Not What I Expected
I was at that age when mowing the lawn had not yet become a chore. It was still a thrill to start an engine by the strength of my arm, to see the immediate results of my labor, to feel like I was useful. To feel like I was an adult.
We were visiting my grandparents. Granddad had recently purchased a semi-self-propelled lawnmower. As the grass was getting long, I volunteered to cut it. The lawnmower’s self-propulsion just added to my excitement. I would race around his lawn and be done in no time.
Perhaps I was mowing in haste. As I neared the house, I did not account for the protective plastic guard on one of the basement shelf windows and—crack! I had run straight into it, making a large and visible hole. As I finished what remained of the lawn, I sank ever deeper into a state of worry. I’d never seen Granddad angry at anyone, much less me, but that didn’t stop my imagination. I envisioned a host of scenarios: Granddad quiet and crestfallen, sorry that he had entrusted his grandson with this responsibility; or Granddad with eyes wide open in disbelief and breathing heavy sighs of frustration; or Granddad with pursed lips and contemplating matters of punishment or repayment.
Perhaps you’re familiar with the acronym F.E.A.R? “False expectations appearing real”? That certainly proved true in this case. Granddad probably saw the fear on my face. He just gave me a big hug and said, “Oh, that’s an easy fix. I’m just grateful I don’t have to mow the lawn!” And that was that. As I remember, we went out later that night and played putt-putt.
An Impatient People, an Impatient God
Moses has been away on the mountain for forty days, and the people of Israel are getting impatient. If the golden calf is a symbol of Israel’s infidelity, then it must be remembered that their infidelity is a symptom of their impatience. Only after forty days have passed and they’ve heard nothing from Moses or God do they cry out to Aaron to fashion some gods to replace Moses. Aaron’s proposal that they make sacrifices before these gods as part of a “festival to the Lord” suggests that these gods are more of a visual stand-in for Moses than an actual replacement for God (Ex 32:5). The people are impatient to have a figurehead, an intermediary, someone or something that can assure them of their relationship with God.
We might be conditioned against speaking ill of God, but allow me to call it like I see it. God is just as impatient and reactive as his own people. It’s like looking into a mirror. God has an extraordinarily short fuse here. He tells Moses, “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them”—or as it says in the Hebrew (and this is crucial, remember this!): “So that my nose may burn hot against them” (Ex 32:10).
This impatient, violent God is very much in keeping with the other gods of the ancient Near East. You might find it interesting to know that Israel’s neighbors had their own version of the flood story, but with some key differences. Most salient among these differences is the reason for the flood. The humans on earth are making too much of a racket, and the gods cannot get any sleep. So finally they settle on a solution: let’s flood the earth! All for the sake of catching a few winks…. It’s not unlike what we see in today’s scripture, where God nearly goes nuclear on Israel within moments.
The Evolution of “God”
Only because of Moses do the people of Israel live to see another day. In today’s scripture, Moses behaves more like God than God behaves like God. He pleads with God to have some patience: “Turn from your fierce wrath,” or literally, “Turn from the burning of your nose” (remember this odd expression!). “Change your mind!” Moses implores (Ex 32:12). And then, lo and behold! “The Lord changed his mind” (Ex 32:14).
I don’t know what’s more troubling in this passage. That God initially has the patience of a four year old, or that God’s plans and purposes change in the blink of an eye. Either way, this is not a God I would feel very safe with. [I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving my nephews in his care.]
I wonder, though, if something else isn’t going on in today’s passage. The resemblance that God initially bears to the gods of Israel’s neighbors, gods who would kill for a wink of sleep, gods who look an awful lot like oversized humans—perhaps this resemblance represents Israel’s expectation. Just as I imagined that Granddad would be upset with me, so Israel imagines a God who operates the way their world operates, with impatience, with vengeance. And just as my expectations were met with the opposite reality, so too were Israel’s.
One way of reading today’s story is that it shows us not an evolution in God’s character but an evolution in the way Israel thinks about God. The story begins with Israel’s fear of a god who looks a lot like us, all-too-human, impatient and wrathful. But the story’s conclusion reveals a very different God. When we hear at the story’s end, “The Lord changed his mind” (Ex 32:14), what we’re really hearing is that Israel changed its mind about the Lord. It is not God who repents from his impatient wrath, but Israel who begins to repent (i.e., change its mind) from such an image of God. Israel is catching a glimpse of God’s true character, which is not an eye for an eye, not evil for evil.
“Long of Nose”
A little while later in the story, when God renews the covenant with Israel and makes new tablets to replace the ones that Moses broke, God passes directly before Moses, and Moses hears a declaration of God’s character: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). “Slow to anger” translates literally to “long of nose,” which is a sort of repudiation of what we saw earlier, when God’s nose burned immediately against Israel. “Long of nose” was the Hebrew way of saying you had a long fuse—your nose didn’t burn so quickly!
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that this revelation of God’s “long nose” is a pivotal moment in Israel’s evolving faith. Israel discovered that their God was strikingly different from the gods of the world in this particular way: God had a long nose! God was patient! People like to draw a contrast between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, saying the Old Testament God is violent and vengeful, and the New Testament God is peaceful and forgiving. But the truth is more complicated. All of the peaceful and forgiving representations of God that we see in the New Testament—they do not appear out of thin air. They come from the Old Testament.
Jesus frequently cites scripture, and one of the books that he draws from most often is Isaiah. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Isaiah seems to have an especially acute sense for the peculiarity of God’s patience. It is Isaiah who anticipates the covenant of love that Jesus will embody (cf. Isa 55), and in this passage he proclaims: “Let [the wicked] return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them…For ‘my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,’ says the Lord” (Isa 55:7-8). In other words, the human inclination is to return like for like, to reward good with good, and return evil with evil. But God’s thoughts are not ours, nor God’s way ours. God is patient. God is merciful.
A Patient God, a Patient People
The earliest followers of Christ understood patience to be part of their unique heritage and witness. The first virtue that received the treatment of an entire book? Patience. The distinctive behavior that drew the attention and curiosity of outsiders? Patience. Justin Martyr, writing in the 2nd century CE, observes that the “strange patience” of Christ-followers who had been injured by others or who were doing business with others, was uniquely attractive. Perhaps they were forgiving debts, or not collecting with interest, or not seeking charges against their wrongdoers—we don’t know the specifics. All we know is that their patience marked them as different than everyone else.
And it all comes back to our long-nosed God, I think. They say you become what you worship. If you worship power, the world becomes a battlefield. If you worship money, the world becomes a marketplace. If you worship a God of steadfast and patient love, the world becomes a community, a family.
This World Communion Sunday, when we celebrate the universal invitation and welcome of our Lord’s table, it is fitting that we remember our long-nosed God. Jesus models for us the patience of our father in his table manners. Eating with tax collectors and sinners, kneeling down and serving others, Jesus shows us that the point is not being in control and achieving certain results, but about caring for others and trusting in the power of God’s love to heal and transform.
At the table, Jesus holds out hope that one day we will all be gathered together at the great family reunion of God’s love.
Prayer
Patient God,
Whose kindness opens the door
To repentance and new life:
Change our minds about you
And make our hearts like yours,
Hopeful, open, and strong
…
Instruct us in the ways of your patience
That we might be saltier, brighter witnesses,
To your kingdom of love.
In Christ, the patience of God incarnate: Amen.
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