Biblical Heroics (Nov 16)

Readings, Exodus 17:8-13 and Isaiah 65:17-25
Image,  John Everett Millais, Victory, O Lord! (detail), 1871
 
The story we heard from Exodus follows shortly after the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. The people, recently freed, are beginning what they hope will be a short pilgrimage through the wilderness on the way to the mountain of God and then the promised land. Cracks, though, are already showing. Despite having witnessed the plagues in Egypt, and the parting and crashing of the sea, the people have begun to grumble: Is the Lord among us or not?
 
Thankfully for them, the Lord is among them, and the Lord provides. Bread and quails have fallen from heaven, water has been struck from a rock. The people are being fed from the hand of God; their daily necessities provided by the one who has promised to be theirs.
 
Then Amalek came and fought with Israel. To ensure that beleaguered and belittled Israel might survive, Moses stands atop the hill with the staff of God in hand – the very staff by which he bested Pharaoh, the staff which touched the sea and made it part, touched the rock and drew water. The staff given to Moses as a sign that God is with him and the people, about to reach out with a mighty hand to free them. This Moses shall hold aloft, so that once again God will act to secure the fledgling nation.
 
But here the story takes a fascinating turn. Because essential to this story of God’s extraordinary power, is the very ordinariness of human weakness. Mixed in with the seemingly supernatural ability of this gesture is the question of human limit. We simply cannot keep our hands above our head all day. Moses’ aged body will not allow it… it doesn’t matter how profound the moment, the human body is a vulnerable one.
 
Moses’ hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the sun set.
 
I love this image, the failing Moses, exhausted and aching, propped up by a rock, arms held in place by those in his trust. It’s one of those beautifully paradoxical Bible stories. One of those stories which defy the heroic, the epic, and instead casts a picture of vulnerability, limit, weakness, and care.
 
Because there’s a more glorious way to tell this story. Where Moses, the intrepid, singular hero, stands alone aloft the mountain, and, with steely grit and rippling muscles seals the fate of the war. Channelling the very strength of his God, he triumphs with maybe just a few dramatic beads of sweat crossing his handsome brow.
 
Instead, we have another addition to the strange and uncharacterizable picture of Moses, of biblical heroism, and of godly leadership. For Moses, we know already from Exodus is a paradoxical figure – the baby saved from death who grew up in a palace, but also the murderer who was forced into decades of hiding. The man called forth by the blazing bush, but also the one whose doubt in his own speaking abilities was so entrenched that God had to relent and let him take Aaron to do the talking. The one who stood arms aloft and parted the Red Sea to bring his people to freedom, is now here requiring his own arms to be held in place to secure their safety. In the very next chapter this will continue. Moses’ father-in-law comes to visit and watches how Moses is stuck all day solving every petty squabble and has to tell Moses to teach the people to solve their own problems, and appoint judges to share the burden: What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out, both you and these people with you. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.      
 
The Torah proclaims Moses as a prophet without rival: Never since, the closing words of Deuteronomy ring out, has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequalled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform. But what today’s story teaches us, alongside all those nifty paradoxes, is that even a man such as Moses has limits, limits which require not only the goodness of God, but the care of community. Moses’ health, his thriving, his survival resembles our own in its contingency. Moses is great, and he is vulnerable and dependent.
 
This is a vital message on a day such as today where we are thinking about men’s health and care, and in the coming weeks as we enter the 16 Days Against Gender Based Violence. The crisis of gender-based violence, the so-called epidemic of male loneliness, the increasing and concerning radicalisation of young men, the lack of dialogue about men’s health physical and mental, so much of this stems from rigid gendered expectations and stereotypes. Stems, that is, from expectations of what it means to be a man, to be masculine. Expectations that are rigid, restrictive, and ultimately destructive (not only for the self, but for others). Sadly, these kind of rigid expectations and aspirations take root in the church as well; where a kind of godly masculinity is espoused, touting the supremacy of men as leaders who are strong and controlled (and perhaps controlling). And yet, as with Moses, time and again the Bible defies a kind of heroic masculinity that is self-sufficient, strong, and stoic, invulnerable and individualist. In its place is the valorisation of service, the requiring of humility, the glorifying of weakness, the celebration of compassion, the commending of vulnerability, and the recognition of our reliance not only on God, but others. To be human, and in particular to be human within the church is to be given to others in mutual dependence and care, to be both giver and receiver of grace and gifts, to be a helpmeet to one another and the earth.    
 
And we needn’t solely glean this lesson from the figure of Moses, or other human leaders in Scripture. Because we find the same example in Christ, the exemplar of the human. Limit and vulnerability mark the life of Jesus. Jesus is entrusted to the care of others. Jesus’ body grows weary, and others will come along (whether it be to anoint his head or carry his cross) to care for and sustain him. Indeed, one of the great, dismaying failures that Jesus experiences is when he is facing an approaching battle and asks his friends to stay awake and pray with him, but – unlike Aaron and Hur – they fail, and sleep through his agony.
 
Jesus’ heroics, such as they are, also fit more in the mode of Moses’. His wonders are hardly herculean, but are acts of healing, feeding, compassion, stillness and peace. For God’s vision of flourishing, of future shalom and abundance – as we heard in today’s reading from Isaiah – is communal. In the new creation, far from being enforced, the so-called natural divisions and boundaries fade away, as wolf and lamb feed together. The picture of heavenly glory and peaceful new creation is not one where we become more self-sufficient, but more harmoniously intertwined with one another, creation, and God.  
 
The reminder then, whenever we start to think about health and flourishing, is to remember that in the Christian picture of the world, we are never called to be self-sufficient, never asked for individual heroics, never taught to hide or shun vulnerability. We are never asked to go it alone. We are made a body with one another, called to fold one another to our hearts, and hold each other up – weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice. Even when Moses possessed the staff of God, this incredible symbol of divine power - this is shown to be too heavy to hold on his own. Here on the battle field, as with the broader governing of Israel, his task will only be accomplished if it is shared. His greatness is contingent on hearing the words of wisdom: you cannot do it alone. Like Moses, all of us have God, an ever-present help in times of trouble, but we need to also have each other, particularly if we are to live into the vision of God’s flourishing kingdom where we shall know full and fruitful lives in community before God.