June 13, 2005

  • Irony of ironies.   I look at the calendar and it says today is Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai over 3000 years ago.    Nice staging I guess.    Anyway, I have to tell this story before the one I wanted to tell will make any sense, so here goes:


    THE TEMPTATION OF AARON 


    Moses and Aaron first appear together like The Blues Brothers. They were on "a mission from God."    It was God that paired them up to work together.    God spoke to them together, and sent them on missions together.   Arm-in-arm they faced possible death together, and they were successful, together.


    IF I COULD SAVE TIME IN A BOTTLE


    Everyone hates to see a good thing come to an end, especially if you're the one who gets the short end of the candy stick.   Less than 90 days after leaving Egypt, Aaron's glory days appear to be over.


    Imagine, if you were Aaron, how you might have felt.   Moses keeps using his staff to save the day now.   Just Moses, not you.   There was a time, once, when it was your staff that got the glory.   You threw it down in front of Pharoh, and it was your staff that ate all the other staffs of Pharoah's magicians.   Now, Moses uses his rod to drownd Pharoh's army in the Red Sea, and to call forth needed water from a rock he struck with his rod. . .    And you?   Well, in the battle with Amalek, you gloriously spent all day helping to hold up the arm of Moses, while he held his rod aloft, because when he held up his rod, Israel prevailed in the battle.


    YOU DON"T SEND ME FLOWERS ANYMORE


    Increasingly, the LORD speaks only to Moses, and increasingly, Moses does his own talking.    Since leaving Egypt, the people have been flocking to Moses to settle their disputes, not to you.    How could you not feel diminished?    Moses's star is clearly rising, and yours, well, it's clearly fading, lets be honest.


    Then, to top it all off, when Israel came to Sinai, the LORD did things that really had to make you feel useless.   Previously, God himself had bragged you up to Moses, saying about you "I know that he can speak well."   "And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people."  But now, not only has Moses been speaking directly to the people, but the LORD does also.   From the mountain, the LORD speaks the 10 Commandments audibly himself directly to the people, all 3 million of them.   You obviously need a new job.


    (Yes, Cecille B. DeMille actually cut The LORD’s big part out of his movie.   Go figure.   Real life was stranger than DeMille’s fiction, if you believe the Torah’s account. . .    And a lot of Jews do.    They take great pride in this event, pointing out that there are some 15,000 known religions in recorded history, and they believe that Judaism is the only religion not based on some form of personal revelation, but instead is founded on this arguably more reliable/believable all inclusive group revelation.)


    So, anyway, Moses has this new servant boy named Joshua who is helping him around now.    God is speaking for himself, and the Israelites don’t need you as a go-between anymore, because they have their own direct personal relationship with the LORD now. Nobody needs you anymore.


    HEY, HEY, MISTER POSTMAN; LOOK AND SEE. . .


    But, hang on, things are starting to look up for you.   When the LORD spoke to the Israelites, they were scared out of their wits.   There were thunderings, and lightnings, and the noise of a trumpet, and the mountain smoking- and they all freaked and ran, and stood afar off.


    They said to Moses "Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die."   Moses tried to calm them down. He tried to explain that the LORD was just putting on a show to scare them so they would fear and sin not, but Moses was no Aaron, and he couldn't speak well enough to pull it off.     The people would have none of it.    They wanted no more of this personal relationship with the LORD stuff.


    The down side for you, though,  was that the people wanted Moses to speak to them, and not you.    That used to be your job.


    NO I'M NOT GOING TO LET IT BOTHER ME TONIGHT


    The whole 10 Commandments event went down as a complete fiasco.   Absolutely nobody was happy with how it went down.   Not God, Not Moses, not the people, and probably not Aaron either.   So, while the freaked out people stood afar off, Moses drew near to the LORD had a little chat. Just Moses, no Aaron.


    After this chat, Moses goes back to the fearful people and tells them the words of the LORD, and he wrote them down. (Basically three chapters of 'Thou Shalt 'and 'Thou Shalt Not's', centered around God's earlier stated desire that the people should become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation).   This seemed to go over pretty well with the people who answered with one voice and said "All the words which the LORD hath said, we will do."   So they closed the deal, and called it  The First Covenant.   Then Moses got up early the next morning and built an altar and twelve pillars, and made burnt offerings and sacrifices on it, (Aaron maybe was still sleeping?) and Moses takes half of the blood and sprinkled it on the people (Aaron is now just part of the crowd, I guess).    The contract was complete, and all signed in blood.


    Now comes the fine print.   Things start looking up a bit for Aaron.  Moses, per the Lord's instructions, takes Aaron and his two eldest sons, and seventy of the elders of the people, and separated themselves, and went up to the mountain (I wonder how Aaron and his young sons felt around all those old people?).   There, they saw the LORD   (a rather awesome sight, no doubt) yet, remarkably, they lived to tell about it, and both ate and drank (five loaves and three fish, perhaps?).   Rapprochement was going smoothly.   God was revealing himself again (less fireworks this time) and this group of leaders (maybe a cut above the mixed multitude) were not running away in fear.   Cool.  


    Yes. Everything was going just swimmingly, until Moses turned to the others and said he was going up the mountain to talk with the LORD, and that they should wait there for him until he returned.    Moses  leaves Aaron and Hur in charge of settling the peoples disputes.  (At last, Aaron finds a new job, but he has to share it with some guy named Hur.)    Then, poof, Moses and Joshua disappear up the mountain to meet the LORD( not Aaron and Moses, like it used to be. . .).  


    Up on the mountain, he fine print Gode gave Moses, it turns out, was rather exhaustive.   The LORD gave Moses seven chapters of  instructions about offerings, priestly garments, candlesticks, the ark of the covenant, incense, and who was going to be appointed to do what, to make and to build all that stuff.    While Moses was up there, the LORD wrote tables of testimony on tablets of stone for Moses, front and back, which Moses, later carried back down the mountain.     contd.            (c) RLM