Don’t miss the first reading today from the Book of Exodus.

Moses prays to God who threatens to exterminate this “stiff-necked” people on their desert march and start all over again. Moses’ prayer is an interesting example of intercessory prayer.

He doesn’t tout the good points of his people, their virtues or their hard experiences in Egypt and escaping from there. He grants they’re “stiff-necked.” 

But it will look bad, Moses seems to say. God will look bad to the Egyptians; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will look bad.

”Why, O LORD, should your wrath blaze up against your own people,

whom you brought out of the land of Egypt

with such great power and with so strong a hand?

Why should the Egyptians say,

‘With evil intent he brought them out,

that he might kill them in the mountains

and exterminate them from the face of the earth’?

Let your blazing wrath die down;

relent in 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.’”

I find myself like Moses. “Your church looks bad; our good and wise tradition looks bad. Our saints look bad. You look bad. Don’t exterminate us from the face of the earth.”

“So the LORD relented in the punishment

he had threatened to inflict on his people.”

We need to pray for our church.