Exodus is a complex image in terms of the Lord’s Prayer; in the beatitudes we find the same progression: ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled’, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy’. First a simple bodily hunger and thirst, a deprivation of all possessions, which were a gift of corruption, a gift of the earth from the overlord, a stamp of slavery, and then exactly in the way in which the mourning of the second beatitude is increased, the moment we are turned Godwards, so this thirst and hunger are turned towards righteousness. A new dimension has been disclosed to men, one of longing, of craving, a dimension which is defined in one of the secret prayers in the liturgy as ‘The Kingdom for to come’, when we thank God that he has given us his kingdom for which we are longing. In the liturgy the kingdom is there, but in the journey through the desert it is ahead, in a germinal state, still beyond reach. It is within us, as an attitude, as a relationship, but certainly not as something which is already life, on which we can feed and by which we can be kept alive. There is the bodily hunger, born of our past and of our present, and the spiritual hunger, born of our future and of our vocation.
‘Blessed are the merciful.’ This journey is not a lonely one; in terms of Exodus it was the whole people of God who were launched out, side by side, as a unit; in terms of the Lord’s Prayer and our vocation, it is the Church, it is mankind, it is everyone who is on this journey; and there is one thing of immense importance that we must learn, namely, mercy for our brothers who are journeying together with us. Unless we are willing to bear one another’s burdens, to carry one another’s weight, to receive one another as Christ receives us, in mercy, there is no way across the wilderness. This journey in the scorching heat, in the thirst and hunger, in the exertion of becoming a new man, is a time of mercy, of mutual charity; otherwise none will come to the place where God’s law is proclaimed, where the tables of the law are offered. Thirst for righteousness and fulfilment goes hand in hand with mercy for the companions who walk side by side through the heat and the sufferings; and this thirst and hunger imply more, now, than just absence of food. When the Jews arrive one day at the foot of Sinai, they are capable of understanding and of being; they have been tamed and have become one people with one consciousness, with one direction, one intention. They are God’s people, in motion towards the Promised Land. Their hearts that were darkened have become more transluscent, more pure. At the foot of the mountain it will be given them, to each according to his strength and capabilities, to see something of God (because ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’), to each of them in a different way, exactly as the disciples saw Christ transfigured on Mount Tabor, according to what they could comprehend.
At this point a new tragedy occurs: Moses discovers that the Jews have betrayed their vocation and he breaks the tables of the law; those which are afterwards given are the same, yet not the same: the difference is perhaps shown in the fact that when Moses brought the law the second time, he had a shining on his face which no one could bear (Ex 34:30); neither could they bear the Lord revealed in all his glory and fragrance. What they are given is what they can bear, but it is a law written by Moses (Ex 34: 27) and not simply a divine revelation of love, ‘written by the finger of God’ (Ex 31: 18). The law stands half way between lawlessness and grace; one can trace three steps in striking progression: in Genesis we see the violent Lamech, who says that if he is offended he will avenge himself seventy and seven fold (Gn 4: 24); when we come to Sinai, we are told, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; and when we hear Christ, we are told ‘seventy times seven shalt thou forgive thy brother’. These are the measures of human revolt against equity and against grace.
Khomiakov, a Russian theologian of the nineteenth century, says that the will of God is a curse for the demons, law for the servants of God and freedom for the children of God. This seems so true when we examine the gradual progression of the Jews from Egypt to the Promised Land. They departed slaves, who had just become aware of their potentialities as prospective children of God; they had to outgrow the mentality of slaves and attain the spirit and stature of sons; this took place gradually in the course of a long and extremely painful process. We see them slowly being built into a community of servants of God, of people who recognised that their Lord was no longer Pharaoh but the Lord of Hosts, to whom they acknowledged that they owed allegiance and unconditional obedience; they could expect from him both punishment and reward, knowing that he was leading them beyond what they then knew, into something which was their final vocation.
~Archbishop Anthony Bloom, Living Prayer
