February 15, 2021
Psalm 110:1–4; Exodus 19:7–25; Hebrews 2:1–4
In the Exodus story, when God comes down in a cloud on Sinai, all of Israel must make themselves ritually holy, getting as far away as possible from anything symbolically associated with death. Even after this, they cannot touch the foot of the mountain or otherwise God will “break out against them.”
God’s holiness is a big deal in the Old Testament, and it’s quite foreign to most of us in the modern west. We don’t have many distinctly ritualistic categories to make sense of such a prohibition. Part of why it is foreign to us, I think, is precisely because of the work and person of Jesus.
Jesus is who Israel failed to be, he is their representative substitute. Just before our passage in Exodus today, God declares that Israel is to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The way to do this properly is to have such a high standard of moral and ritual purity that they might be able to mediate God’s presence and wise rulership to the worl. Israel fails to maintain such a standard and so becomes like the nations, rather than the nations becoming more like them.
But Jesus maintains this standard where Israel does not, and fulfills the law in his love of God and neighbor.
Reading this passage after Transfiguration Sunday, I wonder how could Jesus’ disciples witness the glory of God in Jesus if Israel could not even touch the foot of Mt. Sinai. I think the reason is that it is Jesus, and not immediately the disciples, who stand in for Israel. Jesus, then, is the only one who needs to be worthy of directly standing in God’s glory. Only after this, specifically after the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, can we as disciples bring forward the call that is Israel’s call, to bring blessing to the nations.
