Hero’s Journey or Exodus? Part 2

The exodus model differs from the journey’s quest in two –for me–compelling ways.

Moses leading the Israelites across the Reed Sea, a fresco in a Jewish synagogue in Dura Europos, 3rd century C.E.

In my last posting, Part 1 of this extended discussion on two models of the spiritual journey, I looked at the popular model of the hero’s journey. I call it popular because Joseph Campbell gave it such appealing presentations. Now, I turn to the second model, the story of the exodus.

Fundamentally the exodus story is the story of liberation, the liberation of a people. Through Moses, God frees the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, freeing them through a series of mighty works he performs on their behalf. 

Fundamentally the exodus story is the story of liberation, the liberation of a people.

The struggle for freedom climaxes in the miraculous passing of the Israelites through the Reed Sea on dry land; the Egyptian army is drowned when it tries to follow. Then something interesting happens. If Israel had taken the normal coastal road along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, they would have arrived in the land of Canaan in a matter of weeks. But God directs them to pursue their journey through the middle of the Sinai desert. That journey ends up taking 40 years.

Learning to Exercise Responsible Freedom

Why would God direct Israel into such a long, slow, and circuitous route to Canaan? The answer I believe is that this disorganized band of freed slaves is not yet a people, a nation that can hold its own when it arrives in Canaan. What is needed is a time for nation-building. Nation-building, however, is not a quick and instant task. It can take a long time to forge a group of individuals into a unified society. That is the task of those 40 years in the Sinai wilderness.

In particular, Israel must learn how to live with the freedom God has given it, without falling back into the patterns of tyranny from which they emerged in Egypt. For the great illusion of many revolutions is that freedom means license for every person to do exactly what he or she wants to do. 

If you operate with that understanding of freedom, then society becomes a power struggle among all the competing interests and persons. That power struggle comes to an end only when one group or individual gathers all power into their or his hands. When that happens, a new tyranny replaces the old one that the revolution overthrew. We have seen this pattern repeated over and over again in history. 

For the freedom that God has given the Israelite slaves to survive, they must come to recognize that they must exercise a responsible freedom. Responsible freedom means that I enjoy the freedom to be myself, but in a society where everyone else is accorded the same freedom. Responsible freedom, therefore, means we accept limits on our autonomy.

Israel must learn how to live with the freedom God has given it, without falling back into the patterns of tyranny from which they emerged in Egypt.

What is happening in Sinai during those 40 years is that God is establishing a covenant with Israel and giving Israel a code of law that will enable Israel not only to survive as a nation, but also to flourish by a practice of responsible freedom. 

After 40 years of wandering, the Israelites cross the Jordan River to take possession of the land God has promised to them, the land of Canaan. What we find in the rest of the Old Testament story is how seductive will be the temptation for Israel to return to the life of Egypt.

Over and over again, Israel will compromise its monotheism, reintroducing the worship of other gods. It will backtrack from its principles of social justice, repeating the patterns of exploitation and tyranny practiced in Egypt. As a result, Israel will lose its land and freedom, going into exile.

Four Distinctive Features of the Exodus Model

Let me highlight four distinctive features of the Exodus story.

First, the Exodus story is a story about liberation. What Israel is given in the exodus from Egypt is the gift of freedom. Israel does not free itself from slavery. No, God frees them—and thus we are given the original meaning of salvation.

The gift of the Torah or Law is a gift that God gives so Israel can retain its freedom through the practice of responsible freedom. What Israel must learn in the wilderness is how to love God with all their being and love their neighbor as themselves. That is what a saved life looks like–a life of health, harmony, justice, wholeness, and peace.

Second, the exodus is not a story of the liberation of individuals as individuals, but the liberation or salvation of a people. What is primary in the story is the creation of a people, the people of Israel.

Yes, there are heroes in that story, especially Moses. In the story of Moses, there are many places where the life of Moses follows the classic pattern of the hero’s journey. But the exodus story is not primarily the story of the heroic life of Moses. It is the story of the liberation and forming of a people. Salvation has a fundamental social character rather than an individual character.

Three, note how the exodus story ends. Israel does not return to Egypt to resume its life in Egypt as a transformed people. The journey ends in the Promised Land, a new destination and a new home. 

The old home is left behind. It is the land of oppression. Instead God leads them to a new home, a different place from where they began their journey. The Promised Land is a place where Israel can flourish in freedom, if Israel is willing to practice the principles of responsible freedom.

Finally, Israel remembers and celebrates this story of liberation each year through the Passover festival. Passover is the supreme religious festival of Judaism. It remembers the gift of Israel’s liberation. It continues to be seen as the paradigm for how God relates to Israel all through its history and into its future. 

Scholars speculate that in the ancient past, Passover may have had its origins in a spring festival celebrated by the Canaanites. But what is striking is that the Israelites historicize the festival, making it not a celebration of nature’s cycles, but of a historical event, the Israelite’s liberation from slavery. It is a celebration of liberation, of a people being set free for a life of liberty under covenant with God.

The Jewish Concept of Historical Time

This Jewish concept of Passover involves a dramatically different concept of historical time than did those pagan fertility cults that I discussed in my last posting. Historical time is seen as linear, not cyclical. History has a beginning and it has an end. History time moves from one to the other.

In the historical event of the exodus, God frees Israel from Egypt and sets Israel on a journey. When the journey ends, it does not bring Israel back home to Egypt, but to a new destination, the Promised Land. Egypt and the Promised Land are not one and the same. 

Therefore, the divine movement in the world is not seen primarily as moving through the cycles of nature, but through divine interventions into human life, interventions that make a decisive difference. The divine character of God is revealed in God’s interventions in unique historical events, events that are meant to free human beings into a wholesome society. 

Scholars have noted that this Hebrew understanding of time means that Judaism has built into it a momentum for change. Religion is to lead people to a new and better experience of life, a life of liberation. 

The divine character of God is revealed in God’s interventions in unique historical events, events that are meant to free human beings into a wholesome society. 

Time moves forward from an initial starting point toward a fully developed end point in the future. What the future end point will be is not fully clear, but it will not be a return to the initial state of the world at the time of creation. 

The ancient pagan mindset tended to see the Golden Age of mankind as lying in the past, at the time of creation. This was re-emphasized each year in the pagan celebrations of the New Year Festival.

Hebrew thought, on the other hand, sees the Golden Age lying at the end, not at the beginning of history, but at the end of history when the Kingdom of God will be ushered in in all its fullness. History is a linear journey with mankind moving ahead to a Golden Age that has not yet dawned. 

If we remain true to this mindset, then the Hebrew concept of time works not to re-establish the status quo but to give incentive to change, change that leads to a better future ahead. 

Christian Adaptations of the Exodus Model

With its origins in Judaism, Christianity adopts this same Hebrew mindset of linear historical time. With one big difference: Christianity sees the decisive intervention of God into human life as being not the exodus from Egypt, but the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.

The death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are seen as the ultimate events of liberation, except in this case, not from the political and economic and social oppression of Egyptian slavery, but from our spiritual slavery to sin, death, and evil. The events of Holy Week, Easter, and Ascension then become another Passover, the Christian Passover. They celebrate our salvation from a kind of spiritual enslavement.

Still, exodus becomes the basic model for the classic Christian understanding of the spiritual journey. Let me mention a few examples.

When monasticism arose in the church in the late 3^rd and 4^th centuries, it arose in the deserts of Egypt and Syria. That is not accidental, for by this time, the desert had come to be associated with the location for spiritual transformation and formation. This was one of the legacies of the exodus story in Jewish and Christian imaginations.

One of the first and great expositions of the Christian understanding of the spiritual journey is a book titled The Life of Moses, by the early church father Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory was a renowned Christian theologian of the 4^th century. He and his brother Basil of Caesarea were great apologists for what became the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. He lived and worked in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey.

…exodus becomes the basic model for the classic Christian understanding of the spiritual journey.

In his book The Life of Moses, he interprets the story of Moses and the exodus as an allegory. The allegory describes the spiritual journey of the soul as it journeys to God and to God’s realm. In that journey (a mystical journey as Gregory understands it), he sees the soul going through three stages, symbolized by God’s revelation of himself to Moses, first in light, then in cloud, then in darkness.

Gregory is especially notable for his teaching that the Christian soul never fully reaches the end of his journey, even in eternity. Perfection is seen to be a never-ending journey. He writes: This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him.

Another great Christian exposition of the exodus model of the spiritual journey is Dante’s Divine Comedy. This epic poem tells the story of Dante’s own spiritual journey.

He begins in a dark wood of human confusion and despair. He journeys first through the realm of human sin, Hell. Then he begins his ascent to Paradise, passing through the stages of Purgatory as sins are cleansed. He ends his journey in the celestial Paradise where he reaches the end of his journey with a beatific vision of God.

In fact, his poem ends not with Dante returning to a transformed life in this world, but caught up in the ecstasy of divine love at the center of time and space. The end of the journey is a far different and far more glorious place than the dark wood where he began. His exodus is the journey through spiritual purification.

Finally I want to mention a great Protestant classic of the spiritual journey: John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress. This book is the classic Protestant adaptation of the exodus model of the spiritual journey. 

It has a hero, the figure of Christian, who travels on his way to the celestial city through a series of tests, temptations, and adventures. The land he leaves behind is a kind of Puritan version of Egypt. When he reaches the celestial city, he crosses through the river of death, never to return home. He comes to his new home, the celestial land of heaven.

Why I Find the Exodus Model So Compelling

We have then two models for the spiritual journey: the hero’s journey and the exodus. We often see writers on spirituality blending aspects of the two models together. Even in the exodus story, as I mentioned, we find Moses as an individual exhibiting some features of the hero’s journey.

I personally resonate with the hero’s journey model because my own spiritual journey mirrors some of its components. I have traveled Campbell’s circle, and returned home again, but as a stronger and spiritually healthier person. But I find the exodus model more compelling for two important reasons. 

First, as I have mentioned several times, the hero’s journey generally has an individualistic cast. The transformed hero may have a beneficial impact on society once he returns home, but the hero’s journey is not primarily about a people’s journey as a people.

Maybe that is one reason why Joseph Campbell’s presentations so resonate with Americans. Our culture is one that values individualism, and a spiritual journey that concentrates on the transformation of an individual appeals to us. Even those classic Christian statements that I cited–the works of Gregory of Nyssa, Dante, and John Bunyan–also adapt the exodus story along an individualistic line. They describe the spiritual journey of individuals.

…we can never escape the fact that the exodus model of the spiritual journey is always a story of a spiritual journey of a people, not just of individuals.

But I think that we can never escape the fact that the exodus model of the spiritual journey is always a story of a spiritual journey of a people, not just of individuals. For this reason, Judaism and Christianity remain corporate in their religious visions. The people of Israel as a people, the Church as the Body of Christ, remain central to both religions.

I think that is important. The hero’s journey can breed a sense of elitism. It is after all a story of a hero. What happens then if we do not feel we are heroes? Is the spiritual journey then something we cannot hope to experience?

What about all of us average Christians who do not have burning bush mystical experiences or Damascus Road transformations? Can we participate in any spiritual journey?

I answer a decisive Yes. We participate in the spiritual journey through our participation in the life, worship, and ministry of our home church. Life in a normal parish church may not always feel all that transformative, what with its petty disputes and meanness. 

But it can be very transformative, as we share in its life, in its the study of the Word, its celebration of the sacraments, and its ministry to those in need. That participation lived out through a lifetime of devotion can bring about transformations just as real as Moses’ or St. Paul’s. The transformation may be slow, quiet, and hidden. Nonetheless, whether transformation is gradual or immediate, it is still transformation.

Here is where I resonate strongly with the exodus model. When I look back on the spiritual journey I’ve traversed in my life, I have to say that I have had no sudden or dramatic revelations or enlightenments or mystical experiences that revolutionized my life and consciousness as did the enlightenment that the Buddha had under the Bodhi tree.

My experience of transformation has been much more an experience of living out in the wilderness for a long time. There in the wilderness I have undergone many transformations, but in slow, quiet, and hidden ways. My formation as a Christian, however, has been deeply shaped and influenced by my participation in a number of local Christian congregations. It has not been an exclusively individual journey.

I believe that for most Christians, that will be the way we experience the spiritual journey. If we take our involvement in a local church seriously and we take the call to Christian discipleship seriously, we will be transformed more often than not in these slow, quiet, and hidden ways. This means I have a high regard for life in a congregation. Life in a local church may have its many problems, but it is still the place where the Spirit works to transform us spiritually.

The Best is Yet Ahead

Second, I find myself most drawn to the exodus model because of its sense of the end point of the journey and its sense of time. Again, as I’ve mentioned several times, the end of the Exodus journey is not the return to Egypt, but the arrival in the Promised Land. 

The exodus story nurtures an openness to change. As a result, life takes on vitality, because we are spiritually always on our tiptoes waiting with incredible anticipation to see what amazing things God is doing and will do.

What I find fascinating in the trajectory of the Biblical story is that the Bible begins with a garden, the garden of Eden, and in the Christian Bible ends with a city, the city of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, described in the last two chapters of Revelation.

God is a true conservative, preserving what is good and best in the past, but God is also a true liberal, in the sense of his liberating all creation for a glorious liberty that exceeds description.

Yet in the heart of that city lies the garden. The garden has not been abolished and abandoned, but it has been caught up into something much greater and more glorious, a city where God dwells with his people forever. The garden is preserved and glorified in the city. God is a true conservative, preserving what is good and best in the past, but God is also a true liberal, in the sense of his liberating all creation for a glorious liberty that exceeds description.

What all this says to me is that God is at work not just to save our lives so that we can return to our lives as they are, there to be more happy, effective, and productive.

No, God is at work to bring us and the whole world to something far more glorious than we can ever imagine, a fulfillment that exceeds whatever we can dream. This is a vision of incredible hope. In the exodus story, the best does not lie behind us in the past. It lies ahead.

Final Comment

This posting completes my reflections upon the Book of Exodus, reflections that have occupied my last 34 blog postings. I hope they inspire you to go back and re-read the Book of Exodus and then do so again and again. Let it words sink deep into your souls, for it is, I believe, the paradigm of salvation. This is what the journey to salvation looks like, whether we are an individual or a people. 

Hero’s Journey or Exodus? Part 1

Joseph Campbell and the Book of Exodus offer contrasting models of the spiritual journey.

You may have noticed, as I have, that it has become popular in recent decades to talk about spiritual journeys. 

I’m not sure my grandparents would have, nor my parents. They would have talked more about piety. Many today, however, have thrown out the language of piety. They talk about spiritual journeys.

One reason may be that ours is an era of religious ferment. People are exploring many religious options different from the one they were raised in. 

Many more are holding up their religious convictions for reconsideration. They are on a spiritual quest. The words “spiritual journey” offer a feeling of openness, flexibility, and readiness to change–qualities today’s generations admire.

Today two different models for the spiritual journey compete for our attention: the hero’s journey and the biblical story of the exodus.

But what is a spiritual journey? What happens on it? Where does it lead? These are questions we may not always stop to ask. 

Today two different models for the spiritual journey compete for our attention: the hero’s journey and the biblical story of the exodus. Though they share some features, they are not exactly the same thing. They understand a spiritual journey in different ways. They do not aim for the same destination.  

In this posting, I will look at the model offered by the hero’s journey. In my next posting I will look at the contrasting model offered by the story of the exodus. 

The Hero’s Journey as Spiritual Journey

Joseph Campbell, 1904-1987

The form of the spiritual journey as a hero’s quest has been popularized recently in the writings of the late Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). A scholar of world mythology, he presented his view in several books, most notably The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He also discussed it in his famous TV interviews with Bill Moyer, which were transcribed in the book The Power of Myth. (Another compelling presentation of the hero’s journey is found in Robert Bly’s book Iron John.)

Campbell identified this kind of spiritual journey in numerous myths from a variety of world cultures. He called it the monomyth, the most basic myth of mankind, because its structure and pattern were repeated in stories and myths from cultures around the world. 

He summarized the myth in this way:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

He identified 17 steps that were customary in a hero’s quest story. I will not describe them in detail. If you wish to explore them, you can do so by clicking on the Wikipedia entry and diagram on the quest. I will just highlight a few important stages in the hero’s quest.

The quest begins with a man or boy (and usually it is a man or boy in the mythological stories, although women and girls can go on quests too) being called to go on an adventure. 

That call is usually associated with the hero becoming aware of a major lack in his life. He may not yet have fully grown up and become mature. He faces life challenges, but does not have the power or knowledge to meet them. Or he lives in a society that is also immature. It may be torn apart by conflicts or disordered. His journey may in fact begin with an act of injustice that separates him from his family and home.

The man sets out on a quest for something he needs to either live more healthily in his world or master it. The quest takes him out of his known world into an unknown world. On his quest he encounters mentors and tempters. He faces various tests and challenges. Usually he experiences some kind of an abyss experience, which Campbell calls entering into the belly of the whale.

Ultimately he experiences a transformation, usually coming after an encounter with a person of incredible power. This person may be divine, but often brings an experience of unconditional love. The transformation involves a unification of divided aspects of his life, a unification of his bodily and the spiritual dimensions, a gift of wisdom, or a transformation of consciousness, in which compassion becomes prominent.

He has now achieved his goal. He begins a return home. The return trip may have its various dangers and temptations, but the hero has strength to make it.

He returns grown up, mature, healed, with gifts of wisdom and power. He is free to live without fear. He is master of two worlds. He also returns home with a boon for the society in which he grew up. With his new knowledge and powers, he is able to help heal or transform his society and restores justice. In most of these stories, it is important to note that the hero returns home, returns home that is if he has met the challenges of the quest successfully. 

The Gilgamesh Epic

Gilgamesh depicted on an Assyrian palace wall

This model has deep roots in the ancient world. One of the earliest examples is the epic story of Gilgamesh. This is a poetic epic that comes from the Sumerian civilization that flourished in Mesopotamia around the start of the 3^rdmillennium B.C.

Gilgamesh is king of the Sumerian city of Uruk. He is a lusty undisciplined king, delighting in warfare and sexual pleasure. His rule creates chaos in the city, and the citizens complain to the gods for relief. 

The gods create a companion for Gilgamesh, a wild man named Enkidu, to distract him from his tyranny. The two men become fast friends, engaging in all kinds of shenanigans out in the wild fields. Enkidu, however, is killed, and Gilgamesh is confronted with the reality of death. He becomes obsessed with finding the secret of immortality.

He begins a long and complicated journey. It brings him ultimately to Utnapishtim, the one mortal and his wife who survived a great flood and were given the gift of immortality by the gods. Utnapishtim directs Gilgamesh to a garden where the plant of immortality grows.

Gilgamesh picks the plant but on his return home, it is eaten by a snake. Having lost the gift of immortality, Gilgamesh returns to Uruk with wisdom, understanding that immortality is not given to men. He becomes a model king for Uruk.

The Lion King

The hero’s quest is a theme we often encounter in modern movies. One excellent example is that beloved Disney masterpiece The Lion King.

In that movie, the lion cub Simba is driven out of his father’s kingdom by a wicked uncle after the uncle murders Simba’s father, the rightful king. In exile, Simba is befriended by a warthog and meerkat, with whom he lives into early adulthood.

He then encounters the lioness Nala whom his parents had originally intended to be his wife. She calls him to return to his father’s kingdom, which has become a wasteland under his uncle’s tyrannical rule. 

After many refusals, Simba does, but he returns not as a weak lion cub, but as a full-grown lion warrior, with the gifts and powers to do the task for which he is called.

The Story of the Buddha

If you wish to look for a more historical and less fictional exemplar of the hero’s quest, the best example is the life of the Buddha, the course of whose life follows the hero’s quest quite closely.

Image of the Buddha depicted in an old Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan

The historic Siddhartha Gautama is an Indian prince born into a princely family near Nepal in the 6^th century B.C. His father tries to protect his son from all contact with the evils and sorrows of the world.

But as a young man, during a chariot ride outside the palace, he encounters successively an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and an ascetic. These encounters pop his psychological and social bubble, and Gautama decides to abandon his royal life and family and become an ascetic, searching for the answer to human suffering.

He becomes an ascetic for many years, until he experiences an enlightenment while meditating under a tree. This enlightenment transforms him. He decides to use the gifts given to him in this enlightenment to return to the world to become a teacher and preacher. From his ministry arises the whole movement of Buddhism that has left an indelible impact especially on the east Asian world.

Let me make a few comments on this model of the spiritual journey.

Myths as Symbols of Human Experience

First, Campbell interprets the mythological story’s elements as symbols of what happens to a human being spiritually and psychologically as he or she moves towards spiritual wholeness. The myths talk about spiritual and psychological experiences any of us might have in our own lives.

For example, when the hero moves from the known world into the unknown world, that can represent a person’s moving out of his conscious mind into the unconscious realm of a human personality. Campbell builds upon some of the insights of Carl Jung, who interpreted myths in similar ways.

The myths talk about spiritual and psychological experiences any of us might have in our own lives.

The hero’s quest is an appealing story of individuals overcoming hardship and trial and achieving salvation. Salvation comes in the form of integration of their fractured life or personality. Salvation also brings with it powers and wisdom so the hero can be a master of his life and destiny. 

The hero does not earn his salvation entirely by his own efforts. His wisdom and powers are often gifts given to him from a numinous source, sometimes a god or some other transcendent power. There is a strong element of grace at work in these myths.

Salvation as a Transforming Experience

The key to his salvation is a powerful transforming experience. For the Buddha it was that moment of enlightenment as he sat under the Bodhi tree. After this transforming experience, the hero is never the same.

One thinks of the irrevocable change that occurred for the apostle Paul after his Damascus Road vision of Christ.* One can also think of people who have had a powerful spiritual experience that they might describe as being born again in the language of the Protestant revival movement.

The focus of this model of the spiritual journey…is decidedly on the transformation of the individual rather than on the transformation of a people.

The transformed hero returns gifted with wisdom and powers that his disordered society desperately needs. He is able to bring order and justice and healing to the world. I think the Buddha is a superb example of the hero’s quest activated in a historical person’s life. After his enlightenment, the Buddha preached and practiced a message of compassion for other suffering human beings.

The focus of this model of the spiritual journey, however, is decidedly on the transformation of the individual rather than on the transformation of a people. Social reform begins with transformed individuals. Society may be transformed, but it will be primarily through the compassionate actions of transformed individuals. In this respect the trajectory of this model is more individualistic than social.

The Circular Character of the Hero’s Journey

Another feature about this model for the spiritual journey is the circular character of the quest. The hero leaves home in search of some kind of healing or transformation. When he does find it, he returns home an emotionally and spiritually mature human being, who now can use his powers and gifts to bring order and healing to his community. 

In fact, Campbell has diagrammed the 17 steps of the journey into a circle.

The circle begins at the hero’s home. It ends with the hero’s return home.

I find this circularity fascinating because it mirrors the circular way in which the ancient world (in which this myth arose) tended to think of historical time. 

Religious life in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as in many other parts of the ancient world, such as the Maya in the Americas, was deeply rooted in the cycles of nature—the cycle of day and night, the cycle of the solar and lunar years, the cycle of the repeating seasons, and the cycle of life and death among both animals and humans.

These cycles were critical to the fertility of the land, on which ancient life depended. As a result many ancient religions were focused on ensuring these cycles should continue without interruption. Religion tended to be fertility cults.

We must remember this as we encounter the myths of a dying and rising god that we meet in the ancient Near East. Those myths gave theological justification to the cults themselves.

The Sumerian myth of Dumuzi offers a good example. This myth arose about the same time as the Gilgamesh epic. In it a minor god named Dumuzi is married to the great goddess Inanna, one of the principal gods of the Sumerians. 

There are various versions of the myth. One says that Dumuzi was having terrible nightmares, and his sister Gestinanna interpreted them as attacks of demons. Dumuzi tries to hide from the demons as a gazelle among his sister’s sheep. But the demons find him and carry him off to the land of the dead in the underworld. Gestinanna eventually finds him there and persuades the gods of the underworld to let her brother return to earth for six months in each year, while she remains in the underworld until he returns. 

Another version of the myth tells how his wife Inanna is angry with her husband because of his unfeeling behavior to her. She asks the demons to take him off to the underworld. There he remains six months out of the year, during the hot, sterile months of summer. He returns to earth around the autumnal equinox, bringing renewed fertility to vegetation, herds, and people. 

The myth of Dumuzi and Inanna is clearly a fertility myth. Variations of it are found all through the ancient world, for example in the Babylonian myth of Tammuz and Ishtar, in the Greek myth of Adonis and Aphrodite, and in the Asia Minor myth of Attis and Cybele, which was so popular in the Roman world. 

The Cyclical Character of Time

In these ancient myths we find expressed the ancient understanding of time as circular or cyclical.

What counts most in this ancient mindset is the moment of origin for the world. In that initial act of creation the gods created the divine structure of the world and the divine structure of human society. In that divine structure of society, the king becomes the intersection point between the world of the gods and the world of human beings.

The world remains harmonious and ordered in so far as human beings respect and obey that divine order, created at the time of creation. The king plays the important role in maintaining that divine order.

Home was where it all began, and returning home was the goal…historical time was seen as flowing in an endless cyclical course.

Each year at their New Year festivals, these ancient societies sought to return to that first day of creation and re-affirm or re-establish that divine order. In these annual festivals, people returned to their spiritual home in order to re-affirm it. Home was where it all began, and returning home was the goal. This meant that historical time was seen as flowing in an endless cyclical course.**

Now this mindset had a very practical impact on the society. It meant ancient societies tended to be deeply conservative. The annual reaffirmation of the divine order also included a reaffirmation of the divine social order of semi-divine king, nobility, and peasantry. 

This was the order established by the gods at creation. It was to be reaffirmed each year at the New Year’s Festival. As a result, the way ancient societies were structured and operated seldom changed in any radical way.

Author’s Note: In my next posting, Part 2 of this discussion, I will explore the contrasting understanding of a spiritual journey offered by the story of the exodus.

_____________________

* Described in Acts 9:1-18.

**Mircea Eliade, a Romanian scholar of the history of religions, gives an insightful analysis of this ancient mindset in his book The Myth of the Eternal Return, first published in English in 1954. I am deeply indebted to this book for my insights into the ancient mindset.

Exodus: The Forever Presence

The portable tabernacle bears witness to a God on the move.

The incident with the golden calf is a close call for Israel. God’s first instinct is to divorce Israel, to invalidate the covenant God has made with Israel, and to start all over creating a new chosen people for himself from the descendants of Moses. It looks as if the story of Israel will end in a tragedy. Because of its folly, Israel will be discarded in the midst of the arid Sinai desert, an image of death.

But no one, possibly even God, had counted on Moses. Moses steps in on behalf of Israel and argues with God–all in an effort to get God to forgive Israel and to continue to travel with Israel. At the end of his herculean negotiation with God, Moses says to God:

If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance. (Exodus 34:9)

Moses will accept from God nothing less than full forgiveness. And amazement upon amazement, Moses succeeds. God grants his request, saying:

I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the LORD; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. (Exodus 34:10)

This story astonishes me every time I read it. It offers a message of hope to everyone who seriously flubs the spiritual challenges of our own lives. That includes every one of us. As the apostle Paul says: …all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God… (Romans 3:23). Yet the apostle will go on to assert confidently:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

The apostle has absorbed deep into his spirit the hopeful message of Exodus. It forms the substratum of the New Testament.

Focal Point for Faith

Now that God’s forgiveness is firmly established, work can begin on constructing the tabernacle following the directions God has given Moses on the mountain top. The story of the construction follows in chapters 35-39. These chapters make a repeated point that Israel follows God’s instructions completely, down to the very letter. Because of that, these chapters strike many readers as a tedious repeat of chapters 25-31. Many commentators skip lightly over the construction process. I will do so also. 

With chapter 40, we come to the assembling of the finished tabernacle, under Moses’ watchful eye. In no way will the omnipresent God be confined to the tabernacle. Israel will never domesticate God, as temples in the ancient world tried to do. But it will provide a focal point for Israel’s confidence.*

Once the tabernacle is completed and assembled, the text tells us a cloud, symbolizing the presence of the Lord, comes to settle upon the tabernacle. The glory of the Lord fills the sanctuary. And that cloud continues to proceed with the people throughout their journey. Whenever it picks up and moves out, the people move out. When it settles down, they settle down.

The event of the exodus does not come to an end with the ending of the Book of Exodus. The Book of Exodus only covers the first year of what will be a 40-year-long journey. That journey continues on through the books of Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. But the ending of the Book of Exodus tells us something very important about this continuing journey. 

A God on the Move

Moses has received what he had so ardently prayed for. The full presence of the Lord is with Israel in its continuing journey. And the presence of the Lord will remain with them forever. 

This God, however, is not a settled God. He is a God on the move, and because of that his people will also be a people on the move. Biblical faith will affirm the goodness of creation and the goodness of daily life. But it will never settle simply for an affirmation of the status quo. 

As God speaks through the prophet to Israel in another time of crisis: 

Do not remember the former things,

            or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing;

            now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

            and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:18-20)

So it will always be in the life of faith. Life with God will always be full of challenges and calls to change.

I want to end with one more jump to the New Testament. The image of the tabernacle as the locus of God’s continuing presence with his people comes up in the New Testament in one surprising, but important passage. 

In the prologue of the Gospel of John, we find the famous statement that we hear read every Christmas eve at the climax of our service of lessons and carols. It goes in the traditional King James Version:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth. [John 1:14]

The word that the translators have translated as dwelt is literally in the Greek the word tabernacled. What this text says is that for Christians, Jesus is our tabernacle. In him we experience the presence of God fully dwelling with us and moving with us through the many vicissitudes of life. The story of exodus has become gospel.

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* I want to note one interesting but easily over-looked detail about the construction of the tabernacle and all its furnishings. God through Moses places supervision over the construction in the hands of Bezalel the son of Uri and of Oholiab. Both men are said to be superb craftsmen and designers (Exodus 35:30-36:1). But of Bezalel, the text says (Exodus 35:31) that Bezalel will be filled with the Spirit of God as he pursues his work. In effect, Bezalel will be one more of the anointed ones in Israel, taking his place alongside the anointed priests, kings, and prophets. All are anointed with the Spirit as a sign of their being set apart for their specific mission. What this says to me is that we ought to recognize that artists–painters, sculptors, dancers, musicians, poets, weavers–may all receive a special empowerment from God for service to God’s people on a par with the service of priests, ordained ministers, and teachers. 

Exodus: Audacious Moses, Part 2

Moses does not give up until he exacts a promise from God.

Moses, a drawing by Jacob de Wit, Dutch, 18th century

As I noted in my last blog posting, the infidelity of Israel in worshipping the golden calf poses an existential danger to Israel. God wants to destroy the nation and begin all over again. Moses challenges God not to do so, arguing that God must be true to God’s character. God changes his mind. 

This sets Moses free to descend the mountain and deal with the crisis himself. There is a confrontation with Aaron, followed by a purging from the nation of those who constitute an unruly mob (said to be running wild). This work done, Moses again ascends the mountain, where God still seethes with anger over what Israel has done. 

Moses shows unbelievable solidarity and loyalty to the people despite their sin. 

Then the text (Exodus 32:30-33:23) carries us back to the dialogue between Moses and God. When they broke off their conversation on the mountain, God had determined not to destroy Israel. But will he forgive Israel? That is not yet certain. This sets the stage for Part 2 of Moses’ audacious challenge of God. 

Moses asks God to forgive Israel. And if he will not, then Moses asks that God blot him Moses out of the book of life. Moses shows unbelievable solidarity and loyalty to the people despite their sin. 

So when we come to chapter 33, we find God responding that Moses may lead the people to the land God has promised to them. God will honor at least that part of his promise. But ominously, God says he will not go with them. Israel is a stiff-necked people. They are not docile and obedient. As a result, God in his anger might just consume them if they sin again. So instead God will send an angel to take God’s place. This is an assurance of something less than God’s full presence. 

This word of God devastates the people. It means that their future is precarious. They may survive for the moment, but they can have no confidence for the future. They will live with constant anxiety that they may just trigger God’s destructive anger once again. 

I often think that describes well the spiritual situation of many Christians who live in constant fear that they will do something so heinous that it will trigger God’s anger. God will bring upon them something truly evil, like a serious illness, a tragic death, or some other terrible misfortune. It is not a way to live with a sense of spiritual peace, because we can never truly trust that when the pinch comes, God will truly be there for us. 

Moses in the Breach

This leads to further negotiation between Moses and God. Moses is not willing to settle for an angel to lead them. It must be God himself. Will God’s own presence go with them or not? If not, then Moses says, Let’s call a halt to this project immediately. Will you go with us with your full presence, God, or not?

What this question does is ask the question: Will you, God, fully forgive your people, or will you hold back on forgiveness? If you are going to hold back, then there is no reason why this whole exodus event should go forward. Only full forgiveness will satisfy Moses and meet the needs of Israel. No half-way forgiveness will do the trick.

God continually shows favor and partiality to Moses, but Moses does not use that favor to his own aggrandizement. Instead he plays that partiality as the final card in his effort to get God to fully forgive the people. 

Only full forgiveness will satisfy Moses and meet the needs of Israel. No half-way forgiveness will do the trick.

We come to the climax in verse 33:17. God promises to Moses to do what Moses asks. He will forgive the people and go with them with his full presence. He does so as a special favor to Moses who has stood by his people. Moses has won in his negotiation with God. 

Then God grants Moses a special blessing. He permits Moses the special favor of a partial vision of God’s glory. Not a full vision. Moses is allowed only to glimpse the backside of God as he passes by in glory. But it is something no one else has been granted.

God will revive the covenant with Israel. As a sign of that restoration, God presents Moses with new stone tablets. Israel’s relationship with God is secure.

Majestic Moses

As I read through this extended session of negotiations between God and Moses, I feel utter astonishment at what I have called the audacity of Moses and Moses’ solid spiritual backbone. Moses could easily have been cowed into unquestioned submission to whatever God proposed to do. Afterall, God was the far superior power. But Moses does not cave. He stands up to God and stands up for his people. 

…Moses holds God accountable. God is not allowed to be an arbitrary and irresponsible authority.

Moses also steers his way through what for most people would be irresistible temptations. God proposes to make Moses patriarch of his own nation. Moses turns downs that proposition. 

Instead Moses holds God accountable. God is not allowed to be an arbitrary and irresponsible authority. God must honor God’s character and exercise his power in accordance with that character. Moses will settle for nothing less.*

In this part of the Book of Exodus, we see Moses rise to his true majesty. He remains humble in his ambitions. And we see the immense love that he has developed for his own people. Over and over again the people will try his patience and treat him with some disrespect. But Moses will never waver in his commitment to them and their welfare. He will become a living icon of God. No wonder he is the prophet without compare for the Jewish tradition. 

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* One is reminded of the famous aphorism of Lord Acton that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Moses will not allow God to fall for the potential temptation to corruption posed by God’s own absolute power.

Exodus: Betrayal

Impatience drives the Israelites into breaking the covenant.

Worship of the Golden Calf, painting by Nicholas Poussin, French, 17th century.

Impatience drives people to do many foolish things. We have a clear example in Exodus 32. This chapter tells the story of Israel’s apostasy. The Israelites construct and then worship a golden calf as their god. 

As the chapter begins, Moses has been on top of Mount Sinai in conversation with God. God has been giving him the instructions for constructing the tabernacle and its furnishings and setting up the priesthood and the rituals of Israel’s worship. During this conversation, Moses has been absent from Israel’s base camp for 40 days–a long time.

This long absence seems to have triggered a growing anxiety among the Israelites. They complain, as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him (Exodus 32:1). Behind this anxiety may be the hidden fear that Moses has died and left them abandoned in the wilderness. 

We as readers of Exodus are given a taste of how this anxiety may have arisen by the fact that six long chapters (Exodus 25-31) precede that comment. Those chapters give us the details of those instructions God is giving Moses on the mountain top.

Many readers find these descriptions tedious reading. We must wade through six chapters of boring description before we can land back into the narrative. Literarily these six chapters give us a taste of the tedium in the Israelite camp that set the stage for what was to come next. We long to skip over them and get on with the narrative. 

The Israelites want to get on with their journey just as we want to get on with the story. Impatience becomes the root cause of the incident of the golden calf.

One other factor may be feeding this anxiety, too. The God of Israel has no visible form. No image can capture his appearance. What the Israelites must rely on for confidence that God is with them is God’s presence and actions in their midst. 

But during the 40 days Moses has been on top of the mountain, God’s focus has been on Moses. The Israelites may be feeling they have been forgotten or abandoned by God. They feel a need for some visible token, some memorial or symbol, that God is with them. They demand a visible image to reassure their fears.

Violating the First Commandment

In response to these two factors, the Israelites pressure Aaron to construct for them the golden calf. Once it is erected, they gather around it to sacrifice. They acclaim it in the words: These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt (Exodus 32:4). 

These words repudiate the opening words God speaks when he gives the Ten Commandments: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth (Exodus 20:2-4).*

Just 40 days after the ritual celebrations of ratifying the covenant (described in chapter 24), Israel violates the foundational principle of that covenant. This despite the fact that in chapter 20 we read of how Israel experienced God’s presence on the mountain in the spectacular natural phenomena of the earthquake, smoke, fire, and trumpet blast. Israel at that time had experienced emotions of terror. 

That can be a reminder that awesome religious experiences need not always be transformative. We would have thought that after their experience with God at the mountain, Israel would have settled into a profound trust. But the nation did not. Instead it slipped so quickly into apostasy.

The Corrosive Power of Impatience

When I read this Exodus narrative, I am reminded of the deadly, corrosive power of impatience, the demand for instant gratification that repeatedly afflicts mankind. To build anything lasting, anything of substance, in life–whether in personal character development, in relationships like a marriage, in academic achievement, in architecture, in business, in nation-building–takes time and persistence. 

We have the best evidence of this truth in God’s creation of the world through the evolutionary process. The arrival of homo sapiens upon the earth is the end result of a long period of development of the planet earth. Our planet is some 4.5 billion years old. Life has arisen and grown in complexity over the course of some 3 billion years. That is an awesome but also sobering fact to ponder.

The story of the exodus bears witness to this reality by telling us that it took 40 years for Israel to make its trek from Egypt to Canaan. Important spiritual and national developments were happening in that 40-year period to prepare Israel to take up life as an independent nation in its own land. Likewise human beings must go through a long process of childhood and adolescence before they are prepared to take up the responsibilities of adulthood.

This is why the exodus story is such an important paradigm for us in our spiritual lives. Our spiritual lives are always spiritual journeys. We may begin our spiritual journey with a one-time act of faith, expressed in the sacrament of baptism, but we do not grow into mature saints instantaneously. 

It is not accidental that Jesus turns to the agricultural world for parables about life in the kingdom of God. We grow into spiritual maturity through a process, a process which proves to be a lifetime process. And if the early church father Gregory of Nyssa is right, it is a process that does not end with death, but continues on into the next life.**

Impatience then can cause serious damage, if not thwart, those processes of development and growth.*** Patience, however, is not easy to endure. It can be painful. It causes us anxiety and a longing to speed up the process with easy shortcuts. Maybe that is why patience is one expression of the need to bear our cross that Jesus says describes the life of discipleship (see Mark 8:34).

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* Note that God says I am the Lord your God… (singular). The Israelites, however, say in the presence of the calf, These are your gods…(plural). The Israelites have not only repudiated the command about idols, but have also denied its fundamental monotheism.

** Gregory of Nyssa saw the whole story of the exodus as an allegorical guide to the spiritual life. He expresses that interpretation of the exodus in his book The Life of Moses. 

In his book he states his belief that the spiritual journey does not end with death. It continues on into the next life without end. About the beatific vision of God which traditional spirituality sees as the end goal of the spiritual journey, Gregory says: This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in our desire to see him (The Life of Moses, Book II, Paragraph 239). 

*** One of the three vows that Benedictine monks take is the vow to stability. This vow means they promise to remain with their particular monastic community for their whole lives. This vow mirrors the vow married couples take when they promise to remain faithful to each other “until death do us part.” The vow to stability is a vow to perseverance. Perseverance is the key virtue in the journey to professional, personal, and spiritual maturity.  

Exodus: Temptation in the Wilderness

Who’s being tested in the wilderness, Israel or God?

A portion of the Sinai wilderness photographed in 1862.

Once Israel has finished its celebration of victory over Pharaoh and his army, the people begin their journey into the Sinai wilderness. It soon becomes evident that this journey will be no cake walk. 

Three days into their journey, they pause in an oasis with a pool of water (Exodus 15:22-25). The water is so bitter no one could drink it. Thirsty, the people complain to Moses, who, perplexed as to what to do, turns to God for guidance. He is told to throw a piece of wood into the pool. It turns the water sweet. 

The next crisis comes as the people move deep into the desert. Their food supplies begin to run out (Exodus 16:1-36). So serious is the crisis that the people not only complain to Moses, but even start to look back nostalgically on their years of bondage in Egypt when they thought they had plenty to eat. 

God responds to their need. First by providing a providential flock of quail in the desert, then a kind of bread from heaven, the mysterious manna, which the Israelites harvest each morning off of the desert surface. 

In the biblical viewpoint, … [the] difficult years in the wilderness are more than just a normal transition. They are a kind of testing experience.

Then moving deeper into the desert, they again encounter a lack of water (Exodus 17:1-7). Complaining once again to Moses, they question his fitness for leadership. Each succession of complaints seems to get more and more intense. God meets their need again by instructing Moses to strike a rock with his rod. Out of the fractured rock flows a spring.

That crisis past, yet another one arises. The hostile tribe of Amalek attacks the Israelite line of march (Exodus 17:8-13). A fierce battle ensues. Israel prevails because Moses stands on top of hill lifting the rod of power that God had given him above his head. 

All within the first two months of their liberation, Israel encounters four different crises that threaten to bring their journey of liberation to an abortive end. Those four crises must have shattered any illusions the Israelites had that their liberation would usher them into instant ease and security. Liberation was going to be a much more dangerous and stressful experience than any of them had planned on.

If they had had some experience with revolutions, however, it was to be expected. Liberation movements like the one Israel had experienced remove the many structures, institutions, and customary ways of doing things that have supported life in the old regime. New ones must be created. That takes great energy and time. Before the new is in place, we usually must pass through a time of chaos. Survival can indeed be in jeopardy. 

That was true with the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and even with our own American Revolution. I could cite many other examples as well. If Israel had known it, they could have seen their experience as a normal transition from the old to the new. 

The Dual Focus of Testing

In the biblical viewpoint, however, these difficult years in the wilderness are more than just a normal transition. They are a kind of testing experience. And testing is the root meaning of temptation. 

This is made explicit in God’s words following the first encounter with thirst at the pool of Marah. After turning its bitter waters sweet, the text tells us: 

There [at Marah] the Lord made for them a statute and an ordinance and there he put them to the test,[saying], “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.” (Exodus 15:26)

The test rests upon a promise. In this case the promise is a promise of healing. And I think this promise is a promise not just of physical healing, but of social, political, cultural, and spiritual healing. Israel will be healed of all the malignant features of the slave lifestyle and mindset to which they had become accustomed in Egypt.

The key to healing is trust. Israel’s trust will be shown by its listening carefully for the voice of God and doing what is right in God’s sight. In threatening experience after threatening experience in the wilderness, Israel is being invited into a relationship of trust in God. Will Israel prove capable of such trust? Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the wilderness will show.

But the 40 years in the wilderness will also be another kind of test. Israel will be testing God to see if God will live up to the promises God has made to Israel. God has liberated Israel from bondage. Now will God sustain them through whatever hardship comes? Can God be depended upon to be consistent with God’s promises? Or will God prove to be a fickle deity like those Israel left behind in Egypt?

That process of mutual testing begins with these four incidents recounted right after Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea. God proves faithful to God’s care and provision for Israel. Israel’s reaction is more like that of an infant. Israel repeatedly murmurs against God and Moses, just as a baby cries and whines when its immediate needs are not met. 

A Paradigm for Our Spiritual Journey

Israel’s experience in the wilderness provides a paradigm for what happens to us in our spiritual journeys with God. Time after time we launch into our relationship with God with exhilaration. The sense of joy and release that people feel who respond to a preacher’s altar call at a revival meeting can be real and genuine. 

For all of us engaged in a spiritual journey today, we can take the exodus paradigm as a certainty in our own experience….

But it is often fleeting. Now with their new orientation on a relationship with Christ, they must learn to reorient every aspect of their daily living. That can bring challenge, confusion, and conflict. Rather than entering into the Garden of Eden, they can feel they have been thrown into the desert. Now begins the real work of forming a healthy, mature Christian character and relationship to God, to other people, and to oneself. This does not mean God no longer loves them. Instead God is beginning the process of maturation.

Jesus’ Exodus Experience

That Israel’s journey in the wilderness is a paradigm for spiritual testing is confirmed in the New Testament by the experience of Jesus. Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist is a high moment in Jesus’ experience. He sees the sky split open, the Holy Spirit descend upon him as a dove, and the voice of God declaring, You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased (Mark 1:9-11). It is hard to imagine a greater mountain-top experience.

The gospels tell us, however, that immediately afterwards the Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness where Jesus is tempted (tested) for 40 days (Mark 1:12-13, see also Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13). The numerical figure 40 is no accident. It is the way the gospel writers tie Jesus’ testing with Israel’s testing in the wilderness for 40 years. The exodus story gives the paradigm that even Jesus must follow.

The temptations of Jesus likewise are a time of testing for both Jesus and God his Father. The character of Jesus will be severely tested. Is he spiritually ready and equipped for the challenging ministry the Spirit will soon be calling him into in Galilee? Is he mature enough to truly do the work of the Son of God in a manner worthy of a Son of God?

But Jesus too is testing God. Will this God who has called him his beloved Son be able to provide and sustain him in his ministry and be faithful to the promises God has made to Jesus by calling him Son? Significantly the very first temptation Jesus faces is the temptation of physical hunger. We recall that the first challenges Israel faces in its journey are the challenges of physical thirst and hunger. 

Jesus is called to practice faithful obedience. He does. Israel likewise is called to practice faithful obedience. The Old Testament story of the exodus will show that Israel’s response is much more troubled. 

For all of us engaged in a spiritual journey today, we can take the exodus paradigm as a certainty in our own experience, whether we have experienced it already or are yet to do so. The question is: How will each of us do when placed in this time of testing? Will we show ourselves worthy of the label Christian?

Exodus: The Necessary Long Journey

God blocks a short journey to the Promised Land for good reasons.

Moses leading Israelites across the Red Sea, mural from Dura-Europus, 3rd century CE.

If you follow the coast of the Mediterranean, it is roughly 125 miles to travel from the Suez canal to Gaza, one of the ancient Philistine cities in Canaan. This is the shortest route between Egypt and Palestine. 

An ancient road followed this route. Egyptian armies had traveled it many times in their expeditions into Canaan and Syria. If an army had kept to a steady pace of 10 miles a day, it could traverse the distance in only a couple of weeks.  

This gives us a working number for how far the Israelites would have needed to travel once they were cut loose from the Egyptians after the Red Sea crossing. Exodus, however, tells us that God explicitly denied them this route.

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer; for God thought, “If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. (Exodus 13:17-18)

Instead God leads the Israelites out into the Sinai desert and starts them on a journey that would last 40 years, not two weeks. This raises the question Why?

The Exodus text gives one answer. It attributes God’s rationale to the fact that the ancient road along the coast would have been guarded by Egyptian garrisons. In the skirmishes that would have inevitably resulted, God feared the Israelites would lose heart and give up their journey. The Israelites were too new in their freedom to stand up to armed clashes like those.

The Long Task of Nation-Building

But I think there is a deeper reason why Israel ends up taking 40 years to complete its journey from Egypt to Canaan. It has to do with the important task of forming a nation. 

When the Israelites left Egypt, they left as a disorganized mass of newly freed slaves. They would have had almost no social or spiritual infrastructure to hold this unruly mass together. Conflicts would have inevitably arisen without any justice structure to resolve them. The conflicts would have set various family or partisan groups at each other. The violence would have turned the mass of newly freed slaves into a self-destructive mob.

For the Israelites to find their stability emotionally, socially, politically, and spiritually, they would need:

• • To shed their Egyptian slave mindsets,
  • To develop new structures for organizing their social and political life,
  • To evolve new understandings of what constitutes justice,
  • To experience in trial and error what works and what does not in their new life,
  • To create the traditions that would give them a unique identity,
  • And lastly to understand and live what a relationship with God, their liberator, meant in their new life of freedom.

All this–and much more–was needed if they were to flourish in the new life God had given them. 

All of these tasks are tasks involved in building character, whether the character of an individual or the character of a people. And building character takes time. It does not arise instantaneously. 

Israel faced the task of building its character as a people of God during those long years traveling in the wilderness. It should not surprise us to know that it took 40 years. Theirs was a daunting task to complete, if we can even say that they completed it. In one sense that challenge has remained a challenge through all the succeeding generations of Israelite and Jewish history.

This is one reason why the story of the exodus remains such an inspiration and guide to even peoples outside the Jewish faith. The story highlights the challenges any people face in creating a national identity and constitution (whether written or unwritten). 

It is a very sad fact that many a revolution has only ended up substituting one oppressive regime by another. The French Revolution overthrew the Bourbon regime only ultimately to usher in the Napoleonic empire. The Russian Revolution overthrew the Romanov absolutism only to institute the Leninist-Stalinist one. 

… building character takes time. It does not arise instantaneously.

Why does this happen? One good reason, I believe, is that newly freed peoples tend to expect that they will enter into the promised land of their dreams quickly. They have destroyed the structures of the old, but do not realize that they now have to rebuild new ones. 

If those new ones are to fulfill their dreams, they must be constructed wisely to avoid the old oppressive habits of exercising power. People glory in their new rights, but forget that rights also carry responsibilities. They must create new and healthy bonds among themselves. None of that is done quickly. And so people get disillusioned and fall back into old and well-known mindsets of servitude.

The Long Task of Character Building

What I have just said applies not only to the building of new nations, but also to the development of character in individuals. Individual journeys to healthy, flourishing identities also take time. 

It is an odd fact about human beings that human babies do not emerge from the womb able to walk, talk, and function as mini adults like calves born from cows and colts born from horses. It takes a good 20 to 25 years for human babies to reach physical maturity and much longer sometimes to reach emotional and social maturity.

A human character consists of mindsets, commitments, habits, attitudes, bonds with others, customary ways of behavior, and decisions made. All that takes time to develop. In fact, character development never ends. It continues throughout a person’s life. The best thing to say about character development is that it is a journey, a never-ending journey. 

Christlike character is not something we get: we grow into it.

Jonathan R. Bailey

The Long Task of Growing into Spiritual Maturity

The same is true in the development of our spiritual life. One may make a decision to become a Christian (in Evangelical terminology, to be born again), but that decision point is not the end point of the Christian life. It is the beginning point. What lies ahead is a continuing journey into deeper levels of maturity and deeper levels of one’s relationship with God and with others. 

I like the way the author Jonathan R. Bailey expresses this insight:

Shedding vice and securing virtue–becoming like Christ–is not something that automatically happens when we become Christians. Moving from stage to stage happens over a long, frustrating, rewarding, painful, and glorious period of time. Christlike character is not something we get: we grow into it.*

During the medieval period classic writers on this spiritual journey came to discuss this spiritual journey as passing through three stages:

• Purgation: the cleansing of all that hinders spiritual maturity, whether sins or ego-centrism, that keeps us from the practice of love,

• Illumination: the progressive growth in the understanding and virtues that support spiritual maturity and the practice of love,

• Union: the coming of unity with God in which our wills are fully aligned with God’s will, and we reach the full experience of God’s love.

Many of these writers on the spiritual life have seen in the exodus experience of the Israelites the paradigm for this understanding of the spiritual life as a spiritual journey. One good example is The Life of Moses by the 4^th century church father Gregory of Nyssa.** Gregory takes the exodus story as an allegory for the experience of a spiritual seeker growing into deeper union with God. 

I find it hard to believe then that when God blocked the Israelites from taking the short route to Canaan, God’s only concern was whether the Israelites would become demoralized in their skirmishes with Egyptian garrisons. Israel needed to experience its life with God as a journey, for in doing so they were setting the pattern for all in the future who would embark upon the same journey. 

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* Jonathan R. Bailey, The Eternal Journey: Daily Meditations on the Stages of Transformation. Renovaré, 2020. Page 6.

** Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson, translators. New York: Paulist Press, 1978.

Exodus: Bridegroom of Blood

Can we make sense of a seemingly senseless story?

Probably the strangest and most troubling story in the whole book of Exodus is the incident recounted in Exodus 4:24-26. It is a postage stamp of a story, very short, and yet it raises all kinds of questions.

The incident takes place as Moses and his family are journeying from Midian to Egypt. Moses, somewhat reluctantly, is responding to God’s call to return to Egypt to direct Israel’s liberation from Pharaoh’s bondage. The family has stopped for the night. 

During the night God tries to kill Moses. Moses’ wife Zipporah comes to the rescue. She circumcises one of her sons and touches the excised foreskin to Moses’ feet (probably meant as a euphemism for Moses’ genitals).* This works. Moses survives. But Zipporah is shaken. She exclaims to Moses cryptically, Truly, you are a bridegroom of blood to me!

We are far from the first generation to scratch our heads over this story. How are we to make sense out of what appears a senseless story? Generations of Bible commentators have struggled with this story without any consensus of interpretation emerging. 

Troubling Questions

The question that jumps up for all of us is: Why? Why does God, who has just commissioned Moses to his world-changing mission, try immediately to kill Moses? Why is Moses saved by the circumcision of his son? Why does in fact this story even appear in the book of Exodus? What significance did the book’s editors see in the story that they had to include it in their narrative? 

The text gives almost no clues to interpretation. When we try to blow away the obscurity, it just resettles back in.

I will say right up front: there are no conclusive answers to these whys. The text gives almost no clues to interpretation. When we try to blow away the obscurity, it just resettles back in. All we can do is speculate, which I will do.

When I said there are almost no clues to interpretation, that almost reserves space for one possible clue. That is the story’s placement within the narrative of Exodus. It comes after Moses’ call at the burning bush, but before Moses’ arrival in Egypt. The journey Moses and his family are making marks an important transition.

Moses is leaving behind his 40-year life as a Midianite shepherd living within the family tents of Jethro. In Egypt Moses will embark on a fearful mission of political provocateur and freedom fighter, then later in the wilderness as spiritual and political leader of an emerging nation. 

Cultural Associations with Circumcision

In the realm of world cultures, the rite of circumcision often serves as an identity marker. It establishes a man’s identity within a group. The rite is also associated with times of identity transition. 

For example, in Judaism, a male child is circumcised eight days after birth. Circumcision seals that boy’s membership within the covenant circle of Israel. This comes through clearly in the account of the institution of the practice of circumcision recounted in Genesis 17:9-14. There it is said that any Israelite boy who remains uncircumcised shall be cut off from his people, for he has broken my covenant (Genesis 17:14).  

In other cultures, especially some African tribal cultures, circumcision is a rite performed when a boy at puberty transitions from the status of child to a full-fledged member of the tribe’s adult males. It forms an important element of the initiation ceremonies that take place at that time. 

My speculation is that we need to keep these cultural associations in mind as we read this particular story in Exodus.

Moses in Transition

As I said earlier, the journey marks an important transition in Moses’ life. He is also moving from one identity to another. Although born a Hebrew, Moses was raised in an Egyptian household, presumably acquiring many of the cultural attitudes and mindsets of Egyptians. Then he spent another 40 years living in the tribe of Midian, presumably adapting to the life style and cultural attitudes of that Bedouin tribe. 

In his new role Moses will be living in and leading an Israelite people. He will need to identify and adapt to this new cultural setting. He will have to sever any lingering ties he may still have to his Egyptian upbringing and to his Midianite life. His identity must now be completely and fully with the Israelites. 

In his new role…[Moses’] identity must now be completely and fully with the Israelites.

Exodus does not tell us if Moses was circumcised as a child or not, but if he was not, he will now have to be as a part of this psychological transition. Is it possible that this short incident is a disguised recognition by the editors that Moses had to undergo this identity marker himself?

The transition that Moses must undergo in his identity is one his family must undergo as well. They too will now have to identity fully with their new Israelite cousins and neighbors, severing any lingering psychological ties to the Midianite family and heritage.

If Moses’ son has not been circumcised, then there is a serious deficiency in Moses’ family as the family moves into the circle of the Israelite people. Moses’ mission as liberator is undermined by inconsistencies in his own family. The family must complete its transition into the new social circle. Zipporah is possibly recognizing this harsh fact when she blurbs out about Moses being a bridegroom of blood. The transitions Moses and his family are going through are painful and disruptive.

Baptism as a Christian Rite of Transition

In the Christian church, baptism replaces circumcision as the identity marker that identifies an individual as a member of the community of believers. In the early church baptism was regarded as a serious affair. It marked the decisive transition point when an individual passed from the community of pagans or Jews and one entered fully into the new family that constituted the Christian family. 

The baptism of Jesus as pictured in the dome of the Arian Baptistry, Ravenna, Italy, 6th century.

Interestingly this rite of transition was regarded as an experience of spiritual death and resurrection (see the apostle Paul’s exposition of that belief in Romans 6:1-4). And in terms of the real social consequences many early Christians experienced by their decision to become a Christian (such as ostracism or persecution), Paul’s language takes on real psychological weight.** 

On the basis of this analogy, one may argue that this incident in the desert is Moses’ spiritual baptism into his new role as God’s appointed man to assist in God’s creation of this new people of Israel.*** Certainly both of these rites–baptism and circumcision–carry these associations with transition. 

I freely admit that what I have just expounded is pure speculation on my part. It is importing insights from non-biblical cultures into the interpreting of scripture. And some of my readers may regard that as inappropriate. 

Ineradicable Ambiguity

Nonetheless, the story remains an enigma. It possesses an ineradicable ambiguity. It reminds me of Japanese haiku poems like the one by the Japanese poet Basho.

The autumn full moon:

All night long

I paced round the lake.

The poem has an ineradicable ambiguity, too. What does it mean? It all depends upon what one associates with the poet’s night walk around the lake. Is it a pleasant night stroll or is it a fretful walk as the poet contends with some great agitation in his mind? The poet gives us almost no clues apart from the possible suggestion made by the word paced. We usually do not use the word pace to describe a relaxed, peaceful walk.

This story in Exodus functions somewhat in the same way. We ultimately cannot nail down its meaning definitively. And in that characteristic it may bear witness to an uncomfortable feature about divine activity in the world. Sometimes God’s ways can seem so absurdly senseless. We cannot detect the divine motive or purpose for things that happen in our lives, if there is even one. Yet the biblical witness is that God is at work in the world to accomplish his purposes, purposes which move towards healing and fulfillment. But we cannot always see that clearly. So we live our Christian lives by faith rather than by sight.  

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* The antecedents of the pronouns are ambiguous in the Hebrew. Does Zipporah apply the excised foreskin to Moses’ feet or her son’s feet? It is not clear. Many translations (like the NRSV) assume the ‘his’ means Moses’. Here we have a clear example of how translators sometimes make assumptions that go beyond the Hebrew text proper.

** The radical nature of Christian baptism got lost when Europe turned into Christendom. In that setting baptism became more a symbol of citizenship.

*** Here I am not trying to Christianize Moses’ experience. Rather I am trying to call attention to the similar effects that both Jewish circumcision and Christian baptism have on the respective spiritual status of their recipients.

Dealing with the Three O’Clock in the Morning Anxieties

What guidance can we find in Jesus for the flood of anxieties that disturb our sleep?

Jesus teaching on the mountain, by Karl Block, 1877

It is a common experience for me to wake up about three o’clock in the morning to use the bathroom. Then I try to go back to sleep. But sleep eludes me. Instead powerful anxieties invade my consciousness. I lie there tossing them over in my mind, examining each facet, and then trying to determine how I will deal with the threatening situations they raise. It may take me an hour or more to fall asleep again.

I am not alone. One of my favorite bloggers is Michael Jinkins. He is currently pastor of St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church in New Orleans. Before that he was President of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

He writes a blog titled “Accidental Pilgrims.” I read it regularly because he always has something thought-provoking to say to me.

His most recent blog is titled “Buses and Anxieties.” As I read it, I found he experiences at night what I experience. That’s why I found myself paying close attention to what he has to say about how the teaching of Jesus addresses this common experience. I link to it because I think many of you my readers will find it an illuminating piece, too. It is well worth reading.

Flesh Finds Its Fulfillment

Death is not the ultimate destiny for our mortal flesh.

I find it hard to make sense at times of the Epistle to the Hebrews. I get the gist of the author’s argument. He is trying to persuade some wavering Christians to remain firm in their allegiance to Jesus.

What I find hard to follow is the support arguments he makes for his case. For one, he makes constant references to the old Jewish temple and sacrificial rituals. If we are not familiar with them, as most modern Christians are not, then we will find the arguments he makes based upon them puzzling.

For two, the author is well versed in the Greek literary culture. He writes elegant Greek. He also slides in and out of the Greek practice of interpreting narratives as allegory. He sees aspects of the Old Testament story as prefiguring the events that happened with Jesus. This is not quite seeing Old Testament details as spiritual symbolism, but it’s not far from that. That can challenge our attempts to understand his argument, too.

Yet his imagery and phrasing can prove highly provocative to the imagination. They stick in our minds like thistle burrs. We have a hard time shaking them out. They have left an enduring impact on Christian worship language and theology.

The Example of Melchizedek

Let me give one example. The author makes a big deal about the Old Testament figure of Melchizedek. Melchizedek is a minor figure in the Old Testament. He is described in Genesis 14 as the priest-king of Salem, the future city of Jerusalem. He greets Abraham after his victory over four kings. Abraham gives Melchizedek a tenth of the spoils. Melchizedek in turn entertains Abraham with a meal of bread and wine.

Early Christian readers noted that small detail. They saw it as prefiguring the Christian Eucharist. And so in Christian iconography, Melchizedek’s reception of Abraham is linked to the celebration of the mass.

The mosaic of Melchizedek in the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy. 6th century A.D.

A beautiful example appears in the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. There a mosaic shows Melchizedek offering a sacrifice of bread in front of something that looks like a Christian altar. His bread is clearly prefiguring the bread that will be consecrated in this spot in the Christian Eucharist.

Entering the Inner Sanctuary

 It was a different detail, however, that caught my attention as I was reading Hebrews recently. In chapter 10, the author writes:

Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:19-23)

The point of the passage is found in the last sentence. The author repeats once again his admonition to remain steady in faith. He has been repeating this theme throughout the letter.

We can be resolute in faith, he argues, because Jesus has opened the way into the inner temple. Here he is alluding to the curtain that separated the most inner sanctum of the Jewish temple, the Holy of Holies, from the less sacred Holy Place. Only the high priest could enter this inner room. And that only once a year, on the Day of Atonement.

Now the author of Hebrews employs this imagery to express a spiritual reality that the earthly reality points to. The inner sanctum is the presence of God. We can confidently enter into that presence because Jesus has opened the curtain that separates us from the presence of God.

The Curtain of Flesh

Here’s the detail that grabbed my attention. The author says in a parenthetic phrase that that spiritual curtain is our earthly flesh. By having lived a life of faithfulness in the flesh—a flesh he shares with all of us human beings—Jesus has opened the way into God’s presence.

When I read that, this detail became the burr that stuck in my mind and provoked some further reflection.

It is an axiom of Christian spirituality that God is spirit. As invisible spirit, God cannot be perceived directly by the sensory organs of our bodies. We cannot see God with our eyes nor hear him with our ears. In that respect our material bodies are a barrier to spiritual perception.

We can only perceive God’s presence indirectly, through the effects God has in his actions in the world. That’s why I think the traditional proof for God’s existence based upon the world’s design has such persuasive power, even if it does not provide a logic-tight proof. We sense the presence of a creative power behind the beautiful universe we observe with our senses and our scientific tools.

And that is how it must be as long as we remain creatures of flesh. In that sense, I resonate with what the author of Hebrews says when he identifies the obscuring curtain with our material flesh.

But what if our flesh can come to perceive spirit? What if our flesh can be given the right perceptive capability? That is, I believe, the good news of the Christian gospel. For the destiny of the material universe–and the destiny of each of us as material human beings–is ultimately to be so infused with God’s Spirit that we can come to perceive God’s presence directly. The barrier of flesh is transcended.

The Role of Resurrection

And how does that happen? By a transformation of the flesh in the experience of resurrection. In the resurrection we become, indeed the whole universe becomes, material bodies which unite with spirit in a perfect and fulfilling union. As a result of that union, we become capable of perceiving the world of spirit in a way we could not before.*

This transforming experience seems to be what the apostle Paul is trying to describe in 1 Corinthians 15. There he says of the resurrection that lies ahead:

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. (1 Corinthians 15:42-46)

Our experience of life in the flesh is one of both pleasure and pain. It is a life of mutability, for our bodies are always in flux. It is one of health and of disease. It is one of amazing ability (witness Olympic athletes) and one of disability and limiting injuries. It is one of creativity and one of staleness. It is one of vitality, and one that ends in total loss that comes with death.

It is these facts of life that made the ancient Greeks so disdainful of material life. In the great Platonic vision, salvation meant escape from this imperfect, mutable existence and arrival in the static, but perfect world of spirit (the world of the Forms). Christian spirituality has inherited much of this disdain in its various forms of extreme asceticism.

But that is not the vision of the New Testament. When Christians proclaimed the gospel of the resurrection of Jesus, they held out to the world an unprecedented hope. They saw the destiny of human beings–and ultimately of the whole universe–to be a glorious transformation when material existence is not abolished, but raised to a high and glorious existence, in which matter and spirit are so interfused that they become one.

We see this vision described with great vividness in the vision of the new Jerusalem that we find in Revelation 21-22.

The Practical Point

Now what is the practical, here-and-now point of this Christian vision? It means Christians are called to care deeply about life now in the flesh. In caring for that life here and now we are stewards with God in working to bring material life to its glorious destiny.

We do not run away from the demands placed upon us by daily living, demands that we encounter in carrying for our families and earning our living in our jobs. We pursue with all our energies the search for healing for bodies and minds. We work to nurture the well-being of our environment and the earth’s climate. We care deeply about the needs of the poor and disadvantaged, for we work to help them rise to their glorious destiny too.

And yet we do all this well aware that the eternal is not the same as the material existence we now live. Therefore there is nothing about our present material existence that is of supreme value. We do not turn material existence into idolatry. We long for a glorious destiny that has not yet arrived in its fulness. All of the material creation must pass through the door of death before it can emerge into resurrection.**

I am aware that what I am writing may sound just as strange as the language of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. I am trying to describe a vision I have of creation and life that I cannot describe with full precision because it is not yet here. Yet I glimpse hints of it throughout the New Testament.

We can sometimes feel about our lives that we are stuck in the mud, as if we are turtles crawling through the muck of a fetid swamp. That, to some degree, is life in the flesh. Yet the Christian gospel tells us that is not a fully correct perception. The swamp will someday be transformed into a beautiful paradise garden, fed by all the life that was the swamp. And we turtles will one day sprout wings so we can soar through this garden like dragonflies.

In the meantime, let us–as the author of Hebrews might counsel–keep up our faithful crawling encouraged and buoyed by our vision of the glorious destiny that is coming in God’s providential timing.

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* If I understand the theology of Teilhard de Chardin correctly, this is what he means by his Omega Point. Like the Epistle to the Hebrews, his writings can be challenging to read, but they linger in my mind and continually stimulate my thought. What I write in this post would not be possible without the influence of Teilhard de Chardin on my own thinking.

** In saying that, I think of the strange phenomena of black holes in our universe. I wonder if we cannot think of black holes as the form of death that stars experience. What happens to a star when it is sucked into a black hole? Does it dissolve away? Or does it go through some kind of resurrection experience? Who knows? But the message of the gospel might suggest that in the black hole experience stars too undergo some kind of mysterious transformation.