Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Exodus 24:12-18

Year A - Epiphany Last or Mountain Top to Valley
March 2, 2014

This is a cloudy passage.

1) Moses ascends mountain and cloud covers mountain for six days
2) G*D speaks to Moses from cloud on the seventh day
3) Moses entered cloud and ascends mountain
4) Moses was on Cloud Mountain for forty days

Here we have a mysterium tremendum et fascinosum all jumbled together. A cloudy ascension occurs both before and after a “Seventh” day and is included in some “Forty” day package. Mythic stuff, through and through.

Having a cloudy life might be one way we describe a dark portion of our time; a dark night of the soul, so to speak.

This very same cloudiness is also a locus for insight, direction-setting, and vision-questing.

Trying to put all this into words fails us, time after time.

Immediately after this numinous affair we have the building of a portable Cloudy Mountain. Sometimes this Ark of Covenant is understood as Jesus, a new Law-Maker. On a Mount of Transfiguration folks make much of a Jesus shining rather than the cloud speaking. Working in images is always interesting. Do you try to hold Moses and Jesus together or not? If so, why? If not, what do you do with the six days and seven, the mountain and cloud, the law and prophets?


No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for blessing us with your response.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.