Daily Devotional • June 7
A Reading from Exodus 19:3-6a, 16-20
3 Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: 4 You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, 6 but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.
16 On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17 Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. 19 As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. 20 When the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.
Meditation
Pentecost represents two celebrations at once. For Christians, the celebration is primarily about the arrival of the Holy Spirit, the miraculous gift of the Lord, complete with fiery tongues and evangelistic outflows. But this is always layered atop its first purpose: as a festival of the Jews celebrating the descent of the Lord upon Mt. Sinai and Moses’ reception of the Law from God. Both scenes–the first from Acts 2 and the second from Exodus 19–are scenes filled with fire and glory and the presence of the Lord, though their tenor is quite different. In Acts 2, the believers celebrate joyously the arrival of God’s power in their midst, whereas in Exodus 19, we read that “all the people who were in the camp trembled.”
Lest we try to make too fast a dichotomy here, however, it is worth recalling that just as holiness in the Old Testament could be so powerful that a person could die just by unworthily touching the holy thing (cf. Ex. 19:12, II Sa. 6:7), we have a similar pattern in the New Testament, with the sudden deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5ff) and elsewhere where deceptive figures like Elymas are struck blind (Acts 13ff). The trick here is not to pit Mt. Sinai against the Upper Room and say that the parallel is about law versus grace. Instead, we should be asking: How is the Pentecost gift foregrounded by the law’s majesty?
And here again we find ourselves reflecting on the priestly call of the people of God. The presence of God is ineffable, all-powerful, and untouchable—so sacred that even the mountain upon which God descends is too holy to touch. Yet here, just as God is preparing to provide Israel with the Law that will shape their interactions with God from now on, we see a vision of God’s goals: “You shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” Even in Exodus, the vision is not for a permanent mediation between God and the nation by a selected priesthood. The vision is greater than that–it is for a holy nation that mediates God to themselves by their own collective priesthood. Even though the people initially recoil from this proposition–the very sights and sounds of God’s presence overwhelms them–here in Exodus we see the first foundations for a universal priesthood of all believers, a foretaste of the coming Holy Spirit.
Ian Edward Caveny serves as pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Alton in south-central Illinois and as an occasional lecturer for the John Martinson Honors Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
♱
Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Mukono – The Church of the Province of Uganda
St. Martin’s by the Lake Episcopal Church, Minnetonka Beach, Minnesota
