's book Come Out My People. Howard-Brook maintains that Exodus Chapters 32 and 33 describe an ideological struggle between three different theological traditions about who would control worship in Israel (p. 158). This struggle was rooted in a conflict between a northern, de-centralized theology and a southern, centralized theology in which the North (Galilee - where Nazareth was located) worshipped God as "an untamed, uncontrollable, powerful Creator of mountain and wilderness" (p. 159) in contrast to the South (Judea) that promoted a Jerusalem-focused, temple-based theology supporting an imperial social order. (p. 158) In the end, the Southern perspective won, and the outcome of this struggle was confirmation of the authority of Moses as spokesperson for God (and the Levite tradition of legal interpretation and sacred ceremony) followed by Moses' [somewhat convenient] intervention on behalf of Israel, to ask God to forgive the Israelites for their sins. Then, in Exodus 34 we have the account of God's renewed offering of covenant:
10Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you.
It is after this second encounter with God that Moses' face radiates. But, when the Israelites saw Moses' shining face, they were afraid to come near him. Exodus tells us that Moses began to use a veil to negotiate his relationship with God and the Israelites. So when Moses entered God's presence, or when he was sharing messages from God with the Israelites, he was unveiled, revealing his radiant face, confirming the authenticity of his message and his authority as God's spokesperson. When Moses entered God's presence, he was also unveiled, to have face-to-face communion with God. Then, when he finished sharing God's message, he would cover his face again with a veil (34:33-34). According to Jewish tradition, Moses would cover his face out of a sense of humility. Other scholars maintain it was to accommodate the weakness of the Israelites and not remind them of their guilt before God. But thinking about the Wes-Howard-Brook description of the ideological struggle taking place in Exodus and subsequent domination of a priest-led, centralized Judaism of the South, I can't help but wonder if the veiling of Moses' face was also intended to emphasize the "setting apart" of a special group who would have access to God and who would then instruct the people in the law—conveniently at the time when the first covenant was given. Anthropologists suggest that, in religion, veils are used to maintain social distance and to communicate social status and cultural identity. In the Bible, the veil is an important expression of keeping God's Holy Presence separate from the sinful nature of the common person. During Jesus' time, when the temple in Jerusalem served as the center of religious life, a veil separated the inner sanctum of the temple, the Holy of Holies, from the rest of the temple. This was the veil that was torn in two at the time of Jesus' death, according to Matthew Chapter 27.
In a practical sense, a veil can allow someone to see and/or hear what's on the other side but often in a distorted way. It not only distorts perception for the person outside the veil. It also distorts perception for the person who is veiled (thinking about Moses, for example, and his relationship with the Israelites). The lesson we find in several passages in the New Testament is that if we are veiled in our approach to relationship with God we will understand God's expectations—and God's very nature—in a distorted way, reflecting a lack of faith and a lack of genuine relationship. Commenting on Exodus, Paul says "to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts." (II Cor 3:15).
Last Sunday Shelly Marcus's teaching focused on a big controversy found in Luke 4, when Jesus was teaching in a temple in Nazareth (in the North). To understand the story, Shelly reminded us that, during Jesus' time, Israel, as an oppressed nation, understood Yahweh to be a God of Vengeance and, for that reason, the good people of Nazareth were waiting for God to send a Messiah to judge the enemies of Israel and redeem God's people through violence. In contrast, in the Luke passage,
Jesus presented a God who, even though he had entered into a covenant relationship with Israel, was neverthelesps ready to grant grace and healing to outsiders and enemies ... this was a radical reversal of expectation of God and the meaning of salvation.
Jesus' vision of a God who not only loved and blessed Israel, but everyone—including Israel's enemies—was just too confusing and contradicted what the people of Nazareth had been taught, and so they turned on Jesus and wanted to throw him off a cliff.
Let me digress for just a minute to shed a little more light on the socio-political context of the time period when Jesus lived, according to R.T France in his Commentary on The Gospel of Matthew (http://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/justintaylor/2011/08/17/7-differences-between-galilee-and-judea-in-the-time-of-jesus/). He says that the northern province of Galilee (where Nazareth was) was decisively distinct—in history, political status, and culture—from the southern province of Judea which contained the holy city of Jerusalem. In brief:
- they were racially distinct, with a more mixed population
- Geographically, Galilee was separated from Judea by the non-Jewish territory of Samaria
- Politically Galilee had been under a separate adminsitration from Judea during most of its history since the 10th century BC
- Economically, Galilee offered better agricultural and fishing resources, making the wealth of some Galileans the envy of their southern neighbors.
- Culturally Judeans despised their northern neighbors as country cousins
- Linguistically, Galileans spoke a distinctive form of Aramaic which was the butt of Judean humor
- Religiously the Judean opinion was that Galileans were lax in their observance of proper ritual, and the problem was exacerbated by the distance of Galilee from the temple and the theological leadership, which was focused on Jerusalem.
The result was that
even an impeccably Jewish Galilean in 1st century Jerusalem was not among his own people; he was as much a foreigner as an Irishman in London or a Texan in New York. His accent would have marked him ... and all the communal prejudice of the supposedly superior culture of the capital city would stand against his claim to be heard even as a prophet, let along as the 'Messiah,' a title which, as everyone knew, belonged to Judea. ... It's important to know this because the gospels of Mark and Matthew have structured their narratives around a geographical framework dividing the north and the south, culminating in the confrontation of this prophet from Galilee (Jesus) and the religious establishment of Jerusalem.
So here is another question; How could the Jewish understanding of God and the purpose of the Messiah have gotten so off track? Well, in working with the use of the veil in scriptures, I began to wonder something else. Could the use veiling as a metaphor about managing relationship with God and others help us understand how theology itself could promote a profound misunderstanding of God's nature?
In Exodus Ch 32, just before God once again offered a covenant relationship to Israel, he revealed his Holy Nature more fully to Moses.
5Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. 6And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.
In the greater context of Israel, as an oppressed people living under the Roman Empire, receiving a Jerusalem-focused, temple-based theology supporting an imperial social order, it is easy to see how God's compassion, love and faithfulness could be interpreted as reserved for a chosen people (Israel), while God's judgment would be reserved for the Roman oppressor and other outsiders. This is an easier, if inaccurate, understanding of the nature of our God. Jesus offers to us a description of God that is much more complex and harder to comprehend.
In his book, Not in God's Name, Jonathan Sacks talks about "dualism," which can invade belief systems as a way of resolving complexity, competing ideas that can't easily be reconciled to each other. Sacks argues that the monotheistic nature of Christianity, Judaism and Islam creates the kind of complexity that finds relief through simplified, black-and-white interpretations of right and wrong. He writes:
Monotheism asks us to think of God as both parent and judge. A judge punishes, a parent forgives. A judge enforces the law, a parent embodies love. God is both, but it is hard to think of both at the same time. Dualism artificially simplifies our understanding of God by dividing humanity into two groups: the unimpeachably good and irredeemably bad. What happens is a sharp separation that is created between good and bad—and a projection, attributing the bad to someone else. Once you can identify an enemy, and unite all factions in fear and hate of a common threat, you ... render a culture susceptible to a pure and powerful dualism in which you are the innocent party and violence becomes both a justified revenge and the necessary protection of our group. (as seen today through institutionalized violence, racism, the war on terrorism, etc.] It makes internal tension bearable by turning the question "Why has this happened" into the question "Who did this to me?".
In today's epistle reading in 2 Corinthians Chapter 3, Paul is critical of Moses' choice:
"Since we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside ... (v 16) but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed." Through Jesus' example, we are invited to remove the veil from our hearts and minds. And, in doing so, we are invited to relationship with a God who offers love, compassion, forgiveness as well as judgment and accountability -- to all people, even our enemies or those we think don't deserve it.
Paul writes
"now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.... with face unveiled, beholding the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. "
If we can embrace this freedom, this unveiled lifestyle, we open ourselves up to transformation. Just as the presence of God caused Moses' face to shine, so we can experience this inner transformation by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of Lent, a time in the Christian Church when we prepare ourselves for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Traditionally, Lent is a time for us to contemplate the ways we have turned away from God in our lives and an opportunity to turn our hearts and minds back toward God through prayer, fasting and acts of charity. Giving up something for Lent is a form of fasting—often people give up chocolates or some other treat, just until Easter.
This year, I invite you to consider a bolder expression of Lenten repentance. Do you dare to live an unveiled life? Do you dare to commit yourself to covenanted relationship with a God who not only loves and blesses you, but also loves and blesses your enemy? Can you accept a relationship with the Holy One that is not negotiated through a simplified understanding of what it means to be God's people and to love as God loves? Through Jesus' sacrifice, the veil that was hung to separate us common folk from God was torn in two. Are you willing to walk through the opening to the other side, to seek an understanding of the God that Jesus described? I'll end by paraphrasing the words that Shelly ended with last week:
Be aware that the salvation that God offers may not meet our expectations, reward our worthiness, or even respond to our very real needs in the ways we'd like. Salvation might even come in disguises that make it profoundly difficult to recognize. It might even contradict the beliefs, ideas, and practices that have shaped our spiritual life. Like the people of Nazareth, we, too, might come face-to-face with God's saving presence. Will we be able to see it, or will a veil that covers our eyes and hearts render God's presence unrecognizable?
This year, as you prepare for the celebration of the New Covenant made available through Jesus' sacrifice, ask yourself how willing you are reach for relationship with a God who loves not only you but also loves those you find undeserving. And then reach again, to learn how to love those folks you find so undeserving in the same way that you, yourself, long to be loved. And then let your radiance shine for all to see.