Exodus 32: 1-14
October 11, 2020

Today, Moses is up on the mountain.

He has spent 40 days getting instructions from God and the people have gotten restless. They don’t know what has happened to him … he might be dead … God might have claimed his life … or he might have just wandered off now that the people have safely crossed the Red Sea.

In their uncertainty, the people come to Aaron and tell him to make them gods that they can follow … let us make gods that go before us … is the way it’s put in Exodus.

Aaron has all the gold jewelry collected and melted down and fashions a golden calf … and when the people saw the image … they proclaimed it as the gods who delivered them from slavery … even if the image was made from a currency of slavery.

Aaron tries to rein the people in a bit by building an altar and proclaiming a festival for the Lord. 

The next morning, the people made sacrifices and began to celebrate.

This gets God’s attention.

The people have created a false image of God.

In the midst of their conversation on the mountain, God tells Moses that the people are losing control … they are acting perversely and that is unacceptable.

God tells Moses that he will wipe them from the face of the earth because of their actions and will start fresh with new people.

It sounds pretty much like the conversation between God and Noah that we heard a couple of weeks ago.

Then, God tells Moses that he will make a great nation him and his people.

Rather than just nod his head and accept God’s judgement of the people, Moses argues with God … reminding God of the promise that was made to Abraham, Isaac and Israel … a promise that would be broken if the newly freed people were to consumed by God’s wrath.

Moses wants God to take a breath and let the anger go and keep the promise God made … to make the people a great nation and to give them the land that had been promised.

Today’s passage ends with God affirming his promise … changing his mind and forgiving the people.

Next, Moses heads back down the mountain … we all know what happens next … it isn’t pretty.

It’s easy to see today’s passage as a lesson in being faithful, but it also offers an affirmation of God’s relationship with the people … and centuries later …with us.

The people in today’s story showed a stunning lack of vision … of course, that’s been the case since the journey from Egypt began.

They saw Moses and not God as their deliverer  … then, with Moses gone, they saw the golden calf as the symbol of God to be worshipped.

The people couldn’t see an invisible God being active in their lives.

So, the people acted out of a sense of uncertainty.

With Moses missing … even though he left instructions with the elders to wait for his return … the people are left with a vacuum … a lack of a physical presence.

So, they want something they can see and touch to gain a sense of certainty.

That’s where the golden calf comes in … it is something that Aaron intends to represent God … an image of God that they can point to when they worship.

It’s natural to look for certainty … even in faith … during those moments of prolonged uncertainty. These are times when we look for something tangible to latch onto.

In a recent podcast Lutheran scholar Rolf Jacobson asks: “How is it that we worship our image of Jesus rather than Jesus? How is it that we love the liturgy or the old Lord’s prayer or the old creed or the old pastor or the old traditions than we do the living God?”

Jacobson admits that he can find himself worshipping all the trappings that make him comfortable in church rather than worshipping the invisible living God.

Do we have our own Golden Calf moments?

At an uncertain time when we are called to be faithful to a God who loves us … do we place other things in the way … do we allow the need for something tangible to limit our experience with the living God?

Let’s face it the past seven months have been unlike any of us have ever experienced. It has been a time filled with uncertainty. It was … or rather is … a time when we long for the things that mark the life of faith for us.

Some of the things that have anchored our lives and the life of the church are gone … some for good.

Maybe it isn’t necessarily a bad thing in some aspects.

Perhaps, this is an opportunity to re-centre our lives and the life of the congregation … to discern the narrative … the story … that we want to orient our lives around.

Perhaps, this is an opportunity to consider what marks our faithful living out of who we are called to be and to identify the things that get in the way or that make our view of a loving God a bit small.

I’ve been reading a book entitled, “Everywhere You Look: Discovering the church Right Where You Are.” It is a book that calls for congregations and their leaders to rethink church … to examine how they view their relationship with God and the world.

In the book there is a chapter called “The Magic of Paying Attention.”

The discussion doesn’t offer tips on how to make it through a particularly dull sermon … although I’m sure such tips might be welcome. Rather it calls congregations to look outside their doors to look for ways God is at work in the world … and for places where we are called to serve. It calls for people to listen … actually … deliberately listen.

To listen through life’s uncertainty for God’s actions and to know God is still present.

This is something that I don’t think congregations do well enough … or often enough. Certainly, the freed slaves didn’t do it particularly well.

Rather than see the mass of liberated people as evidence that God was with them … without Moses present, the people lost sight of God’s actions in their lives and sought out a visible reminder … an image of God … that they could get behind.

Even now, that is always a danger … that we fill up unfamiliar, uncertain silence with the familiar trappings of church life … rather than embrace our grace-filled relationship with an ever-present loving God.

So, as we give thanks for the blessings in our lives … the grace … the love … we have received … as we give thanks for God’s actions in our lives and the life of the world, I pray that we all spend time in reflection … discerning … listening … where we are called to be … who we are called to be.

AMEN