Tuesday • 4/23/2024 •

Tuesday of the 4th Week of Easter

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Exodus 32:21-34; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 5:11-16

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum(“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90);following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Some passages, like today’s from Exodus, demand a wide-angle lens. The apostle Paul offers such a lens when in 1 Corinthians 10 he looks, through the lens of Christ, back at the golden calf incident and all the failings of Israel in the wilderness journey.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, … 4 [T]hey drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

6 Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. 7 Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” (Exodus 32:6)

11 These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. (1 Corinthians 10:1-7,11)

The Exodus events foreshadow the coming of Christ in a future that was then still distant. They even provide glimpses of his presence back then, battling “up close and personal” with sin. If God was indeed working a plan that would lead to the revelation of Christ and his work at “the end of the ages,” what instructions lie here for us?

Sin is deceitful. “So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” — Exodus 32:24. Aaron won’t accept his responsibility in proposing and actually making the golden calf as a means of placating the people (see Exodus 32:2-5). He makes it sound like it happened by magic.

The first lesson here may be that I need to be wary of my own heart’s propensity to twist reality to make me look good. Sin makes us all dissemblers, dodgers, evaders, and twisters of the truth.

The priestly office is designed to put an end to sin. “Put your sword on your side, each of you!...” — Exodus 32:27. Some members of the tribe of Levi had worshiped the golden calf, and some had refused. Moses decrees that those who had prostituted themselves with the idol must die at the hands of their fellow Levites who remained true to Yahweh. There can be no division in the house among the Levites, the tribe that exists for the sole purpose of overseeing the sacrifices that deal with sin.

From this distance it’s difficult to take in the powerful significance of the entirety of the sacrificial system that will be unfolded, especially in Leviticus. “It is the blood that makes atonement,” according to Leviticus 17:11. The writer to the Hebrews offers: “Indeed, under the law, it might almost be said that everything is cleansed by blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22 REB). All the sacrifices are about a reckoning for sin. And it is the tribe of Levi that will oversee those sacrifices.

In Christ, a passage like this one, calling for the killing of sinners who themselves are supposed to be in the business of killing sin, becomes a call for us to kill the sin within ourselves. As Paul says to the Colossians, “So put to death those parts of you which belong to the earth—fornication, indecency, lust, evil desires, and the ruthless greed which is nothing less than idolatry; on these divine retribution falls” (Colossians 3:5-6 REB).

There is a Mediator who would rather see Himself excluded if it means you can be included. “But now, if you will only forgive their sin—but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written.” — Exodus 32:32. Here, if anywhere in the Old Testament, is the voice of our Savior in advance. Moses would rather give up his own place in what he refers to as Yahweh’s “book,” that is, Moses’s place in God’s inheritance (for God’s book of life, by the way, see Psalm 69:28; Daniel 12:1; Malachi 3:16; Revelation 3:5; 13:8). Moses would rather be written out of God’s story than to see his brothers and sisters condemned for their sin. When Christ steps onto the field, he takes people’s diseases into himself, bears their sorrows, takes into himself the curse that they deserve, and on the Cross “becomes sin” on their behalf. That they might be accepted, he is willing to be rejected, written out of the book of life that they might be written in.

Here is a mysterious exchange, anticipated in the example of Moses. One can only sit in silence before it, and wonder. Why this? And for the likes of me?

The joy of Eastertide is ours because, and only because, of our Mediator’s self-giving on Good Friday. It seems fitting today to close with the prayer that concludes Good Friday’s worship:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day.

Reggie Kidd+