The Six-Day War, and the Hand of God

Judaism is not simply an amalgam of national concepts, moral and ritual laws, subjective emotions. Jewish existence is an engagement to what is greater than ourselves. It is sustained by numinous powers; it is carried on the wings of a hidden Presence in history. That Presence, often passive and suppressed, breaks forth in rare moments. (Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Israel: An echo of eternity,” p. 96. Heschel was an American rabbi, theologian and author. Several of his books are important to me, and this book, listed below, started the train of thought leading to this essay.)

Heschel, Abraham Joshua: Israel: An echo of eternity (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1969
Pressfield, Steven: The Lion’s Gate: On the front lines of the Six Day War (Penguin Group, New York, 2014)
Dayan, Moshe: Living with the Bible (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1978)
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A reminder: as stated in the sidebar, the opinions here expressed are mine, and may not reflect the teachings of the parish where I work.
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In 1967, I was a young teenager and a young Christian, still reading the Old Testament for the first time. Perhaps because of my youth, I found it horribly unfair that, as pressure mounted against Israel from all of its neighbors that spring, the United States dithered. The Soviets were arming Egypt with their most modern weapons; the U.S. would not even send Israel the weapons they had already purchased.

The United Nations had a force of peacekeepers in the Sinai, which was supposed to be a demilitarized zone. When President Nasser of Egypt ordered them out, they packed up and left while the Egyptian tanks moved in.

It was not fair. Why didn’t we do something? Why didn’t the U.N. stand up to this aggression, as they did in Korea? It was blindingly obvious that the Western world would stand by, wringing its hands while the Jewish nation was obliterated. They were badly outnumbered, surrounded by enemies, with no friends.

As it transpired, Israel did not need help from the United Nations, nor the United States. They had a helper who was considerably more reliable:

Behold, he who keeps watch over Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:4)

I have lived to see the Hand of God in action among the great deeds of the world one time, perhaps two. The one of which I am certain is the Six Day War, June 5 through 10, 1967.

The events of this time could have been lifted straight from the pages of Judges, First Samuel, and the Maccabees where the LORD of Hosts rescued his people from the hand of enemies that surrounded them on every side, enemies who appeared to be far stronger. That was clearly the situation in the spring and summer of 1967, with the entire Arab world united in determination to destroy the “Zionist entity.”

I have come to more fully understand what the Hand of God looks like in action by reading Steven Pressfield’s account of the war: “The Lion’s Gate,” which is mostly a collection of personal accounts by Israeli veterans who fought in that conflict. The Hand of God in action is for the most part individual people doing what is right (led, I would say, by the Spirit of God), in accord with Divine Providence.

Even the three supreme instances of the Hand of God, where He acted with the most glorious and surprising power, required human cooperation. The deliverance of the Children of Israel from Egypt depended on the sometimes hesitant obedience of Moses (Exodus 3, especially vv. 9-12). The Incarnation depended upon the free assent of Our Lady to what was asked of her (St. Luke 2:38). And the greatest of all the mighty acts of God hinged upon one person, alone in his prayers one night in Gethsemane (St. Luke 22:39-44).

Although the United States did not sufficiently support Israel in the wars of 1948, 1956, and 1967, we were better in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, resupplying the Israelis as fast as the Soviets were resupplying the Egyptians and Syrians, and ultimately facing down the Soviets to keep the war from spiraling into something larger. The work of President Carter in brokering the Camp David accords a few years later (1978) was important. The courage of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in seeking peace by means of this agreement is something to be remembered through the generations. Carter and Sadat are further examples of men simply doing what seemed right at the time, despite what it might cost them. For Sadat, it cost him his life in 1981.

I support the Zionist cause insofar as I am able, which means primarily by prayer, and (when needed) letters to my elected representatives, and by speaking up for Israel. That can be hard, because it is fashionable in the circles in which I work and live to support the Palestinians, and to consider the Israelis to be the Bad Guys. The best I can understand the liberal position, the State of Israel is one last relic of colonialism, inflicted upon the innocent Arab residents of Palestine by the British Mandate. For liberal Christians, there is the additional notion that the Old Testament (like the New) is largely pious fabrication. The Israelites were simply one of many Canaanite peoples. They invented a “back-story” involving supposed promise of the Land to the Patriarchs (fictional persons, no doubt) to justify their genocidal seizure of Canaan. For example, this from an encyclopedic source:

The Abraham story cannot be definitively related to any specific time, and it is widely agreed that the patriarchal age, along with the exodus and the period of the judges, is a late literary construct that does not relate to any period in actual history. A common hypothesis among scholars is that it was composed in the early Persian period (late 6th century BCE) as a result of tensions between Jewish landowners who had stayed in Judah during the Babylonian captivity and traced their right to the land through their "father Abraham", and the returning exiles who based their counter-claim on Moses and the Exodus tradition (Wikipedia, s.v. “Abraham,” accessed 9/9/2016)

For whatever reasons, there are periodically workshops and lectures in our college town, advertised on our parish's bulletin boards, concerning the righteous struggle of the Palestinian freedom fighters against oppression. Not a word about the Israeli side.

The U.S. has remained one of Israel’s allies. I must do my small part to help keep it that way.

The Israelis are not the Bad Guys. Neither are the Palestinians. But the Land belongs to the Jewish people by express gift from God, and Jerusalem most of all. It is impossible to read the Old Testament without seeing the promise of the Land to the children of Israel. The Land was a part of the first thing that God said to Abram (Genesis 12:1), and the promise is repeated from Genesis to Malachi (Mal. 3:12, for example: “And all nations shall call you blessed; for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.”)

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In the first weeks of June 1967, the situation appeared hopeless. By the end of the month, not only had Israel survived, but they had recovered their lands on the west side of Jordan, and most of all, Jerusalem.

July, 1967… I have discovered a new land. Israel is not the same as before. There is great astonishment in the souls. It is as if the prophets had risen from their graves… My ancestors could only dream of you—to my people in Auschwitz you were more remote than the moon, and I can touch your stones! Am I worthy? How shall I ever repay for these moments? (Heschel, p. 7, speaking of the return to Jerusalem.)

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I have known Avremale [Schecter, sergeant, “A” company, Battalion 71] and his brothers since we were boys. His father was the kindest, most simple and modest man. He worked all his life for the Tnuva Dairy in Tel Aviv, riding his bicycle to work, raising his boys, asking nothing but to be here as a Jew in this land, but feeling always that our people’s return remained incomplete, with the Wall and the Old City in the hands of those who hated us.

Now I see Avremale, with his Uzi with its folding stock under one arm and the tefillin in place on his head and other arm. I know he is thinking of his father.

The others want to pray, too, but none of them knows how. Avremale has to teach them. (Pressfield p. 343, quoting Yoram Zamosh, “A” company's commander, describing the scene when the first Jewish soldiers reach the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem)

[Zamosh continues, describing Moshe Stempel, one of his officers] … Stempel held my arm in a grip of iron. Twice he tried to speak and twice his voice failed. He pulled me so close that the brows of our helmets were touching.

“Zamosh!” Stempel said, with such emotion that I can hear the words still, though he spoke them almost fifty years ago. “Zamosh, if my grandfather, if my great-grandfather, if any of my family who have been murdered in pograms and in the death camps… if they could know, somehow, even for one second, that I, their grandson, would be standing here at this hour, in this place, wearing the red boots of an Israeli paratrooper… if they could know this, Zamosh, for just one instant, they would suffer death a thousand times and count it as nothing.”

Stempel gripped my arm as if he would never let go. “We shall never, never leave this place,” he said. “Never will we give this up. Never.” (Pressfield p. 406)

I worry about the Israelis, which puts me in good company:

Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me. (Isaiah 49:15-16)

But there is this:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (St. Matthew 23:37)

That is why I worry. From this distance, it does not seem to me that the Israelis treat the “strangers within their gates” (that is, the Palestinians) as they ought. Nor are their actions as individuals and a nation especially righteous. (Neither are ours, and our treatment of the “strangers” within our gates, the undocumented and mostly Hispanic immigrants who do much of the hard work of this country, leaves much to be desired.)

We have the unshakable promise of God that he will look after Israel forever. But even a cursory reading of the Old Testament shows what that can look like. It can at times look very much like what is not much beyond living memory: the Shoah.

The attack [in the 1948 war, against a formidable Egyptian position] was ready to go. At the last minute a half dozen trucks rumbled up, bringing reinforcements. The men got off. They were pale and thin. They had numbers tatooed on their arms. Someone said they had spent the last two years in relocation camps—under the British, of course—in Cyprus. They had got to Israel just a week earlier and been given only a few days of military training. They came up and were issued rifles. I will never forget their faces. They were certain they were going to die. But their eyes were shining… (Pressfield p. 82, quoting Lou Lenart, an American Jew who was a major figure in the newborn Israel Air Force during the 1948 war. Lenart describes elsewhere how he came to an enduring hatred of the British, for setting the new Israeli state up to fail as soon it was born. Pressfield dedicated this book to Lenart.)

Pressfield’s book led me to what he calls an “extraordinary personal testament,” “Living with the Bible” by Moshe Dayan, minister of defense during the Six Day War. His mode of “living with the Bible” was new to me, and I suspect possible only for an Israeli. Dayan was not an observant Jew; he never even did his Bar Mitzvah. But his faith leaps from the pages of this book, a faith that is that of a warrior. It is a faith in the God who revealed Himself to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob, the God who carried His people through the wilderness, gave them the Land, has stayed with them through thousands of years, and remains with them today. He delights most of all in the battles described in the Scripture, giving insights to them that one does not hear from the scholars -- especially the liberal Christian scholars, who mostly gloss over these passages or deplore them as barbaric. His characterization of Samson brought him to life for me in a way that nothing else has: a man who loved his strength and freedom, walking where he would through the countryside with the wind in his hair, even when it was the land of his enemies the Philistines, for whom he had no fear.

My Bible consists of the books of the Patriarchs and the Judges. Its pages narrate the stories of Joshua and Gideon, of Saul and David and Jonathan. Say these names: Galilee, Mount Carmel, Beersheba, the Vale of Sharon. These sites are not theoretical to me… They comprise the hills and flats that I have plowed and planted, tramped over and slumbered upon. A field at Ramat Yohanan has soaked up the last of my brother Zorik’s blood. I left my own eye in the dirt across the border with Lebanon. How many thousands have given the same and more?

The treads of a half-track rend a slope that has no name and is known to no one. Up comes an arrowhead three thousand years old… Into the sunlight emerges a shard from the era of Joshua, the handle of a vessel from which a soldier of Israel once drank. Who was that man? He was myself. I am that man.

He shivered on watch, this fellow thirty centuries gone; he marched through the night; he defended his fields and flocks. (Pressfield p. 162, quoting Dayan)

Dayan viewed it as his responsibility to defend this Land, and the idea of Israel, with all of his being. There were many like him then, and hopefully now:

[Menachem] Begin is curt, humorless, intractable. But he is without fear. He has endured political imprisonment under the Soviets, from which ordeal he emerged tougher than ever and more passionately dedicated to Jewish nationhood and to political autonomy for the Jewish people. He is a good man, possibly a great one. The nation needs men like him as much as she needs visionaries like Ben-Gurion and poets like Natan Alterman.

‘To the banks of the Jordan’ is Begin’s party signature. His vision is of the Israel of the Bible. He speak passionately at this cabinet meeting [which made the decision to launch the pre-emptive strike on June 5, destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground], citing numerous biblical passages, to which [Levi] Eshkol [the prime minister] with good humor appends, “Amen, amen.” (Pressfield p. 158, quoting Dayan)

For the Israelis and Palestinians and their neighbors, there are still no clear solutions. There have been too many wrongs, too much bloodshed. How can the two peoples ever live at peace?

[quoting Dayan, Pressfield writes] All the same, I am no hater of Arabs. I grew up with Bedouin herders and farmers. We have plowed together, and planted, and sat side by side in the furrows to take our noon meal.

Who is the Arab? No man makes a better friend than he. None will stand his ground with greater courage. To the Arab, honor is all. He will drain his blood for the clan and the tribe, and for the stranger he has taken in at the gate. No one laughs like an Arab, or loves his children with such tenderness; no one dances like him or worships God with greater devotion, and none is more compassionate to the weak and the helpless.

The modern world, in which the sons of Ishmael have fallen behind and become a backward people, is a nightmare of shame from which the proud Arab cannot awaken. This is the source of his violent and inextinguishable rage. (Pressfield, p. 162)

Many have come to hate the United States, too – partly because of our support for Israel, but we have given people many more reasons to despise us. Hatred boils in our own land, between races, between rich and poor, between political factions. It seems hopeless.

But the Hand of God worked in the summer of 1967, and in the collapse of the Soviet empire some years after. It is through such actions as were taken by ordinary people in those times that God’s purposes prevailed. It is through our actions, here and now, that God may again bring to pass what seems impossible.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours… (St. Teresa of Avila)

The ultimate meaning of the State of Israel must be seen in terms of the vision of the prophets: the redemption of all men. The religious duty of the Jew is to participate in the process of continuous redemption, in seeing that justice prevails over power, that awareness of God penetrates human understanding. (Heschel, p. 156)

Thoughts on Genesis 3

Two thoughts struck me in this morning's reading of the third chapter of Genesis at Matins. They may be obvious to others, but were not to me until now, so I share them:

“... and [the serpent] said unto the woman...”: Why was a talking snake not a remarkable thing to Eve our Mother? Could it be that Adam and Eve conversed freely with all of the animals (appropriately to their respective conditions), so a talking snake was not surprising? There is a passage in Tolkien's “On Fairy-Stories” where he writes of the primordial desire to communicate with animals, with the possibility that this might be an echo of our distant past, as well as something that might one day be restored. Perhaps this verse of Genesis hints at the possibility.

“... and he shall rule over thee” (v. 16): In some circles, male authority over women is viewed as a Good Thing, and more than that, “God's plan.” I was taught in my fundamentalist background that the Man is head of the household, and the Woman is to be submissive and obedient in all things. Islam, which is a religion based in part on the Torah, is notorious for its oppression of women, and at various points in history Christianity and Judaism have not been much better.

But this verse is not saying that male dominance is a Good Thing. It is no more in God's will than our mortality, or the “thorns and thistles” of v. 18. It is part of the Curse, somehow caught up in our disobedience as an inescapable consequence, an aspect of Original Sin. This verse, it strikes me, is crucial to the interpretation of all subsequent passages of Scripture that seem to paint male dominance as “God's plan” (cf. I Corinthians 11:1-16, Ephesians 5:22-24 for two examples from St. Paul. There are many others, from Old and New Testament). And there may be further application to any power relationships: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

some thoughts on Sabbath

The previous entry raised questions about Sabbath. Before I go further, I must emphasize that I am a novice at Sabbath-keeping; it is only in the last year or so that I have made a serious effort to be faithful in this, and I still fail very often.

I was (and remain) behind schedule in my preparation of the Grand Piéce Symphonique for its performance next month – four and a half weeks from now -- and I had the opportunity to finish fingering it last Thursday, which is the day that I try to observe as a Sabbath. Instead, I laid the Franck aside, and had a fine Day of Rest.

This Sunday's Gospel in the Revised Common Lectionary is St. Matthew 5:21-37, wherein our Lord speaks about several of the Commandments: they are not so simple to obey as they seem at first glance, for the intents of the heart matter just as much as overt actions. Trees of the Field addresses this splendidly here.

It seems to me that all of the Ten Commandments are at root questions of faith. It is right that it should be so, for justification is by faith, not by the works of the law – not even in the time before Christ. The law is simply a schoolmaster to teach us faith (Galatians 3:24 – 4:7).

“Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day” (BCP p. 318). The test of faith in this commandment is obvious: Will I get the work done? Even in “earing time and in harvest” (Exodus 34:21)? Do I believe that the work is God's and not mine?

The Sabbath is almost always mentioned in connection not only with oneself, but with “thy son, thy daughter, thy manservant, thy maidservant, thy cattle, and the stranger that is within thy gates” (c.f. Exodus 20:10). Taking a day of rest for oneself is no Sabbath if one's manner of life is such as to force others to work (c.f. Isaiah 58), and the American way of life does just that. We demand convenient shopping opportunities, service, and entertainment seven days a week, and someone has to do the work. This comes back to the same question of faith: Will the work get done? Will our quarterly profit statement satisfy the upper management and stockholders? If I close my store while my competitor stays open, how can I stay in business?

In our area, there is a relatively small state-wide grocery chain that does indeed close on Sunday, while all of its competitors stay open. I have spoken with some of their employees, past and present, who appreciate this above anything else that the company does – and consider it indicative of the company's respect for its employees.

There is another test, which the Pharisees failed: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (St. Mark 2:27). Sabbath-keeping can become just another task, an arduous one hedged about with restrictions. As with the commandments concerning murder, adultery, and swearing falsely addressed in St. Matthew 5, Jesus forced his listeners by his actions and teaching to look again at the commandment of the Sabbath. It was not a list of regulations; it was a gracious gift. It was a proclamation of liberty to the captives, beginning with the people whom he healed on the Sabbath, and a foretaste of the everlasting rest which is promised to the people of God (c.f. Hebrews 4).

The same two temptations that attach to the Sabbath also attach to the Daily Office and other forms of disciplined prayer, which are “little Sabbaths” through the course of the day. On the one hand, we are tempted to think that we do not have time for them, especially on the busiest of days (when, ironically, we most need to be in contact with God), and on the other hand, the Offices can become a burden instead of a blessing, especially for those bound to them by monastic rule.

It would be instructive to work through the rest of the Ten Commandments and consider how they test one's faith, sometimes in subtle ways. Not surprisingly, the most direct test of faith is in the “first and great commandment” (BCP p. 324). To “love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind?” Too often, the children of Israel wanted to love the LORD their God, but they hedged their bets with a bit of devotion to Moloch or Baal on the side. The prophets compared this to adultery (e.g., Ezekiel 23). Too often, we do the same. What if the materialists (including many clergy) are right – there is nothing beyond what we can see with the eyes of science? What if Jesus was just another rabbi, and his bones lie hidden in a grave somewhere? We have a handful of teachings, filtered through the early Christian communities and Gospel accounts. We have the institutional church, which is more of an argument against Christianity than for it. All the rest, in this view, is based on wishful thinking and the delusions of Mary Magdalene, Paul, and a handful of others, none of them reliable scientific or historic observers. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (I Corinthians 15:19). No wonder many of us try to hedge our bets by limiting the scope of our Christianity and, in effect, serving other gods in various aspects of our lives.

But love “believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (I Corinthians 13:7). Because it depends upon love, there is no hedging of this bet, as there was no way for the children of Israel to hedge their bets. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Joshua 24:15).

Lessons from Leviticus: Atonement and Hope

In the Daily Offices, we spent about nine weeks with Genesis. Exodus took about five weeks. Leviticus? Ten days and we are done.

The preacher at Sunday's Evensong addressed this well; she said that Leviticus is probably not anyone's favorite book, and even her Hebrew Study Bible slights it. It is no wonder that the Daily Office gives it scant notice. I understand the reasoning of the framers of the Lectionary; a month or two of the fine points of the Law, read orally in public worship, would be daunting.

As I said recently, everything in Scripture is part of the Story, and none of it can be entirely overlooked without peril. I would compare Leviticus to the Appendices of Lord of the Rings. Many Tolkien fans read the book as far as Sam's return to Bag End and his family, and stop there. They turn the page and see the annals, the tale of years, page after page of family trees from the Shire, calendars, linguistic notes; they move on. A longtime fan who had read the book (but not the appendices) numerous times over several decades once argued with me that the story of Arwen and Aragorn in the movie version was constructed out of whole cloth, right up to her arrival with Elrond at Minas Tirith near the end. "No, it's not," I insisted, and finally dug out my book and showed her the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen in Appendix A.

The story contained in LOTR is comprehensible without the appendices, but much is contained therein that underlies the larger story, and there are moments of surpassing beauty among the mass of detail that reward the reader. So it is with Leviticus in its relation to the Torah, the remainder of the Old Testament, and the larger story of God's mighty acts continued in the New Testament and beyond, into church history, theology, and tradition. It contains much that underlies the rest of the story, and its own moments of surpassing beauty.

The first part of the book is, in essence, a Liturgical Customary. Precisely how were the various offerings to be made? Such details are as much the delight of some as the details of Sindarin are to a certain portion of Tolkien fandom. For a modern equivalent, visit the Customary of one of the great parishes of our denomination, the Church of the Advent in Boston. It outlines their customary procedures for Sundays and major feasts, the duties of each liturgical minister, the work of the Altar Guild, as well as the procedures for extraordinary services such as those of Holy Week. I am adding it to the list in the sidebar of the Music Box as one of the "places I like on the Net" because it is a delight to see how "it ought to be done," at least in that place. But as with much of Leviticus, it is enough to make one's eyes glaze, if such details are not one's interest:
The Customary of the Church of the Advent

"And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying . . ." (Lev. 1:1)

The lasting significance of these opening chapters of Leviticus is that all of it, down to the most minute details of liturgical observance, is the direct word of God. It is not the work of a committee, or an amalgam of what we want as a congregation or larger polity. The clergy and the Levites, right up to Aaron himself, had no say in its composition.

Liturgy -- that is, the manner in which we worship the LORD -- is not something we create. It is a gift. We accept what has come to us through the tradition, or we ought to. One of the evil fruits of the 1960's and 1970's was the wholesale rejection of tradition, in liturgy as in all other areas. Liturgical "creativity" is dangerous, as Nadab and Abihu learned in Chapter Ten. More generally, the priesthood is dangerous, and the Levitical ministry as well. There are times when it all goes horribly wrong, as it did for Aaron and his family in this chapter. But the gifts and call of God are without repentance. There is no turning back from the responsibilities of the priesthood, or the Levitical ministry, including that of church organists and choirmasters, and for that matter choristers, deacons, acolytes, members of the Altar Guild, and others connected with the sacred mysteries. No matter how bad it gets, we must go on.

This is not to say that the liturgy is fixed for all time. It cannot be static if it is to continue as a living thing. The children of Israel had to learn this when the whole system outlined so carefully in Leviticus was swept away:

"Your adversaries roared in your holy place;
they set up their banners as tokens of victory.
They were like men coming up with axes to a grove of trees;
they broke down all your carved work with hatchets and hammers.
They set fire to your holy place;
they defiled the dwelling-place of your Name
and razed it to the ground.
They said to themselves, 'Let us destroy them altogether.'
They burned down all the meeting-places of God in the land." (Psalm 74:4-7)

In Psalm 137, we hear the Levitical musicians. They tried to lay aside their ministry and calling, because they could not see how to continue in it:

"As for our harps, we hung them up
on the trees in the midst of that land.
For those who led us away captive asked us for a song,
and our oppressors called for mirth:
'Sing us one of the songs of Zion.'
How shall we sing the LORD's song
upon an alien soil?"

Yet, they learned that the LORD's song could -- and must -- continue even "by the waters of Babylon," without the proper ministry of priests, without sacrifices and offerings, without any external support. It was there, in exile, that Judaism became something entirely new, a world religion implicitly (and, in Christ, explicitly) open to everyone, of every time and place. By necessity, their manner of worship changed, and this eventually changed their manner of belief. One can see this in the latter part of Isaiah (chapter 40 and onward), and some of the other Prophets.

Liturgy is a living thing, an ancient and gnarled tree. It is not static, but neither is it uprooted by every transient wind of secular culture. As soon as it becomes "free" -- that is, cut off from its roots in the tradition -- it degenerates into the gathered community's worship of itself and its own creativity. Examples abound, then and now. "The people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses . . . we wot not what is become of him." (Exodus 32:1)

In the Anglican tradition, and even more so in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, changes to the liturgy are not entered into lightly, and are never left to the whim of a local priest, congregation, or diocesan bishop, though (in our tradition) he or she is the arbiter, within the limits circumscribed by the mind of the wider church as delineated in the Prayerbook. Unfortunately, I have never heard of an Episcopal clergyperson being disciplined for departure from authorized liturgical forms, and sometimes the bishops are the worst offenders. I wish we were more careful of this.

From the Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer (BCP p. 867):

"[in case of question about liturgical practice] the parties that so doubt, or diversely take any thing, shall always resort to the Bishop of the Diocese, who by his discretion shall take order for the quieting and appeasing of the same; so that the same order be not contrary to any thing contained in this book." [my emphasis]

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The great theme of Leviticus is Atonement. It is introduced in the first verses; it underlies all that follows.

"And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him." (Lev. 1:4)

The sermon at Evensong mentioned Atonement, as did our Anthem. It is a large word.

I continue to nibble away at the Hebrew tongue. More and more, I am drawn to the "large" words; it seems that Hebrew is filled with them: words that contain realms of thought and idea and passion in concentrated form -- words like "Shalom." To say that it means "peace" is insufficient; it is much more. "Kippur," or "Atonement," is such a word. So is "Kodesh," "Holy." The concordance indicates that both of these words appear more frequently in Leviticus than in any other book of the Old Testament.

From Wikipedia s.v. "Atonement in Christianity" (and other sources, including the Evensong sermon):
"The word 'atonement' was invented in the sixteenth century by William Tyndale who recognized that there was not a direct English translation of the biblical Hebraic concept [Kippur]. The word is composed of two parts 'at' and 'onement' in order to reflect the dual aspect of Christ's sacrifice: the remission of sin and reconciliation of man to God. Tyndale's concept overcomes the limitations of the word 'reconciliation' whilst incorporating aspects of propitiation and forgiveness."

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Not much happens in Leviticus. There are only two bits of narrative: Chapter Ten (already mentioned), and 24:10-23, which is the first example of putting the Law into practice. Both of these are ugly stories. If I were writing the book, I would leave them out; when I read the book, they are parts that I would prefer to skip. But there they are, and they (especially Chapter Ten) are the keys to the book. [Edit: see the first comment]

The story of Nadab and Abihu in Chapter Ten and what ensues, especially 10:10-11 ("And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between clean and unclean. . . ."), is the gate into the remainder of Leviticus, wherein these matters are expounded at length. Hidden among the dietary laws, additional details of liturgical customary, a calendar of the liturgical year (Chapter 23), the regulations concerning leprosy, an equivalent in Chapter 18 to the 1662 Prayerbook's "Table of Kindred and Affinity", and many other matters are passages whose place in the Story was not to be fully comprehensible until much later. Among my favorites:

Chapter 12: concerning what in our tradition would be called the "Churching of Women," wherein the Father makes specific provision for his own Son and his Mother, thousands of years in the future, along with all others who share their poverty: "And if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons. . . ." (12:8, and St. Luke 2:22-39)

Chapter 16: the Customary for the Day of Atonement, filled with foreshadowings of the Cross, and the basis underlying much of the Epistle to the Hebrews. This chapter is perhaps the most important of the book. The two narrative passages of Leviticus both point to the need for it, and in one way or another all of the various "statutes and judgments and laws" (26:46) work at this problem. God says "Ye shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy" (19:2), and our Lord reiterates it in the Sermon on the Mount: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (St. Matt. 5:48), but we are unable to live up to it. Leviticus leaves us the question: how then can we be saved?

"Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." (Acts 2:37-38)

Chapter 25: the Seventh Year, and the Year of Jubilee, which have provided eschatological hope to oppressed and suffering people through all of time. It is significant that the trumpet -- a foreshadowing of what St. Paul describes in I Thess. 4:16-18 -- is blown to "proclaim liberty throughout all the land" (25:10) on the Day of Atonement, for our only hope, our only deliverance, is through the Cross. O Crux, ave, spes unica. It is significant also that these provision of the Law were disregarded more than they were observed; they remain a hope yet to be fulfilled. "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God" (Hebr. 4:9). Charles Wesley wrote a good hymn about this: "Blow ye the trumpet, blow!"

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This brings us to the Eucharist, the sign of Hope and the ultimate End of the Sabbath, that which every earthly Sabbath and Jubilee foreshadows. Last Sunday morning, we sang Edgar Bainton's magnificent setting of Rev. 21:1-4, appointed as the Second Lesson of the Eucharist:

"And I saw a new heaven, and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

It is the peculiar province of Music to remind us of these things, and the higher province still of Baptism and the Blessed Sacrament to be sign and seal of these things. Tolkien again -- from the Appendices, no less -- "Behold! we are not bound to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory." The day will come when at last we shall be the "holy city, new Jerusalem," even now through our tears and struggles and faltering efforts being "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."

Torah, American government, and me

In the Daily Offices, we began the Torah on the First Sunday after the Epiphany: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. . . ." By design, we came to the first part of Exodus in the final weeks of Lent, with the plagues upon Egypt. On Easter Day, the first lesson at Matins was Exodus 12:1-14: "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. . . ."

This week, we have come to Sinai. Yesterday, we read of one of the pivotal moments in all of human history: "And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. . . ." After this most exalted chapter, the twentieth of Exodus, the Lectionary skips ahead to chapter 24. By doing so, something important is missed.

I have voiced my opinion of the omission of parts of the Story in other places. It all matters, even the parts that do not apply directly to us who live not by law, but by grace. I make it a point to read all that is skipped, mostly on the bus commuting to and from work.

Why does it matter that God goes straight from the Ten Commandments to all this business about oxen, and pierced ears, and what happens if your sheep gets into your neighbor's field and eats his wheat? It matters because the Law of God must immediately lead to very specific acts of righteousness in the most ordinary affairs of daily life, personally and as a community. If it does not, we have missed the point of it.

This does not mean that we should enact a Judeo-Christian version of Sharia Law, wherein a statement such as "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (22:18) leads to women being judicially executed by a Christian community simply because they are eccentric. Many would argue that "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (21:24) is not the best way for a modern community to administer justice. Many other judgments, and many of the dietary regulations that soon follow, are more suitable to an ancient agricultural community than to ours.

But these matters must not be entirely glossed over. The community must somehow administer justice if it is to survive -- and, I think, it must do so in order to be pleasing to God. The Law of God as expressed in the Torah is one of the foundations making possible any community that amounts to more than "might makes right." The Torah ought to remain the standard by which any other system of jurisprudence or ethical teaching is evaluated.

In the United States, and especially in the South, activists periodically try to erect the Ten Commandments on courthouse lawns, where they used to be in many cases before "godless liberal judges" ordered their removal on grounds of separation of church and state. In this matter, I stand with the right-wing activists, adding that if the non-Christians of the community want to erect statements of their moral values beside the Commandments, that would be all the more excellent. I would love for our county courthouse to have a granite monument on its lawn graven with the Ten Commandments, another with the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, another with an appropriate passage from the Koran, others with principles from Confucius and from the long wisdom of the Hindus, others offered by every branch of our community. We need such reminders that Law is more than just Expediency.

And we need reminders that Law must always protect the weak from the strong. "Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child" (22:21-22).

It is manifest that American jurisprudence and government do not measure up very well to these standards. It is not so much "might makes right" these days as it is that "money talks." When the big banks can spend $1 million a day to influence about five hundred people in Congress to ensure that they can continue to cheat the poor out of their retirement savings, when there is a straight path from Wall Street to the Cabinet and other positions among the president's close advisors, when Big Pharma and Blue Cross-Blue Shield managed to get more from the health care reform than common people, we are falling short.

But the Law of God does not leave room for righteous indignation, for it is equally manifest that I, personally, do not measure up to these standards, nor does any son of Eve or daughter of Adam, save one. This is one of the key lessons that must be learned from the Torah: we cannot live up to it. It is a clear teaching of St. Paul, but it is equally clear in the Psalms and Prophets:

"Every one has proved faithless;
all alike have turned bad;
there is none who does good; no, not one." (Psalm 14:3)

The answer to this dilemma is stated in today's Epistle, among many other places, where St. Paul writes:

"And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross." (Colossians 2:13-14).