Standing Under the Scriptures
October 26, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Deuteronomy 34.1-8: At the conclusion of the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness, the Lord shows Moses the Promised Land but stops him from entering it.

Matthew 22.34-40: When finally in the series of hostile questions put to Jesus a lawyer asks about the greatest commandment, he answers with our Summary of the Law, taken from Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18.

I am in something of a flap this week on account of getting ready to go to England and also of an unanticipated root canal. But in spite of this I am glad of the chance to give an account of our discussion last Sunday. For although we approached the heart of our Exodus reading (33.12-23), I feel that we did not quite get there. And this heart is significant. Except for our grappling in the class, however, I would not be able to see this now.

We noted the passage’s context. In Exodus it is preceded by the escape of the Hebrews from Egypt, the transactions of the Lord with them at Sinai, and the episode of the golden calf. And it stands at the head of the move of the people from Sinai to the Promised Land, the next phase of their history. To be sure,they seem not actually to start out until Numbers 10. But Exodus 33 begins with the Lord’s command to Moses: “Depart, go up hence, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… “.

As we saw, our passage consists of Moses’ back and forth with the Lord over this. Firstly Moses complains about the Lord’s mixed signals. He has found favor with the Lord, who knows him by name (striking thought), but the Lord has not told him whom he will send with him on the journey. The Lord replies, “My presence will go with you.” But Moses then sets a further condition on his willingness to go, “Show me your glory.” To this t.he Lord makes a two-fold response. Firstly he declares, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” This is to say that his glory consists in his being gracious and showing mercy, not out of any compulsion internal or external but in his absolute freedom. Secondly and anthropomorphically, he passes by Moses, preventing Moses from seeing his face but allowing him to see his back.

Although the foregoing has been spoken of as Impenetrable, in the class we got a fair distance into it. We saw Moses as here exhibiting his diffidence in the face of his assignment of leading the people to the Promised Land. To be sure, what he had already been involved in, namely organizing the Hebrews to flee Egypt and getting them through the Reed [sic] Sea despite Pharaoh’s pursuit, might seem an even more formidable accomplishment than this. But usually it is easier to keep people together in the face of dramatic events than in the face of a long hard slog. And we noted the resemblance between Moses’ apparent bargaining with the Lord and Abraham’s bargaining with him over the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah, and even Jacob’s bargaining with the angel with whom he found himself wrestling all night. What we evidently failed to see is the closeness of the parallel with Jacob, closer than that with Abraham. For Moses was bargaining not out of captiousness or capriciousness but in deadly earnest, as was Jacob. The most instructive parallel of all, however, is with Moses himself at the Burning Bush, the inception of the previous phase of the history. There also he expressed doubts about his adequacy for the task. There also he insisted on assurance of the Lord’s presence and support. And there also a manifestation of the Lord came out of his contending, in that case the pronouncement of the Lord’s name, in this case the sight though not of the Lord’s face but still of his back. In Luther’s view, as I mentioned in the class, his back, taken as his opera aliena of which we have heard discussion, is what brings us into a real relationship with him. The point is elaborated on page 218 of my book.

And what this means for us is basic. We tend to suppose that obedience and submission to the Lord are what are required of us, and in the end we are right. But this does not mean looking askance at contending with him concerning the difficulties and failures, the tragedies even, that encounter us along the way. For only as we become aware of the magnitude of what we are surrendering, as Jesus was in Gethsemane, is our surrender to the Lord fully meaningful. And out of our contention this awareness can come. Out of it can come also, as it did for Moses, the manifestation of the Lord to us, in a true hearing of his name and a real seeing of his form, albeit of his back rather than of his face.

Our Gospel reading (Matthew 22.15-22) was concerned with paying taxes to Caesar. In posing the question of whether it was right to do so, the Pharisees thought they had Jesus in a trap. If he said yes, he would lose the support of the Jewish crowds that had flocked to him in the final week before his crucifixiion, enabling him to face down the Pharisees and other religious authorities who felt threatened by him. If he said no, the Roman occupiers would be after him. And it would not do simply to say that he did not know, as the authorities had in response to his own question about the source of John’s baptism. His answer, however, avoided this trap: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

Less clear, however, is the application of Jesus’ dictum. Does it entail the division of our lives into two spheres not having a great deal to do with each other? We thought not. Instead we concluded, I believe rightly, that everything comes from God and therefore pertains to him. Certainly this is the presupposition of our Exodus reading. Caesar’s jurisdiction is secondary, by delegation, and valid only so far as it operates in accordance with God’s purposes (cf. John 19.11: “You [Pilate] would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above… “). What we may have missed, though, is the extent to which, while accepting the principle of God’s sovereignty, in practice we take Caesar, meaning society around us as well as government, to be in charge.

An essential purpose of our class is to equip you to carry on by yourselves. With your support, John Beckwith will take it over for the next three Sundays. May my absence in England be an occasion for its flourishing.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted