Daily Lesson for March 8, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 9 verses 13 through 21:

13 “Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stubborn people. 14 Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’ 15 So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. 16 And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had made yourselves a golden calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you. 17 So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. 18 Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed, in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. 19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also. 20 And the Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him. And I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. 21 Then I took the sinful thing, the calf that you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. And I threw the dust of it into the brook that ran down from the mountain.

Fascinating.

Here we have the infamous story of the Israelites and the Golden Calf, the molten image they created to alleviate their anxiety over God having kept them in the wilderness without a word for so long.

This story has been abused by non-Jews over the centuries to highlight Israel's disobedience. As a guard against this the Jewish writer Josephus left the story out of his History of the Jews, lest he give ammunition to those who already despised the Jewish people. But this is not a story solely of the faithlessness of the Jews. This is a story about the anxieties of all the people of God and the ways in which we, in St Paul's words, "exchange the worship of the immortal for images of the mortal".  None of us is immune from treachery against God. The wilderness can make a people do really crazy and disobedient things. This is why we pray, "Lead is not into temptation."

But here's the really fascinating part:

This isn't actually the only account in the Bible of the Golden Calf episode.  The other is found in Exodus and in that account Moses comes down off the mountaintop and goes absolutely ballistic at what he sees the Israelites doing with Golden Calf -- bedlam, revelry, singing, and even (LORD forbid) dancing. Seeing this Moses immediately draws a line. He slays 3,000 men. Then he crushes the Golden Calf and makes the still-living Israelites to drink the gold mixed with water.  They drink it to the dregs.

Notice any differences in that story in Exodus from this story we have in today's lesson in Deuteronomy?  In the one there is penalty and vengeance and death for many and absolute horror for all. In the other there is still deep regret and pain and heartbrokenness on Moses' part, but no killing and no vengeance. Their is prayer and lamentation. As my friend Jim Beck says, there is not so much anger but anguish.

Of course, it may be that they're all the same story with the gory details left out of the one and included in the other. Okay, that's definitely one way to read it.

But here's another way to read it:  Read it by asking ourselves which is the better story?  Which is the more Godly story?  Or, as Christians might ask, which of these two Moses stories would be the story Jesus would have lived -- did live?

These may be the most important questions in the world. How do we read these two texts?  How do we read the Bible?  Through what lens do we read the Hebrew Scriptures?  Which is the better story?

How you answer these questions will tell you a lot about your Moses, your Jesus, and your God?

How do you read?