“The Lord then said to Moses and Aaron:
Because you did not believe that I could
Assert my holiness before the eyes of the
Israelites, you will not lead this assembly
Into the country which I am giving them.”
--Numbers 20:12
“Come consider the wonders of the Lord…
He puts an end to wars…/ He breaks
The bow, He snaps the spear, shields
He burns in the fire…” –Psalm 46: 8-9
This was my morning reading today. I have been working my
way through the book of Numbers, and just came to that wondrous story of the Israelites at Kadesh complaining about their lack of water and Moses striking
the rock with a staff to bring forth water for the people (cf. Nm 20. 2ff). And it is a little painful to run hard up
against that statement by God: Because
you did not believe… you will not lead the people into the promised land!
I was troubled. Why was God being so hard on Moses and
Aaron? What did they do wrong? They basically did what He told them to do!
They took the rod and when Moses struck the rock the water flowed. Is the problem that Moses struck the rock? Maybe... God told them to “order the rock to yield its
waters (some translations read: speak to the rock…” (20: 8b) but instead Moses strikes the rock --twice! There is speculation by some scholars that the second blow is the real problem. But, I don't know. I'm still pondering it, and it is still troubling. There seems to be a kind of vindictiveness to this God
who bans Moses and Aaron from the promised land simply because Moses lost his
temper with the people (something God does quite often in this part of the Bible) and struck the rock.
Yet, there was that psalm.
And it kept echoing in my head as I read Numbers. It worked on me like a counter-melody or a "haunting refrain." Why had God put these two readings together
for me this morning? Why had He given me a reading about destroying our defenses and our weapons and a reading
about how lack of trust in God could keep us out of the promised land; what was God
saying to me? I imagine it has something to do with the way I
cling to security and safety.
In the psalm God tells us how He puts an end to war: He breaks
our weapons, melts our shields. We are left completely defenseless,
completely vulnerable –and completely dependent on Him for protection. And in the reading from Numbers He told me
that if I don’t trust Him completely, depend on Him fully, I cannot reach the
promised land.
And as I read the psalm one of the first things that came into my mind was a person I work with who
frightens me. The authority and the defensiveness and the anger this person
demonstrates make me anxious and fearful and worried about protecting myself
and my job. And my immediate thought
was: if I see this person today, I should speak to them. I should share this with them. I should tell them about this wonderful
passage from Psalm 46.
God will break our bows, shatter our
spears, burn our shield. God will take away our defenses and then, on
top of that, we must trust Him, and THEN, and only THEN, can He lead us
to the promised land. Because the
promised land isn’t about an earthly, geographic, space. The Promised Land is found in our faith, in our trust. It is that
place where we put our complete faith in God. It is a place without weapons, without
defenses, where God is our shield and our guide and our way and our promise. The way to the Promised Land is through putting our faith in God's might, not our own. The way to the Promised Land leads straight to the Cross, and then the tomb, and only then to the
resurrection. That is the Promised Land.
And the way to get there begins with giving up your weapons, and putting down your
shields.
