A Merciful and Gracious God

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity - Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9

Early in the morning Moses went up Mount Sinai

as the LORD had commanded him,

taking along the two stone tablets.

Having come down in a cloud, the LORD stood with Moses there

and proclaimed his name, "LORD."

Thus the LORD passed before him and cried out,

"The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,

slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity."

Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.

Then he said, "If I find favor with you, O Lord,

do come along in our company.

This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins,

and receive us as your own."

To really know someone personally, to understand what motivates them and how they think and feel, you need them to tell you about themself. I am not the expert on how you tick; you are. I can learn a lot about you by observing you and talking to other people about you, but I cannot really know you unless you tell me about yourself. The same is true of the Lord. The only reason we can claim in faith that the only God that exists is a Trinity is because it is what he says about himself. In this passage from Exodus, the Lord tells us several other things about himself too. 

First, some context. Exodus 34 picks up the narrative right after the Golden Calf incident. God’s covenant people, who witnessed the Great Theophany at Mt. Sinai in which they heard the voice of God speak the Ten Commandments from the midst of the whirlwind (see Exodus 19:16-20:14), whose leaders looked upon the Lord with their own eyes and ate a meal with him (see Exodus 24:9-11), chose to worship the Egyptian bull god Apis in a pagan ritual that the Bible euphemistically describes as “play” or “dance” (see Exodus 32:1-6). In the face of this brazen rebellion against their Creator and Liberator, Moses climbs back up Mt. Sinai to confess the people’s sin and beg the Lord’s forgiveness, which the Lord quickly grants. 

In the course of their conversation, and in this messy context, the Lord reveals his name and his heart: “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” The LORD is the mysterious divine name, first revealed before the Plagues and the Exodus in 3:14. Transliterated from ancient Hebrew, it is YHWH, meaning “I am who I am,” existence itself. Some Hebrew scholars point out that the divine name essentially means “My nature will become evident from my actions.” In Exodus 34, the Lord’s nature does become evident from his actions when he pardon’s Israel’s egregious sin simply because Moses asked him to. It is the essence of the Holy Trinity to be merciful, slow to anger, and rich in kindness. It is who he is. It is how he ticks. It is what he says of himself. 

You and I are “indeed a stiff-necked people” too. If we are honest with ourselves, far too often we commit acts of brazen rebellion against our Creator and Liberator, just as Israel did. And yet the Lord is who he says he is, both to them and to us, and he receives us as his own when we turn from our sins. The essence of who God is, the essence of the Trinity, is merciful love. If you want to know God in a more deeply personal way, then trust what he says of himself and immerse yourself in his merciful love. You can do this most concretely in the Sacrament of Confession.