Ki Tisa - Love is a viable approach
Exodus 30:11 - 34:35 | Ezekiel 36:16 - 38
Summary: When Moshe finds out about the gold cow, he is of course frustrated and angry. But he also finds a deep reservoir of love that allows him to contextualize and manage the situation in the best possible way.
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Somehow I keep forgetting about love as a viable response and solution to the problems and challenges I face. It occurred to me today as I was struggling to plan a class. Should I teach this text or that one? Both? In which order? How should I frame it? And then, somehow, I arrived at this: “I’ll spend some time feeling my love for these students and see what happens.” And what happened was magical. We talked text and there were frames, an order emerged, but it all happened inside of love and everyone felt that. We covered material and discussed things, and it happened within this larger context that made it effective and memorable.
Unsurprisingly, every situation that I’ve approached with the simple thought that “I love this person and I want them to know that” has been lifted up, calmed down, clarified, simplified, and magnified. I brought my love to the forefront when dealing with customer service agents, co-workers, members of my family, and the fine people who show up late at night to do the evening prayer so people can say kaddish. 100% success rate. Love is right.
I would hesitate to say that, through love, problems have been solved, because it would be more accurate to say that some of those problems were dis-solved, or were dissolved as problems. I no longer needed to make a choice between two options, choose a text, choose a frame. Somehow the ordering became obvious. A lot of times, when there is love, relationships organize, the important stuff comes to the surface and the less important stuff recedes. You remember why you’re here - in this building and on this earth. You remember why it matters. And then you remember how to do it.
What might I have been feeling at all those other times that I ultimately moved to the passenger seat so that love could drive? All kinds of things. The need for power. The need to impress. Shame about this or that. And you could appreciate that those are powerful feelings, and a person might be strongly motivated to address them. Strangely enough, love actually leaves those issues and feelings unresolved. But it contextualizes them. It adjusts them to their proper size and weight. “Love covers all things.” (Proverbs 10:12)
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When Moshe faced the challenge of advocating for a people who had taken a very wrong turn, who had made and worshiped a gold cow a mere 40 days after God revealed God’s Self and gave them the Torah, Moshe had to find his love for them. This love was tested by God. “Let Me destroy this people and I will make you into a greater, stronger nation.” Meaning, aren’t these people so broken? So flawed? They’ll never stop being broken and flawed. It’s going to be so much work. Moshe says, “Absolutely not. If You won’t forget them, I quit.” Why?
Moshe loves these people. He would literally die for them. His love for them is so real, so true, so unmovable and non-negotiable. He truly lives the idea in Pirkei Avot that a love which is dependent on anything at all will not last. A love that is dependent on the other person or people being perfect certainly will not last. Moshe’s love is full and complete, warts and all.
When he expresses this, the magnitude of their transgression is suddenly shrunk in the face of the magnitude of his love. The proportions and dimensions of the situation are suddenly reorganized and recalibrated and their egregious sin from which they could not possibly recover suddenly feels navigable and negotiable and overcome-able. God’s anger is mitigated - God even reveals the deepest description of how far God’s mercy extends, of just how deep that love is. Somehow, everyone comes out better for it.
Not to sat that this love dissolves the consequences of actions. There is a problem that resulted in the Gold Cow Incident. This needs to be dealt with. But it’s a different conversation entirely, borne of mutual understanding and connection, shared responsibility, and mature communication.