Exodus 32:1-14 New International Version (NIV) The Golden Calf 1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don t know what has happened to him. 2 Aaron answered them, Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me. 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord. 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. 7 Then the Lord said to Moses, Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. 9 I have seen these people, the Lord said to Moses, and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation. 11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. Lord, he said, why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever. 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. Exodus 20:5-6 You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them. Don t make em; don t worship em. This is the basis of belief for the three great Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And for about the first thousand years of its existence, Christianity followed the beliefs about no depictions of God. However, Judaism seemed to allow depictions of some forms depending on intent. But to this day Islamic religious art is composed of intricate patterns, designs, and mosques, but not images for God or God s creation. And the idolatry prohibition is maintained by all. One of the stories I grew up with was the story of Abraham smashing all the idols in his father s idol shop. It is a tale that seeks to fill in the unknown part of Abraham s life as a young child. I remember it always struck a responsive yet fearful chord in me.
Abraham s father, Terah, was an idol maker. One day he went away and left Abraham in charge of his shop. When a man came to buy an idol Abraham asked, How old are you? and the man said, I am fifty. Abraham said, Well then, how is it you are that old and want to buy a day old statue to worship? The man was embarrassed and left. Later, a woman walked in to the store and wanted to sacrifice to the idols. Abraham then took a stick, smashed the idols and placed the stick in the hand of the largest idol. When Terah returned and asked Abraham what happened to all the idols, Abraham told him that a woman came in to make an offering to the idols. Then the idols argued about which one should eat the offering first. Then the largest idol took the stick and smashed the other idols. And the story goes on from there. Abraham was seen as a great hero of the faith, even in childhood. These were tales composed long after the original stories to give some information or make some commentary about the passage. This biblical tradition against idolatry has roots in the wonderful story of the burning bush: at the bush that burns but is not consumed, Moses does not see God but hears God. God creates and enacts through words like the Let there be of creation and the ten words or Ten Commandments. The other nations make representations of their gods, but we, as God s chosen, are not to do so. We are to be holy, different. But of course images of God are made throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and warned against in the New Testament. Everyone else has one - why can t we have them too? seems to be the motto of the people of Israel. The quintessential story of making images of God is the Story of the Golden calf. Moses is gone for a short time, probably forty days, and the people begin to clamor, Where is God? It seems that without Moses, the mediator of God s will and message, they are afraid. Help us, they cry out to Aaron. And Aaron, the second in command, gets caught up in their fear and tries to remedy the situation. To fix it, Aaron gathers up all the gold the people had collected on the way out of Egypt and builds a golden calf. There is your God! Aaron cries. God is not pleased, to say the least, and Moses is furious. I feel for the Hebrew people; their faith has failed them. They trusted God and Moses and now both feel absent for waaaaay too long and they are afraid. What are they to do? That is a common theme in the Bible: fear weakening faith. It is no coincidence that the first words of the angels in the birth stories of Jesus are, Fear not. Fear is also one of the first stories in the bible. God says look at everything I have made for you and you can have it all except that onnnnnnnnne thing. Of course Adam and Eve have to have that one thing and then they become frightened and when God comes looking for them, they go into hiding. They, too, have lost their faith in God and God s will for good in their lives and are now afraid. There is a similar story in the New Testament. Jesus is sleeping in a boat and a storm comes up and the disciples become afraid and call out to Jesus to save them, Don t you care that we are perishing? Jesus stills the chaotic storm. He then asks, Where is your faith? There is also the story of the night when Jesus is arrested; the disciples flee in fear. Even Peter the great leader of the disciples cries out, I don t know him! Fear often supplants faith as the basis for actions in scripture and it can do the same to us. Think of the things that you really fear, illness, loss of a loved one, declining health, financial insecurity to name a few. Those things we fear are often so powerful that we lose faith and turn to other things for comfort and security. That is why fear is so insidious; it can destroy our faith and trust.
Can you imagine how different these stories would be if the people named and claimed their fears? Our stories could be different too. As Jimmy Buffett sings, Sooner or later you ve got to face your fears. (Off to see the Lizard) Fear is one great source of idolatry. When God seems absent or does not seem to be working the way we wish, we can become afraid and seek out something to fill the absence to ease the void instead of facing our fears and meeting them head on. The answer to this fear is faith. Trust that God is at work in the world and in my life. When we lose that faith fear takes over. How do we deal with that fear that life is falling or has fallen apart? Often not real well. People today are doing a lot of self-medicating to ease the pain of a world without meaning and purpose, a world without God. Alcohol, drugs, sex, food and money are often used to fill the void. The recent resurgence of heroin as a drug of choice along with the associated narcotics are doing great damage, but they are being used to try to mask and cover up the emotional and spiritual pain people feel. I know it is not a simple situation and there are many contributing factors that lead one down the alley of addiction and self-medication. And many of those are justice-oriented reasons such as the lack of adequate community mental health agencies, poverty and hopelessness. The story of the Bible is, Moses returns. God still loves Adam and Eve though they have lost the garden. Jesus wakes up and Jesus returns. One of the great messages of the Bible is, Fear not, God is with us. Idols are not a very present help in time of trouble but God is. But for most of us the danger of idolatry has other sources as well. Sometimes something slips up on us. We take something good and turn it into a god. What are some of the idols of our current life, things we have elevated to a holy status? At least the time we spend with them seems worshipful. We used to call it the idiot box. But all too often we isolate and numb ourselves with too much entertainment. I have my shows and my DVR and I am always behind in keeping up with Downton Abby, Sherlock, Arrow, Flash, NCIS and Scandal or sports. I will admit I can hardly watch news and politics because of all the shouting and rancor, but the question to ask ourselves is, Are we spending too much time in front of the TV? Are we busy with mind-numbing entertainment and spending too much time worshiping at the entertainment shrine? Or what about technology? I know I am bad about checking my email and texts and Facebook and I have even let them interfere with my connecting with other people. That is why I like the story of the people who will gather for dinner at a restaurant and put all their cell phones on the table in a stack and the first one to pick theirs up also picks up the check. Tech is to be our tool, not our master. Or what about the past, the good old days when life seemed so good? Usually this was the time of our childhood when we did not have all the worries of an adult life. Even if those days seemed so good for us, for so many they were not so good. We can absolutize the past as we seek to regain our own Garden of Eden. Silver and gold cars, homes, clothes and bling are the stuff of idols. I have spoken enough about consumerism as a form of worship. These inanimate objects are not the author or source of life and do not bring meaning or purpose. The notion that these can preserve us from all troubles is idolatry. It is a false god. Jesus knew it and so do we. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24 NIV). Money is a tool for life, not life itself. Clothes do not make the man, God does. I know the first coin to have In God We Trust was the 1864 two-cent piece, but I find it ironic that such a phrase is on our money. Also that it was such a hot button issue when the presidential dollars had the motto on
the rim. People still believe the myth that some conspiracy had the motto taken off the coin. Let me tell you if you find one of those dollars with no In God We Trust you have found a collector s item worth a premium. I wonder what visitors from a distant planet would think about our Gods if they entered a bank vault. I really sympathize; some object or thing is necessary to remind us of God s presence, but the danger is that the thing becomes an object of worship. I have my cross that I wear all the time, but for me the cross is like my wedding ring. My wedding ring is not my marriage, but it is a symbol that points to our love. The cross I wear is not God, but a symbol that reminds me of God s presence. One of my favorite and tragic stories about idolatry getting out of hand was told to me by my friend, a pastor. He related a brutal church fight over what color to paint the kitchen door of the church. I am sure there were vital reasons for selecting the color, but none of those reasons was significant enough to fight over and create a feud. He went on to say that a few families on the losing side left the church. I have a feeling that the fight might have been over more than color, but it does remind us that the church building can take on a kind of ultimate status. The building needed the perfect color for its kitchen door because how else could people find God there? Silly isn t it? Only sort of. One of the greatest dangers we face is this idolatry of the church building. Think of it; we are always in danger of transferring our ultimate allegiance from the living God and God s mission to the buildings. I am not against church buildings; they are a sacred space. I fell in love with our windows the first time I saw them. I believe that some form or structure is absolutely essential for church people, though I think that nature is fluid. But I have also seen the downside when the building begins to devour all our resources and become the sole reason for existence. In the scripture, one event in the background described the worst that could happen, the destruction of the temple, the house of God. But as the Jews and the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians learned, God does not need a house. Well sort of. God s people need a place to meet and years ago when there were so many more of us, we built houses to accommodate us. Now those houses, as great as they are, are devouring more and more of the church s resources until preserving the house becomes the only mission. I think churches need buildings of some sort to back their mission. The problem is the buildings so many of us enjoy are overwhelming. Think of our area with the Portville and Allegany churches nearby. Wouldn t it make sense to try to function as one congregation, but who would give up their buildings that have meant so much for so many years? Congregations could even be distinct, but share and use the same building. That is a long way off. At the same time many churches are seeking creative solutions, especially some of the newer house churches meeting in homes and less formal churches gathering in other spaces and not owning a building. But the truth is, the tools for worship are not to be objects of worship but aids to worship. The style of worship, the organ, (careful now) the hymns, the hymnals, the choir, the pastor - all of these are tools for worship. The way to evaluate them is, Do they point us to God? The danger is they can become more important than the God they are to point to. For those of us with a high view of scripture, even that is a tool for worship, but a tool with a divine component. It is called God s word and as such is one of God s primary tools for self-revelation. It is sacred and without parallel. But it is also a tool given us so that we might hear God. It is like our own burning bush. The bush was not God, but God was heard through the bush. As I said, one of the tasks is to turn the don ts and thou shall nots into positive commands. One way we can do that here is give reverence to the things God has made in God s own image.
Last weekend our town celebrated African American Heritage weekend with an art exhibition, the showing of Selma and a community worship service. To build on that we know that fear often increases prejudice. It can lead to disastrous consequences when it is institutionalized and ingrained in the way society functions. While we are not to make idols or try to picture in image form God, we are also reminded that God is not forbidden from doing so and indeed, God made us in the divine image. While we are not to create images, neither are we to disparage that which is in God s own image. We would do well to remember, though, that we can see God in other people, but we cannot elevate a person to divine status in our lives. We cannot worship the ground she walks on. Nothing, not anything in the natural world, is to be an object of worship. God cannot be domesticated, tamed or corralled, but can be encountered, discovered and worshiped. This is the heart of second commandment.