October 15, 2023

Exodus 32:1-14; Matthew 22:1-14

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

Moses had gone up Mount Sinai. He was there for forty days. The people had become worried that there was now no one to lead them. They had left Egypt forty days plus three moons ago, meaning three months—four months total. So, it had not been terribly long since their leaving Egypt or since Moses had gone up the mountain. But the people grew impatient and they asked Aaron to make for them gods. This was not a good idea.

The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

God was furious and wanted to wipe out the people and build a new nation from the children of Moses, like had happened long ago with Noah. Moses interceded on the people’s behalf, suggesting that it would look bad if the people were freed from Egypt only to be destroyed a few months later. I am not sure who the audience for that embarrassment was, but it worked. There is some scholarly discussion that God was only testing Moses to see how he might defend the people. That makes the assumption that God in the Book of Exodus is more forgiving than God in the Book of Genesis. You can mull over those assumptions, but I will continue.

Moses succeeds in averting the wrath of God. The reading ends with: “And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” So ended the reading for today.

But that was not the end of the story in the Bible. Moses descended from the mountain and found the people celebrating their new gods. Moses had been up the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, one of which was that the people shall have no other god before God. He was carrying down those commandments on stone tablets. In anger, he cast down the commandments, destroying them.

In the ancient Near East, destroying such a tablet meant you were cancelling an agreement. Moses was in effect cancelling the covenant between the people and God because they had betrayed God. Of course, it is not clear from the text that the people yet knew about this covenant at all. They had just left Egypt, a land of many gods and they were only four months into exclusively following the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nonetheless, Moses decided to punish the people, as described here in Exodus.

“When Moses saw that the people were running wild (for Aaron had let them run wild, to the derision of their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, ‘Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me!’ And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. He said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.”’ The sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and about 3,000 of the people fell on that day.”

Moses and his Levite followers killed 3,000 people. That was not the full contingent of Hebrews, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands according to the Book of Exodus. There is some conjecture that those killed were the ringleaders or those most running wild per the description. That is all guesswork, all after the fact. But we are told that they died because they had sinned against God, even though it is unclear if they even knew it was a sin.

What should we call someone who commits an act that they did not know was a sin? Were they ignorant? Were they innocent? Depending on the word we choose the significance of their death changes. Killing the ignorant versus to killing the innocent—which might it be?

This Sunday I was supposed to be offering another sermon about the nature of beauty and how it has influenced religion over time. I was going to consider sculpture, the form of beauty. I was going to use the imagery of Exodus and the Golden Calf to make wry commentaries about beauty and idols and other churchy sounding things. But I decided not to do that today because this has been a week of grave matters and terrible tragedies.

This week thousands have died in the Middle East. Over a thousand people were killed in Israel. Most were Israelis, but there were others, including Americans and Europeans. The killings were brutal and without mercy. They were indiscriminate except that people in Israel were being targeted. Young and old, military and civilian. Men, women, and children. It was the most horrible loss of life to a terrorist attack since September 11.

And I want to make my viewpoint clear. This was terrorism. There have been discussions and recriminations about what to call the events in question. I find it hard to describe them as anything but acts of terrorism. They cannot be acts of war because an act of war would not intentionally target innocent civilians. They cannot be the actions of freedom fighters, because again there is no legitimate basis for killing innocent civilians. And there is no legitimate basis for taking hostages as has happened. There is nothing legitimate about what the group Hamas has done.

The word “Hamas” is a loose acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement. Like many acronyms, it has a double meaning. Hamas is also the Arabic word for zeal or strength or bravery. Which is an image someone is trying to convey. Of course, there was nothing brave about these actions. There was nothing strong about a surprise attack against civilians. And the word zeal can have many meanings—zealotry need not be good or right or noble. And in this case, it was anything but.

This week, someone asked me if I had heard about what Harvard had said about the conflict, about Harvard saying admiring words about Hamas. I must confess that I snapped at them, a moment of impatience. I did so because I admittedly have a soft spot for Harvard. And I also knew that the university had said nothing of the sort. It was student groups that had made such remarks, with one comment that Israel was “entirely responsible” for the violence. Which is an earnest and stupid and cruel thing that a college student might say.

It was earnest because there is only black and white morality on the dorm room floor, a place where Marx sounds sensible and self-sacrifice is an untested theory. It was stupid because even a momentary pause to reflect would put the lie to the statement. And it was cruel because over a thousand people were dead. And I would guess that quite a few in the Harvard community lost loved ones in those terrible hours.

The controversy was not about what Harvard had said but what it had not yet said. Harvard had not immediately condemned what these students were saying. They were not unique. People at other universities and organizations are trying to explain away why they signed onto statements of support for Hamas. I am not terribly interested in the halting apologies of these people.

I have never been to the Gaza Strip. I have no point of reference about what has gone on there over the decades of occupation. I know what I have heard through the media, which is biased to put it mildly. And yet, I know that Hamas has taken responsibility for these actions and it has threatened further action. And all of that is frankly evil. Evil meaning an utter disregard for human life. Evil meaning profoundly immoral and wicked. Evil through and through.

I do not know much about Hamas or the Gaza Strip, but I know a bit about Islam. That is a surprising area of knowledge for an American minister. And to be honest, I came into much of that knowledge by accident. When I went to seminary, I was required to study something called “Other Religion.” That meant some tradition different from my own. For a Unitarian, that meant something not Christian and not Jewish. I needed to go further afield.

So, my plan was that I would study Buddhism. Yes, I was going to study the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and lovely stories about Buddha. Peace and rainbows and compassion. Except, there was a problem. Almost all the Buddhist faculty were on sabbatical while I was scheduled to be in school. My Buddhist plan was foiled.

Instead, I studied Islam. I studied the Quran. I studied the Islamic practices of India and Pakistan. I know quite a bit compared to the average American and maybe even a bit compared to some American Muslims. Most people do not nerd out on religion like a graduate student studying fulltime. And I was nerding out because it was it was new and interesting, far outside my existing areas of knowledge.

And one of the things I discovered through my studies of Islam, the scripture and the history, the customs and the traditions, is that none of it supports what happened in Israel. There is nothing to support the killing of innocents. Nothing at all.

Yes, in recent decades there has been a violent group of death cults using the name of Islam. People who use the cloak of religion to seize power and commit atrocities. Some of those cult members led the terrorist attacks on September 11. And now more of them killed over a thousand of people in Israel. It is unfathomable evil, but make no mistake, this is not because of Islam but in spite of it.

It is also not because of the people of Gaza. The regular people of Gaza, who have nothing to do with armed insurgencies. The people who go to work, who go to school, who try to live simple quiet lives out of the range of people shooting each other.

These events were also not because of the Palestinian people, those in the West Bank, those in Israel, and those around the world. The typical Palestinian just wants to get on with living. Yes, there are grievances between Israelis and Palestinians. Yes, there are injustices that should be addressed. But this is not justice.

When I heard about what had happened, and my horror grew and grew, I could not imagine why this had been done. What was being achieved by this series of atrocities? What conceivable objective was there when the response was a forgone conclusion: the declaration of all out war by Israel against Gaza. The mobilization of one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world with over 400,000 troops waiting to invade an area the size of Detroit, MI.

Someone said that it was because Hamas is animalistic, prone to violence, filled with rage to the point of being beyond reason, etc. My problem with that characterization is that it took an unbelievable amount of planning, an unbelievable amount of cunning to do what they did. I do not mean to offer words of admiration for them because this was unmitigated evil. And that evil has invited reprisals against the two million people in Gaza, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with this.

In our reading from the Book of Exodus this morning, we read a limited version of the story. The editors of the lectionary snipped off the uncomfortable part about Moses’ anger and his gang of Levite enforcers who slaughtered three thousand people. That is an uncomfortable Biblical tale that we never hear on Sundays because it makes Moses out to be a killer.

Bear in mind that God did not tell him to do what he did. He did this on his own after God had already decided not to act. The best that can be said is that Moses and the Levites limited the death toll. They only killed three thousand men.

I mentioned my unexpected familiarity with Islam. Well, I am going to add more to my “Show and Tell” presentation. When I was in law school, I became a minor expert in another subject, the Law of War. The Law of War concerns international law and treaties dealing with how one is to conduct armed conflict.

I wrote a law review article on the First Persian Gulf War and the oil wells that Iraq had set ablaze. This was a violation of the Law of War, including the law limiting reprisals. A reprisal is responding in kind to some form of attack. Outside of an armed conflict, the action would be prohibited, but during a conflict it is permissible if and only if it is proportionate to the act in question. Setting the oil fields of Kuwait on fire was not even vaguely proportionate to the imagined harms of Iraq.

In Biblical terms, this notion of proportionate measures means an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This is sometimes called lex talionis or the law of the talon or the law of the claw. This rule is intended to be literal. If someone takes your eye, you can respond by taking theirs. You shall not kill them. You shall not injure or kill someone else.

In the present conflict, the State of Israel is subject to the laws of war. If you listened to President Biden’s address on the events in Israel, you might have heard him say that democracies follow the law. I am guessing this was a thinly veiled reminder to the leaders of Israel that they can respond to what happened in kind, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And no more than that.

One troubling question, however, is whose eyes and whose teeth. I have no moral qualms about Israel striking back at the members of Hamas. I have no problem with them striking back at those who helped in the planning and the killing. But that is not the same as carpet bombing an area the size of Detroit filled with two million people who have literally no place to go. No place to hide. No place to shelter. And while I understand the desire to strike back because innocent people have died, I cannot understand striking back and killing more innocent people just to balance the scales.

I cannot imagine the grief that people are going through. I cannot blame those who are calling for vengeance. But I cannot ignore that some of the new people being injured and some of the new people dying in Gaza had nothing to do with what happened. That is not morally acceptable, even in the face of outright evil.

Yes, respond. But not with the same indiscriminate violence that was intended to terrorize regular people. Yes, respond. But let innocent people get out of harm’s way to places of refuge. Places which can be secured and searched for those from Hamas or other groups who might try to hide like wolves among the sheep. Yes, respond. Respond admittedly in a way that will take a lot of extra effort and care. Because there is no excuse for destroying the guilty and the innocent alike.

That will not bring anyone back to life. And it will likely lead to another generation of hatred and violence. So, when Israel asks us for weapons that are more accurate, we should provide them. When Israel asks for our help to limit the damage or to find Hamas and its allies, we should do everything that we can.

I must confess that I am not a pacifist, which might seem out of character. I completely agree that the people of Israel have a right to justice in response to these terrible events. They have a right to strike back at Hamas and its allies. And yet, I must state firmly that the two million people of Gaza should not pay the price for the evil ones hiding in their midst.

When Moses struck back at those who had done evil in the sight of God, he limited his reprisal. I am not suggesting this was a good act, but it was a limited one. He focused on those that lead the people into their sins. I can only hope that the same level of Biblical restraint will be followed centuries later in the shadow of great evil committed by a group of monstrous men.  Amen.