Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread # 119
Secondary

1/ Today’s text is a pip:
“And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf of gold and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain...

2/...“He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to a powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.” Exodus 32: 19-20

3/ Good for Moses. Sometimes politics just makes us furious. Listening to our vile President makes me want to break the law too. Watching the confrontation between Pelosi & Schumer vs Trump, I screamed as Trump touted his stupid wall.

4/ Trump kept lying about our terrible danger from the tide of non-whites coming to ruin our gene pool. The racism, the arrogance and ignorance, his duped millions -- all threaten our freedom. Anger rushed through me, filling me with hatred.

5/ More than 45 years ago, a professor of Pastoral Theology, wise in the ways of the heart, remarked in class one day, “Anger, you know, is a secondary emotion.” I raised my hand and asked, “How’s that?”

6/ The professor answered, “The primary emotion is fear; fear ignites the whole fight or flight mechanism. So if you’re made very angry, ask yourself what are you afraid of?”
Teachers can say powerful things. We should pay them more.

7/ What was Moses afraid of? He had just spent all that time with God on Mount Sinai, receiving and learning about the law, that gift God intended to help the people whom God had liberated remain in their new freedom.

8/ Yet here they were, after experiencing the Exodus and after seeing God’s provision for them in the wilderness, cavorting around some stupid piece of gold and singing praises as they adored their new little made-up god.

9/ What was inscribed on that stone tablet Moses was carrying down from the mountaintop? Law 1: “ I, Yahweh, am the Lord your God, you shall have no other god but me.” Law 2: “You shall not make a graven image and bow down and worship it.”

10/ Moses was afraid the whole liberation project was tanking before his eyes. Suppose God abandoned them now, in the wilderness? They could all die, and with them the hope of a newly free people. Moses had a tremendous and reality-based fear.

11/ That fear provokes Moses’ volcanic anger; and in the transport of that anger he breaks the tablets of stone on which God had written the law.

Hmmm...

12/ Moses was right to be angry; the underlying fear was justified. So were all of us witnessing the spectacle of the Donald dancing before the idol of that stupid wall and declaring that he would proudly shut down the government for the sake of his wall.

13/ So what is the fear that underlies that anger? It’s that this inept mobster and his followers are going to trade in our Constitutional freedoms for the sake of the gold they lust after.

14/ We fought the Revolution, the Civil War, and the great World Wars of the 20th century so that we might be free and equal before the law. Are we now to trash all that just to slake the bottomless greed of the oligarchs and mob bosses?

15/ “Greed,” says the New Testament, “is idolatry.”

16/ What mistake did Moses’ anger drive him to? He felt so much of God’s righteous wrath that he smashed God’s handiwork, the tablets of the law. Moses momentarily lost touch with his dependence on God, the source of his authority.

17/ But Moses quickly attended to his lapse, by delegating authority to the Levites, the tribe that was willing to stand with him. Now Moses was no longer so alone in his authority. And then Moses pleaded with God for forgiveness, both for himself and for the people.

18/ Both Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Schumer already feared that Trump will wreck our democracy. They also feared that Trump had staged this phony public negotiation to fix some kind of blame on them. But they handled their rising rage is a way that is very instructive.

19/ Rep. Pelosi calmly asserted the source of her authority to Trump, recalling for all of us the basic truth that this is a representative democracy, and that she is the leader of the majority of the representatives.

20/ Sen. Schumer calmly insisted on facts, and placed two alternatives before the Don as a way to refuse participation in shutting down our government.

21/ We are rightly afraid for our country. There are two basic responses to fear. One response is to flee, which has been the dominant response in the country so far -- fleeing into anything that will distract us from the disaster unfolding before our eyes.

22/ The second response is to allow ourselves to experience the anger and then use this anger to defend our land.

23/ What authority do we have to do so? The Declaration that we are created as the equals of those who hold offices of authority. And the opening line of the Constitution: “We the people, in order . . .”

24/ As we express the anger, this secondary emotion that I’m sure God shares, here’s what I take from Moses’ example:

25/ Don’t break the tablets of the law; join with those whose hearts are set on living together in a just and free and merciful nation; and plead with God for the redemption of this hour.