Thoughts & Deeds

ROGATION SUNDAY: Thoughts & Deeds
a homily by the Rev. Matthew Brench for Grace Anglican Church on 5 May 2024

The Rogation Days are the flip-side of Thanksgiving: these are the days we pray for God’s provision.

• But it’s not just about “thoughts and prayers”, it’s “thoughts and deeds”.
• What is true in the natural world for natural flourishing has its spiritual counterpart also.

O LORD, from whom all good things do come:

Grant to us thy humble servants, that

1. by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good,
2. and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same;

through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Good Thoughts – think this through.  We pray for God’s holy inspiration so that we can think good things.  Is this divine thought control? Celestial thought police?  Nothing so crass.

The Greek philosophers developed a system of understanding human virtue which at times came remarkably close to biblical truth.  One of their key insights was the notion that our actions spring from our character, and the nurturing of virtuous deeds helps build virtuous character.  They glimpsed, however dimly, the truth that Jesus would go on to teach: “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.  These are what defile a person” (Matthew 15:18-20a). Or as he said another time, “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:18).

How do you fix your thoughts?  Jesus says set your mind on the things of God, not the things of men; it starts with the simple matter of what you give attention to, what you read, what you sing, what you dwell upon, what you obsess over and dream about.  Similarly, St. Paul said “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2).  So much of what we spend time with is ephemeral, temporal, corruptible if not already corrupted.  More often than not, we need to lift ourselves out of the gutter and focus on the land of the light rather than the darkness.  This, more than anything else, is where we must rely upon (and pray for) holy inspiration.

So if you want to do good deeds, perform works that are righteous, act in ways that are virtuous, you have to start with your heart and mind, your psyche, where all your acts originate.

Good Speech – And before we move from your psyche to your actions, there’s something very important in between: the tongue.  The Epistle of St. James is sometimes referred to as the New Testament’s wisdom book.  He doesn’t write about the Gospel very much, but he does address a lot of practical issues in Christian living, and he pulls no punches when it comes to identifying the sinful tendencies of man.  Consider this verse we heard today: “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless” (James 1:26).  Do you know someone who purports to be a Christian, but has an unbridled tongue?  I don’t mean simply using rude words, but all sorts of speech that are “stained by the world.”  People who speak words of anger, who lash out at their opponents; people whose words are weapons rather than a healing balm, whose communication is ultimately about themselves and not about God; people who lie or cheat or weasel their way around speaking the truth, rather than proclaiming God’s Word without shame or fear.  Maybe you’ve thought of a couple choice politicians.  Maybe this reminds you of some famous ministers whose rash words and actions have betrayed a more shallow faith that you would have imagined.  Or maybe that person with the unholy tongue is you.  As St. James implies, the tongue is like a horse – a large and strong animal that requires a bridle to keep under control. This isn’t something we master easily, or alone.  Like a bad habit or an addiction, the tongue is quick to betray the true state of your psyche.

So if you want to do good deeds, perform works that are righteous, act in ways that are virtuous, have to learn to bridle your tongue, which mediates much of what comes out of your heart and mind, and flows into your actions.

Good Acts – At last, we come to our actions.  We pray that by God’s merciful guiding we might perform deeds of righteousness that match the good thoughts that we ought to think.  As the Holy Spirit inspires your imagination, your heart and mind, your very will itself, so too will your words and deeds begin to follow suit.  It’s a slow process, being cleaned from the inside out, and sometimes we are able to observe more progress than other times, but the trajectory of the Christian life is one of sanctification: being made holy.  Again, our passage from James helps us understand this point:

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:22-25).

Notice the importance of your attention here: “the one who looks into the perfect law… will be blessed in his doing.”  Righteous deeds depend upon righteous thoughts.  That’s why St. Paul taught that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23b).  For the only perfect deed, the only truly righteous action, must come from a similarly perfect heart and mind.  Thus anybody who has no love or faith in Christ is unable to produce truly righteous deeds.  Certainly, non-Christians can do good things for others, but these are not the fruit of faith; at best they are cultivated human virtues which carefully mask the sinfulness within.  Indeed, as the Psalmist wrote more than once, “there is not that does good; no not one” (Psalm 14:1,3; 53:1,3).  Only Christ is truly righteous, his heart and mind truly steadfast to his heavenly Father; only his words are “pure words like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times” (Psalm 12:6), only his deeds are perfectly holy and good.  It is in following and imitating him that we learn an all three fronts.

So, having begun to set your heart and mind on the things of God, and having begun to bridle your tongue against the wild passions of the sinful nature within you, you can then begin to address your actions, your habits, your deeds.  If you try to clean up your behavior without addressing your psyche or your tongue, then your spiritual or religious practices will be unguided, random, disconnected from who you are as a person and from the actual spiritual strengths and weaknesses that you possess.  It is when you turn your heart and mind to Christ that you begin to see him as truly is, and start to understand what it is that he’s saying to you, much like the Apostles in today’s Gospel lesson (John 16:29-30).  It is when you subject your tongue to the bridle of holiness that you begin to realize just how off-kilter your passions take you, and start to learn a new level of self-control.  And it is then, in that greater knowledge and self-control, that you can begin to practice deeds of righteousness, be it penance for your past sins, charity for the good of others, or other disciplines like prayer and fasting that also help realign your whole life – body, psyche, and spirit – into the Way of Christ.

Forsake & Follow

a homily for the 3rd Sunday after Easter

ANSELM

Start with his prayer: Teach me to seek you, and as I seek you, show yourself to me; for I cannot seek you unless you show me how, and I will never find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you by desiring you, and desire you by seeking you; let me find you by loving you, and love you in finding you.  Amen.

So prayed St. Anselm, who lived in the 1000’s.  He was a Good Bishop, if we can borrow from the language of last week’s sermon.  Like many bishops in the early medieval centuries, he started out as a monk and an abbot; he was a man of prayer and a man of contemplation much longer than he was a leader of the church.  He is perhaps most famous for his contributions to theology (his greatest treatise is Cur Deus Homo) and the use of philosophy to serve the theological task.

But a large portion of his surviving written works are simply letters and prayers from his time as an abbot and monk.  Far from the stereotype of the ivory tower theologian of obscure terminology and language, Anselm was a man of deep devotion, rooted and grounded in prayer.  “Faith seeking understanding” is a motto attributed to him, and this opening prayer that I read is a further reflection of this.  In this prayer he expresses his desire to seek God, which depends upon God’s revelation and his faith.  The acts of desiring God and seeking God are thus tied together, as are the resultant states of finding God and loving God.  In short, he’s seeking a consistency across his entire person – mind and heart – to be with the One who loves him and died for him.  This consistency is a major theme of the Scripture lessons on this third Sunday after Easter.

FORSAKE

Collect: Grant unto all them that are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, that they may forsake those things that are contrary to their profession…

Epistle: I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul

FOLLOW

Collect: Grant unto all them that are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, that they may… follow all such things as are agreeable to the same.

Epistle: they may, by your good works which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation

DOING ALL THIS STRENGTHENED BY CHRIST

Gospel: “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’? … you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.  In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.  Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

The King of Love My Shepherd Is

1 Peter 2 on the Christ the Good Shepherd

Outline & Notes based on those of Melville Scott

Jesus’ role as the Good Shepherd is grounded in (and a demonstration of) divine love.

A.  The Christian Calling.

The Christian ideal is not satisfied by mere resignation under punishment, for the Christian is to be patient, not only when he suffers justly, but when he suffers wrongly.  He must be as ready to suffer for doing right as he is for doing wrong.  Such patience is “acceptable with God,” for it can only come from the highest motives (“conscience towards God”).  Christian meekness is far more than a mere passive quality, and must never be confounded with weakness, for it needs far more strength to restrain our passions than to let them have their way.  The Christian is meek because the passion of love has the mastery over all other passions.

B.   The Example of Love.

Such conduct is our bounden duty, for we are called not only to trust in Christ, but to follow Christ.  We are to follow His footsteps of sinlessness, of sincerity, of meekness under provocation, of calm confidence in the just judgement of God.  Unless we endeavour to be like Christ in His holiness we cannot be like Him in His patience, Who “did good and suffered for it.”  We cannot otherwise suffer as Christ, but at best only as the penitent thief “receiving the due reward of our deeds.”  But we are called to do far more than this.

C.   The Sacrifice of Love.

Love was the very essence of Christ’s sacrifice, and must, therefore, be the example we are to follow.  The exceeding love of Christ’s sacrifice is seen in every phrase of the description.

     “His Own Self.” — He alone could bear the Cross, and He bore it alone.  The Good Shepherd did not send after the lost sheep, but went after them.

     “In His Own Body.” — The high priests had offered the bodies of animals, turning over to them the pain of sacrifice.  Christ bore all “in His Own Body.”

     “Upon the tree” — a place of agony inconceivable and of shame inexpressible, of dreadful loneliness, of horrible publicity.  He was made as one accursed for us.

     All this was a sacrifice of love, for it was done “for our sins.”

D.   The Purpose of Love.

Christ’s purpose in thus dying was far more than merely our pardon.  He came, not merely that our sins should be forgiven, but that we “having died to sin should live unto righteousness.”  He came to heal the wounds of sin and to restore us to perfect soundness.  He came, not merely that our wanderings should be overlooked, but that we should cease to wander; not only to bring us back to the fold, but as our “Shepherd and Bishop” to keep us ever under His love and care.  Thus the final words of the Epistle prepare for the fuller teaching of the Gospel…

I am the Good Shepherd.  He is our shepherd/pastor and our overseer/bishop.  The full gamut of church ministry stems from him.

Judging, Wisdom, and Victory (Triduum homilies)

Here are the recordings and notes for my three homilies through the Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.

MAUNDY THURSDAY

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

What Jesus has accomplished with his blood is offered to you right now in this Sacrament.

Do you judge yourself truly?

GOOD FRIDAY

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Jesus acted wisely (or prospered) by undergoing this Passion.

• High and lifted up, exalted on the Cross
• Appearance was astonishingly marred
• He shall sprinkle (purify) many nations
• Kings will be impressed by this sacrifice
• Jesus didn’t seem like a king himself, beforehand
• He carried our griefs and sorrows
• He received the punishment meant for us
• All of us are/were guilty, and he took all our iniquities
• He did not object to his maltreatment (for it was God’s will)
• This offering of himself will prosper in his hand
• His righteousness shall “make many to be accounted righteous”
• And he shall bear their iniquities (thus, an exchange)
• Therefore he shall divide the spoil, as a victory over evil & death

HOLY SATURDAY

1 Peter 3:17-22

Even in death, Jesus proclaims victory.

Q. What meaneth his descending into Hell? – from Nowell’s Middle Catechism, 1572 –

A. That as Christ in his body descended into the bowels of the earth, so in his soul severed from his body, he descended into hell; 

and that therewith also, the virtue of his death so pierced through to the dead, and to Hell itself,

1. that both the souls of the unbelieving felt their most painful and just damnation for infidelity, and Satan himself, the Prince of hell, felt that all the power of his tyranny and darkness was weakened, vanquished, and fallen to ruin;
2. and on the other side, the dead who while they lived, believed in Christ, understood that the work of their redemption was now finished, and perceived the effect and strength thereof with most sweet and assured comfort.

Emptying

PALM SUNDAY: Philippians 2:5-11

I apologize for the poor sound quality this time… I clearly need to improve the positioning of the computer during these recordings.

What did God the Son give up?

• Did not deem equality with God something to be grasped
• emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave

What are we to give up?

• Entitlement to the things that are ours
• Autonomy of self

What did Jesus receive?

• Exaltation from God
• The name that is above every name
• The worship from all creation

What shall we receive?

• A place at Christ’s table to worship him
• Abidance in his name

Laws both Civil and Religious (Exodus 23)

Ancient Israel was supposed to be sort of a theocracy, God himself being their king. As such, their laws were a seamless mix of social, political, and religious legislation for the people to follow and live by. Sometimes people today get nervous when religious people are voted into office, that they want to establish some sort of theocracy in our country today. While they may have other cases for concern, this one is a red herring; even at the height of Christianized Europe no state ever came close to a theocracy, either in practice or in name. The Papal States might be the only exception here. Apart from that blip, and perhaps a couple other very-short-lived extremist movements such as the first round of Anabaptists, Christianity has always had a very clear distinction and division between the authority of the Church and the authority of the State.

But the Law of Moses is a different kettle of fish; it metes out all sorts of laws. It has become a significant feature of biblical interpretation, therefore, to distinguish between laws that are civil, laws that are cultic/religious, and laws that are moral. The first category pertained to the nation-state of ancient Israel, and thus can serve only as an example for other countries. The second category pertained to Old Covenant worship which has since passed away. It is only the third category, therefore, that directly binds the Christian to this day, and sometimes it takes a bit of study to sort these out from one another.

For example, the first 9 verses of Exodus 23 contain a listing of laws which are a mix of civil and moral, continuing where the previous chapter left off. We read here about the maintenance of justice in court, returning lost property, and respecting the sojourners (resident aliens). But then verses 10-19 turn to religious laws, describing key elements of the cultus (worship practice) of Old Covenant Israel. The Sabbath Day is reiterated and the Sabbath Year is introduced. The three primary holidays are commanded: Unleavened Bread, Harvest, and Ingathering (tied to the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles).

The chapter’s second half is occupied with God’s promises that his angel will accompany and protect them such that they will be able to conquer the Promised Land. Christians reading this should remember a similar saying from Jesus: “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). What God intends to build, no man can thwart; what God has joined together, let no man rend asunder; what God promises, will be accomplished.

After all, what’s the point of learning how to live in God’s Kingdom if you aren’t assured of the fact that you’re actually going to get to live there?

Same with us today – all the commandments of Jesus, all the moral laws of the Old and New Testaments, are instructions for how we are to live in the Kingdom of God where Christ is reigning even now. If Jesus wasn’t our king, he wouldn’t have needed bother teaching us how to be upstanding citizens in his realm. But he is, and he has; and so we heed the words of the Word.

Economic Justice and Social Justice (Exodus 22)

The string of laws that began with the Ten Commandments continue to unfold here in chapter 22. Let’s consider the opening verses:

If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. ² If a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him, ³ but if the sun has risen on him, there shall be bloodguilt for him. He shall surely pay. If he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. ⁴ If the stolen beast is found alive in his possession, whether it is an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall pay double.

Exodus 22:1-4

“Theft is theft”, one might be tempted to say. But God’s justice recognizes different contexts, nuances, and severities. Consider:

• If a stolen animal can be returned, the thief must “pay double”, that is, return it and give another one too.
• If the stolen animal is killed or sold, however, the thief must pay four or five times its value, depending upon the value of the animal (oxen being much larger and more expensive than sheep).
• If a thief can’t repay, he is sold into slavery (see the previous chapter on Israelite slavery).
• If a thief is caught and killed at night, his killer is not guilty of murder.
• But if a thief is caught in the daytime, his death is not warranted…
  This is in part because the penalty for theft is supposed to be monetary, not death;
  This is also partly because if a thief is brazen enough to steal in the daytime then he’s probably desperate.

Notice how both justice for the robbed and compassion for the robber is balanced in this set of laws. Keep this in mind as you read any and every other set of laws here in the Torah.

In verse 16 the general subject of laws switches from economics to society; economic justice to social justice. Again, let’s look at the first entry:

If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife.  If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins.

Exodus 22:16-17

Did the young couple elope? Make them get married, and the man pay his new wife’s family according to the “bride-price” tradition. Was the young man taking advantage of the young woman? Now he’s got to live with the consequences (whether or not she got pregnant!) for the rest of his life. What if the man is untrustworthy, or potentially abusive or neglectful towards the woman? Her father can refuse the marriage and the man still has to pay them.

Thus the Law aims to address both victims and perpetrators in their respective situations, and thereby benefit society as a whole. This is the meaning of “social justice” – laws that are good for the maintenance of a healthy and godly society.

Along that line of concern we then see laws against bestiality, public blasphemy, oppression of resident aliens, widows, and orphans, and usury.

But not only are the vulnerable protected by law, but also the prominent: “You shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people” (22:28). These two statements are put together for a reason: earthly rulers are granted rule by God himself; all authority derives from the King of Creation. Thus to curse an earthly ruler is to revile God. Have you seen people cursing out the President? Have you done so yourself? Such behavior is unjust, bad for a peaceful society, and violations of God’s law. Besides, we’ve already seen the evil of cursing others called out in the previous chapter; this should come as no surprise now.

The High Value of Life (Exodus 21)

Having reached the halfway point of the book of Exodus (chapter 20 out of 40, the Ten Commandments), we now dive headlong into the sequence of laws of various types that so often typify popular perception of the Torah. Chapter 21 of the book of Exodus deals with slaves, violence, and livestock. It’s worth remembering that the chapter divisions in the Bible are a medieval invention for the sake of convenience – they generally make good reading-length units but do not always perfectly reflect the division of subject matter across a given book in the Bible. As a result, many of the following chapters may feel a bit scattered, even haphazard, about the subjects they address. This is especially true with large lections of books like Leviticus and Proverbs where strings of short singular statements are common.

That being said, there is a loose theme linking the laws in chapter 21: the high value of life. In modern parlance, we speak of the “sanctity” of life, particularly when addressing the ethical issues of abortion (at one end) and euthanasia (at the other). But, as we all know, life is sacred all the way through, not just in the womb and on the hospice bed. And that’s what we see in action with this string of laws.

The first subject is slavery, which isn’t exactly an easy subject to tackle these days. With a high view of human freedom, we have a cultural aversion to the concept of people “owning” other people. And particularly with the spectre of American slavery in our past, it’s hard to conceive of other systems of slavery. The form of slavery described in the first 11 verses is perhaps more akin to what was once called “indentured servitude” – a slave belongs to a household for a set period of time, and then must be released. This respects the slave, on the one hand, by giving him or her a means of repaying debts without being stuck in an inescapable cycle of poverty, and this respects the slave owner, on the other hand, by not sinking personal costs into the slave upon the end of the 7-year contract. At the same time, if the slave wants a perpetual contract, that is an option. There are even additional rules for female slaves, to protect them from maltreatment.

If we compare this to how we handle debts, debt repayment, and employment in today’s economy, we find both affirmations and challenges towards current practice. An honest reading of Scripture will always remind us of the limitations of secular theories such as distributism, capitalism, and the rest.

The second subject is violence, especially in discerning between murder and manslaughter. People who kill by accident, or unintentionally, will be able to flee to safe zone where they can live in a sort of temporary in-state exile; thus they receive a punishment for their crime but need not be subject to the fullest extent of the law. But murder in its various forms, including striking and cursing, is punishable by death. Yes, even verbal cursing! You didn’t think Jesus simply made that up, did you?

In verses 20-27, life in the womb and the livelihood of slaves get specific notes among these laws, acknowledging the need to protect these particularly vulnerable members of society.

This is where “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” comes from, too. It’s a covenant principle that Jesus would edit for the New Covenant, though the basic idea that punishments should fit the crime remains a universally-applicable lesson.

The third subject is livestock, though violence is still part of the picture: if an animals kills a human, the animal is punished. But because animals are also the property of other humans, attention must be given to the owner’s livelihood (on the one hand) and responsibility to protect others from a dangerous animal (on the other).

In all of these, we see a respect and concern for the sanctity of life. However one might feel about the death penalty as a punitive punishment, the appointment of it for the crimes listed here signifies to the reader that such violations of human life are sins of a high order indeed. How we treat others, how we handle and respect others’ property, as well as the consequences of our actions, are all subject to the great principle that all life is sacred, and God will hold us accountable for how we treat it.

Thus these laws shed light not simply on “thou shalt do no murder,” but indeed on many of the Ten Commandments.

The Covenant Stipulations (Exodus 20)

Something I haven’t examined much yet in this walk-through of the book of Exodus is the subject of a covenant. In the Ancient Near East, the covenant was a standardized literary form for brokering a peace treaty or similar agreement, typically between a greater and a lesser power (be it a king and his vassal, a conqueror and the conquered, etc.). In pretty much every written covenant, these are the elements you find:

1. Identification of the two parties entering into this covenant, usually with some sort of prologue, backstory, or historical narrative about how and why this covenant has come about;
2. Stipulations or obligations that both parties agree to uphold toward one another;
3. The blessings and curses associated with keeping or breaking those stipulations;
4. a document clause noting where or when this agreement will be read, rehearsed, or displayed in time to come.

When we speak of the “Old Covenant” we usually mean the covenant that God made with Israel through Moses. In effect, the entire Torah is the covenant document; Genesis and half of Exodus being the prologue and backstory material (point 1), and the covenant stipulations, blessings, and curses occupying the second half of Exodus, and nearly all of Leviticus and Numbers, Deuteronomy then serving as a summary of the whole thing.

The Ten Commandments, occupying the majority of Exodus 20, mark the beginning of the covenant stipulations in the Torah (although there were already some ritual instructions back in chapter 12 on the subject of the Passover). And the Ten Commandments also serve as the heart of the Torah’s teaching: all laws and rules stem from these ten. Indeed, some biblical commentators have argued that the book of Deuteronomy is structured as a massive commentary on the Ten Commandments.

Now, even though we live under the New Covenant, brokered by Christ, rather than under the Mosaic Covenant, the Ten Commandments still serve us as a coherent summary of godly law and behavior. With only minor transpositions, the fulness of the teaching of the Ten Commandments is reiterated in the teachings of Christ and his Apostles, wherein we find the New Covenant set out. Thus they have remained a staple of Christian instruction, even landing a lasting place in the Anglican Communion liturgy. (Imagine if we read the entire three-chapter Sermon the Mount at the beginning of each eucharist instead!)

After the Ten, verses 21-26 detail the rules for building altars for sacrifice. It’s interesting to read God say “in every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you“, as under the Covenant of Moses there was typically only once place where God would cause his name to be remembered: the Tent of Meeting, or Tabernacle, and later, the Temple. Yet God makes this promise about “every [such] place“, neatly leaving room for we who live under the New Covenant: God will come to us and bless us at every altar of his Church where we call upon him. We just must see that we do not commit idolatry – several examples are given here at the end of chapter 20, though we know that there are many others ways in which people have turned idolatrous.

Trust God one day at a time (Exodus 16-19)

When we pray “give us this day our daily bread”, what the grammar really means in that phrase is “our bread for tomorrow”, that is, Jesus taught us to pray in trust that God would look after us in the short-term, and leave the long-term to trust. Not that we can’t make our own plans, investments, and whatnot to look after ourselves and one another through the course of this life, of course, but when it comes to following God we are rarely privy to his Big Picture. And honestly, considering God exists outside of time and space we know it (as he’s the Creator and everything else is created) we probably couldn’t conceive his Big Picture perspective even he told us.

Then again, there are elements of the big picture which he has revealed. All who are in Christ are promised eternal life with him in a renewed heaven and earth that will not know decay or corruption, where sin and death will be no more. But we can’t really prepare ourselves for that… it’s too big. And so we live our ordinary lives, one day at a time, slowly learning the ways of holiness, worship, adoration, and thanksgiving. Thus we pray for “our daily bread”, our “bread for the morrow”, rather than attempt to clog up our spiritual attentions with the whole course of our lives in a single moment.

The Israelites in the exodus generation lived out this very principle, too. As they departed from Egypt and forged their way through a desolate wilderness, they had a Big Picture promise from God: they were going to inherited a land of their own! But they had to journey there, and they had a stop to make along the way at the holy mountain where Moses had first seen God in the form of a fire in a bush. They’d already grumbled about the lack of water, and now in chapter 16 they’re getting upset about the lack of food. And so God provided them, literally, with daily bread. Six mornings of the week, a mysterious food which they named manna would appear on the ground like dew, and they would collect that day’s supply. Only on the sabbath day would they not collect it, as God would provide two days’ worth on the previous day. It was hard, and there were hiccups along the way, but the Israelites were learning how to trust God for their very-literally-daily bread, one day at a time.

But they didn’t really internalize this lesson, did they? For in chapter 17 they complained about the lack of water again. And then they got attacked by a nearby tribal kingdom, the Amalekites. In both cases, God appointed Moses to work his miracles to save his people: he struck a rock with a staff to produce water, and he lifted up his hands in prayer to turn the tide of battle. Note that the rock was stationary: the people couldn’t take this water source with them. It’d only serve them in that one spot, and then they’d have to trust God after setting out on their journey again. Same with the battle: God didn’t give them better armor and weapons, but simply a prayer warrior to stand on a hilltop. If they want to survive future attacks, they’ll have to turn to God in prayer all over again.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? God teaches us, in all sorts of ways, to trust in him, day by day. He will not resort to giving us magic, or allowing himself to be reduced to the role of a genie, thus putting us in charge of his power to make use of at our will. Rather, God is the King and we are his servants, subject to his will and pleasure. He will is for our good, and his pleasure is our sanctification to stand along with him, so we can trust him. Yet it’s awfully hard to entrust ourselves to him, isn’t it?

Moses had his own struggle with this, in his own way. After all his complaints and protestations about his inability to speak and to lead, he was awfully reticent to share his leadership role and authority. In chapter 18 we read of how he was swamped with the responsibility of hearing the peoples’ cases, settling disputes, and serving as judge and law-giver for every fiddly little issue among the people. It took Jethro, his father-in-law, to speak godly wisdom to Moses about sharing the burden of leadership. He could indeed entrust God-given authority to others; he didn’t have to be in control; he didn’t have to cling to a godlike role over Israel.

And then, finally, in chapter 19, the people arrive at the mountain. God gives a hint at his Big Picture plan again: “Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (19:5-6). This time they have a three-day set of instructions for preparation. They have two days to consecrate themselves, then they must wash their garments and be ready to listen to God on the third day. Just as Jesus rested in the tomb at the end of his life’s journey and then rose on the third day, so the Israelites rested and waited at the foot of Mt. Sinai, awaiting the appearance of the Lord at the appointed time.

Despite following these instructions, not all of the people were welcome onto God’s mountain; the invitation list was relatively small. This, perhaps, is more like the mount of transfiguration, where Jesus brought only three of his twelve disciples with him to see his glory and get glimpses of Moses and Elijah with him. What will God say on this mountain? How long will the people have to wait for Moses and the others to return down?

They don’t know. They only have to wait and see, and trust in God’s timing and plan. How about you?