Exodus 34

²⁹ When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. ³⁰ Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. ³¹ But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with them. ³² Afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. ³³ And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. ³⁴ Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, ³⁵ the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

When I was in high school I went to Rome and, while there, I was privileged to be able to see Michaelangelo’s majestic sculpture of Moses. It was, like all Michelangelo sculptures, absolutely breathtaking! It is a famous statue, not only because of the artist and the artistry, but also because of an oddity. If you look at Moses’ head, there appear to be horns coming out of it! Why is this? The answer has to do with our text and a particular translation of it. Patrick Murray, writing for “Art & Liturgy,” explains:

This statue of Moses, housed at San Pietro in Vincoli (Basilica of St. Peter in Chains), is part of the tomb of Pope Julius II, who was notable for commissioning the Sistine Chapel, as well as the destruction and reconstruction of St. Peter’s Basilica.

At first glance, the statue seems ordinary, or at least as ordinary as a Michelangelo masterpiece can. Look more closely, though, and you’ll find that the subject has sprouted a pair of horns.

Michelangelo’s sculpture is the most famous of many images with the same quirk. What’s going on here?

This bizarre addition stems from an oddity in Scripture.  Here’s the relevant passage, Exodus 34:29–30, in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.

The original Hebrew uses the word qaran or keren here. It can refer to a horn (like a goat’s) or a ray of light. You know, because a light beam can be kind of horn-shaped, I guess. The first translation is more common by far.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, the Greek translation of Scripture, called the Septuagint, translates this phrase as “his face was glorified.” 

Later on, one of my favorite saints, Jerome, produced the Vulgate, which was the first comprehensive translation of Scripture into Latin. Jerome translated qaran as cornuta. The root of this Latin word, cornus, can mean a horn (like a trumpet) or a horn (like a goat’s). This is where we get the English words cornet, cornucopia, and, yes, unicorn.[1]

The “horns,” then, are a particular way of trying to translate and understand Exodus 34’s description of Moses’ face beaming with light as he came down from the mountain. I like this particular oddity because it shows just how difficult it is to take hold of, much less depict artistically, the reality of what happened to Moses in Exodus 34.

Why was Moses’ face shining and what was happening here? What does this mean?

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I was deeply touched by both of these videos. Dr. Garrett’s sincerity, sharp mind, and tender heart are a true inspiration. Here is the lecture and the lunch Q&A:

Haggai 1

¹ In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: ² “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.” ³ Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, ⁴ “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? ⁵ Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. ⁶ You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. ⁷ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. 

Fred Craddock tells a jarring story about a friend of his named Glenn Adsit this illustrates well what good priorities look like.

            Glenn Adsit, a schoolmate from years ago, ministered mostly in China.  He was under house arrest in China when the soldiers came one day and said, “You can return to America.”

            They were celebrating, and the soldiers said, “You can take two hundred pounds with you.”

            Well, they’d been there for years.  Two hundred pounds.  They got the scales and started the family arguments:  two children, wife, husband.  Must have this vase.  Well, this is a new typewriter.  What about my books?  What about this?  And they weighed everything and took it off and weighed this and took it off and weighed this and, finally, right on the dot, two hundred pounds.

            The soldier asked, “Ready to go?”

            “Yes.”

            “Did you weigh everything?”

            “Yes.”

            “You weighed the kids?”

            “No, we didn’t.”

            “Weigh the kids.”

            And in a moment, typewriter and vase and all became trash.  Trash.  It happens.[1]

I suppose all of us get the point. The Adsits were given the gift of a shocking moment of perspective and priority. They suddenly understood and, in that moment, there was no question. Everything else becomes trash in the face of what really matters!

The book of Haggai tells the story of how God’s people were given a similar gift of clarity. God used a prophet named Haggai to bring it about. My prayer is that, as we study this amazing little book, we too will have a moment of shocking clarity!

First, however, we need to understand what is happening. The book of Haggai makes real sense only when we understand the historical context surrounding it. Probably the easiest way to get at this is to highlight five important moments in Israel’s life that set the scene for this book. They are:

606 & 597 BC – Babylon invades Jerusalem

586 BC – Babylon destroys the temple

538 BC – Persia conquers Babylon (with Cyrus ruling initially then Darius in 522 BC)

536 BC – many Jews return home

520 BC – Haggai prophecies to the Jews

The last two dates specifically will help us get at what is going on here. Many of the Jews return to Jerusalem in 536 BC. In 530 BC the prophet Haggai rebuked them for not rebuilding the temple of the Lord. Mark Dever puts the problem nicely when he writes:

The Israelites had been living back in the land for more than sixteen years at this point. They had spent several months rebuilding the temple at the beginning of those sixteen years. But then they had become indifferent to the rebuilding effort, and foreign opposition gave them all the more reason to spend their money elsewhere. In fact, they were taking the meager amount of money they did have and were spending it on their own homes. So the Lord used Haggai to rebuke them and tell them that this was not right.[2]

What we find in the book of Haggai is therefore a corrective and a challenge to all who have neglected or forgotten or turned away from what matters most. But in order to understand this, we must first define what matters most!

What Matters Most

The book of Haggai begins with a list of the powers: the king of Persia, the governor of Judah, the high priest, and the prophet.

¹ In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: ² “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”

It is telling to note that Haggai’s prophecy was actually addressed to the governor, Zerubbabel, and the high priest, Jehozadak. Responsibility for the negligence that Haggai would address therefore rested on the shoulders of these leaders. However, as these institutions, for lack of a better word, represented the totality of the lives of the Jews, Haggai’s prophecy must be seen as being addressed to all Israel through these representative heads. And what, in essence, was Haggai’s complaint? His complaint was that, “These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”

His complaint, in other words, was against the shoddy priorities of the people who had lost their way. But his complaint also defined what mattered most, and what mattered most was the rebuilding of the house of the Lord, the temple?

Why? Because the temple was more than simply a structure. It was a living symbol (a) that God was in the midst of His people, (b) that the people were orienting their lives around the person and will of the one true God, and (c) that the people realized there was something above their own individual existences.

The Jews knew, of course, that God was omnipresent, that He was not literally contained in any structure, temple or not. Even so, the temple was where God’s people went to worship and the Holy of Holies was seen as that sacred and set-apart place where the high priest would stand before God interceding for His people. It meant, in a very real sense, that Israel at least recognized that their lives needed to be caught up in the life of their God and that His presence needed to be the empowering center of their existence.

Haggai’s complaint was not therefore primarily about a structure. It was primarily about what the neglect of the structure revealed about the hearts and minds of God’s people. His complaint was about their abandonment of what matters most.  And, for our purposes, how would we articulate this great truth? We might say that what matters most is the alignment of our very existence with the person, work, character, attributes, and plans of the one true God who made us and in whom alone we can find meaning, peace, joy, and true life. What matters most, in other words, is God.

In essence, this is what Haggai was saying. It just so happened that the way in which this was communicated concretely in the life of Israel was through the great symbol of the temple and all that it meant. To neglect it was to neglect God, not because the temple was God but because they knew that the temple was the place where they consistently came to stand before God.

How about you? Does the temple stand in ruins in your own life? Do you walk by it every day without ever turning to consider it, to rebuild it, to see it regain a place of prominence in your life? Would you say that God is the single most important thing in your life and that your priorities reveal that fact?

How We Avoid What Matters Most

Many of us cannot say that this is the case. This is because we ignore the temple, the presence of God in our lives. It lies in ruins and we have become accustomed to the ruins. How does this happen? Haggai, fortunately, reveals how it happens.

² “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”³ Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, ⁴ “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?”

There are two realities to which Haggai points in his diagnosis of the problem.

• Procrastination (“These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”)

• Bad priorities (“Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?”)

The former leads to the latter. When we neglect the things of God other things take the place that He alone should occupy. Things like our own comfort and our own lives. In other words, “paneled houses.” What does this mean. The IVP Bible Background Commentary offers a nice explanation.

The term “paneled” can mean “covered,” “roofed,” or “paneled,” but the point in any case is that it represents the finishing touches. Their homes were not “in process” but were fully appointed, while the temple remained a ruin. The term does not imply luxury or great expense, though paneling can be of that nature. Wood paneling was unusual in private residences, although Solomon’s throne was “paneled” (1 Kings 7:7).[3]

Thus, whether or not this is a reference to luxury, it is definitely a reference to the shameful fact that their own houses were now finished while work on God’s house had been neglected and seemingly forgotten. What are your paneled houses? What are those areas of your life that you know you have neglected God to tend? They need not be negative things in and of themselves. They might just as easily be good things if tended to in the right season and in the context of a viable relationship with God. But good things can become condemnable things if they are achieved at the cost of the prioritizing of God and His ways.

Mark Dever poignantly asks:

Consider this: what would your life look like if you got what you really wanted? Do you have a picture of that in your mind? Now ask yourself, would God be there? Is he at the center of your desires, or is he repeatedly neglected by the true center of your heart’s desires?[4]

And what is “the true center of your heart’s desires?” Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:21—“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Your heart is really in whatever you most treasure. The only question is, will we treasure our own paneled houses or will we treasure the Lord our God?

Be honest with yourself: are your procrastinating in building the temple? Is that showing up in your priorities? Is there even room in your life as you have created it for tending to the things of God? I plead with you to make it so if there is not!

The Folly of Avoiding What Matters Most

Why? Why does it matter so much? It matters so much because anything in life that you move to the center of your life where God alone should be is doomed to frustrate you and leave you empty. Consider Haggai’s description of what these returned exiles’ lives had turned into.

⁵ Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. ⁶ You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. ⁷ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.

Haggai’s description of the symptoms of Israel’s sickness is devastating:

• “You have sown much, and harvested little.”

• “You eat, but you never have enough.”

• “You drink, but you never have your fill.”

• “You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm.”

• “And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.”

This is devastating because it is one of the best descriptions of modern American life I have ever read. We consume and consume and consume, but all for nothing. At the end of the day, after all of our laboring and trying and buying and consuming, we are left empty.

Consider the ways of the modern, upwardly-mobile American. He must have that car and those clothes and that spouse and those kind of children who do those kinds of things with those kinds of people to create that specific kind of image for us to put on Facebook! Consider the ways of the modern American enslaved to social media. He must take one thousand selfies so he can delete all but one in an effort to find just the right image to put on his social media platforms so hopefully just the right people will think just the right thing. Consider the successful American businessman who spends all of his time, often to the neglect of his family, to climb the ladder so that he can finally tell himself and others that he has made it, that he has arrived! Consider the helicopter mom who must control her children and everybody else around them so as to create what she considers to be the optimal outcome. Consider the neurotic parents who demand that their children perform in such and such a way so that they can live vicariously through them.

Consider your ways! Consider all the ways we as modern American try desperately and spend ourselves in a frantic effort to achieve some goal, we often know not what, to impress some people, we often know not who, so that we can be thought well of! We consume things and time and each other in a frenzied and misguided circus of activity all in the hope that we might matter!

And we so often do these things while the temple of God lies in ruins in our own hearts!

Tellingly, these descriptions of Israel’s life are bookended by the statement, “Consider your ways.” In other words, the problems they were experiencing were a direct result of the lives they had chosen to live. So too with us! We are reaping what we have sown!

But here is the good news: you do not have to live that kind of life and you do not have to run that kind of race and you do not have to be a hamster on a wheel in a cage of empty consumption. You do not have to neglect the things of God! You could turn to God and to the life He has for you. You could lose yourself in His glory and nourish yourself on His word! You could turn to the rubble of the temple in your life and simply begin!

And when this happens, when we set down our stuff and dare to turn our attention back to what matters most, we will suddenly find that we are now equipped to handle our stuff! If we get the most important thing in the right place then the other things can get in their right places and then we can actually start living life as it is meant to be lived!

The beauty of this is that Jesus will say the exact same thing Haggai said. In Matthew 6, Jesus said:

³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

And that, in a nutshell, is what Haggai is about! It is about getting the kingdom in front of us instead of behind us or off to the side. It is about letting God’s Kingdom and His ways and His life dominate the horizon of our lives as we move forward. It is about following Jesus first, not as an afterthought or as a religious custom. For Christ is the temple of the living God! He said so in John 2:19 when He said, ““Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He was speaking there of Himself!

Christ is the temple and, in His resurrection, He has been raised up in our midst! To turn back to what matters most, to turn our attention to the temple where we meet God and worship and abide in His presence, is to turn to Jesus Christ!

Jesus is what matters most!

Do not neglect the Lord of Lords! Consider your ways! Is He at the very center of your life?

[1] Fred Craddock.  Craddock Stories (St. Louis, MO:  Chalice Press, 2001), p.22.

[2] Mark Dever, The Message of the Old Testament. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), p.886.

[3] John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p.797.

[4] Mark Dever, p.889.

Mark 16

¹ When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. ² And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ³ And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” ⁴ And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. ⁵ And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. ⁶ And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. ⁷ But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” ⁸ And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. ⁹ Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. ¹⁰ She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. ¹¹ But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. ¹² After these things he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. ¹³ And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. ¹⁴ Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. ¹⁵ And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. ¹⁶ Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. ¹⁷ And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; ¹⁸ they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” ¹⁹ So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. ²⁰ And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

A few years ago CNN did a story on the controversial New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan. Crossan is controversial because he does not believe in the supernatural. He is in the forefront of what is called “the search for the historical Jesus,” which is, proponents say, an effort to get at the “real” Jesus behind all of the myths and superstitions with which the Church has allegedly surrounded Him. What this means is that, among other things, Crossan does not believe in a literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus. He believes that the story of the resurrection as presented in scripture is a parable intended to make another point. Here is how the CNN story puts it:

Crossan says, however, that he’s “trying to understand the stories of Jesus, not refute them.”

Still, his findings often end up challenging some of Christianity’s most cherished beliefs.

Consider his understanding of the resurrection. Jesus didn’t bodily rise from the dead, he says. The first Christians told Jesus’ resurrection story as a parable, not as a fact.

“Crucifixion meant that imperial power had won,” Crossan says. “Resurrection meant that divine justice had won. God is on the side of the crucified one. Rome’s values are a dead issue to me.”[1]

That final comment intrigues me: “Crucifixion meant that imperial power had won. Resurrection meant that divine justice had won. God is on the side of the crucified one. Rome’s values are a dead issue to me.”

Do you see what this does to the New Testament account of the resurrection of Jesus? It makes it not a historical account of an actual miracle but rather a feel-good story that essentially means God prefers one set of values over another. To use a modern term, Crossan’s reading of the resurrection account reduces it to some kind of divine virtue signaling whereby God, through a parable, lets the world know that he thinks Rome did a bad, bad thing and He does not like it, not one bit. Rome’s values may be dead to Crossan, but the problem is that, according to his theory, so is Jesus!

Then there is this, from a First Things review of the book Belonging to the Universe. Listen to these comments of a Benedictine monk named Thomas Matus:

Is Christ’s resurrection a stumbling block for the hip? No problem, answer the Benedictines. “That’s not theology,” says Matus of Jesus’ Easter victory over death. “No responsible theologian is going to dredge that up today.” The Resurrection, he says, was just a mental “experience” the disciples underwent because they couldn’t bear the thought of “a wonderful, lovable person . . . being subjected to capital punishment on the basis of ambiguous allegations.”[2]

So in Matus’ view the resurrection is a case of what is called psychological projection whereby the untrue story of the resurrection was conjured up because the thought of Jesus being killed by Romans was simply too difficult for the early Christians to handle.

What is most unsettling about both of these faulty views is that they come from two who would, if asked, call themselves Christians. But, to be blunt about it, this simply will not do.  The resurrection is not a parable about how God does not like bad people who do bad things and it is not the projection of a psychologically soothing story that the foolish Christians could hide behind in their effort to avoid the disturbing reality of the cross.

No, it was the actual resurrection of the actual Jesus from the actual dead! It was a staggering and shocking display of divine power. It was, in short, a miracle, and one that changes everything!

As we journey through this final chapter of Mark’s gospel. Let us consider what the resurrection of Jesus means for humanity. As we do so, we will see why it matters as much as it does and why it must not be jettisoned.

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Exodus 34

⁹ And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” ¹⁰ And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. ¹¹ “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ¹² Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. ¹³ You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim ¹⁴ (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), ¹⁵ lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, ¹⁶ and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. ¹⁷ “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal. ¹⁸ “You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib, for in the month Abib you came out from Egypt. ¹⁹ All that open the womb are mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. ²⁰ The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. And none shall appear before me empty-handed. ²¹ “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. ²² You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. ²³ Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. ²⁴ For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year. ²⁵ “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until the morning. ²⁶ The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” ²⁷ And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” ²⁸ So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Last November Peter J. Leithart wrote an interesting article for First Things journal entitled, “The Promise and Limits of Covenant Polity.” In it he argued that the language of “covenant” might elevate American political discourse above the tired and hackneyed verbiage into which it has so shamefully fallen. In defense of using the language of “covenant,” Leithart argued the following:

First, covenant has deep roots in Western political history. American order is laid out in covenantal and quasi-covenantal documents, from Winthrop’s Model of Christian Charity to the U.S. Constitution…

Second, covenant polity’s anti-individualism combats the corrosive effects of liberalism…

Third, covenant polity is polity of mutual obligation…Politics isn’t reduced to the defense of rights…

Covenant polity, finally, unites law and love. Biblical covenants are initiated by the God who loves Israel for the sake of their fathers, and the covenant people are knit together by the bonds of love for neighbor and one’s enemies. Love is not privatized romance but a “macro” value that overarches what Benedict calls a “civilization of love.”

But Leithart concluded his article with an interesting observation:

Covenant isn’t anything like a cure-all. It’s been badly abused. At times, it has taken a racial or tribal turn. It underwrites aggressive nationalism when it treats some nation-state, rather than the church, as the “new Israel.”

The biblical references above expose another difficulty. Western politics borrowed its notion of covenant from the Hebrew Bible. Once we start talking about “renewing the national covenant,” we may have to turn to Israel, as many of the Reformers and their children did, as a model polity. How will that fly?

And then, even more foundationally: Is it possible to speak of a covenant polity without acknowledging a covenant Lord who transcends the polity? Who will that Lord be? Fudging that question will put us right back where we started, with a post-liberalism indistinguishable from liberalism. Facing it will expose how thoroughly covenant polity challenges foundational premises of liberalism.[1]

I think he makes an important point there at the end. “Covenant” outside of an eternal, immutable, faithful God upon whose person and character the covenant can find deep and abiding grounding is likely nothing more than mere political talk like all the rest with which we are so unfortunately familiar. Fortunately for Israel, they had both the language of covenant and faith in the God who issued and ensured the covenant. This becomes especially clear in Exodus 34:9-28 and God’s reinstatement of the covenant with Israel.

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Mark 15

⁴⁰ There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. ⁴¹ When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

⁴⁷ Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

Mark 16

¹ When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.

It is said that Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem, “Mother o’ Mine,” in order to please his mother after the ending of one of his novels had disappointed her. It is a simple poem, but a powerful one about the lengths to which a mother’s love will go to reach her son. Kipling wrote:

If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine![1]

Time and time again in human history has revealed the powerful extent to which a mother’s love will compel her. Most notably, we see it in Mary’s presence at the cross. But there is more. Mother is present at the cross with other women. Marks tells us of three women. But the presence of these women is not recorded simply for information’s sake. No, Mary, Jesus’ mother, and the other women tell us something powerful and important about the nature of discipleship and about what a true relationship with Jesus looks like.

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Exodus 34

¹ The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. ² Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. ³ No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.” ⁴ So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. ⁵ The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. ⁶ The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” ⁸ And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. 

Philip Ryken passes on a story that makes us chuckle and helps us understand what is happening in Exodus 34.

            Maxie Dunnam tells the story of a woman who “took a friend with her when she went to a photographer to have her picture taken. The beauty parlor had done its best for her. She took her seat in the studio and fixed her pose. While the photographer was adjusting his lights in preparation for taking the shot, she said to him, “Now be sure to do me justice.” The friend who had accompanied her said, with a twinkle in her eye, “My dear, what you need is not justice but mercy.”[1]

While we laugh at the audacious comment from the lady’s friend, there is something actually quite profound about that statement: “My dear, what you need is not justice but mercy.” To which we might say: Indeed! Indeed that is so!

That was certainly the case with Israel and it is certainly the case with us as well. We need mercy, not justice! The last couple of chapters have been chapters of justice for Israel, and rightfully so. They had earned justice and God’s wrath because of their disobedience. So do we all. But what God reveals about His character in Exodus 34 is that, while His justice is pure and His anger is always just, He is the God who delights in mercy.

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Mark 15

⁴² And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, ⁴³ Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. ⁴⁴ Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. ⁴⁵ And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. ⁴⁶ And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 

Everybody loves enigmatic characters, those characters that have an air of mystery about them. In the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, Joseph of Arimathea—the man who asked for the body of Jesus and who buried Jesus—is one of those enigmatic character. And, as usually happens with enigmatic characters, people’s curiosity gets the better of them and increasingly strange stories grow up around them. This seems to be especially true of Joseph of Arimathea. There are countless legends that have grown up around Joseph, many of them quite old. Undoubtedly this is because we do not know all that we would like to know about Joseph. So people allow their imaginations to fill in the blanks! The BBC has provided a fascinating list of some of these legends.

• He was the first person to bring Christianity to Britain, having been sent with other disciples by St Philip.
• He built Britain’s first church (some say this was actually the first church in the world).
• He was Mary’s uncle, and thus Jesus’ great-uncle.
• He was a merchant who visited England to buy Cornish tin.
• He took Jesus with him to England when Jesus was a teenager (local legends say that among the places they visited were St Just in Roseland and St Michael’s Mount).
• He brought to England two vials containing the blood and sweat of Jesus (or two vials containing the sweat of Jesus).
• He brought the Holy Grail to England and hid it in a well at Glastonbury, now called the Chalice Well.

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says of Joseph of Arimathea:

Acc. to the apocryphal “Gospel of Nicodemus” he played an important part in the foundation of the first Christian community at Lyddia. In the “De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesie,” written by William of Malmesbury between 1129 and 1139, occurs the earliest mention of the story that St. Joseph came to England with the Holy Grail and built the first church in the country at Glastonbury, but the passage relating this incident was added to the book at least a century later.[1]

It is also said of Joseph of Arimathea that he planted his staff in the ground of Glastonbury and it blossomed into a thorn tree. It is said that this where Glastonbury Thorn comes from. All of these legends are fascinating and a bit amusing, but they do point, again, to the mystery surrounding Joseph of Arimathea.

Even so, what is truly intriguing about Joseph of Arimathea is not the legends but rather what we do know, what scripture does tell us about Joseph. All four gospels mention Joseph, a fact that is very important. When all four gospels mention a figure or an episode, attention must be paid.

So who was Joseph and why does that question matter to us? Who was Joseph of Arimathea and, specifically, who was Jesus to Joseph?

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Mark 15

³³ And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. ³⁴ And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ³⁵ And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” ³⁶ And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” ³⁷ And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. ³⁸ And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. ³⁹ And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

In G.K. Chesterton’s amazing book, Orthodoxy, he says something astonishing about what Christianity brings to the table. He writes of Jesus’ “cry of dereliction” on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Here is what Chesterton says:

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly fear to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt…When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.[1]

I realize that that last phrase makes us wince, but understand what Chesterton was trying to say here. He was saying that, in the cry of dereliction, God cried out wondering where God had gone! In that sense, He “seemed for an instant to be an atheist.”

Whatever one may think of Chesterton’s approach, he certainly gets at the difficulty of this passage and of these words. What was Jesus doing when He cried out asking God why God had forsaken Him? What was happening in that moment? It was, in fact, a critically important step in our own salvation: God crying out and questioning God!

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Exodus 33

¹² Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ ¹³ Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” ¹⁴ And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” ¹⁵ And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. ¹⁶ For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” ¹⁷ And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” ¹⁸ Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” ¹⁹ And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. ²⁰ But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” ²¹ And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, ²² and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. ²³ Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

I am an unapologetic fan of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s great fantasy epic. I have always thought that one of the most touching parts of the story is when the fellowship (tasked with destroying the one ring of power) passes through the elven forest kingdom of Lothlorien. There they encounter the beautiful and powerful elf ruler Galadriel. As the fellowship departs the woods, Galadriel offers each of them a gift. She finally asks Gimli the dwarf what gift he would like. This exchange intrigues the watching elves since elves and dwarves, Tolkien informs us, do not normally care for one another. But Gimli is smitten by the beauty, power, and grace of Galadriel, so he dares to make a great request.

            “And what gift would a Dwarf ask of the Elves?” said Galadriel, turning to Gimli.

            “None, Lady,” answered Gimli. “It is enough for me to have seen the Lady of the Galadhrim, and to have heard her gentle words.”

            “Hear all ye Elves!” she cried to those about her. “Let none say again that Dwarves are grasping and ungracious! Yet surely, Gimli son of Gloin, you desire something that I could give? Name it, I bid you! You shall not be the only guest without a gift.”

            “There is nothing, Lady Galadriel,” said Gimli, bowing low and stammering. “Nothing, unless it might be—unless it is permitted to ask, nay, to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine. I do not ask for such a gift. But you commanded me to name my desire.”

            The Elves stirred and murmured with astonishment, and Celeborn gazed at the Dwarf in wonder, but the Lady smiled. “It is said that the skill of the Dwarves is in their hands rather than in their tongues,” she said; “yet that is not true of Gimli. For none have ever made to me a request so bold and yet so courteous. And how shall I refuse, since I commanded him to speak? But tell me, what would you do with such a gift?”

            “Treasure it, Lady,” he answered, “in memory of your words to me at our first meeting. And if ever I return to the smithies of my home, it shall be set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house, and a pledge of good will between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of days.”

            Then the Lady unbraided one of her long tresses, and cut off three golden hairs, and laid them in Gimli’s hand.[1]

Wonderful! I love the audacity of Gimli’s request. I love his desire to have the great Galadriel with him at all times. I love her gracious willingness to give him strands of her hair.

I thought of this when reading of Moses’ exchange with God at the tent of meeting in the latter half of Exodus 33. Moses dares to make an audacious request of God. Why? Because he wants to know that God is with him, that God has not and will not abandon him, and, indeed, that God is with His people still.

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