Lesson 5 Moses - A Man between God and the People

1. Every meeting of God with man is a gift. God greatest gift to

humanity is Jesus Christ. Jesus met humanity with all the greatness of God and humaneness of man. Jesus continues to meet daily man in the church, in the Eucharist and other sacraments. The same Jesus is given to us daily in the sacred scripture in the form of the written word of God. The greatness of man consists in realizing Gods nearness to him in and through the church through the sacraments and in the Holy Scripture and by responding to them to be in the process of having the fullness of life. 2. Salvation history is a continuous narrative of Gods saving presence in the world. God, being the pure spirit does not act directly among the humans, but only through his representatives who were His chosen instruments like Moses, the Kings, and the Prophets and finally through his own Son Jesus Christ. After the gotra pithakanmaar (Patriarchs) Abraham Issac Jacob, the people of God began to experience Gods intimate saving presence among them. The greatest hero who mediated Gods presence among the people in that period was Moses. The liberation of Israel from Egypt particularly the crossing of the Red Sea, known as Exodus (Ch. 5-14) was the foundational God experience Israel ever had on which the Jewish religion was based just as the death and resurrection of Jesus for the Christian religion. The orma (memorial) of exodus is made in every liturgical celebration and Synagogal assemblies of the Jews. The exodus was the proof that God is the ever present saviour of the people of God. 3. Gods love for his people is eternal, unchangeable but before God man is always flimsy or dilly-dallying. From the one true God who powerfully liberated them from Egypt Israel slipped into human, material, handmade gods symbolized by golden calf. So the God-man relationship needed to be more firmly established in a Covenant, in a liturgical assembly wherein the sacrificial blood was sprinkled on the altar and on the people while the sacred book was read
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(Exodus 24: 3-8). The terms of this covenant was more formally established with the formula I (God) am your God and you (Israel) are my people (Jer 31: 33). The Christian life too is a covenanted life lived in the blood of the covenant (Mt 26:28, Mk 14:24) of Jesus Christ yet the phenomenon of the members of the people of God making gods of their liking, the golden calves and dancing around them throughout their whole life is actual for us too. 4. The Exodus experience progresses through the desert experience. In the desert the people murmur against Moses, in reality against God himself but God feeds Israel with manna and quail (Ex 16:1-35) and water for drinking (Ex 17:1-7) all showing how much God cares for his people. The same symbols of food and drink in the sacrament of Eucharist and of water in Baptism are operative in the covenant of the people of God today. For leading the God human relationship, God makes use of human mediums and even the created beings. Hence, the importance of sacraments. If the human mediums lead the people to God, to Gods love the sacrament keep men in Gods love. 5. For Israel Moses was not only the liberator but also the law giver not in the sense of the author of the law as perhaps Manu in the Indian thought, but only the mediator of the law of which God himself is the author. The divine origin of the Jewish law was guaranteed by pre facing many of the provisions of the Jewish law by the phrase Nahum Yahweh meaning thus says the Lord. The bulk of the Jewish law is spread out in the first five books of the Old Testament, which together is known in Hebrew as Torah Law elements of which are found spread out in many of the OT books. The social commandments within the Ten Commandments (4-10) serves as the basic norm for every human being, hence inherent in the deepest level of human behaviour and thus become part of the natural law itself. For a Jew mans obligations towards God consists in fulfilling the ritualistic and purificatory laws. Our church too is governed by laws known as Canon Law. The legitimate laws, ecclesiastical as well as civil are Gods voice for his people and obeying them is following Gods will for his people. Jesus placed the essence of law in the inner attitude of love of God and of ones neighbour this is the radical revolution that Jesus brought about in the practice of religion.

Vishal Malankara Voice / MCC ETRI

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