The 1st commandment invites us into asking which God is God.
The God Who Comes Into Suffering Does Not Call to Rest
In the first three installments, we asked about the Prologue of the Decalogue, because the story in which the Decalogue rests sets the stage for what is to come. We are invited into a story in which God’s singular Word is given to the suffering within a suffering house, to slaves living among a people enslaved by their gods. This word is given first to the Jew, and then to the Gentile, first to Israel but overheard by Egypt. This word is the greatest gift, for it is the gift of God’s own presence.
If this is what the Decalogue is—God’s presence into a suffering world—this frames how we approach the first commandment1:
“You shall have no other gods before me.
God comes into the suffering of the people, and therein comes the first commandment as one which does not take away that suffering, but which sustains them in it. The entrance of God into a suffering world helps us to see how a golden calf might suffice, whatever its origin. Some say the calf was an image of the Canaanite gods; some take the calf as a sign of the ox who helped the people through the desert; some further take the calf as a sign of presence who reminded them of their provision in Egypt, both in his substance and his form2. In any event, the calf offers them a tangible sign of comfort, a marker of God’s presence within the desert.
In considering their having no other gods, it is of little concern whether the people were monotheists, became monotheists over time, or believed in the existence of many gods with this One their god: the point is the same. There is to be the one God who is given our allegiance, whatever other options there might be. And there will always be options.
In truth, what could be more understandable than reaching out for God’s face? It is the very act of reaching for God’s face which creates the problem—for one shrouded in darkness and mystery must be brought into the light! But the first command stops us in our tracks, however: this time—time itself?—is not a time for rest, but a time which requires our following, our sending out alongside this God.
The calf offers an image of a God who is some place, and thus, some place of rest—Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia perhaps. But the God who appears on the mountain is the God who has come to the them in the fire is the God who has led through the waters: this is a God of no-wheres and of no places. God’s presence is a utopia3, a non-place, and to be this people’s God is to likewise those whose only place is in God.
Walking After God: The Rejection of Idolatry
Many years later, the calf will make a reappearance, as the reassurance of God’s presence in the absence of Jerusalem, with the people once again resting into the arms of another god4. Years after that, the promise of the calf—of rest over journey—will appear again in the temptation of Jesus to be a certain kind of Messiah, one who would embrace bread over God’s sustaining words and angelic security over humility.
The ground surrounding Jesus’ temptations is well-trod, but I want to focus our attention on what comes before and after it in Mark 1-2. For if the 1st commandment links the people to God in a way which compels them to continue following instead of resting with the calves, then what we find in Mark reinforces this.
Consider two stories in Mark which are surprisingly parallel: Jesus’ baptism and temptation (Mk. 1:9-13), and Jesus healing the man who is paralyzed (Mk. 2: 1-12). For both stories follow similar patterns:
Jesus, in the middle of the action, has something descend from above.
In the story of the baptism, the Holy Spirit lights upon Jesus. In Mk 2, the friends tear open the roof and lower their friend down toward Jesus.
Following the descent, a statement is made that reveals something about Jesus that was otherwise hidden.
In the story of the baptism, Jesus’ sonship is disclosed, with an admonition for the crowd to listen. In Mk. 2, Jesus’ ability to forgive sins is disclosed through his healing of the paralyzed man. In both cases, Jesus’ identity is made visible through a visible action, toward an astonished crowd.
Following that descent and revelation, the one at the center of the action gets up and walks out. The ones watching the action are amazed.
Following the baptism, “at once”, Jesus is sent in the wilderness. Likewise, the formerly paralyzed man is directed to pick up his mat and go home while the crowd goes wild.
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I draw our attention to these two stories together because together, they get at this dynamic of what it means for Israel to abandon its calves and adhere only to God: to keep on going after God. The baptism of Jesus, in which Jesus departs into the desert, sets the stage for the latter story. The one who is baptized and raised up from the water is followed by a story in which a man is literally lowered down that he might be raised up again.
The disciple follows the pattern of the Lord. Importantly, the man is not directed simply “to walk”: that is the hypothetical that Jesus uses to indicate which is harder—to forgive sins or to heal his legs. Rather, the man is directed to pick up his mat, and to go home: particular direction is given as opposed to generalized agency. For the healing of God is not for no reason or no direction, any more than the freedom of Israel was for its own discretion as to what to do next. In both cases, the one freed is directed to walk in a manner befitting the one who has led them into freedom.
That the latter story lacks a temptation belies the ordinary nature of the life of disciples, perhaps: that going home and continuing on there is of a different nature than some other destination. We can only offer conjecture. In case we are unpersuaded by the parallel offered here, consider the following story, in which Jesus does it again, offering healing to the tax collectors and sinners at dinner, after which “many followed him.” The nature of our continued embrace of God goes hand in hand with loss, and often not one of our choosing: future income, the open road, the leeks of Egypt.
No Rest for the Righteous
There is much to say at this point: about the role of a therapeutic culture which prioritizes rest over an embrace of suffering, about how this disturbs our thinking about Sabbath and the rest that it brings, about returning home again as the form that temptation takes. The point I wish to draw out here is simply that of perpetual motion. For both in Exodus, and in Mark, movement seems to be aligned with righteousness in a way which tempts us toward a kind of Puritan industriousness.
As Gerry McKenny has argued, in John Calvin, you find an account of the Ten Commandments in which what it means to love God through the law is endlessly extropolated and expanded. This could mean that the walking never ends, but as McKenny points out, it actually terminates in being attentive, to being aware of what it right before me to do, instead of endlessly looking for ways to please God. I’m sympathetic to this view, insofar as it keeps us from roaming endlessly and scrupulously: what we are given to do is right in front of us, if we simply pay attention to what God has put before us.
Rest, in other words, is found not by staying put, but by falling in love: to attend to that which is around us is to learn to stay with it, and in doing so, learn it. Attending to God, following, becomes less a labor than a true labor of love, as we become perpetual motion machines orbiting the one who came to us in our suffering.
As a matter of sidestepping the historical debates, I’m treating the 1st commandment in ways similar to the Reformed/Anglicans, but seeing the logical connection to graven images as part of the 1st commandment, as Catholics and Lutherans. For in the weeds discussions, see this.
The word utopia means literally ou-topos, “no place”, as deflating a description of perfection as there ever was.
1 Kings 12:28