After Beholding God

Sorry about the silence.  My computer finally kicked the bucket.  Two weeks and a new computer later, we're ready to go.

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Based primarily in Exodus 24:9-11

God has brought his people out of Egypt and lead them through the wilderness to His holy mountain, where he promises to give them his law, to set them apart and to guide their steps, like an old rutted driveway guides a driver in the dark.

YHWH calls Moses, with the priests and elders of Israel, up onto the mountain to meet with Him.  And there, in cloud and fire and darkness, they see God.  He stands on a floor of translucent sapphire, as the sky.  Scripture comments on the importance that God does not touch them.  They should be dead already, by simple exposure to His glory- any further contact would be disastrous.

This is the pinnacle of Israel as a nation.  Really, its birth, or its moment of adoption.  Father reveals Himself to His children, standing on beauty, in power and mystery, and all His people respond.

How?

They eat and drink.

I've been marveling at this passage for days now, and have marveled at it before in years past (judging by the dark underlining and marginal stars).  It's always sat as a beautiful thing to me, charming in an I-don't-get-it-but-I-like-it kind of way.  Last night, wrapped in a blanket in my great-grandmother's rocking chair in my attic, I realized what was so good, deeply good, about this passage.

So often I require my spirituality to be lived out in an extreme way.  I do not go half-way once my mind is set, and therefore, as a Christian with authority, I wrestle with the times I DON'T pray for healing, the times I DON'T engage with the schitzophrenic, ready to pray into whatever God brings, the times I DON'T share the gospel explicitly, in power and meekness.

Yet often this leaves me more frustrated than joyful.  I fail to live up to my own expectations in deed, and even when I act I don't always produce the fruit I desire.  I seldom do, really.

And I do not mean that the Christian should not pursue the miraculous-  the Bible is full of commands towards just that:  we are called to anoint and pray for the sick, to act boldly because the days are evil, to seek times of refreshing in the Spirit, pursue our giftings, and above all to love and seek first the kingdom.  These are fighting words, charging words.  They don't speak of resignation but of pushing the limits, something we all must do, and something from which the church so often retreats.

Yet here, in the greatest moment (thus far) of God's revelation to His collective people, Israel does nothing amazing.  They do not collapse in tears (at least, not for long), and there is no recorded resolutions or strivings to live into their new-found relationship with the God of the universe.  They behold YHWH in glory, and then they eat and drink.

A similar meal occurs in much of the old sacrificial system, beginning even with Passover-  families brought animals and grains and fruit to be sacrificed, and then feast upon their gifts (sharing with the priests).  The eating completed, consummated the sacrifice, celebrating the reception of that which saves us.  From thence comes the Last Supper, and then Communion, the eucharistic meal.  Eating/drinking, then, can hold immense spiritual significance.

But on the mountain with the leaders of Israel, God had yet to create the sacrificial system.  Passover had happened once, but had been linked to no greater celebration, little longitudinal ingraining.  I don't think the elders had anything in mind, except perhaps some combination of worship and hunger.

Interestingly, Israel met with God on the mountain while wandering in the desert- thus, the only food they ate was manna and quail, as given by God every morning.  Their eating and drinking only emphasized their insignificance, and yet their unexplainable importance before God.  Because while they were small, and should already be dead, they had been invited up into His presence, and given food.

The take away.  First, we underestimate the gift we have been given.  The presence of God, since the fall, has been fatal to man except when He makes a way.  So-and-so died trying to catch the ark, for goodness' sakes.  Yet we have been given access to the mountain.  When we rightly view the blessing we hold, the magnitude of this grace before us, we can offer no response of appropriate magnitude.  I think of honor-giving, like when Jeremiah Johnson gives horses to the chief who must then give something greater or else be shamed (Jeremiah ends up with a wife, and discovers love in the end).  When pride meets with a gift, it must earn, match, make itself worthy.  Israel, before the shining floors of God, cannot even try.

Instead, they enjoy that which God has given them.  They live, as they were created to live, before God, as they were meant to live.  Eating and drinking was not below the presence of God (though our pride would call it such, and strive to do something greater).  Indeed, the incarnation made our secular-spiritual division moot (did not Jesus eat fish before and after his resurrection?).

Instead, Israel acted 'human'ly (not fleshly, but 'human'ly), in the way God had created them, and by the means that He had provided.  They gathered, they saw Him, and they ate.  We might strive less, and worship more, if we followed their lead.

May we do the same, over pork tonight, donated to the cause.