Word to the Wise
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - Tuesday in the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Exodus 33:7-11; 34:5b-9, 28 and Matthew 13:36-43]The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to another......
In almost any place on this planet and at almost any time in history, the importance of some individuals in their own eyes or the eyes of others has been measured in terms of the access of those individuals to the highest authority in the group! To bring this wide and pompous statement down to one point on earth and to a somewhat less (I hope) exalted example than the one quoted from Exodus, we might note the tendency in Washington, DC, to measure a person's influence in the White House in terms of how much time they spend in the Oval Office with the President. Or, to use an example that we Catholics would recognize, the measure of a person's influence at the Vatican could be gauged by the amount of one-on-one time they have with the Pope! In the Old Testament, the direct conversations of people like Abraham and Moses with God are a measure of their importance in the story. In today's scripture, the "tent of the meeting" is outside the camp, emphasizing God's transcendence and power. Moses alone may go to the tent where he speaks "face to face" with God "as one man speaks to another." There are no dreams to interpret or "lots" to throw. It's a matter of direct communication. This is clearly a privilege accorded to very few in the story, and once the temple is built in Jerusalem, only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies, once a year, to offer incense in the direct presence of God! Now it's time to "fast forward" a ways and contrast that relationship to one that would be possible with the carpenter from Nazareth! The difficulty that many Jews would have with Jesus as a possible Messiah or even more as God, has to do with the whole Old Testament experience of the Chosen People with God! In our modern day, certain spiritualities would emphasize the personal relationship with Jesus. Furthermore, this relationship is open to any person, and not just a chosen leader or elite group. (However, the notion of superior/inferior access to God, based on one's vocational status in the church, still lingers.) Some folks prefer the distance and some kind of mediator. Some like to talk face to face. The struggle to recognize how the sacred and the human may well overlap without danger to either is one that continually challenges our faith. AMEN
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