Two different tales reveal the same message

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072919.cfm
Exodus 32:15-24, 30-34
John 11:19-27

A not so hidden message shows up in two of our readings today — the intimacy between God and his people is made up of one-on-one relationships. We discover, with surprising consistency, that God engages in a conversational participation with each of us. He does this by actively participating in both our holiness and our sin. 

We subtly hear this message in two stories of siblings.

One story is an epic display of impropriety and unholy evil waged between two brothers. The other is a rather tame family dispute between two sisters. The brother’s impropriety deals with high crimes. The sister’s impropriety deals with no crime at all. The brothers differences highlight life and death. The sister’s difference highlight the proper place of contemplation and work. The men argue over horrifying, alarming sin. The women deal with the importance of fixing food and setting the table. In truth, among the women no sin really takes place at all. 

Both scriptures, however, tell us unforgettable things about attending to God, listening to God, and recognizing that God is always participating in our lives.

One set of verses is pulled out of Exodus, a book of the Pentateuch, one of the five scrolls of the Torah. The corresponding New Testament text resides in Luke, the third book of four Gospels. They are seminal teachings. Everyone has heard these scriptures. They are controversial because God seems harsh. Yet, despite their opposites in sheer drama, they are equally important to study.

In Exodus, Many thousands of God’s chosen people raise up a false god to replace the Lord, God Almighty. Moses’ brother has let this happen, and he has even participated. This is serious stuff. The payback? God tells Moses to turn his priests into warriors. God forces them — their lives are at stake if they fail  — to slaughter the unrepentant participants in idol worship. Kill them all. Aaron is excused from the grisly death, but is forced to watch. 

This story is truly an awful consequence of outrageous sin. Moses must call upon only faithful Levites to take up swords. Then they kill 3,000 of their own people. This is not some foreign riotous gang of thieves that local ranchers must logically engage in war. These are folks judged unfaithful, but known to each other for generations. They are all relatives and close friends. 

What’s happened is that short-sighted craftsmen and laborers have gotten extremely drunk and held a raucous, sex-crazed marathon. Now, the religious community, the only innocent ones, must turn into an army and wipe out the unrepentant. It is final judgment on a Burning Man reverie replete with dancing, all enacted with fornication around a ridiculous idol. This hedonism is not foreign to us, but the judgment sure is.

Then we have this other story. In Luke’s Gospel dinner is being served and Martha wants her sister to get off her butt and help. There’s no reverie, no sex scenes, no idols, and no subsequent chopping off heads and running for your life. Just olives, carrots and some diced lamb. This is a very familiar exchange between perceived laziness in the face of required, diligent service. The response by Jesus, however, throws us for a loop, similarly to the harsh execution of the unfaithful Israelites. Lazy Mary isn’t lazy. Hard working Martha isn’t so superior after all. That's the gist of it on first blush.

In fact, the teaching of these two stories is identical. Do not ignore the constant intimacy of God, neither in the face of his supposed absence nor in the act of performing a duty. God’s with us for a reason. He draws us to him. “Pay attention to what he says. Do what he tells you. No, really. Stop what you’re doing. He’s talking to you.”

In both stories the same God of the universe is verbal and involved. The Exodus scripture is epic, but the Lukan scripture has an epoch changing setting also. 

The ten commandments get written out by God himself on stone tablets — not the iPad kind — up on a mountain top. Upon coming back to a camp where hundreds of thousands of Israelites live, all hell has broken loose. Moses yells at his brother, breaks the imperial stones, executes thousands of relatives, and justifiably treats his brother as a traitor. God is angered by the outrageous sinners, expects retribution, monitors the slaughter, and then spends 40 days listing out hundreds of detailed behaviors that the Jews must perform for two thousand years. Here’s the interesting thing. Exodus goes on and on for many more chapters outlining in amazing detail the rules of life as God’s people. All those add-ons to the ten commandments were God’s idea. They were provided specifically to produce holy behaviors. They seem to be never ending.

The Luke story involves the same God, though now God is incarnated as Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. Jesus has also just come down from a mountain in experience of his own celebrated transformation, much like the seminal experience of Moses on the mountain seeing God as he is. But now God is just lounging around in the home of Martha and Mary. Martha mouths off a bit to Mary, and Jesus responds with firmness to both of them. His response, like that to the Israelites, comes with an expected and subsequent behavior. 

Take time to listen to God, especially when he calls for it. Work is good. But the better thing is to turn to God when he’s talking to you. And then, just like the hundreds of commands given in the rest of Exodus, following upon the sins of the idol worshippers, the authors of the other books of the New Testament write out hundreds of things we need to watch out for. In book after book, from Romans through to Jude, behavioral requirements are listed over and over. Watch out for sin — lust, greed, and so on. Love each other, confess to each other, pray all day long. 

I’m suggesting that the Exodus doctrinal rituals map the same litany of doctrines lined out in the Testament. The warnings and expectations of being God’s holy people or the Body of Christ describe a consistent and public example of holy living.

God uses Moses and Aaron’s huge display of brotherly tension to then pound home the teachings and expectations of holiness that come from paying attention to the authority of God over everything else. In the face of egregious sin God sees everything. Sin results in a mighty fist, a booming voice. Don’t put any other gods before him. 

God uses Martha and Mary’s minor spat to help us understand the same thing. Jesus teaches us all. The teachings and expectations of holiness come from paying attention to the authority of God. God sees even the most inconsequential of things. Consider God before all other things.

There is an even more important similarity behind these two stories. Aaron and Moses are called brothers. Martha and Mary are siblings. In both of these relationships a third party is integral to the scriptures. Martha and Mary’s brother is Lazarus, the one Jesus rose from the dead. Miriam is Moses’ and Aaron’s sister, and she is healed miraculously by God, saved from an excruciating death. 

Moses pleads with God to save Miriam. Martha pleads with God to save Lazarus. Both are eventually cured and restored. There is more to this similarity across the two testaments. There is active communication with God at the highest of levels.

Moses and Aaron are integrally involved in the forming of the Israelites as the chosen people of God. They are founding fathers, and Miriam plays a major role in that burgeoning development of a holy nation. Martha and Mary are also integrally involved in the forming of the Christian Church. They become spiritual giants in the development of Christianity. Their brother, Lazarus, is similar to Miriam. He and Miriam become living testaments to the mercy of God.

The surprising similarity between all of these people, though — Moses, Aaron and Miriam recorded in the Old Testament, and Martha, Mary and Lazarus recorded in the New — centers on their unique relationships to God. God spoke directly to all of them. Two men and their sister. Two women and their brother. Their lives then teach us the foundations of holiness.

Within the drama of the hedonism and the sister’s spat a merciful God responds to the pleas of those he loves. The closer our intimacy with God, the more clearly we see God active in our lives. That relationship isn’t about pleasure and rest and rainbows and sunrises. It’s about being participants in a brutally honest and frighteningly truthful relationship with the God of the universe.