The Rev. Frank Logue Sacred Cows and Golden Calves In this
week’s Old Testament reading, we join the Children of Israel in that long time
between deliverance and the Promised Land. The very people who walked through the waters
of the Red Sea on dry land are now camped at the base of Mount Sinai. Moses is on the
mountain receiving the stone tablets from God. But everything is far from perfect. Sinai is
in a dry, barren land—an inhospitable wilderness. The place where the children of
Israel are camped is not their home. Sinai is in the middle of nowhere, a place that is
neither the home of their youth nor God’s promised kingdom. Brought out of bondage to
the Egyptians, guided and protected by a pillar of cloud, they find themselves in a
desolate middle ground. The
community’s communication link to God is down. Moses has gone up onto the mountain,
where no one dares follow. Moses has been gone far too long. Moses may never return. What
are they to do? In our
reading for today from Exodus, the people speak. The last time we heard “the
people” speak as a group in the Bible was in Exodus 24:3. Then their words were very
different. In response to hearing God’s commandments they said, “All the words
that the Lord has spoken, we will do.” Now the very next thing the people as a group
are quoted as saying is, “Arise, make us a god who will go before us, for this Moses,
the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of
him!” The people
no longer want an invisible God. They want a god that they can see among them. God
isn’t working the way they think God should and something needs to change. Instead of
changing their view of God, they seek to change their God. What
happened? God didn’t live up to their expectations. They had an image of how a god
should be and act and the one true God wasn’t measuring up. The people took things
into their own hands, or more particularly, they put it into Aaron’s hands. Their
high priest was charged with making an image of a god—something that he and all the
people had very specifically promised not to do. Look at
the words they used in particular. They say that it was Moses who brought them out of Egypt. Moses? Did
they forget the Passover? Did they forget the parting of the Red Sea? Did they forget the
pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night? Did they forget the manna? What
they forgot was that if God does not measure up to your idea of God, then it is your idea
that must change, not God. After
Aaron created the calf, he announced, “This is your God, O Israel, who brought you
out of the land of Egypt!” and then he built a slaughter site in front of it and
proclaimed that the next day would be a festival to the Lord. In the Hebrew text, he calls
God by the 4 Hebrew letters, (yod heh vav heh, or in English YHWH) which are sometimes
pronounced as Yahweh. But calling your handmade god by the name of the one true God
doesn’t make it so. Aaron had
set up something new in the place of Israel’s God and it didn’t go unnoticed.
The Bible let’s us in on a sort of divine council between God and Moses with the fate
of a nation hanging in the balance. God says, “Go down at once! Your people,
whom you brought up out of Egypt, have acted perversely.” You can almost hear
Moses saying, “My people, since when are they my
people.” After all, Moses had tried to convince God that he wasn’t the right one
to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt. Moses didn’t want to lead God’s people
anywhere. And now they are his people who he, Moses,
brought out of Egypt? In
referring to Israel as your people, meaning Moses people, God is showing that the
Children of Israel are separated from God. But who did the dividing? God didn’t cut
himself off from the people, the people cut themselves off from God. The very people who
pledged everlasting devotion have been quick to turn aside. God is angry and wants
justice. The people committed a capital crime. But even in pronouncing judgment, God
leaves open the door for prayer and forgiveness. God says
to Moses, “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may
consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” When God says, “Let me
alone,” it is a very strong hint to Moses that if Moses intervenes, God will relent.
Even in anger, God lets Moses know that intercession is possible. The people below are
reveling in the shadow of a god made with their own hands, but at that same moment, the
one God is making room for forgiveness and reconciliation. Moses
takes on the mantle of mediator. In short what he says is, “Lord remember your own
deeds, remember your reputation, and remember the promise you made to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob.” God had not forgotten all these things, but Moses uses this to intercede for
the people. God does listen to the intercession and feels sorry for the evil intended to
befall Israel. The people at the base of Sinai are still lost in their sin, but through
grace the unity broken down by the people begins to be restored. Verse 14 says, “And
the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”
Israel is referred to as his people, God’s people. No longer are they Moses’
people, once again they are God’s own people. The people
broke faith with their God, but God remained faithful to his people. God did not relent
from the evil he intended because the people were good, or they deserved mercy. They, like
we, were saved by God’s grace alone. God’s free gift of undeserved love alone.
God looked on God’s own people Israel and saw them as a stiff-necked lot, unworthy of
salvation, and then saved them anyway. Like
Israel at Sinai, we too are in that long time between deliverance and the Promised Land.
Our mediator is no longer Moses, but Christ working through the Holy Spirit. And sometimes
it seems to me like a very long time since I have seen or heard from my mediator. Left
alone in a desert, even at the base of the mountain of God, it is very tempting to prop up
another god, a nice tame god that acts just like I think God should, in place of the true
God. It’s
particularly easy to get angry with God on a week like this week. God has not acted the
way we want God to act this week. Why didn’t God intervene in human history once
again to save lives? Why didn’t God prevent the airplane crashes? Where was God when
the planes were hijacked? Where was God when the planes crashed into their targets? The
answer is that God was with the people on the airplanes, in the buildings, and amid the
rubble. God never abandoned his people, even in so great a tragedy. God was present and is
present. Yes, it’s true that God did not prevent the tragedy the way I wish God had.
But, instead God was present in and through the suffering. God will remain present to
redeem the tragedy in thousands of big and small ways. That may not be the way we want God
to act, but God is bigger than our expectations. Here’s
what I expect. I want God to punish the people who hurt me and other folks I care about. I
want it done in this lifetime, preferably this week. I don’t mind bad things
happening to good people so much as I don’t want God to allow good things to happen
to bad people. But God will not act as a cosmic cop to exact the revenge I deem
appropriate. I want God
to rescue me in my times of trouble, even the trouble I so intentionally make for myself.
But God is not the cavalry set to rush in just before the closing credits and save the
day. I want
prayers answered on demand. And I want it done on my schedule, in my way. But God is not a
divine vending machine, and no effort on my part will change that. It’s not God that
needs to change, but my idea of who God is. My wife,
Victoria, and I went to Nepal on our honeymoon. Though religiously tolerant to a point,
Nepal is a Hindu nation. In the streets, cattle roam free. They are considered sacred and
are not to be harmed. To western eyes, this creates some unusual circumstances. Cattle lay
in the middle of a busy road and sleep. The cars and buses drive around them, careful not
to come too close. Caught in a swirl of traffic, the cows have nothing to fear. They sleep
peacefully without a care for the passing vehicles. No one could imagine harming them.
Policemen divert traffic around the beatified bovines and life goes on. Reading
through the story from Exodus reminded me of those cattle, because I too have my share of
sacred cows—ideas that I leave unmolested. Like a policeman diverting traffic around
a cow sleeping in the road, I too can go to great lengths to preserve my false images of
God, which can be my own sacred cows. I put God in a box and then I go to great lengths to
leave my image of God alone. I don’t allow it to change and grow. The boxes
may be labeled cosmic cop, cavalry, divine vending machine, or perhaps something else. But
as soon as I confine God to a segment of my life and decide how and when God may act in my
life, it can have dire consequences. It’s not that God will abandon me, but I will be
abandoning part of who God is and how God acts. Our false
images of God, these sacred cows become our golden calves, taking the place of God with a
cheap imitation. Just as the Israelites wanted to create a god that fit their own image of
how God can act, so can we. God is not safe and cannot be contained. God refuses to be
placed in a box, no matter how comforting that may be to us. We can’t segment God off
to a few hours on Sunday. The
challenge is to let God be God. To allow God to delight and surprise us in new ways. As we
break open the boxes, we find that God is more than can be contained with human
imagination. We need to let loose of the God of our making to find the true God revealed
to us in ever new ways through sacraments, scripture, and prayer precisely because we are
in the same situation as the Israelites. We too
have been brought out of bondage. Our bondage
was to sin. But we have yet to dwell in God’s promised kingdom, and sin is still with
us, around us and in us. As faithful children of God, we too have experienced God’s
saving acts in our own lives. Finally, just as the Israelites were alone in a desolate
land, so are we. Our culture has increasingly cut itself off from its godly roots. From a
Christian viewpoint, our land of plenty is a desolate wasteland with little spiritual
nourishment. And yet there are oases in the desert. Through the sacraments, Bible study
and prayer, we are nourished even in the barren reaches of an arid wasteland. The
sacraments, the scripture, and prayer help us to put down deep, spiritual roots to reach
the springs of living water where God breaks into our lives in new and often unexpected
ways. Our sacred cows are seen as pale shadows compared to the divine. Our false images of
God are turned to dust as we encounter the true and living God in our lives. Let us
pray: Lord,
break down our false images of you. |
King of Peace Episcopal Church + P.O. Box 2526 + Kingsland, Georgia 31548-2526