Monday • 6/20/2022

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89:1-18; Numbers 16:1-19; Romans 3:21-31; Matthew 19:13-22

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

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Throughout the book of Numbers, Moses prepares the 2nd generation to cross over into the Promised Land. Here in Proper 7 of the Daily Office, our lectionary has us in the middle portion of Numbers, a section that recounts a series of rebellions. These rebellions illustrate different aspects of the sinfulness of the human heart. This middle section of the Book of Numbers also offers a series of images of mediation, as Moses stands between the people and the consequences of their faithlessness.

Breathtaking presumption. Korah’s and his followers’ claim that “all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them” is partially correct, but mostly wrong. They are correct in that the Lord had indeed said that Israel would be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). They are correct in that the Lord dwells “in their midst” (Numbers 5:3).

But Korah and company are more wrong than they are correct, because they fail to take into account how the congregation becomes holy. A sinful people are inherently unholy. In the first place, that means they must be shielded from the presence of the Holy One—thus, the permission for Moses alone to ascend the holy mountain back in Exodus 24. In the second place, that means their holiness must be established through God-ordained sacrifices (for instance, the Day of Atonement sacrifices in Leviticus 16, symbolizing purification for sin) and then maintained through God-instructed living (“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” Leviticus 19:6).

Breathtaking stupidity. Further, Korah and his followers are profoundly wrong to claim that Moses and Aaron “exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord” and “lord it over us” (Numbers 16:3, 13). At age 40, Moses had indeed taken it upon himself to deliver his people, when he killed the Egyptian—and had failed miserably (Exodus 2:11-14; Acts 7:23-29). For the next 40 years, he had tended his father-in-law’s sheep in obscurity. At 80 years of age the Lord had appeared to him in a burning bush and, over Moses’s protestations, had called him to this task (Exodus 3 & 4; Acts 7:30-36). Aaron was pressed into service because of Moses’s claim to inelegance of speech: “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exodus 4:10). And Numbers has already stated, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). Moses doesn’t have a “dog in this fight,” nor any “turf to defend.” He’s willing to let the Lord show how He wants to order leadership among the Israelites. Not to mention, Korah and his family—of the tribe of Levi—had already been set apart in service to Yahweh and his people! What??

Breathtaking remedy. Numbers is part of a whole history that proves, according to Paul in Romans 2–3:20), that Israel is just as sinful as the rest of the human race (Romans 1). Paul draws the lessons from Israel’s history (Romans 2–3) and adds it to his indictment of the rest of the human race (Romans 1). Paul’s summation is that, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”. And that summation leads to perhaps the profoundest words he is ever to pen: “…they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:24-26).

The tangled history of Israel has led to this singular Son, Jesus Christ, whose atoning sacrifice the heavenly Father would set forth to cover all the Korahs and all our rebellions. Here is God’s gift of unspeakable grace, in fulfillment of his promise to make right all that went wrong in the Garden, all that went wrong in the wilderness, and all that has gone wrong in the myriad of ways we continue to prove that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory.” Through Christ, the God who keeps faith becomes “just and justifier.” All that is required is that his faithfulness be met with our own faith. As Romans 1:17 has already put it: “from (understood, his) faith to (understood, our) faith.”

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

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