Parashat Ki Tisa: True Refuge for our Vulnerable Heart

(A) Mishkan (Exodus 25-31:11 - Terumah and Tetzaveh)

(B) Shabbat (31:12-17 - Ki Tisa)

(C) Golden Calf (31:18-34:35 - Ki Tisa)

(B) Shabbat (35:1-3 -- beginning of Vayakhel)

(A) Mishkan (35:4-40:38 -- Vayakhel and Pekudei)

The final section of the book of Shmot -- comprising five parshiyyot all together-- deals primarily with the construction of the Mishkan (Tabernacle).  Through its ordering of this section, the Torah creates a textual architecture that parallels the physical architecture of the Tabernacle.   The literary structure built here is a chiasm, a rhetorical device with the structure A-B-C-B-A as seen in the diagram above.   The C here, the middle, is the sin of the Golden Calf. On either side of that incident stand first, short reminders to observe Shabbat, and then, on the next outer layer, much lengthier (two full parshiyyot each) descriptions of the construction of the Mishkan.  

What is the purpose of this literary structure?  

The Golden Calf Story as the Heart

(Purpose #1) A chiasm tends to highlight or point to the element in the middle, asking the reader to move from the outside to the inside, to focus on the heart of the matter.  In the Tabernacle, the innermost space was the Holy of Holies, where the Ark holding the tablets resided, and where God Himself communicated from the top of the Ark.  

In the chiasm of our parshiyyot, the innermost point -- the Holy of Holies, as it were -- turns out to be the story of the Golden Calf.  

Why?  What is it about this story that makes it the heart, the Holy of Holies?  After all, this is a tale of idolatry!  

The Heart is the Intimacy Achieved Through Forgiveness

One way of thinking about it is to understand the aftermath of the sin.  We all know that when we reconcile with our partners after a fight, our relationship becomes that much stronger; there is a new level of intimacy achieved through the ordeal of disharmony and then repair.    The same is true here in the relationship between God and Israel.  Probably the peak moment of intimacy anywhere in the Torah happens in the aftermath of this sin, as God reveals Himself in a new way, passing over Moshe and showing Moshe who He, God, really is -- His thirteen attributes of compassion and love.   Here, in this moment, we have indeed entered the Holy of Holies -- a place where we meet God in an intense and intimate way.  

This moment of intense connection to God, we should note, is only achieved through the process of sin and then forgiveness.   It turns out that the heart of the matter -- connecting to God -- will often necessarily involve human imperfection and wrongdoing.  Indeed, the Tabernacle itself is built partly for this purpose, as a place the people can go to be absolved of their sins and reconnect to divine presence.  The Torah’s literary structuring of the Golden Calf sin in the middle of the Mishkan parshiyyot expresses this idea structurally, that the purpose -- the core -- of the Mishkan is to connect to God despite or even by means of human sin and repair. 

The Heart is the Vulnerability Behind Sin

I want to take it one step further.  It isn’t just that through the process of sin and forgiveness the people come closer to God and that such closeness is the heart of the Mishkan.    It is actually the sin itself -- or more precisely, the vulnerable human heart behind the sin -- that is the centerpiece here, that is the place where God ultimately resides, the core of the Mishkan inside us.  Our vulnerability is our Holy of Holies.

How does the relationship between sin and vulnerability work?  Consider the nature of this sin of idolatry.  What leads the people to create a concrete idol to worship?  They are waiting for Moshe to return and he does not return in the expected timeframe.  They think -- maybe he is not coming back.  Maybe he is dead.  Maybe he got run over by a truck.  (Have you never been in that situation, awaiting a loved one who is delayed, and imagining the worst?)  They feel alone and abandoned, scared, maybe even terrified about their uncertain future.  What they say is: This man Moshe who saved us, “we don’t know what happened to him”  -- we don’t know.  Uncertainty.  We hate that feeling.  It makes us anxious, so anxious that we forget any faithfulness and steadfastness to the things we hold dear.   We just want some way to feel better right away, some fix for the anxiety of not knowing.  And so we build idols.  We declare -- this is our god.  This is the answer.  We need to know and so we create an immediate answer.

And maybe that sense of abandonment wasn’t just a matter of uncertainty; maybe it was a real wound, a place of vulnerability.  The children of Israel are like children at this stage of their relationship to God.  Moshe is their conduit and he has been gone for forty whole days.  That is a long time for a child, especially after the trauma of Egypt.  We can imagine the sense of abandonment here, the feeling of a child, brought to a new country far from home and from anything familiar, and then suddenly left to fend for herself.   Help!  The ground has been taken out from under us.  We are alone and helpless, dropping through the net of security, free falling with no one to catch us.  

It is in this Tender Human Heart that God Resides

All of these feelings make up the precious tender human heart of vulnerability; it is precisely in these places that God resides, that we are truly open-hearted enough to receive such presence; it is precisely through these portals that we know we cannot do it alone, and it is in that knowledge of our impossibly needy hearts that we turn to and find God; It is here that we make room for and build a Mishkan.   It is this heart that is the heart -- the Holy of Holies -- of the Mishkan.  No wonder the Golden Calf incident, which points to all of this vulnerability, no wonder it stands at the center of the text.  

The problem is that here, in our vulnerable needy heart, it is often easier to build an idol than to build a Mishkan.  It is easier to close off the insecurity and fear and hurt, to shut those all down, banish them with an idol that offers temporary refuge -- this is our god; no worries; get busy; distract; be productive; build something; watch something; post something; check your phone; then for a moment at least you won’t feel the gnawing fear, the restlessness, the sense of incompleteness and inadequacy.  

The Sanctuary (ies) as the True Refuge for our Vulnerability

(Purpose #2) And so the second purpose of the Torah’s use of a chiasm here -- in addition to pointing to the Golden Calf incident as the centerpiece -- the second purpose is related to the importance not of the inner layer (C), but of the outer layers (A and B); the second purpose is to portray the sanctuary -- both of space and of time (shabbat) -- as the answer, the ultimate refuge for this tender human heart of ours.  

In their position surrounding the Golden Calf, the Mishkan and Shabbat both stand guard around this heart, offering a place of refuge, and yes, sanctuary.   Our physical hearts are surrounded by lungs for protection, and the midrash notes that in the physical Mishkan, the wings of the cherubs atop the Ark offer protection for the Ark as heart.   Similarly, the Mishkan and Shabbat are the protectors -- double doors for extra security -- for our vulnerability.  

These two protectors point to the one true refuge in this world.  While idolatry in all its ancient and modern forms is a false refuge -- a place where we seek temporary refuge but which we know will ultimately not help us -- there is only one true refuge -- God -- only one true refuge where we can rest our weary human selves without risk of losing or enslaving ourselves. 

The Mishkan and Shabbat are two aspects of this divine refuge, two ways of accessing this sanctuary of the heart, one a sanctuary of space and the other a sanctuary of time.   In both, the central idea is that the human being is creating a place -- either by setting aside a physical space or a specified time -- for God to come dwell on earth, opening up to make room for God.  In our anxious moments, we may feel like we need all the space and all the time in the world and have none to spare, but when we are able to make room for God, something counterintuitive happens -- we open up space for God only to find that God is the space -- the makom -- that we dwell in, that God is the home for this heart of ours, the sanctuary, the only container that can truly hold all of our hurts and needs.   When we make room, it turns out this is our home; we are coming home to God, and our hearts can finally rest in that peace, the peace of Shabbat, the peace of a God whose name is Shalom.   

Shuvi Nafshi lemenuchaychi -- Return, my soul, to your resting place. (Ps 116:7).

Our worries, our uncertainty, our insecurity, our feelings of aloneness and abandonment, all of that is real -- and also precious.  It is the stuff inside that is looking for God, looking for a home, a refuge, a place to be held.   We can construct idols or we can construct a Mishkan, a Shabbat, a true home inside us.  In depicting the Mishkan and Shabbat as surrounding the Golden Calf, the Torah shows us structurally that these divine sanctuaries are the company we should keep -- the malakhei hasheret, the accompanying angels -- for this vulnerable heart.   Our needy hearts need divine accompaniment; no other refuge will do.