From the Book of Numbers:
Then the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying: Separate yourselves from this congregation, so that I may consume them in a moment. They fell on their faces, and said, “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one person sin and you become angry with the whole congregation?”
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Numbers 16:20-22 – June 25, 2012)
So the story of Korah’s rebellion (which lead me yesterday to give thought to the current leadership crisis in the Episcopal Church) continues in today’s reading and Moses (now with Aaron) is again falling on his face! This time because God, righteously unhappy with the Hebrews because of Korah and his companions, decided to simply wipe them out. Moses and Aaron made the case that this would be (to coin a phrase) overkill. So God relented and decided only to wipe out Korah, his companions, and their families. The rebels “together with their wives, their children, and their little ones” (v. 27) stood before their tents and then “the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households – everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods.” (v. 32) And just for good measure, 250 Levites who’d been standing around with censers (as instructed by God through Moses) were consumed by fire which “came out from the Lord.” (v. 35). I probably don’t need to tell you that I find this story more than a little troubling! This vengeful warrior god taking out his pique on a large number of people, including small children, is not the god I particularly want to worship! ~ I once had a parishioner who was part of my team of lectors (folks who assist in worship by reading the lessons from Holy Scripture) who refused to read from the Old Testament: “I don’t believe in that god,” she would say. Well, I thought, neither did Marcion, but the church decided he was wrong, that the God of the Old Testament is the same God who is the Father of Jesus Christ, that we do worship that God, and we have to wrestle with the discomfort these ancient writings inflict upon us. Still, I didn’t insist that she read the Old Testament lessons. After all, this sort of reading (as I said) makes me more than a little uncomfortable, too! ~ And that is at it should be. The Hebrew Scriptures are the story of a people’s developing understanding of their God and their relationship with God. That story will have and does have the same sorts of violent and unpalatable events any human history will have. This is why the historical-critical method of studying the Bible is important, for it enables us to grasp what it actually meant to live as one of the Chosen People in any given era. The more accurately we understand the world of the Hebrews, the Israelites, or the church, the more we can see how the people of the Bible understood themselves to be in relationship with God. ~ A daily meditation on the Scriptures is not the place to wrestle with and resolve the difficulties and discomforts passages such as this episode from Numbers create. However, it is a place to suggest that approaching the biblical picture of God with a recognition that the Hebrews progressed in their apprehension of God, appreciating the historical circumstance of the Bible’s stories, allows us to see these stories in as positive a light as possible. Seen in this light, the more brutal parts of the Bible may still communicate valid insights – even to us. We simply don’t have the luxury of saying “I don’t believe in that God”! Rather, we have the responsibility to wrestle with these pictures of God.
Moses “fell on his face.” This is biblical language for expressing great despair and sadness, not the reaction to a leadership confrontation a modern person would expect. Anger? Yes. Hostility? Yes. Yelling and shouting and public protestation of one’s rightness? Yes. Falling prostrate on the ground in desperate sadness? Not so much. ~ It would appear that in the confrontation of Korah and his compatriots, Moses felt personal responsibility. He believe that what had gone wrong with the Hebrews was his fault. He seems to have believed that he himself had created an atmosphere which had led to less-than-perfect delegated administration and justice. ~ Unfortunately a leadership crisis in the Episcopal Church isn’t resulting in similar behavior from the church’s leadership. In recent months the two highest officials of the church (the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies) have had a public squabble over when and how one or the other might communicate with other persons in the church (the cause of the dispute was a video the PB made and sent to members of the House of Deputies, apparently without a “heads-up” to the PHoD). More recently, proposals for the church’s budget for the coming triennium have raised concern among many church members. In response to the first criticisms, the Executive Council issued a statement which was wholey inadequate (in my opinion) and failed to take responsibility. Then the PB (apparently distancing herself from the Executive Council of which she is actually a member and the chair) has come out with her own budget proposal. Now one or more members of the council have their backs up, writing blogs and making statements about being stabbed in the back. In all of this, there hasn’t been a lot of “falling on one’s face” going on. ~ The incident described in the Book of Numbers was really all about Korah’s personal grievances, suitably disguised for public consumption. Moses could have fired right back at him. But Moses suspected that his own earlier mistakes might be the cause of Korah’s uprising, that it was his failure which had created a setting in which discontent could germinate and ultimately promote the Levite rebellion. So, in humility, Moses admits accountability. Might a little of Moses’ humility be a good idea for the current crop of spiritual leadership? ~ Several church members recently have written blogs analyzing the budget and the business of the up-coming General Convention. Would that the Episcopal Church’s bishops, Executive Council, Presiding Bishop, deputies to General Convention, et al. would read these and consider their own roll in creating the situation in which the church finds itself. But I’m afraid they are too busy pointing the finger at one another, blind-siding one another, accusing one another of stabs in the back, playing turf wars, and engaging in cat-fights and pissing-contests. ~ We could use a little less of that sort of thing and a lot more falling on faces!
This psalm is not the only time Holy Scripture reports God’s displeasure with the sacrifice of animals. Consider these words from the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.” (Isa. 1:11-13) Despite all of the ritual directions found in the Law and in the Histories (see, e.g., Exodus 29, Leviticus 1, Numbers 7, and 1 Kings 18), the Psalmist, the first Isaiah, and especially the Prophet Micah make it very clear that sacrificing innocent animals is not what Judaism (or religion in general) is all about. Micah writes, “‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8) It may be that doing justice, loving kindness, and walking with God may (and often does) require one to give up one’s possessions, one’s livelihood, even one’s life. But such “sacrifice” without the demanded ethical basis, sacrifice done only to curry favor with God, is not what God asks or wants. ~ It is from this ethical stream in ancient Judaism that Christianity flows. It is unfortunate that early Christian writers looked back to the sacrificial practices of the Temple to find an analog to crucifixion of Jesus; we might have seen the Christian religion develop differently if, like the writers of the Gospels, they had looked more to the prophets. Jesus certainly did: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) ~ So spare that bull! Sacrifices of animals (or their modern analogs, whatever they may be) are not the sacrifices that demonstrate love of God and love of neighbor. Rather, the core of ethical religion is as the writer of the Letter to Hebrews said: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Heb. 13:16)
The simple answer is that fasting is going without some or all food or drink or both for a defined period of time. An absolute fast is abstinence from all food and liquid for a period of at least one day, sometimes for several days. Other fasts may be only partially restrictive, limiting particular foods or substance. The fast may also be intermittent in nature; for example, Muslims fast during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan which is intended to teach Muslims patience, spirituality, humility, and submissiveness to God. Fasting as a spiritual practice is common to all major religions. Mahatma Gandhi once noted:
