Preliminaries:

• Satan recruited Judas to betray Jesus.
• The disciples prepared for the Passover/Unleavened Bread feast. They killed and roasted the lamb, brought the wine and unleavened bread, arranged the room, and so on.

Deliverance from Death

Jesus first connected his ministry/sacrifice with the Exodus. God delivered the people from slavery in Egypt. Exodus 12.1-14; 21-28 describes Passover. They sacrificed a lamb without blemish, and daubed its blood on the door posts. When the Death Angel passed over, and saw the blood, he spared everyone in the house. God brought the people out of Egypt so fast there wasn’t time for the bread to rise. Exodus 12.15-20 describes rituals related to Unleavened Bread.

Covenant

Second, Christ connected his new way with “the new covenant” promised by the prophets. A covenant is a promise, a contract, an agreement between God and people. The old covenant began with the Exodus and included the giving of the Law of Moses at Mt. Sinai. The old covenant reaches a climax when Moses sprinkled the blood of the covenant on the elders in God’s presence on the mountain (Exodus 24.8). Jesus, however, cut a new covenant, based on his life, given that all creation may be redeemed.

Jeremiah promised that God would make a new covenant (Jer. 31.33-34):

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

No longer will we meet God in a temple made of stone; no, we’ll meet God in our heart, from the least to the greatest, all will have equal access to God’s Spirit.

A Suffering Messiah

Luke 22.37 records that, quoting Isaiah 53.12, Jesus said,

For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, “And he was counted among the lawless.”

Here Jesus connects his ministry to a third Old Testament tradition, pointing to Isaiah 52.13-53.12, the fourth in a series of poems about an innocent person who chooses to suffer on behalf of others. This process comes to a climax in these words:

He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

Who did the prophet have in mind? Scholars suggest the prophet himself, or perhaps the nation Israel. Jesus  found in the Servant Songs of Isaiah a vision of who the Messiah was to be: not a conquering general-king like David of old, but a gentle Savior who took on himself the sins of the world.

On this night Jesus may have used non-verbal methods of teaching, ritual and tradition, because these reach deeper into the spirit than words alone, and because the night of betrayal and violence that lay ahead would seek to destroy everything Jesus hoped to teach and to begin.

“Do this in remembrance of me,” he said. I often pair “re-member” with “dis-member.” To dismember is to cut into pieces, but to remember is to join what has been separated into one whole. When we take part in the Lord’s Supper, we become one with him and with each other.

Left: Moses and tablets (Rembrandt)

We’re studying Exodus 32-34 in our Neighborhood Bible Study, part of a summer Great Chapters of the Bible series.

Why read these dusty old stories?

The scribes who preserved them had lost everything. Enemies had swept through their land, destroying everything and carting off most of the people to foreign soil.

These scribes, perhaps even those who had grown up far from the Promised Land, treasured these stories.

Why?

Because they tell of a man and a people who utterly betrayed their ideals, yet found their way back; they tells us about ourselves.

They tell of God long ago turning from justifiable anger to characteristic mercy and grace, as God turns today.

Ch 32 tells the story of the Golden Calf, with the also troubling account of the slaying of 3000 who were guilty.

Ch 33 has three main sections:

• vv 1-6 God commands the Israelites to go and to strip off their ornaments
• vv 7-11 God confers with Moses at the tent of meeting, not to be confused with the tabernacle
• vv 12-23 Moses prays with hutzpah that God go with the people and that God reveal Godself to Moses

Go! Strip off your ornaments!

After the episode of the Golden Calf idol, God calls on the people to “Go!” just as God called Abraham to “Go!” They are to resume their journey to the Promised Land. But two things have changed: they are to strip off their gold earrings and jewelry, and God will not accompany them.

They compromised their core identity in idol worship. They could have become, as they once had been, “no people.”

The scribes who collected the traditions and literature of Israel did so in the exile, the terrible aftermath of the nation’s long betrayal of God. Becoming “no people” was not an idle threat to them; they had to live it.

God demonstrates amazing grace here, by calling the people back to their mission, back to their roots.

What changed?

First, God demanded they remove their jewelry, which they had used to make their idol. In the same way Jesus demanded the  rich young ruler sell his many possessions and give them to the poor, then “Come, follow me.”

Most Americans like the Israelites have many things, but we aren’t rich. Our possessions possess us; they block our access to God.

Second, God would not go with them, lest God’s anger blaze in response to their being “stiff-necked”—stubborn, hard of heart rather than pliable and poor in spirit.

Moses recognized that the promise of land meant little if God were not present with them.

God with us—the tent of meeting

Later tradition conflated the tent of meeting and tabernacle. Here they are distinct.

The tabernacle was in the center of the camp, an ornate structure for sacrifice. The tent of meeting was far off, simple and unadorned.

The author may be contrasting the elaborately dressed and ornamented priest and sacrificial cult with a plain Moses and simple tent.

Moses met with God here; the people remained at their own tents, but with gestures of profound respect.

God met Moses face to face according to this text; represented by the pillar of cloud, however, God remained hidden from the people.

Verse 23, a diverse tradition, insists for his own protection that Moses may not see God’s face. This diversity, like the diversity of the psalms (not all written by David, although we attribute the psalter to him) and the diversity of the gospels, demonstrates that, no matter how sure and sacred, no one human tradition can convey the whole truth of God. Indeed, all human traditions, all human wisdom and knowledge together, cannot encompass God’s fullness.

But “the Word became flesh and (pitched a tent) among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14-15 (NRSV)

Moses’ daring prayer

 In the final section of ch 33, verses 12-23, Moses exemplifies both intimacy with God and audacious praying, which Christians can learn much from.

Moses is not satisfied with the promise of land; he want God’s presence. He pressed God to go with the people on their journey.

Astonishingly, God changes God’s mind. God replies to Moses’ plea, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

According to the New Interpreter’s Bible on this passage, the “you” here is singular. God promises to go with “you, Moses.” Ex 33:14 (NRSV)

Moses answers, insisting “I and your people” (v. 16).

Jesus promised, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Matt 11:28 (NRSV)

The Israelites are a distinct people because God is with them, for no other reason.

Then, Moses prays that God reveal more of God to him.

God agrees to show Moses God’s goodness, God’s Name (character), graciousness and mercy.

This tradition varies; here God refuses to show God’s face, because no mortal can survive seeing God’s face. God sets a limit beyond which not even Moses can go.

Old stories? Yes. Our longing to be in touch with the divine Presence is as old as the human spirit—and as new as the next breath. That’s why these old stories point you and me to brand new experience.