Torah came thundering down from...
Illustration
Object:
Torah came thundering down from the mountain with the force of a hammer striking an
anvil, and sparks shooting out all over the place from the force of the blow.
The sound was so terrifying that the people had trouble standing up. They could not have stood up, in fact, if God had not sent two angels to support each one of them -- one angel to lay a hand upon their hearts so that their souls did not depart and one angel to hold their heads so that they could bear to behold their maker.
When they looked, what they saw and heard defied all reason. Each spark that shot out from Torah -- each tongue of fire -- was the sound of God's word in a different language so that all who heard it could understand. There were at least seventy sparks flying out from every word, one for every language spoken in the world. When the smoke cleared, Moses' face was lit like a flame and the people -- God's kingdom of priests, God's holy nation -- had Torah to guide their feet in the way of life. To this day ... when Jews celebrate the birth of their faith they remember this story, and the cake they bake on Pentecost is in the shape of Mount Sinai.
(From Barbara Brown Taylor describing what she calls "the Jewish Pentecost," in Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2004, pp. 35-39)
The sound was so terrifying that the people had trouble standing up. They could not have stood up, in fact, if God had not sent two angels to support each one of them -- one angel to lay a hand upon their hearts so that their souls did not depart and one angel to hold their heads so that they could bear to behold their maker.
When they looked, what they saw and heard defied all reason. Each spark that shot out from Torah -- each tongue of fire -- was the sound of God's word in a different language so that all who heard it could understand. There were at least seventy sparks flying out from every word, one for every language spoken in the world. When the smoke cleared, Moses' face was lit like a flame and the people -- God's kingdom of priests, God's holy nation -- had Torah to guide their feet in the way of life. To this day ... when Jews celebrate the birth of their faith they remember this story, and the cake they bake on Pentecost is in the shape of Mount Sinai.
(From Barbara Brown Taylor describing what she calls "the Jewish Pentecost," in Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2004, pp. 35-39)
