Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

“Now if the ministration of death, engraven with letters upon stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which is made void: how shall the ministration of the spirit be rather in glory? For if the ministry of condemnation be glory, much more the administration of justice abound in glory” (2 Corinthians 3:7-9).

These words from St. Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians refer to what for the Jewish people was the supreme moment of divine revelation, the giving of the Law (the Ten Commandments written on tablets of stone) on Mount Sinai. Moses, according to the book of Deuteronomy, was the greatest figure in the history of Israel because to him God spoke face to face (Deuteronomy 34:10). The thirty fourth chapter of the Book of Exodus tells how what Moses saw on Mount Sinai was reflected in the glory that shone from his face. When he came down from the mountainside the children of Israel could not look on his face because of the glory that shone from it, so he had to cover his face with a veil (Exodus 34: 29-35).

In view of this, it seems strange at first sight that St. Paul should speak of this supreme moment in the history of Israel as “the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones”, and the “ministration of condemnation”. The reason lies not in the Law itself, which, as St. Paul explains in the Epistle to the Romans, is “holy and just and good”, but in human sin (Romans 7: 12). This means that the Ten Commandments, intended to provide a pattern for living in accordance with God’s will, become instead a ministration of death. The Law could not change fallen human nature, which from the beginning, had desired the better, but done the worse. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3: 23).

The prophet Jeremiah, writing at the time of the fall of the Jewish nation to the Babylonians, looked forward to a day when this would be dealt with, and there would be a new covenant between God and man, in which sins are forgiven, and the law would be written on the hearts of men. “Behold the days are come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, though I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31: 31-34). 

St. Paul declares that in Jesus this prophecy has now been fulfilled. Jesus in his own person is the full, final and definitive revealer of God’s will. He has not come to replace the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfil them. The Law of Christ given in the Sermon on the Mount is this new covenant written on the hearts of men, a righteousness surpassing that of the scribes. It is the ministration of the spirit, a glory that surpasses the glory revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. “For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Corinthians 3: 6).

St. Paul was confronted on the Damascus Road with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, who is himself in his own person the embodiment of the divine glory which Moses saw on Mount Sinai. The Christian, with an unveiled face, can now behold the glory of the Lord and be changed into the same image from glory to glory. We can be transformed by following him who did for us what we could not do for ourselves, and so inaugurated the new covenant in which sins are forgiven. We are following not simply precepts written on tablets of stone, but a living person.

In this life, we still have this treasure in earthen vessels and none of us is able to fully realise this vision. St. Paul speaks elsewhere in the epistle of his own trials and tribulations which taught him of God’s power made perfect in weakness. We have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ. C. S. Lewis put it like this “Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him and with him everything else thrown in.” 🔝