In this election season it seems appropriate to post this excellent article by frequent commenter and new friend Chad Holtz. Enjoy!

Every week I get to hear lectures from Dr. J. Kameron Carter in Christian Theology. It has been a tremendous blessing. Below you will find a sort of summary of much of what I have been digesting in this class. I hope it blesses you and inspires you as it has me. Peace.

An Election worth Voting For

Who is Israel? According to Exodus 4:20-23 Israel is the “Son of God.” Yahweh calls upon Pharaoh to “let my son go so that he may worship me.” So who is Israel? They are the world’s first glimpse at incarnation. What is incarnation? It is the total union and identity between the God of Israel and the Israel of God. It is the union between the God in whose name itself cannot be pronounced (YHWH has no vowel points – it is unpronounceable) and the one in whom this unpronounceable name is given (Jesus).

Throughout the Old Testament we find that this first union, this first incarnation between God and his Son Israel is anything but complete and total. God has chosen to bind himself to this people, to his Son – God has declared a “YES!” to Israel. This is scandalous. God does not engage with the world in any way we would like. No, God has chosen to interact with the world in this way – he has bound himself to this unfolding of his divine name. When Moses is given the task to go to Egypt to free God’s people, Israel, Moses asks for the name of the one sending him. It is at this moment that God gives Moses the name YHWH, the name that is unpronounceable and is his “name forever, [his] title for all generations” (Exod. 3:13-15). One of Moses’ chief objections to his calling is that he does not speak very well – he is “slow of speech and slow of tongue” (4:10).

Speech is what unites a certain people group together. Speech also divides. Speech is what we use to place ourselves over and against another. In Genesis 11 we discover the hazards of a group of people with one language who strive to “make a name” for themselves (see Gen. 11:4-6). The Tower of Babel holds a mirror up to our efforts to become for ourselves something other than what our Creator has made us for. Identity is not something we make for ourselves but rather something given to us by God. To remind us of this fact God confuses the speech of the people, scattering them abroad over all the earth, rendering them inarticulate to each other. But God does not confuse our speech without reason. The very next scene that unfolds is the nescient call of Israel via the call of Abram. It is out of this inarticulate land, Chaldea (one of the lands inhabited by the people scattered from Babel), that God calls Abram to leave the identity of his father’s world and follow God to “the land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). Remarkably, Abram goes. And in that going his identity is always out before him provided his continual obedience to the one who has called him out.

Back to Moses. The descendents of Abram are in bondage to Egypt. They are overburdened to make bricks for Egypt, many bricks. Bricks are what built the tower of Babel. Egypt is striving to make a name for itself on the backs of another people – God’s Son. Moses is called to lead this people out of bondage so that they can worship God. Moses objects – he does not speak well. His speech is slow, muddled. To help Moses better articulate the message God has for his people God asks, “What of your brother Aaron the Levite?” (Gen. 4:14). Aaron, whom we first meet here and who will soon after become the first priest (prefiguring the Church) is one who will help translate the message of God to the people and likewise will help the people learn to speak the name of God that is unpronounceable. To put it another way, the task of Israel is to add vowel points to the name YHWH – to render it pronounceable in a world of jumbled speech.

It is in this way that God has bound God’s self to the world and entered into the drama that unfolds. It is to Israel, God’s Son, God has said “YES” and it is Israel, God’s Son, who will pronounce the name of God to the world. It is through Israel that salvation will come to the world (John 4:22).

How well does Israel, the son of God, return God’s “YES” to them with a “YES” of their own? Not very well, as it turns out. Incredibly, Israel’s historians do not hide their “no’s.” They do not attempt to make themselves look better than they are. Over and over, time and time again, God works with Israel, His son, to purge their “no” out of them. True, Israel sings YHWH’s song beautifully at times – but embedded within their “yes” is always a “no.” Incredibly, even scandalously, we are witnesses to a people who become the anvil on which God is forging out what it means to be a people whose identity is only before them insofar as they follow in obedience to the one who has called them out of their bondage and is leading them to the land promised them – a land flowing with milk and honey.

This drama that has been unfolding throughout the Old Testament, of God binding God’s self with Israel and thereby with creation is a drama that keeps on happening until finally it reaches its fevered pitch – it comes to this resounding crescendo…

“There was a young woman named Mary, a virgin.” Mary of Israel. Will Mary utter a “no”? Will Mary allow God to pronounce through her the name that is unpronounceable? Mary said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Mary says yes! In Mary’s “yes” Israel has said “yes.” There is no longer a fight. The “no” has been worked out. The unreserved “YES” of God meets, finally, the unreserved “YES” of Israel and brings together the emblazoned and fully concentrated Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? He is the Elected One – the Israel of God – the Son of God, eternally begotten, not made. It is in him that all things (all creation) live and move and have their being. It is this Jesus Christ who enters the wilderness, just as Israel had, but this time does not falter but responds with the word of God – the speech of God – perfectly articulated. It is this Jesus Christ that is perfectly obedient, even in death. It is this Jesus Christ that returns back to God the perfect YES of creation to meet the unreserved YES of God.

This is Election. It is an election already won irrespective of my vote. Glory to God!