Lent Day 11: They Were On a Break

This morning's passage was a strange, sad one from Exodus.

Moses and the people are at Mount Horeb (another name for Mount Sinai), the very place where God gave Moses the law on two tablets. You may remember that, when Moses descended from the mountain with the tablets, he found that the people had melted down every last gold ring and bracelet and pocket-watch to make themselves an idol, a calf. They were having separation anxiety from Moses, it seems, or maybe they were impatient and had lost faith that he'd be coming back down that mountain.  Or maybe the bible gets it exactly right: they were not so enchanted with a God who went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire. They wanted a God they could see.

God catches wind of all this, and says to Moses, Oh boy, you will not believe what's going on down there. Go!

The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” ~Exodus 32:9-10

The Israelites appear to have gotten on God's last nerve, and God's ready to get rid of them and make Moses the new patriarch of a new covenant people. Moses will have none of that, though. He begs. He implores God to relent, to turn from God's fierce wrath, to remember those guys God loved! Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-- God's favorites from way back when!

This is the very next thing that happens.

Image by Prawny from Pixabay.

The Lord said to Moses, “Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’  I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.  Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” ~Exodus 33:1-3

God relents from destroying the people utterly with the divine white-hot wrath. God even says, fine, go. Go into the land I said I'd give you. I'll still give it to you. It's still flowing with milk and honey, and I'll even do you the favor of making sure the last tenants are gone. But I'm out.

This is a wholly unexpected turn of events. Anger, wrath, maybe even fearsome displays of such are to be expected. But this "Let's just go our separate ways" thing is shocking.

When the people heard these harsh words, they mourned, and no one put on ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, and I will decide what to do to you.’” Therefore the Israelites stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.  ~Exodus 33:4-6

The people grieve. (Of course they do.) This is not how the covenant is supposed to play out. It was supposed to be a happy-ever-after thing. Who could have imagined God reaching a breaking point?

Actually, most of scripture assumes God has a breaking point. But in the next chapter, having been persuaded by Moses to change the divine mind, God allows Moses to (partially) see God, passing by while saying,

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, 
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness..." ~Exodus 34:6

And that, it turns out, is really who God is. God, who had really wanted a break from those stiff-necked people, in the end, wanted to be their God more.

I know I can be stiff-necked. (My mother told me, it started reeeeeeal early.) I can go my own way, digging my own grave until I'm up to my eyeballs in dirt, and still insist I'll be in China in just a minute. How inexpressibly grateful I am to know that God's mercy, God's grace, God's steadfast love, and God's faithfulness, are even bigger and more powerful than my recalcitrance. The moment I am ready to let go of my self-will-run-riot, there is God, ready to hold me up through whatever mess I've created and set me (again) on a better path. (And even before I'm ready, God is there, with me, accompanying me, watching my struggles, wishing I'd stop already, checking the divine watch, hoping I'll be back soon...)

People like to make this claim that the Hebrew scriptures are all about Law and the Christian scriptures are all about Grace. I do not buy that. I see grace-- grace upon grace-- all through the messy family stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs, all through the wild ride of the Exodus, and beyond. God is unchanging. If God is gracious now, God was gracious then, and God will be gracious into futures we can't yet see or imagine. But know this: if you imagine a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, you will be right on the money, every time.