(As often as time allows, I want to share some D’var Torah (otherwise known as a sermon) as it applies to our modern day living. I hope you will be inspired, educated and see its relevancy to the work we do to repair and restore the world through Playing Together Project.) ~Barrett
Ki Tissa (Exodus 30:11-34:35) concerns the original Fantastic Voyage – a momentous and miraculous adventure. Picture this: the Israelites, a ragtag group of about 2 million liberated slaves (approximately 600,000 men, not including women and children), had just made a dramatic escape from Egypt. Imagine the pyrotechnics of the parting Red Sea and then there was food that rained down from the sky.
In this text, Moses is juggling some hefty divine instructions. Then Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, demonstrating a profound moment of spiritual elevation. He is there on behalf of the Israelites to get the rest of the divine guidance the people need to know now that they are, like Norman’s Lear’s The Jeffersons, “moving on up” from enslavement in Egypt. But God’s people decided it was taking too long and that they needed to go another way, to follow a golden god in the shape of a calf. They stopped elevating.