Wasting the gift: A meditation on the life and death of Samson

“...but the Angel said to her '...you will soon conceive and have a son!...for he shall be...a special servant of God from the time of his birth; and he will begin to rescue Israel...'” Judges 13:3-5, LB

30 “Don’t be frightened...” the angel told her, “for God has decided to wonderfully bless you! 31 Very soon now, you will become pregnant and have a baby boy...32 He shall be very great and...And he shall reign over Israel forever...'” Luke 2:30-32, LB

My devotions this year have come out of my meditative reading of the Book of Judges and recently I was struck by the fact that of all the leaders named and talked about in this volume, only Samson

has a story about his birth. In fact, the Samson cycle is four chapters long (Judges 13-16 - pretty long as stories go in that book) and one quarter of it alone (chapter 13) concerns how he came to be.

Samson as a baby boy?

His parents, Manoah and Mrs (only Delilah gets named in his story; all the other women – including his mother – are simply referred to impersonally as in “the woman”) live on the frontier of western Judah within shouting distance of the hated Philistine hostiles that live in the coastal region. Though they've been married for sometime they have no children and to be barren in those days was a curse. And then one day all that changes. Expectantly, while going about her housework, the woman is met by an angel who shares with her remarkable news: she was going to be a mother. In fact, she was already with child. Her only son was destined for greatness (so the angel said) and therefore his whole life he was to live the Nazirite way.

Did Samson have dreds?

In those days, if someone wanted to dedicate himself to God for a certain season of time, he would inform the priest and this would be the terms of his consecration: he was to drink nothing with alcohol in it, remain ritually pure by steering clear of anything dead and refrain from cutting his hair. It was the hair cut (or lack thereof) that would give you away to be a Nazirite, a separated one. This kind of vow could not be demanded. It was totally voluntary except in Samson's case: the angel told the woman he was to be a Nazirite his entire life, consecrated and set-apart for a special purpose. These were the terms of his extraordinary life. In fact, later when the angel returns and speaks to Manoah who wanted both confirmation as well as further instructions all the angel will offer is what he commanded the first time: he was to be a Nazirite for always. He would be God's chosen tool to begin to deliver his people from the domination by the Philistines.

The bad guys of Judges, Samuel and Kings

Hundreds of years before under Joshua's leadership, the Israelites had entered the land and had begun the process of evicting the Canaanites. God's instructions delivered by Moses had been very clear: everyone must go. No one who did not embrace the leadership of Yahweh as it was spelled out to Moses on Sinai was to remain in the land. If they did in time, they would “turn your sons away from me to serve other gods and the Lord's anger will burn against you and quickly destroy you” (Deut 7:4). Initially they had experienced impressive victories – Jericho, Ai, Gibeon – but at the time of Joshua's retirement there were still pockets of resistance of Canaanites who stubbornly remained in the land of Promise. What the Book of Judges records is what happens to God's people when they do not heed God's command: like a cancer the attraction to the world – at least, the world of their Canaanite neighbors – spreads insidiously among them and over a long period of time they eventually become indistinguishable from them. By the time Samson is born they've conformed so much to the worldly ways of the Canaanites that they've nearly forgotten their unique identity as a “people holy to the Lord your God” (Deut 7:6). This stokes God's ire and if they will not resist the Philistines and their growing cultural influence, he will.

Samson's life, so the angel said, was the first salvo of deliverance from Philistine domination. Later Saul would contend with them rigorously and David would do clean-up. After King David's rule, the Philistines pretty much vanish as a foil to God's people. But during Samson's lifetime they are a prevalent menace that no Israelite will do anything about.

Unselfconsciously, simply by being his impulsive, willful, selfish self, denying totally the consecrated life he was destined to live, he becomes a wrecking ball to Philistine hegemony. By the end of his short life, as the Philistine body count mounts he literally pulls the house down on top of their leaders, their priests and their god (see Judges 16). But even as the dust settles I can't get around the fact that his life was pretty much a train wreck that leaves me wondering what could have been had he tried to live the set-apart life he was called to live.

In my previous readings of Samson I've read the end of his story as almost like a “thief-on-the-cross” moment – a guy who realizes too late that he's squandered the gift God had given him but now requests one more opportunity to glorify God before his life is over. But that's not what the narrator tells us. Yes, his hair begins to grow again (16:22) (did none of the guys who captured him tell their boss what Delilah had learned about his hair?) Was nobody paying attention when following his “performance” (could it have been feats of strength?) he asked to be put between the pillars that “hold the temple up”? (v. 27) But the nature of his final prayer reveals the soul of the man. Here was no penitent thief on the cross- kind of prayer, i.e., “Lord, remember me when you enter your kingdom” but “Oh, please, give strength yet once more. God! With one avenging blow let me be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes!” (v. 28). No contrition here. There is nothing but a desire for revenge and with one mighty shove he dies with those he had lived and contended with for much of his life.

Reading his story again during Advent I couldn't help but hear echos of the Nativity story that we read again at this time of year:

• Like Jesus, the angel announced to his mother who was barren that she would give birth to a son.

• Like Jesus, the angel shared with her knowledge that he was being consecrated for a special purpose.

• Like Jesus, Samson was born to two parents living on the outskirts of wherever the action was (e.g., he was not born in Shiloh where the Tabernacle resided).

• Like Jesus, he was rejected by his own people and turned over to Gentile overlords (Judges 15).

• And like Jesus, his delivering-work that he was born to do was consummated in his death.

But for all that Samson was nothing like Jesus. As one man puts it aptly:

He is one of the most narcissistic persons in all the Bible. Self-gratification is what drives this man. Never in the Samson narrative does he operate in anyone's interest but his own. He does not care about God's plan or any of the divine standards of either his place as an Israelite or his Nazirite status. He does not care about the will of his parents or the hearts of his “lovers” with whom he consorts. All are to be manipulated for his sake...Very simply, Samson is not a type of Christ...Instead, if anything, Samson is a foil to Christ. Yes, there are similarities, but the contrasts are much greater. The similarities only heighten the contrasts all the more.

(NIV Application Commentary on Judges by K. Lawson Younger, Jr pp. 327-28)

How vastly different is the Savior that we welcome at his birth every December 25.

"He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion." Philippians 2:5-8, Msg

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV

At the credits roll on Samson's story the narrator adds, “He had led

Israel twenty years.” I haven't really figured out yet what that means. I mean for the bulk of his story he's living in a cave by himself or going into some Philistine town for a night of fornicating with some of their women. What we're told of him is that he's ruled by his glands and his passions. If that's leadership it certainly it's lowest form of it and his style is not to be envied or copied. In movies, he's commonly portrayed like a version of The Rock, a he-man with abs of steel. But if that's so why are the Philistines willing to pay Delilah $15 million in today's dollars (16:5) to find out his secret? What if he was just a guy who looked like an otherwise normal Hebrew until his life was threatened and then the Spirit of God would rush upon him and he would be unstoppable? The incredible hulk but just not green or muscle-bound?

This is how I usually imagine Samson

But what if he looked more like Mark Ruffalo than Dwayne Johnson?

Regardless, his legacy is tragic. Sure, he killed a lot of Philistines before his death but he frittered away his life and the awesome God-given potential that he had been born with. It provokes me to not be like him. To not live only for myself and my own version of success as we define it around here. To live, rather, obediently and faithfully and aspire to follow the path that Christ himself took all the way to Golgotha, if that is what is required of me.

Journey's end: Reflections on John 21:18-25

One last meal together

When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you’ll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don’t want to go.” He said this to hint at the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. And then he commanded, “Follow me.”

Turning his head, Peter noticed the disciple Jesus loved following right behind. When Peter noticed him, he asked Jesus, “Master, what’s going to happen to him?”

Jesus said, “If I want him to live until I come again, what’s that to you? You—follow me.”

John 21:18-22, The Message

“In the next day or two Frodo went through his papers and his writings with Sam, and he handed over his keys. There was a big book with plain red leather covers; its tall pages were now almost filled. At the beginning there were many leaves covered with Bilbo's thin wandering hand; but most of it was written in Frodo's firm flowing script. It was divided into chapters but Chapter 80 was unfinished, and after that were some blank leaves. The title page had many titles on it, crossed out one after another...”

'Why, you have nearly finished it, Mr. Frodo!' Sam exclaimed. 'Well, you have kept at it, I must say.'

'I have quite finished, Sam,' said Frodo. 'The last pages are for you.'

“The Grey Havens” in The Return of The King by J.R.R. Tolkien

For the last year and a half I have been camped in the Gospel of John taking a meandering, slow devotional journey through it. Just the other day I came to the end of the road: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (v. 25, NIV). The writer of the last sentence, be it John or a later contributor as some suggest, is waxing eloquent. As Gary Burge notes:

With playful and delightful hyperbole, John says that even all the books of the world could not contain Jesus’ story. Such expressions were common in antiquity. Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, a first-century teacher, wrote, “If all heaven were a parchment, and all the trees produced pens, and all the waters were ink, they would not suffice to inscribe the wisdom I have received from my teachers: and yet from the wisdom of the wise I have enjoyed only so much as the water a fly which plunges into the sea can remove.” John ends his Gospel with similar humility. The story is larger than anything he can imagine. His effort, while glorious for us to read, pales in comparison to the glory of the Person whom his story describes.

The story ends where it began – at the shore of the sea. Though John doesn't mention it in his gospel, all the other gospel writers do (Matthew 1:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11) sharing the origin story of the age-old Sunday School song “Fishers of Men” that I learned as a boy:

I will make you fishers of men,
Fishers of men, fishers of men.
I will make you fishers of men,
If you follow Me.

If you follow Me,
If you follow Me,
I will make you fishers of men,
If you follow Me.

Three years before Peter and John (along with Andrew and James) had been invited to leave their vocation as fishermen and apprentice themselves to this peripatetic rabbi who majored in story-telling and frequently confusing teaching that was validated by the miraculous again and again. They did drop their nets. They did turn their backs on their homes in Galilee and had followed Jesus of Nazareth all the way to the cross – and beyond. Now that journey had taken them back full circle to where it had all began. And just like then Peter and Jesus are walking along the shore of Lake Tiberius (John is the only one of the Gospel writers to refer to the sea with its proper Roman name) with John in tow. I imagine it's a cool morning at the lake and the waves are gently lapping along the shore. There's a bit of a breeze that gives a little bite to the air. Once again, Jesus turns to Peter and utters his all purpose invitation to all would-be disciples of every place and of every time: “Follow me” - through thick and thin, in good times and bad, even though it may cost you everything including your life – which it will. “You must follow me, Peter!” (v. 22) is how we're supposed to hear it.

All of us who read the story are silent witnesses of these three walking along the lake in the early morning. Church history is in the making. Peter and John both will follow Christ through the rest of their lives but the arc of their stories will follow different trajectories. As Bruce Milne puts it:

The ministries of Peter and John would be different. Peter would be the shepherd, John the seer; Peter the preacher, John the penman; Peter the foundational witness, John the faithful writer; Peter would die in the agony and passion of martyrdom, John would live on to great age and pass away in quiet serenity.

Both would follow Christ faithfully. In the early days of the movement known as the Church they would walk together ministering in both Jerusalem and Samaria. But eventually their paths would take them in different directions, John to Ephesus in modern-day Turkey (interrupted by several years spent in exile out in the Aegean) and Peter to ultimate martyrdom in Rome as Jesus had foretold. But at this particular moment in time all of that is in their future. Right now it is just Jesus and two of his most closest friends having a private conversation by the sea.

Mark's story ends with wonder in front of the empty tomb. Matthew's concludes with Jesus uttering “the Great Commission” to the Eleven. And Luke's finale is perhaps the most dramatic of all with Jesus ascending to heaven right before their eyes. But John's gospel, which many believe officially concludes with Thomas' declaration of Jesus being his Lord and God when the resurrected Christ appeared before him (John 20:26-31), is singularly unique in that it comes to an end in a quiet and yet emphatic invitation to follow the risen Savior to whatever end he has destined for each of us. With regards to Peter, Michael Card writes:

They had first met beside this very same sea, on this same shore. At first Jesus had to show Simon that the lake he thought was empty was indeed full of fish. Now he had done it once again. Now a new kind of fisherman is left standing there – beside not a lake of fish but a vast sea of souls. He will fish for men and women. He will tend and feed the flock of Jesus. He can accomplish all this now because, in his brokenness, he knows the certainty both of his love for Jesus and – more importantly – of Jesus' love for him. He is armed with the painful knowing of own end. He is ready. A Fragile Stone: The Emotional Life of Simon Peter

Tolkienphile that I am, the last verses in John wistfully remind me of chapter 9 in The Return of the King. The One Ring and Sauron utterly destroyed and King Elessar now enthroned in Gondor, the Third Age has ended. Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond and Bilbo are making one last journey to the Grey Havens to board the ship awaiting to carry them to Valinor. Frodo, accompanied by the faithful Sam, travels to the Havens, too, to bid farewell to this mighty company. Once there, however, Sam learns that Frodo plans on taking the ship as well. Crestfallen, Sam vainly tries to persuade Frodo to stay to no avail. Replies Frodo:

...I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. But you are my heir: all that I had and might have had I leave to you. And also you have Rose, and

The passing of the Red Book

Elanor; and Frodo-lad will come, and Rosie-lass, and Merry, and Goldilocks, and Pippin; and perhaps more that I cannot see. Your hands and your wits will be needed everywhere. You will be the Mayor, of course, as long as you want to be, and the most famous gardener in history; and you will read things out of the Red Book, and keep alive the memory of the age that is gone, so that people will remember the Great Danger and so love their beloved land all the more. And that will keep you as busy and as happy as anyone can be, as long as your part of the Story goes on.

Peter's and John's (as well as James' and the others) part of the great Story would continue for many years to come. All but John would suffer and die for the glory of the Name but all followed Christ and allowed him to write His story in theirs. And unlike that melancholy good-bye among the members of the Fellowship of the Ring at the Havens, his spirit would abide and remain in them all their lives. As Paul put it they would know “the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings,becoming like him in his death” (Phil 3:10-11, NIV). They told the Story to others who in turn passed it onto others through the millennia and because they did the world continues to fill with the stories of Jesus. And yet, as Frodo reminds us, despite all that has been written there's yet a few pages more for each of us to write our own installment of the Story that will go on until he returns. “Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen” (Ephesians 3:21, KJV).

In the centuries that followed, the books that spoke about Jesus have flowed by the thousands, and yet still the world is not full of them. In many, perhaps most, of those books Jesus remains the misunderstood Messiah. Misunderstood, not because he had been obtuse or obscure, but because the wisdom he spoke and embodied was not, could not be grasped only through the intellect. The wisdom Jesus was could only be comprehended through relationship with the Word who had become flesh. John: The Gospel of Wisdom by Michael Card

I'm hoping Christ is writing his story in my life

"...and the Glory of God filled the Dwellling" (A meditation on Exodus 40:34-38)

“The Cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Glory of God filled The Dwelling. Moses couldn’t enter the Tent of Meeting because the Cloud was upon it, and the Glory of God filled The Dwelling.”

Exodus 40:34-35, The Message

My thirteen and a half month study of the Book of Exodus ended yesterday. Since mid-January of 2016 until yesterday morning I have slowly plodded through its pages, musing on the old story once again. On my journey I was accompanied by Biblical scholars Walter Kaiser Jr., R. Alan Cole, J.A. Motyer and John Mackay as well as several others who contributed to my meditations – Kathy Lee-Thorp, Meindert DeJong, Thomas Cahill, Bruce Feiler and Walter Wangerin, Jr. The principal story line of Exodus I have known since my youth and flannel graph days – the people in slavery, the plagues visited upon Egypt, the Red Sea crossing, the receiving of the Ten Commandments, the Golden Calf and the construction of the Tabernacle – but just like I have found with the rest of the Scriptures, the Word is indeed “living and active”, so that every time you read it the potential is real to see something or hear something new that you hadn't seen or heard before. Such was the case with this read-through.

When I attended Bible college back in the early 80s, I didn't attend a school that embraced the JEDP-theory of the Pentateuch (essentially the belief that the first five books of the Bible were derived from several different sources instead of being composed by one author) but we had to, at least, be familiar with the idea. Having it be the source of my devotional life for a little over a year I am now more persuaded than ever that at least with Exodus, the book is a unity. I am no scholar by any stretch of the word but the themes of the book are consistent and seem to flow from one mind, one individual who was chosen for a remarkable task.

The Book of Genesis opens with creation and all its splendor, portraying humanity as it was always meant to be. It ends with the fateful words “...he was placed in a coffin in Egypt” (50:26). The story of Exodus begins where Genesis left off – in Egypt but the people who once sought refuge there had become enslaved for hundreds of years. By the end of the book the people are in the wilderness of Sinai, now free and in covenant with Yahweh with the glory of the Lord filling the Tabernacle. They

haven't just moved geographically. It's a brand new day, a new beginning. The verbiage of Exodus 39 has echoes of Genesis 1 in it – “God saw all that he made, and it was very good” Gen 1:31 compared with Exodus 39:43, “Moses inspected the work and saw that they had done it just as the Lord had commanded. So Moses blessed them.” I'm told by people who study such things that this is intentional.

J.A. Motyer writes of the “clouds” of Exodus:

And even more significant inclusio looks back to the first chapters of Exodus. There is no verbal reference to a 'cloud' in 1:1-2:10, yet we could not expound that passage without reference to 'days of darkness' and 'to living in the shadows.' It was, indeed, such a time. The dark shadow of enslavement lay upon the people of God, the bitter cry of bereavement as their sons were snatched from them for the river, the blows of the taskmaster, a future without hope, and the relentless, uncaring policy of genocide. They were at that time a people under a cloud, even if the text does not expressly say so. Now, at the end of the book, they were again a people under a cloud, this time the cloud of the Lord, the signal of his presence in glory, holiness and grace. Between these two clouds the Sovereign Lord of the whole earth had routed all the power of the enemy, granted his people deliverance, brought them to himself by the blood of the lamb, graced them with his directive law and come, in the fullness of his person, to take up residence in their midst as their indwelling God. This is the whole story of the book of Exodus.

The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of Exodus by J.A. Motyer, pp. 325-26

I think on that day that Moses inspects all that had been constructed (Exodus 39:32-43) – the furniture that will be in the Tent including the ark and the altar of incense, the tunics that the priests will wear and the special vestments for the high priest, the curtains and the stands that will hold up the Tent, and all the other special equipment. Like some agent of the FDA inspecting food, slowly Moses makes his way around the plot of ground where the articles have been lain inspecting their quality and ensuring that they are according to plan. One of the men who serves on our Board of Deacons has been involved in the construction of many homes. He tells me that between blueprint and finished product there are always a lot of “tweaks” to the plan. During his 40-day stay on the mountain, among other things, Moses had been given a blueprint for the Dwelling Place – the place where Yahweh would camp among his people. Amazingly, considering how many workmen had been involved, he finds at the end of the construction phase everything was completed “just as the LORD had commanded” (39:42).

All was set. All was made ready but the glory had not yet come. At this moment, it's beautiful craftsmanship but nothing else. And then, “the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (40:34). This is the climax of the story. God comes to dwell with his people and share in their travels. The Presence is so thick that not even Moses can enter the place. As Motyer comments:

Strange as it must have seemed, the tent designed for meeting was the very place even Moses found he could not meet with the Lord. The title belied the reality. The Lord had come home, but was not 'at home' to callers. Was Moses surprised? Reading between the lines, the text seems to hint that he was, that he tried to go in but found he could not. Yet, in reality, nothing had changed. On Sinai, while Moses did indeed enter the divine presence, he never did so without invitation, and in 24:15-16 he even waited six days to be called. The Lord is sovereignly in charge of his own front door. (p. 324)

John Mackay points out that the same cloud that had covered Mount Sinai when Moses had gone up on it (24:15-16) now settles and fills the sacred Tent “which becomes in effect a miniature, portable Sinai. The LORD's presence with his people is not confined to a single site, but may now with them wherever they go” (Exodus: A Mentor Commentary by John Mackay, p. 604). This is Day 1 of the beginning of the second year since leaving captivity. In the camp they are celebrating the Passover – it's first memorial celebration. The cloud of God's presence is filling his Dwelling Place among them. On this day, the hope and the joy they experienced must have been palpable. The living God was in their midst. The land of promise awaits them. Who could stop them now? Of whom could they be afraid? The only appropriate response to these reality is worship.

Unholy juxtaposition: A meditation on Exodus 32:1-6

The Bible employs all kinds of literary devices to tell its story – narrative, parable, proverb, metaphors, similes, poetry and things called chiasms, and hyperbole (as in, “If your right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee...”), only to name a few. In Exodus 31-32 the Biblical author uses juxtaposition by placing two events side by side to great affect.

As soon as the Covenant has been ratified and Moses, Aaron and the 70 elders finish their amazing meal in the Lord's presence at which they “see God” ( Exodus 24:10), Moses is invited to go further up the mountain to receive “the tablets of stone” on which will be placed the terms that the people have agreed to. So Moses goes up and Aaron and the rest of the leaders return to the plain below. As chapter 24 closes we're told that Moses enters the thick cloud that lays upon the heights and disappears from view for “forty days and forty nights” (the exact time that Noah and his family were in the ark). From the plains below, however, it looks like he enters the doors of an immense blast furnace.

Within the cloud, time becomes meaningless and over the next seven chapters, Yahweh reveals to Moses the design of the Place wherein he will dwell in the camp, the specifications of the furniture that will be set within the Tent as well as in the adjoining courtyard, the design of the priests' garments, the mixture of the incense that will burn before the Ark that will contain the tablets of the Covenant, even how they will pay for it as well as who will oversee the project and ensure that all is done according to plan. These aren't just blueprints he's receiving; everything will have a purpose in revealing the character and the heart of the God who has redeemed them from a life of slavery in Egypt. The very structure of the Tabernacle will be a sermon in physical form that will speak of God's majesty and power.

Moses will always look like this to me

What glories Moses must have seen while within the Cloud. What mysteries that were impossible to speak of later. And when it was all over, as he leaves the cloud the tablets of Testimony - “inscribed by the finger of God” (31:18) – are placed within his arms. Talk about a mountaintop experience! I can't help but think of Charlton Heston's version of Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments emerging from the cloud with that ethereal, far-away look, his face singed by glory. Even if the Biblical author doesn't tell us that his face glowed like it would later, Moses must have been on Cloud Nine. Think of all that had transpired in such a short time. Six months ago – more? less? - he had been an octogenarian shepherd too afraid to heed the summons that Yahweh was commanding him to do. But he returned to Egypt and a mighty kingdom was driven to its knees in a demonstrative way. And here he was now in a personal face-to-face encounter with the Creator of all the earth receiving the revelation that will shape a nation and the world for ages to come.

The tablets are then placed in his hands, the Cloud withdraws and then God speaks:  “Go! Get down there! Your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have fallen to pieces. In no time at all they’ve turned away from the way I commanded them...” (32:7, Msg) After a knock-your-literal-socks-off encounter atop the mountain you would expect something like the “Hallelujah Chorus” as a benediction but instead we hear a commanding voice of rebuke and Yahweh sounding like he has already disowned his people. While he's been in Glory, the people – or, at least some of them – have fallen apart. In the interim while Moses has been gone, the nation has fallen away. In fact, an argument could be made that in his absence they have broken all Ten Words that capture the essence of the Covenant.

While the chapter designations in the Bible are a human convention to help us distill the epic the “Story of stories” is, the demarcation between heavenly revelation (Exodus 25-31) and human invention (Exodus 32:1-5) could not be more stark: atop the mountain, there is purpose and design that communicates the holy from the unholy; beneath the people essentially return to a default setting of their life in Egypt and rip-off a form of Egyptian worship. As Thomas Cahill puts it:

Exodus calls it a “molten calf,” though this is by way of denigrating the idol. It was actually a bull, probably rampant and in rut, the aboriginal symbol of potency. This, cries Aharon,

“This is your God, O Israel,

who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”

What follows is an orgy of prostrations, animal slaughter, feasting, drinking, and, as the Book of Exodus puts it discreetly, “reveling” - that is, sexual indulgence in the manner of a pagan liturgy. The bull...was a common image of divinity in Mesopotamia, as it was in Egypt.; and though we cannot be certain that the people thought they were worshiping a bull-god (they may only have meant to worship YHWH as the invisible God who stands on the bull at his

footstool), they have surely made a “carved image” of a visible figure. They have mistaken YHWH for his creation. They have broken the first two Commandments. They have dishonored their forebears – their ancient fathers and mothers – who had so long refrained from idol worship; and, in the course of their reveling, it is most unlikely that they managed to refrain from adultery and sexual covetousness. With a little ingenuity, we might even conclude that they succeeded in breaking all Ten Commandments – but even five out of ten is a pretty good average for so short a time. (The Gift of the Jews, pp. 148-49)

I wonder if this moment in his people's history is what inspired the writer of Proverbs 29 to conclude:

“Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint;

but blessed is he who keeps the law.” 29:18 (NIV)

While Aaron and the elders anxiously waited for Moses they caved to the mounting pressure “to do something”, to appease the need of a nation to have something to bow down to and connect with (see Exodus 32:1-6). It's like King Saul who breaks with custom and performs the sacrifice himself before the army goes into battle because Samuel is late and the troops are beginning to slip away and the ones who remain are “quaking with fear” (1 Sam 13:9, NIV). What he does is expedient from a worldly point of view but from a heavenly perspective it reveals that whatever else he is he lacks the kind of faith a godly king is required to yield and it costs him the kingdom.

Admittedly, I don't always know what God is doing nor saying as far as Refuge is concerned. I'm not good at discerning “the times” because in so many ways it feels like trying to focus on the tip of your nose – you get all cross-eyed and blurry while you do it. While having “vision” or discernment as to what God is saying right now to the fellowship we serve is a good and needed thing, the “revelation” referred to in the proverb is that which begins with a capital R, as in the word of the Lord already revealed in Scripture. As in, Jesus is Lord and Master and Savior and calls us to deny ourselves and follow him even if it means to a foreign land or a smaller house or a poorer neighborhood. When the people of God lose sight of his authority over our lives, we begin “to cast off restraint” and reshape our lives and seek to conform them to whatever are the accepted norms of the culture we live in. We see this force at work in our own society in real time now. More and more moral confusion, more and more righteous ambiguity.

Even though Moses has been forewarned, when he sees with his own eyes how “the people were simply running wild” (v. 25) he is galvanized into action. With his nostrils flaring with holy zeal, he deliberately smashes the tablets at the foot of the mountain, melts the golden idol and pulverizes it to powder. Then with a loud shout, he commands the people to make a choice - “whoever is for the Lord, come to me!” (v. 26, NAS) – and then to radically deal with the spirit of rebellion at work in the camp -

This only makes sense if God hates sin
like a doctor hates disease

 “God’s orders, the God of Israel: ‘Strap on your swords and go to work. Crisscross the camp from one end to the other: Kill brother, friend, neighbor.’”

“The Levites carried out Moses’ orders. Three thousand of the people were killed that day.” (v. 27, Msg)

This is one of those passages that offends every person who has ever been perplexed about what appears to be the “angry Old Man” God of the Old Testament and the “loving and meek” Jesus of the New. And yet this same Jesus said some pretty stark things himself:

“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:26, NAS)

“Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.” (Matthew 16:25, Msg)

And the aforementioned hyperbolic statement:

“Yes, if your right hand leads you astray cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than that your whole body should go to the rubbish-heap.” (Matthew 5:30, PHILLIPS)

The long and short of it is, God - the Lord of Old and New Testaments together - is grieved by the presence of sin in our lives as well as in our Christian community and the way out is not in denial or forbearance but in brutal, decisive action though it look like a Klingon bezerker running through the camp. Honestly, it makes me squeamish but can a holy God ask any less of us than our undivided love and loyalty? When we lose sight of Who He is and how He has commanded us to live, all kinds of trouble can find us and threaten the health of our spiritual life.

They saw his glory too: A meditation on Exodus 24:9-11 on Christmas Eve

“Then they climbed the mountain—Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel—and saw the God of Israel. He was standing on a pavement of something like sapphires—pure, clear sky-blue. He didn’t hurt these pillar-leaders of the Israelites: They saw God; and they ate and drank.” Exodus 24:9-11, The Message

“In one of the most amazing texts in the Bible, these men saw God.” Walter Kaiser, Jr

They trembled too...but it was just acting

In the Bible, to “see” God is no small thing. In fact, the few that had such a numinous experience with glory wrote afterward about it as if they had a brush with death but lived to tell of it: Gideon, Manoah, Isaiah, Ezekiel. All of them describe being whelmed by a wave of terror. Think Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Cowardly Lion (and Toto, too) approaching dreadfully into the throne room of the “great and terrible Oz” except in this case it's not fiction and there is no friendly little man over in the corner behind a curtain working the levers. On the mountain when Jesus is transfigured before a few of his closest disciples, just the sound of God's voice is enough to cause them to hug the ground as if being caught in a barrage of artillery. All that to say it is no light thing to stumble across glory.

After a little more than three months of sojourning from Egypt, the people of Israel had finally arrived at the mountain, “the mountain of God” as it is referred to a couple of times in Exodus. Author Bruce Feiler notes in his own tracking of his ancient ancestors' footsteps,

The Israelites, who for centuries were enslaved in the flatlands of Egypt, had not encountered mountains as high as the Sinai for at least six hundred years. The Bible says they “trembled,” and seeing the red granite mountains in the southern Sinai, one of the leading possibilities for the site, one can understand why.

Rising 7,455 feet above the plain Jebel Musa (the traditional site of Mount Sinai) is not a particularly tall mountain as those things go but “its barren face is dramatic...As the American visitor John Lloyd Stephens wrote in 1835, 'Among all the stupendous works of Nature, not a place can be selected more fitting for the exhibition of Almighty power.'” (Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey). Add to it thunder, lightning, thick billowing smoke, fire and the very mountain – mountain! - “trembling violently” (Exodus 19:18-19) no wonder the people pleaded with Moses to go on their behalf. They were certain their lives hung in the balance before such Power.

His invitation to Scrooge is an echo of the one offered to them

Over the next few weeks, Moses will make that trip up and down that mountain several times during which time he will receive the foundational Ten Commandments (20) and the complimentary Book of the Covenant (21-24) as well as the design plan of what was to be his dwelling place among them in their travels through the wilderness (25-31). After the people heard the terms of the Covenant and agreed wholeheartedly to them, Moses records that he then solemnized the moment with sacrifice, sprinkling the blood upon the them (24:8). And then God extends his remarkable invitation to Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders to join him upon the mountain for a meal. I think of the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol who beckons Scrooge in his bedroom to “come in here and know me better, man” as this kind of moment. But instead of a jocular giant cajoling a frightened Scrooge to make his acquaintance it is the King of all the earth whose very presence has made the mountain shake all the way down to its roots. “Scared” is so inadequate a word to describe their frame of mind at that moment but do they dare decline an invitation from the Deity?

All that is preserved for posterity from that awe-ful moment, however, is a sparse two sentences that state the main facts: that they went up and saw God; that the most they could or bothered to describe was the color of the pavement he stood upon, a blue like a clear, blue sky; and that they sat down and ate and drank in his presence (24:9-11). No one bothered to record what was on the menu. Not one thing that was said – if anything was said at all – was written down later. Clearly the most astonishing thing about this episode as far as they were concerned is that they did not die.

Something like this

When our kids were little, we used to have a tank with seven gold fish in the boys' room. As God's creatures go, the gold fish is a pretty simple creation: they swim, they eat and they poop. If I remember right, we didn't have a filter or an air pump. It was just a tank full of tap water with some pretty rocks and underwater decorations. After awhile, the water got murkier and murkier and the onus to clean the tank and change the water became increasingly greater with each passing day. Soon, the water was so green all you could see was a fin or a tail or a faint glitter of gold now and then. The time had come and an intervention was at hand. Linda and I didn't draw straws or rock-scizzor-paper-it; I was simply the first to cave.

I set to work. First with a little net I gently gathered up the small school of fish in a large plastic bag full of tepid water and set them aside. Then I got cleaning: I scrubbed the sides of several weeks' worth of algae, I rinsed the little rocks of gravel and made sure every sign of filth and muck had been washed away. Then I filled the tank afresh with clean, lukewarm water and gently reintroduced them to their former habitat. And instantly six of them bellied up and died. Just like that.

Maybe after weeks of living in dirty, low-oxygenated water to suddenly breathe rarefied air was too much for their nervous system? Or (as someone who heard me tell this story recently suggested) it was the Windex I used to clean the glass? Whatever the reason, instantly six were translated to gold fish heaven. And the seventh? He lived and seemed happily content to be back in his old surroundings (later that spring we brought him out to some friends of ours' goldfish pond where “Freddie” - as they came to call him – happily lived on for several more years).

Ever since then that image of six croaked fish floating on the surface of the water seems to me to be an appropriate metaphor of what would become of any of us were we to be suddenly translated into the Presence of God. Sinful from the get-go, rebels the whole lot of us, one moment of being exposed to heaven's gamma rays and we're dead men. Recall, several chapters later in Exodus when Moses boldly asks Yahweh to see God's glory (33:18), God curtly replies that he will be allowed to see his back but not his face “for no one can see me and live” (v. 20). Which makes Exodus 24:9-11 all the more remarkable. Except for Moses, these guys are not overly spiritual – Aaron will be complicit in the making of the Golden Calf a month or so later, Nadab and Abihu will be dead by holy fire early on in their travels for being reckless (and probably drunk) carrying out their priestly duties and all of these elders (unless Joshua and Caleb are included among them) will die in the wilderness on account of rebellion. And yet, reports Moses, they sat in the Presence of God and saw Him.

Of this moment, theologian John Mackay says that these “representatives of Israel are given a foretaste of what heaven is like when they are permitted this audience with the King” (Exodus: A Mentor Commentary). Nearly a millennium later at the occasion of another sacred meal, Philip asks his rabbi and teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” To wit Jesus will astoundingly reply, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:8,9). Many years later, John, who was at that dinner, will write those words that will be read at most Christmas Eve services tonight,

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth...No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only...has made him known” (John 1:14, 18)

Um, sorta like this

A thousand or more years before seventy or more guys sat down to a meal and lived to tell of it. Perhaps that they could has to do with the fact that prior to that moment they had been sprinkled with blood and their sins had been covered. Without that, they would have been melted just like those two Nazis were in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they dared to open the Ark of the Covenant. Poet Annie Dillard once reflected how pedestrian we can become in worship, reciting the liturgy by rote without pausing to think about what we are intoning:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god (sic) may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god (sic) may draw us out to where we can never return.’” (Teaching a Stone to Talk)

And yet this same God who shook the mountain and caused it to tremble and quake before Him is the one who has come close to us in Jesus allowing us to enter his presence, sit down and enjoy his friendship.