Chosen

Our Adult Christian Education class is viewing a series on the Old Testament from a professor at Vanderbilt University. Today's lesson covered the stories of Cain & Abel and Noah. The professor made the point that aspects of these stories (as well as the Creation story) are to be found in other Middle Eastern and Greek mythologies. The purveyors of the OT stories must have had many more details at their disposal for the stories to be part of their meaningful legend.

The class facilitator, herself a teacher of theology, emphasized the importance of understanding that the OT stories did not stand alone. They were a variation on a whole cloth narrative (cf Hmong story quilts) common to  the peoples of the Middle East. She quoted a favorite writer (whose name I did not get) that there is only one story in mankind - the story of our identity. The OT variations are entwined in and informed by their early Middle Eastern milieu, but still climaxed in the identity story of Israel.

That made me think of the OT pericope for the day from Exodus 33. In it, Moses dickered with God to define the terms of his chosen-ness and the Israelites' chosen-ness. "You have said we have found favor in your sight, but now show us Your way so we can find favor in your sight." That could be read as a pious request to learn just how to obey YHWH. Or it could be read as an attempt to put himself and the Israelites on even footing with God. "We'll both be each other's favorites - then it will be an equal partnership. We won't owe you any more than you owe us." That sounds cynical, but it is not unlike the bargains we often attempt with God ourselves. Moses' further arguments sound more along the lines of resolving an identity crisis than of swearing fealty and obeisance.

God says in Exodus "My presence will go with you" and Moses replies "If your presence will NOT go, then do not move us from this place... in this way, we will be distinct." Moses goes so far as to negotiate witnessing God's glory itself. God accommodates Him. "You can see my back, but not my face." God even described himself in bodily terms, as though He was in the image of man, and not the other way around.

Finally, Moses was confident that he was the chosen leader of a chosen people. But the operation looks more like a messy birthing than a ceremonial anointing. Tearing a chosen people for the One God out of the fabric of Middle Eastern polytheism and mythologies was an arduous process. That is the story of the OT.

The New Testament reverses that story, resulting in an almost equally messy patchwork called the Church. With the Church there is no more chosen leader or chosen race. The narrative tradition and cult practices of the longstanding chosen people must be liberalized to accommodate other stories. The peoples of the Middle East (Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria...) are linked together again, along with uttermost parts of the earth in a new story known as the Gospel. In the Gospel there is no Jew, Greek, male, female, slave nor freeman. The Gospel is the final story of the identity of a people of God comprised of those in the image of God learning to bear witness to the glory of God for all time.