Day: August 17, 2025

“Now these things were our examples”

Examples of what exactly? Simply to think and do what is rightful as opposed to what is wrongful. Or, as Paul clearly puts it, “to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted,” before mentioning the problem of idolatry. All of this, including the Gospel, turns on the relation between thinking and doing, a question about the virtues and the vices in our souls.

Sanctification or holiness is the project especially of the Trinity season. The focus is on the virtues as the essential activities of our souls as infused by the grace of Christ. Thus the virtues become graces, aspects of the charity or love of Christ moving in us. That requires our thinking and our doing, especially our acting upon what has been made known by way of revelation. Both the Epistle and the Gospel emphasize the point made so clearly in the Collect that we “cannot do anything that is good without thee,” without God, and that only “by thee may we be enabled to live according to thy will.”

This is part and parcel of the core teaching of the Christian Faith. It complements and belongs to a rich and profound ethical tradition of teaching about the relation of the virtues of the soul as transformed into the forms of love. The virtues are the activities of our souls that belong to human excellence and perfection of character. The key point is the transformation of the cardinal or classical virtues into the forms of charity or love. What Paul and Luke present to us is the concept of the virtues as placed upon a new foundation, the foundation of charity or love; in short, Christ, in whom the end or perfection of our humanity alone is found. It cannot be attained by ourselves on the basis of our own power and intent.

This is the point of Paul’s reference to “these things” that are “our examples,” namely, the recapitulation of the Exodus story into the story of Christ. The reading begins and ends with the sacraments of baptism and communion, the very forms of our incorporation and life in Christ. Paul references the moments in the exodus in the wilderness of Sinai as signifying our spiritual life in Christ; at once anticipating it and participating in it. The cloud which protected and covered the people of Israel in the wilderness and the crossing of the Red Sea point to our redemption in Christ sacramentally understood: “our fathers … were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud, and in the sea,” thus, baptism, and “did all eat of the same spiritual food, and did all drink of the same spiritual drink,” thus, communion, both of which are explicitly tied to “the spiritual rock that followed them; and that rock was Christ.” This connects to one of the dominant metaphors for God in the Hebrew Scriptures, God as the Rock upon which everything depends, the Rock which in Moses’ song in Deuteronomy both begets and gives birth to all things, especially our humanity. Such imagery complements the profound revelation of God’s transcendent ‘Name’ to Moses in the burning bush as “I Am Who I Am” which is ultimately explicated by Jesus in terms of the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

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