If you were only allowed one book from the Hebrew Scriptures, which would you choose? It would be a tough selection, wouldn’t it? At the risk of being called a Marcionite, there are a few books I might dispense with quite cheerfully: not least Leviticus (that continuing bane of some people’s lives) and also Numbers, and perhaps Ezra and Nehemiah. Personally, I’d also be happy to see quite a few other passages put to one side, including the invasion of the land by Joshua. However it would be hard to choose just one book to keep. For Isaiah would be high on my list, together with Genesis and the Psalms, Lamentations and some of the other prophets. In the final analysis however I’d pick Exodus: a book which begins with abject slavery and ends in the glorious presence of God. Along the way, we see all kinds of adventures, highs and lows, encounters and transformations, betrayals and revelations, miracles and mercies: all ending in today’s vision of clouds and glory. Such a core story which encompasses so much about living faith! What a perfect prelude today to this Sunday’s feast of the Transfiguration….
At first glance, first hearing, I have to say that the establishment of the tabernacle of God might not only seem a potentially disappointing conclusion to the book of Exodus but also a possibly worrying one. For, after all the experience of liberation, and dynamic movement in faith, what is this concern with place and fixture? Has temple religion crept back in at the last moment to undermine the prophetic witness of Moses and Miriam? That is certainly one of the great tensions of the Hebrew Scriptures, isn’t it? The book of Exodus certainly wrestles with the temptation to fix and glorify prophetic faith, as we see in the story of the golden calf. With hindsight, we may indeed see how the tabernacle was used as a precedent for the reversal of justice and mercy in the worst excesses of later temple and church establishment and the Gods of sinful obsession and exclusion they fostered. Yet this is not the true picture of the conclusion of the book of Exodus, which makes it still such a powerful challenge to those who would emtomb the our living God of liberation in walls of fear and gold. Let us therefore briefly reflect upon three aspects of the story in a more life-giving way: with three ‘Ps’…
Firstly, Profundity, or the awesome Mystery of God, is the central feature of the climax of Exodus. This is expressed in the images of the cloud and the glory of God. These are images of the ineffable and incomprehensible divine nature which are beyond our human grasp. Indeed, we are shown, even Moses cannot enter such glory. Thereby we are reminded that God is no mere lawgiver or cultic deity. Exodus is not to be read as the provider of merely one set of pictures of God or one set of stories of God’s people. However great the liberation of Israel, this is not to be read as an ideology. No one set of images, no one story, no one ideology – whether of left or right – no one identity can ever speak of the God of the burning bush, the miraculous One, the cloud of the unknowing and the glory of eternity.
Secondly, Presence is at the heart of the climax as well as the earlier story of Exodus. For the Profundity of God is, sometimes paradoxically, the intimate relationship in which God’s people, and indeed all of Creation, are bound, liberated and sustained. Without such presence all is lost. In this concluding passage, we are reminded that God’s people only find their true way, literally and metaphorically, when God is present with them. Waiting on God as well as walking with God is vital.
For thirdly, and perhaps most importantly for we who easily become stuck in our ways, the conclusion of Exodus speaks of Pilgrimage as the iconic symbol of human dwelling and journeying with God. As the final verse has it, it is when the cloud and fire of God are present in their profundity that the people of God may walk on.
So may the God of liberation continue to travel with us and before us, empowering us with love, and drawing us ever closer our of our slaveries into glory. In the Name of the transfigured and transfiguring One, Amen.
by Jo Inkpin, for St Francis College eucharist, Thursday 3 August 2017
Firstly, Profundity, or the awesome Mystery of God, is the central feature of the climax of Exodus. This is expressed in the images of the cloud and the glory of God. These are images of the ineffable and incomprehensible divine nature which are beyond our human grasp. Indeed, we are shown, even Moses cannot enter such glory. Thereby we are reminded that God is no mere lawgiver or cultic deity. Exodus is not to be read as the provider of merely one set of pictures of God or one set of stories of God’s people. However great the liberation of Israel, this is not to be read as an ideology. No one set of images, no one story, no one ideology – whether of left or right – no one identity can ever speak of the God of the burning bush, the miraculous One, the cloud of the unknowing and the glory of eternity.
Secondly, Presence is at the heart of the climax as well as the earlier story of Exodus. For the Profundity of God is, sometimes paradoxically, the intimate relationship in which God’s people, and indeed all of Creation, are bound, liberated and sustained. Without such presence all is lost. In this concluding passage, we are reminded that God’s people only find their true way, literally and metaphorically, when God is present with them. Waiting on God as well as walking with God is vital.
For thirdly, and perhaps most importantly for we who easily become stuck in our ways, the conclusion of Exodus speaks of Pilgrimage as the iconic symbol of human dwelling and journeying with God. As the final verse has it, it is when the cloud and fire of God are present in their profundity that the people of God may walk on.
So may the God of liberation continue to travel with us and before us, empowering us with love, and drawing us ever closer our of our slaveries into glory. In the Name of the transfigured and transfiguring One, Amen.
by Jo Inkpin, for St Francis College eucharist, Thursday 3 August 2017
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