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I did a little crowd-sourcing
this week, by which I mean, I asked other people for help. “Let’s make a list,”
I said. “Golden calves we have known and loved. Go!” And these are the things
offered by the good people of Facebook.
“Our own preferred political
candidates.” “Keeping up with the Joneses.” “Our children.” “The Protestant
work ethic.” “Our obsession with the Kardashians, the idolatry of the
superficial.” “Celebrities.”
“Vanity.” “Wanting to look or be
perfect.” “Thinking we have to be like Martha Stewart.” “Being considered
really good at my job.”
“My phone.” “Text messaging.” “My
sewing machine.”
“A certain number on the scale.” “Acceptance.”
“Money.” “My 401K or 403 B, retirement accounts.” “Shoes.” “The latest glossy
promise of a magazine! Lose 20 lbs by Memorial Day! Unclutter your home! 15
pages of Chocolate Decadence!” “Books!” “Fabric.”
“The
church building, complete with the Advent wreath someone's Great Aunt Millie
gave!” “The Church building as you say goodbye.”
“A
particular church program; a set of hymns, music or liturgy; other people's
opinions.”
If you
hadn’t heard my introduction, I’m guessing it might not be the easiest thing to
tie all these disparate things together. But what my friends were saying was
this: These are the things that get in the way. They get in the way of our
being the people we want to be in our lives.
In our
passage from Exodus this morning, we hear a story that, in many ways, is about almost getting it right. The people,
whom God rescued from slavery in last week’s passage, have been wandering in
the wilderness for some time now, about four months, and they have endured…
well, life in the wilderness without a dependable supply of food and water, for
one thing. Division in the ranks. Grumbling.
But
they have also been the recipients of a covenant, which is to say, an
agreement, every bit as mysterious and awe-inspiring as the one given to Abraham
and Sarah way back near the beginning of the story.
In
chapter 19, after the crisis of food has been managed by the sending of bread
from heaven, and the crisis of water has been dealt with by bringing forth of
water from a rock, God says the following to Moses:
“Thus you shall say to the house
of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians,
and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore,
if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession
out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for
me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall
speak to the Israelites” (Exodus 19:3b-6).
And the people, gathered together
and offered this arrangement, say, Yes! “Everything that the Lord
has spoken we will do.” And then Moses brings the people to Mount Sinai, in the
midst of a pretty spectacular display of thunder and lightning and thick smoke,
and Moses receives the covenant from God.
Now, the covenant consists of the
Ten Commandments, followed by God’s commentary, and interpretation, and
instructions on worship and creating an appropriate worship space. And then an
invitation from God to Moses for what comes as close to a face-to-face meeting
as you could get with God at that point. In Exodus 24, Moses disappears into
the cloud on Mount Sinai, to receive more instructions in a more intimate
setting. He disappears for forty days and forty nights.
It’s this last part that ends up
being the cause of a lot of anxiety. Now, in addition to the other hardships of
wilderness wandering, the people have to cope with life without their
designated leader. Our passage finds them as they have decided how to cope with
this situation. They gather around Moses’ brother, Aaron, and make their
demand:
“Come,
make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who
brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him”
(Exodus 32:1b).
A translation issue comes up in
this sentence. There are several different words used for “God” and “Lord” in
the Old Testament. One of them is elohim.
Interestingly, elohim is a plural
word, and sometimes it is translated “gods,” and sometimes “God,” based on
contextual clues. So, the people might very well have been saying, “Make God
for us,” in other words, “Make this invisible God visible to us!” And here is
what I mean by coming so close, and yet missing the mark. They almost have it
right. God has been giving instructions for creating a worship space, and that
will include taking an offering. A far-flung colleague in ministry put it this
way: “They took their offerings to the Lord and
instead of building a house for God, they worshipped the offerings themselves.”
So
close.
And if
you look at our 2012 list of Golden Calves, in a lot of ways, I think you will
see that the things that get in the way of our being the people we want to be
are a lot like that. Things that seem designed to serve the purpose of
connecting—to God, to one another, even to ourselves—they become barriers to that
exact longed-for connection. On our list you will see things like cell phones
and texting that are supposed to keep us connected to those we love—only they
end up becoming distractions that actually alienate us from one another. You
will see things that are about taking care of one another—like retirement funds
and college funds, even sewing machines—but which end up stealing energy and
focus from our real relationships instead of enhancing them. You will see
things that are about taking care of our precious, God-given bodies—miracles of
creation!—but which, instead, end up making us so full of self-criticism and contempt
that we become alienated from ourselves. You will even see things (many of
them, shared by other pastors, in other churches) that seem to be all about our
worship of God—our beautiful church buildings and the hymns we love and the
programs we treasure—which, in the cruelest twist of all, become, not pathways
to God, but ends in themselves, to be preserved at all costs, even the cost of
division and despair.
We
come so close. And we miss the mark. We forget. But, thanks be to God, we have
opportunities to remember again.
The
Lord’s Supper is one of those opportunities. Each time we gather around this
communion table, we remember, together. We remind one another. We remind
ourselves. That the Lord our God hates slavery, whether in ancient Egypt or
modern day USA. That God, our great, ever-creating God, continues to create us to
be free—yes, even free from our cell phones and online addictions—and to live
within the blessedness of covenant community, with real (not virtual) people. That God, in Jesus, came to be with
us—that celebrations and festivities around a table are good, provided we don’t
forget who is the Founder of the feast.
So today,
I ask us to look at our own particular Golden Calves, those attachments, that
get in the way of real relationship, real worship, real communion with God and
with one another. I ask us to wonder together how we can let go of the things
that distract and divide, and embrace, instead, one another. I ask us to pray
together for the honesty of heart to know how best to serve together the one
who seeks to serve us at this table. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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