Comments on Exodus 16-34

Starting Advent by finishing the Book of Exodus and sampling the rest of the Torah is not your regular approach to the Christmas season. And yet…

There’s that journey motif. The Israelites wander through the desert, hungry, thirsty, confronted by enemies, snakes, and their own infidelity and constant distrust that God will help them. They are given a leader, Moses—whose face shines with the presence of God--and his eloquent brother Aaron and their sister Miriam. They are given manna and quail to eat and water from a rock and a caduceus to ward off the serpents (in the book of Numbers). They are given commandments to guide their relationships and keep them from killing and stealing from each other. You could say that they discovered their identity through that long journey and came to a level of belief and trust in God that was much weaker when they started.

Fast forward to Advent, 2011. Can we characterize our living as a journey? Rather than ‘wandering,’ many would feel we are racing, bouncing along from crisis to crisis like the silver balls in an arcade game. Instead of serpents, we can be bitten by the incessant commercials that are crafted for the sole purpose of convincing us that our real need is to buy this or that product.

But there is still a hunger and a thirst, isn’t there—one that no present, no matter how carefully wrapped and thoughtfully purchased, can satisfy? It’s a kind of homesickness, isn’t it? --A yearning for a ‘promised land,’ or maybe for a ‘promised embrace’ of forgiveness and love?

In our contemporary journey, we come to a mountain, too, a place of encampment, of decision. After we’ve opened hundreds and hundreds of presents over the years and still find a yawning opening in our spirits that is not yet filled, we long for someone to speak to us of a loving God.

Hafiz, the 14th century Sufi master, saw himself as such a mediator and guide. “Bump into me more,” he says in The Gift (translated by Daniel Ladinsky). “Listen. Hafiz knows. Nothing evolves us like love.” Moses knew this, too. However, his knowledge did not take away his problems nor make his journey any easier.

So what good WAS this knowledge of Moses, this trust and this faith? Well, it gave his life meaning. He must have felt that all this wandering was getting him somewhere! And where it was getting him was into a deeper relationship with the God of the universe, the giver of manna and water. “Whither thou goest, I shall go.”

Advent occurs any time we stop and reach for God’s hand. We do not pretend that He is coming; we celebrate His presence. We rush along our life’s path like a three-year old running ahead of her mother. Suddenly we remember that we seem to be all alone amid these crowds of frantic shoppers and blaring carols and we remember to stop, reach out, and clasp a loving hand.

NEXT: Beal, pages 67-74.