Monday July 31, 2017
“Crowd is untruth,” observed Søren Kierkegaard. Moses would agree. Ever since Moses began leading them, the Israelites had experienced YHWH’s care and protection. They had witnessed in person His mighty deeds. In response to His covenant, they promised total obedience to Him. But at the slightest delay in Moses’s return from the mountain of God, they lose their faith and trust. “The man who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him,” they complain. If only they knew that it was not the man Moses that brought them out of Egypt, but the hand of the Lord! (Didn’t they know it already?)
But Aaron begs Moses for the sinful people. Moses begs YHWH on their behalf. Moses even offers himself as a sacrifice for the sins of his people. Aaron and Moses serve as the mustard seed and the yeast that Jesus speaks of today. Aaron and Moses are a minority compared to this vast majority of sinful people; but their actions yield powerful results. We are called to be such mustard seeds and yeast, silently working for the Kingdom in an indifferent world. Our labor will bear fruit one day.