Every.Single.Time

Russian icon of Aaron from the 17th century.

I'll hug him, he'll hug me back and we'll both shout "Every single time!" Then most likely, we'll cry. But let me back up a little bit.

I can't be the only person in this world who plans their interactions with the people they will meet when they get to heaven. Everyone jokes that they will ask Noah why he didn't smack those two mosquitoes, what it felt like when that fish dove into the deep with Jonah inside and ask the disciples what jokes made Jesus laugh the most. I want to know the answers to those questions too. But there are others.

Besides the legends of the faith (the ones mentioned in the Hall of Fame in Hebrews) there are a few others I want to talk to. Way up at the top of my list is Aaron. Yes, Aaron, Moses' brother, you know who I'm talking about.

That was some family. With Moses the leader, Aaron the Priest and Miriam the prophetess, family dinners in the middle of the desert must have been fun, not to mention all the growing up dynamics. You know, the ones hinted at in the  Prince Of Egypt movie, where Moses doesn't know who his brother and sister are, and Aaron is Jeff Goldblum.....But I digress.

I want to meet Aaron. We all think we know about Aaron and what he did. But really the only story we know is that he built the golden calf. We forget everything else, or we fail to tie all the pieces together. To get the truest picture of Aaron it is important that you start at the beginning.

In the beginning there was a family in Egypt. Now the Bible is a little unclear on the details. I think this is important. It lets us use our imagination to try and tie these great stories onto and into our experiences. We put a little bit of our background, our experiences and emotions into the stories, making them real, making them about us so we can learn from them. It’s a little how we "picture" characters and scenes from our favorite books. It’s a tool to aid in our comprehension, and we do it when we read the Bible too.

Aaron is listed first in all the accounts of the children, so many assume he is the oldest. If Miriam was the girl who followed Moses' basket then Moses would have been the baby of the family. We know from the Biblical account that Miriam, quick thinker that she was, convinced Pharaoh's daughter to let Moses' real mother be his wet nurse. But after that, when Moses was weaned and he moved into the palace, did they know each other or were they strangers to each other? Did they wave from a distance on those occasions when Pharaoh and his family paraded through public? Did he come "home" from time to time? No one knows. How did Aaron feel about that? No one knows. Up to this point in the story, Aaron has not even been mentioned.

We do know that the first time we really meet Aaron by name, God says it. "Look, there is Aaron your brother." You see, God has a problem--Moses doesn't want to do what God wants him to do. So as a solution, God picks Aaron to solve his Moses problem. That's amazing to me, Aaron is presented as God's answer to a problem. 

Then Moses and Aaron go off and have lots of adventures. Do you know who was there when Moses confronted Pharaoh? Aaron. Do you know who was there when Moses had to keep his hands in the air during the battle with the Amelekites? Aaron, holding one of the arms up. Do you know who gets invited to the top of Mount Sini and sits down in God's presence to share a meal? Aaron. During every significant event mentioned during the Exodus and the long walk afterwards, Aaron is there.

But then we come to the golden calf. This one is harder. Aaron caves in the face of the people, and then tries to blame them for his sin. I forget why we teach this story to little kids in Sunday School. I do know that it is not to teach what I realized later and now see in Aaron's story. But let's not jump ahead.

Do you know what happened after the golden calf? Aaron is anointed High Priest in a grand ceremony in front of all the people. There are fancy clothes, sacrifices--lots of sacrifices--and then Aaron and his sons are given the prime camping location right in front of the tabernacle. Of course two of his sons die after trying to worship God the wrong way, but Aaron soldiers on. He's the high priest after all, the one chosen by God (who did not choose Moses by the way, Aaron was chosen for this role) to seek forgiveness and atonement for the sins of the people.

And then he goes and does it again, this time plotting against Moses with his own sister. Did he think the two of them were going to lead the people into the promised land themselves? Was it a big kids versus the little kid thing? Every single time it seems Aaron has the opportunity to do the wrong thing he makes a bad choice. Every single time, although this isn't what we'll be referring to when we hug.

In between all these stories, the unwritten things make a argument from silence. Aaron did his job, the role God chose him for, the role God called him to, the role God decided Aaron was the man for. He served God. Day after day, week after week, Aaron stood before God and in essence said, "Don't punish us for our sins, we need forgiveness. Please forgive us. Please forgive us."

And every time Aaron did his job he was reminded of all his failures.  But this still isn't the "every time" I'm referring to.

To get to the "every time" I want to get to, we need to understand that the central character of Aaron's life is not Aaron. Its God. In Bible school I always heard that the hero of every Bible story is God. And I must admit that it seemed a little too….Bible school-ish to say that. But in Aaron's and I guess by extension the whole Bible, it is true. God is the main hero of Aaron's story because the center of Aaron's story is not Aaron's sin. The way we teach it in Sunday school its all about Aaron's sin, but we teach it wrong. Aaron's story isn't about sin, its about grace.

Here is the "every time" I'm talking about. Every time, every stinking time Aaron did something stupid, every time he made a bad decision, every time he sinned, every time Moses looked at him and clenched his teeth and shouted "AARON WHAT DID YOU DO?"--after every one of these things God looked at Aaron and said, "Aaron, I forgive you. Now do what I picked you to do."

Every time I sin, which is really what I m saying when I use the words "make a bad decision," God looks at me, forgives and say "Now go do what I picked you to do," Every single time.

This is the every time. Every time I come back, God forgives. Every time I confess, God forgives. Every time I call out to him, God forgives. Every time I sin, God forgives. This is what Aaron and I will be shouting to each other.

Every. Single. Time.

photo credit: photo