A Covenant of Love

            Following the incident with the golden calf, when the Lord had every reason to be angry, to abandon his plans with Israel, to choose a different direction, He does not.  Instead, He declares Himself to Moses as “the Lord, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.”  This description of the Lord is used at least 8 times in the Old Testament.  It is in God’s nature to be compassionate and faithful.  Lutheran theology describes anger and punishment as God’s alien works, that is, they are works He does when pushed but they are not works He takes joy in.

            We struggle to understand the mind of God.  I’ve often heard people reflect on their difficulties putting together God’s foreknowledge and the freedom He gave Adam and Eve to sin.  People wonder, “If God knew they were going to disappoint Him that badly, why did He create them like He did?  Wasn’t He just setting Himself up for heartache?”  Or, they think, “Oughtn’t God just have started over after Adam blew it?”  But, of course, love takes a risk on another.  Love means opening oneself up to the possibility that the beloved will hurt you.  And, of course, God is love (1 John 4:8).

            God is love, but humans are sinners, and our love is never perfect.  That’s why the Lord forbade interactions with the Canaanites.  It’s not that the Lord does not love all humanity or that He had it in for the Canaanites or that the Canaanites were worse than other humans.  It’s that Israel was a guardian of God’s promise, and the Lord knew their weakness, so He gave them commands to curtail their worst behaviors, namely, to drive out the Canaanites and to have nothing to do with them lest they lead Israel into more idolatry.

            Here’s a hard question:  to what extent ought we Christians separate ourselves from the temptations of the world around us and to what extent are we to be a leavening agents within that world?  Clearly we are called to be in the world, to be a light for the world, to testify to the world of the grace that is in Christ Jesus.  It’s tough to do that if you are hunkered down in a bunker!  On the other hand, there may be some places it is simply unwise to go:  one has to wonder whether a recovering alcoholic ought to engage the bar scene.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” that we might learn to recognize our own weaknesses and limitations in our pursuit of the kingdom.

            As a Christian pastor reading Exodus 34 I think I’d ‘square the circle’ like this:  The Lord’s love is overwhelming and unconditional, and we are called to manifest that love in the world.  That necessitates the risk of being among ‘the Canaanites.’  To live among ‘the Canaanites’ can be dangerous because it puts us in an environment of constant temptation.  However, if we are regularly and faithfully in the presence of God and His promises, that is, if we are regularly attending to His Word and Sacraments in worship and regularly in His Word (notice the commands to worship in verse 18-26), we can be maintained in the compassionate love of God for us and in our compassionate love for the world.