Audacious Prayer
Moses Talks Back to God
Based on Exodus 32:1-14
How can a mere human, one whose heart and destiny is tied to a people who are at that very moment reveling in a festival dedicated to a shiny trinket that they fashioned with their own hands and resources, dare to challenge God?
Photo by Micah & Sammie Chaffin on Unsplash
There was a time when God terrified me. When I first heard the voice of Adonai in an unmistakable way, it came on the heels of seeing a bush engulfed in flame. And yet as I watched, impossibly, the bush itself was not consumed by this fire. It was unsettling enough that I turned aside from my task for the day – leading a flock over the mountain – to look some more. And when I came near in curiosity, I heard the voice of God telling me: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,” and I was so afraid that I hid my face.1
A lot has happened since that day, and on the way, I’ve learned about this God. I learned that God is a God who hears. My people – the Hebrew people – who were being worked to death in the land of Egypt – cried out in pain under the lash of the whip. They had been muttering prayers in their beds because they were terrified to bring a child into an oppressive world. They screamed in anguish as a baby boy was ripped from their arms and drowned before their eyes (a fate I had narrowly escaped thanks to the cleverness and tender heart of my older sister Miriam, my mother Jochebed, and the woman I grew up calling my mother – a princess of Egypt herself). God heard the whimpers of those who still missed their lost babies. God knew about those who could barely even exhale a prayer because they couldn’t catch their breath in between hauling and making bricks from morning to night. God heard all of it, and God decided to act.
That’s why God was trying to get my attention. God said that I was to be sent to Pharoah, to demand that he let the Hebrew people go. I tried to get out of it – really I did! I argued, and I stammered, I made excuses. But another thing I’ve learned about God is that God is determined – and so God sent me anyway.
But every step of the way, God backed up this absurd plan with undeniable power. With God as my strength, I did what God asked of me. Somehow, someway, I led the people out of that land of oppression.
And now we ended up here, at the base of a mountain in the desert, where we camped for a long time. And God beckoned me up the mountain so we could meet some more. When I was up there, time simply faded, and I was barely aware of how the sun rose and set around me. The presence of the God who is, who heard our cries, who acted and brought us out of slavery, is intense.
But the people who were camped at the base of the mountain didn’t have the luxury of forgetting the time. Though it felt to me like the blink of an eye, from the perspective at base of the mountain, so much time had passed that they began to become nervous, suspicious even.
They, too, were still getting to know what this deity was all about. They had experienced some miraculous things – such as walking through the heart of a sea with walls of water on either side. They had seen how the troops that pursued them (complete with horses and chariots) had drowned in the self-same sea on the very moment the last pair of feet from the last of the Hebrew people had reached freedom on the other side. They had tasted the manna – that mysterious substance sent from the heavens that sustained them. They had their needs for meat met through the provision of quail. They had never gone thirsty though we wandered in a wild wasteland where none of these things were easy to find.
Even so, they carried nightmares from their brutal treatment in Egypt. Some had wounds that had not yet healed into scars. Some hearts contained shadows in the shape of a son who should have lived. They had no idea what tomorrow would hold now that everything they’d ever known – good, bad, and everything in between – had changed literally overnight. These people – my people – have not been safe, certain, or in control for a very long time. Some of them may never have felt that way.
So, when I disappeared from their sight on a mountaintop that looked for all the world like it was on fire,2 their anxious minds carried the day. In their fear, in their deep need to control something – anything – in their lives, in their confusion about what was going on, they reached for something they could touch, something they could finally understand. And they asked Aaron – the one constant who had not left them for such a shamefully long time to commune with God on the mountain – to make an image for them that would be safe, that they could control. And thus the infamous golden calf was created.
It was a human reaction through and through. However, it broke the heart of God who had carried them to this place. God had gone to many lengths to show the people that God loved them, that God would take care of them – and they still couldn’t bring themselves to trust the heart of God. A poet once said: “To love someone is to firstly confess: I’m prepared to be devastated by you.”3 And, having been on that mountain the day that God’s people convinced Aaron to make an image for them to worship in the place of God, I can tell you that it is not too light of a thing to say that this devastated God. God’s heart was broken by how quick the people were to turn away, how impatient they were, how slow to trust.
Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash
Of course, enveloped in God’s presence, I knew nothing of what was going on below. It wasn’t until God Almighty told me: “Go down, because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have become corrupt.”4
I felt a prickle of shame about MY wayward people. I was shattered by what they’d done. No, I had not led my people out of Egypt – at least not on my own. I knew that we wouldn’t have made it ten feet out of Egypt if God had not been with us. But still, they were my people. I came from them. I hurt when they hurt. They were my flesh and blood. Even though I was raised with an Egyptian upbringing, instilled with Egyptian values from the Egyptian Princess who was my adopted mother – it didn’t take. In my heart of hearts I was always a Hebrew. And with this people I would stand.
But when God said “Your people…” I was confused. Was God suddenly saying that they were, somehow, NOT God’s people? Or at least not anymore? This statement struck me as (dare I say) unfair… if not flat out wrong.
Of course, I immediately doubted this thought. What did I, a mere human being, know of God? I was still getting to know God myself. And the fact was, I also thought that God had a really good point. Surely God was justified to walk away from these people who had so quickly walked away from God. These people had broken God’s heart. And so, at first, I didn’t say anything at all in response to this revelation of what the people – my people – had done.
But then God spoke a second time. This time, the Lord said to me: “I have seen these people, and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you a great nation.”5
And that’s when my brain, which had been running in confused circles since God first spoke, sprang back into action. God words: “then I will make YOU into a great nation” were echoes of the words that God spoke to Abraham – “I will make you into a great nation.”6 And this promise, which had been so slow (decades and decades) in emerging had begun to take root – and finally grown into the very people gathered at the bottom of the mountain. These people were how God’s promises to Abraham materialized in this world.
And now God is saying that he would wipe them out and start again… with me?
I’m only human, but I wondered, if God was willing to break this promise to Abraham, how I could ever truly trust a promise made to me. Could anyone really trust what God promised them if God went back on those promises?
Yes, my people had delivered a serious, even devastating heartbreak to God. But to strike out in wrath went against the character of God that I had gotten to know as I followed God from the day I saw that flaming plant until this very day, the One who had spoken with me at the top of the mountain. To give up now seemed to me to run contrary to the nature of the same God who heard the cries of the people and rescued them. I knew about – I was raised to honour – deities who might do such a thing, the deities of Egypt and the other nations of the world. And yet here was Adonai threatening to do something that any one of those other deities might do. Surely this God, the One who promised to bless the earth through the people just plucked from Egypt, didn’t want to become famous in Egypt for turning around and destroying the people that had just been rescued out there in the wilderness.
God had also said: “Now leave me alone…” And yet everything I knew about God is that God didn’t want to be left alone. If so, why create humanity in the first place? This is why we still relate the legend of how, when God created the first human out of the dust of the ground that it was not good for him to be alone either – because we understand that God created we humans to be in relationship with each other, and with our Creator. And since God had now spoken to me again a second time, I wondered, was God inviting me to share what I was thinking with the class?
I was well aware – even hyper-aware – that I am a mere human. I was no better than any of the people gathered at the bottom of the mountain, who had just gone and done this terrible thing. Even though I had not participated in it, I was inextricably tied to it through my people. And I had no idea what would happen to me if I were to speak up.
And yet, I couldn’t stay silent either. No longer terrified, I’d come to believe and know that this God wanted – invited even – conversation partners. So, presuming on God’s goodwill, I gathered my courage, and said, “Lord, why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self…”7
How can a mere human, one whose heart and destiny is tied to a people who are at that very moment reveling in a festival dedicated to a shiny trinket that they fashioned with their own hands and resources, dare to challenge God? How could a mortal go even further – to tell the God who created the universe to relent, to turn from evil, even to repent? Even as the words left my mouth I could feel my hands trembling, my legs were ready to buckle underneath me. I was, for the first time in a long time, frightened in the presence of God.
But “the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster God had threatened.”8 I was prepared for God’s anger to burn against me, but just like that, God backed off. God agreed. It was almost like this was what God wanted to do all along.
And for the rest of my days, I learned to model my prayers after this rather audacious beginning.
Photo by Armand Khoury on Unsplash
In other people’s words…
“Were it not written in the text, it would be impossible for us to say such a thing; this verse teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, drew his robe round Him like the reader of a congregation and showed Moses the order of prayer.”
-Rabbi Yohanan.9
“Even a friend of God may talk back to God without jeopardizing that friendship.”
-J. Richard Middleton.10
Exodus 3:6.
Exodus 27:17-18.
Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body
Exodus 32:7.
Exodus 32:9-10.
Genesis 12:2.
Exodus 32:11-13.
Exodus 32:14.
Rabbi Yohanan, Midrash Tanhuma (S. Buber ed.), vols. 1-3, trans. J.T. Townsend (KTAV: 1989-2003), Va’etchanan, section 6.
J. Richard Middleton, Abraham’s Silence, Baker Academic: 2021, p. 41