Aaron, mourning silently

Leviticus 10:6

Then Moses said to Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, "Do not let your hair become unkempt, and do not tear your clothes, or you will die and the LORD will be angry with the whole community.

The heart will not be silent but rages. Speak to the heart, speak to it.

Speak, silence it, instruct it, still it. The heart must be instructed, the heart must be owned, possessed.

Silent, quiet, my heart rages, my heart is silenced. Be still. Be still.

It rages forward, it rages forward, O Lord, what is a man, that he should oppose himself so?

My sons! Lord, I held them when they were born, I looked at their faces, I kissed them, carried them, fed them, helped them walk, run, my delight, my joy. Lord, these were my sons, my flesh, my wife's darlings. Lord, this was my heart, my heart, my heart that was burnt when you burned. Lord, look upon the fullness of this, these dead men were my sons.

Silence. Be silent, O heart.

Lord. I am a man, flesh. You are God, all-powerful. I will be silent before you, quiet in the fierceness of my rage, acknowledging the natural pathways of it, but not excusing them. I will be a child before you, still.

A child before you. A child before you. They were my children, my children, Lord, my heart is breaking forth again, I will be silent in choice, O Lord, subsume, subsume.

Take my heart.

Lord, those boys, those fools. O Lord, they are my children but they were fools. I have known their ways for years now, seen in them the lack of sight possessed. O heart which loves, die now in the futility of it, the weakness of it. There is love and there is love, a natural going forth of the heart towards that which it protects, and then the exalting self-giving love, a self-forgetting love. My sons were men too, men existing before God as we all do, men loved by me, but not by God, in what sense? For we know love exalts, we know love protects, this is love is it not? Would you say a mother loved her child if she tossed him into the fire? What love is there in this burning, this consuming?

Lord, Lord, we who are wise and see the paths you choose know you are a God of burning. Lord, we who have heard your voice in its power, and seen your works not just in the physical grandeur of them, but in the secret holy power in them, we are the ones who fear and know. For God is fearful, beyond control in his operations, beyond manipulations, an unbridled presence. You are a God of anger, a God who will destroy, a God who will purge one day.

But Lord, my heart's love, my sons! Who can look upon the corpse of a son burnt and not revenge himself? O heart, be silent, you stray, O heart, know and fear, know and fear!

Lord, I will be silent. I will cover my mouth. You are just.

Ah yes, justice. Justice then, unveiled here in this desert, given as a prize to us, we his people, the possession of the Law. There is no justice with no law, no punishment, but no promise either, for the word which stands behind the law stands also behind the promise. We understand so little of these things, but we know enough to say that the Law is some inseparable part of God's covenant with us, the place of contact initiated so long ago, shown in the shadow of Adam's obedience, mysterious for so many long and dark generations, but now bursting forth, the Law in its beauty, its perfection, a revealed God in action, a straightness emanating from God and dividing.

But Lord, we who see, we who see know that the beauty of the law is a beauty remote from our experience, a beauty like the beauty of a diamond, a distant beauty, a foreign beauty that is complete in itself and takes nothing into itself. Apart from us, or perhaps, to Adam, it is beautiful, flawless, and in the hope of it, it may one day provide beauty again. As a form to be molded into, it speaks of transforming beauty, but in it to us, O Lord, it is a burning.

Lord, it is an exposure. Lord, it is a terror. Lord, it is a bringer of death. Lord, in it you bring and have brought death. You have brought death here, here, to my own, my own children. Lord, the Law surely slays all alike. But my children are dead.

Fools!

Lord, I loved them. For your law in its requirements is a terror and a bringer of death (the law brings death only in relation to our performance of it, not inherently, for Adam died in the breaking of the Law, how long, O Lord, can I occupy myself with such abstractions), but Lord, it also speaks of worship. Those fools! Lord, I loved them though, these men who could not see, who forgot in their pride that all worship is obedience.

O Israel, do you think a holy God would permit himself to be worshiped in any way but according to his proscription? Are you so unaware of the natural weakness of your hearts and minds as to imagine that you could devise a method of honoring God? You who cannot even approach this throne except through the sacrifice of a high priest? Even this is a sham, not a sham, but an appointed means that signifies, for can a goat atone for the sin of a man? What proportion is there between such things?

O men, O heart, O sons, O future sons, know that the Lord is a holy God! Know that the Lord is a consuming fire, a God who has brought to us the revelation of his worship, but a God whom vile flesh approaches warily. You must come through the sacrifices, you must come through the priests. Now I sit, unmourning, silent, a mask of a man, holy in what I signify, able to represent to these unholy people the drawing near, while even my heart rages, for I am silent but my heart will not be silent.

Be silent heart.

When they swung their fire, those fools, they worshiped not the God of Abraham, but the empty vanities of their own minds, a self-worship, rules invented, as if God were altogether like them. God does not change, O men of the earth, he is the same forever, and he is approached only by sacrifice, the way appointed. Do they think their own inventions could open a door when God had once promised death for all? O fools, O my loved sons, did you not know that all men stand before the Lord condemned, that the very law we were given is meant to throw us down before him, so that in the shadow of these vain sacrifices we might see the forgiveness that is to come? But only in them, only in the means God has given, salvation is found nowhere else, and if you are not cleansed by the fire you will be consumed by it. We are nothing, vileness, filthiness, unclean in the this flesh, never cleansed so long as it persists. Cleansed in shadow, perhaps, but still possessing that which the presence of God can only consume. We are shielded from him for our own sake.

Be silent, O heart. Worship him in the discipline of your emotions. My anger is no worship, my rebellion is no worship. My submission, my obedience, these are the sacrifices of the spirit, the worship of the heart for you. Be silent heart, your sons are gone.

No resolution. I loved my sons, and they are gone. Still my heart, before the God who has both promised this way, but filled us with the terror of his wrath. He has and will show himself holy. To know him is enough, this mystery vanishing in the greater mystery of surpassing love, which could overcome this fierceness.

Be silent, be silent.