"Ich bin ein Sündelære" (Cumberland Saga)

Sunday dawned crisp and cold.

Blain was in the habit of joining Sarah, Lliam and Mary in church services. Sarah handed Blain his English language Bible with the “readings” Sig had picked out marked with a red, yellow and blue ribbon. Uncharacteristically, there was only one ribbon in the Bible this Sunday.

Blain stood with Sarah's family near the front, where it was Sarah’s habit to stand.

Sig started reading in archaic, formal German that the Danubian Swabians of Copperhead Cove worshiped in...

The LORD said to Moses:

You must also tell the Israelites: Keep my sabbaths, for that is to be the sign between you and me throughout the generations, to show that it is I, the LORD, who make you holy. Therefore, you must keep the sabbath for it is holiness for you. Whoever desecrates it shall be put to death. If anyone does work on that day, that person must be cut off from the people. Six days there are for doing work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD. Anyone who does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death. So shall the Israelites observe the sabbath, keeping it throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant. Between me and the Israelites it is to be an everlasting sign; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, but on the seventh day he rested at his ease.

When the LORD had finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant, the stone tablets inscribed by God’s own finger.

When the people saw that Moses was delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for that man Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.”

Aaron replied, “Take off the golden earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”

So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.

He received their offering, and fashioning it with a tool, made a molten calf.

Then they cried out, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”

On seeing this, Aaron built an altar in front of the calf and proclaimed, “Tomorrow is a feast of the LORD.”

Early the next day the people sacrificed burnt offerings and brought communion sacrifices. Then they sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

Then the LORD said to Moses: Go down at once because your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted corruptly. They have quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them, making for themselves a molten calf and bowing down to it, sacrificing to it and crying out, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!” I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are, continued the LORD to Moses. Let me alone, then, that my anger may burn against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation.

But Moses implored the LORD, his God, saying, “Why, O LORD, should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent he brought them out, that he might kill them in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning wrath; change your mind about punishing your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and how you swore to them by your own self, saying, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky; and all this land that I promised, I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage.’”

So the LORD changed his mind about the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.

Moses then turned and came down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, front and back. The tablets were made by God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

Now, when Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “That sounds like a battle in the camp.”

But Moses answered, “It is not the noise of victory, it is not the noise of defeat; the sound I hear is singing.”

As he drew near the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing. Then Moses’ anger burned, and he threw the tablets down and broke them on the base of the mountain.

Taking the calf they had made, he burned it in the fire and then ground it down to powder*, which he scattered on the water from which the Israelites drank.

After reading, Sig stood at the lectern long enough for the younger people to start to fidget. Then, in a loud and commanding voice Sig stated "Ich bin ein Sündelære!!" (I AM A SINNER!)

A full five seconds passed before he resumed preaching.

“The first commandment...the VERY FIRST COMMANDMENT that God gave his people was “I am a jealous God. Thou shall have no other gods besides me. Thou shall not worship graven images.”

“I broke that commandment. I worshiped a graven-image, an image crafted by the hand-of-man. Just like the Israelites, a graven-image crafted by my own, fallible hand” Sig said. And then he was silent while the congregation absorbed his words.

“I could stand up here and say that I had committed the sin of excessive pride and most of you would dismiss it. Pride can be good. People miscalculate. It happens.”

“I could stand up here and say that I committed the sin of conceit and you would dismiss that, too. You would not grasp the gravity of my sin.”

“I could say those things and they would be true, as far as they went. But they would be the lies of partial truths.”

“James tells us that teachers will be judged more harshly. I should have been more vigilant and not fallen into this sin.” Sig's voice was sad and filled with remorse.

“I created a story in my mind about how fertilizer made the corn fall down. I continued to blindly worship that story even though there was much evidence that it was a lie; a lie of partial truths. I thought, in my pride, that I did not need to look at the evidence that God had abundantly scattered in his creation, evidence that refuted the false-god fabricated by my intellect.”

“I atone by asking for your forgiveness. My stiff-necked pride was not just a sin against God, it was also a sin against those of you who would have benefited from the use of fertilizer” Sig said.

Murmuring broke out in the room. Every person in the room knew that hunger waited if they could not grow enough food for themselves and for the expected wave of new-comers.

Sig held up his hand to quiet the congregation.

“It was only through the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that the truth was brought to my eyes and I was made to see.”

“Blain, who is new to our community, pointed out what I had refused to see.”

Blain, who had been daydreaming startled at the mention of his name and everybody looking at him.

“Blain will coordinate the distribution of fertilizer to those who choose to fertilize their fields. If you have suggestions, talk to Blain and not to me. I will be working a shovel.”

This last part had been Roger’s suggestion. “Reward him for his courage by giving him more responsibility. He earned it. The cement is wet. Mold it.” 

Sarah snaked her left arm around Blain's waist and subtly pulled him closer. The people standing behind them saw this and interpreted it as meaning that Sarah was "all in". She would not take any of his authority but she was going to do everything she could to ensure his project would be successful.

Lliam burst into a huge grin. He was 99% sure he was going to be driving a tractor when the project kicked off.

“I ask that you leave one-third of your fields unfertilized. I also ask that you continue to plant punkins around your cornfields and continue to plant beans with the corn. You can ask Roger about that if you have any questions about the punkins and beans."

Sig concluded. “Given the glorious weather, I propose that we start spreading chicken manure tomorrow. Miss Alice told me that she anticipates three good days before another series of storms hit.”



*”...ground to powder and made them drink it” warrants some discussion.

As slaves escaping their masters, it seems likely that they did not have large quantities of gold, certainly not enough to make an impressive idol. They did have enough to cover or gild a baked clay image, however.

The process of making a baked clay image is not very quick. The wet clay is mixed with manure so it does not crack as it dries. It must be thoroughly dried before it is heated in the fire to harden the clay. Gold must be melted and cast into an ingot and then pounded into gold leaf. That suggests that Moses was up on the mountain for at least 10 days.

The baked-clay idol is consistent with “ground to powder”. Pure gold is ductile and difficult to grind into powder. Baked-clay is is far easier to grind to dust.

A sub-text is that by throwing the bits into the wadi or stream upstream of where the Israelites gathered water, they would be reminded of the fact that their idol had been made from clay...and manure. ESAD.

The text "molten calf" shows up several times and tends to dispute the gold-leaf, baked-clay calf hypothesis.