“What is your Golden Calf?” Exodus 32:1-14
Several years ago, a friend who had worked his way through graduate school as a paramedic told me about one of his more grisly experiences on the job.
He received an anonymous call reporting a heroin addict who was on the verge of death in an abandoned apartment building.
When [my friend] got to the apartment, the man was huddled in a corner, shivering and unresponsive, surrounded by piles of rotten trash, used syringes, lighters, spoons—all the paraphernalia of heroin addiction.
When I asked what that was like, my friend told me that it was terrifying, but that he also thought it was probably the first time he fully understood what worship looks like.
If you’ve ever spoken, for any length of time, with a drug addict, you will understand what my friend was talking about.
In this case, the object of worship was heroine.
And like all idolatry—which is counterfeit worship—it doesn’t lead us to the promised land.
Humans are not created to be
godless.
If we don’t know the true God, we
will make our own deities.
It’s a sign of our finitude, and a
subconscious awareness that we need
direction, purpose, and relationship with something--someone bigger than ourselves.
A wise person once wrote: “the desire for God is the most fundamental appetite of all, and it is an appetite we can never eliminate.
We may seek to disown it, but it will not go away.
If we deny that it is there, we shall in fact only divert it to some other object or range of objects.
And that will mean that we invest some creature or creatures with the full burden of our need for God, a burden which no creature can carry.”
The story of the Bible is the story of God and humankind trying to rebuild our broken relationship.
We see this story played out from the Old Testament to the New Testament.
We see this story played out in all of
human history.
We see this story played out in our daily lives—on the playground at school, in offices and tall skyscrapers, and at home.
It’s the story of a lost people and a
loving God.
It’s the story of a very weak people,
and a very strong God.
It’s the story of a God Who seeks us out…
…and a people who, often, don’t want to be found.
In our Story from Exodus, we see a people who had really been given a lot.
Never before had a people been so
privileged as Israel.
They had just been liberated, set free after 400 years of slavery.
Their nation was being born, the nation of Israel, and they were soon going to be given a homeland…
…and they had been chosen by God to
be God’s followers, the people of God.
They were to be God’s witnesses to the other nations of the earth, witnessing to the truth that there is only one true and living God.
Moses had gone up on Mount Sinai to receive the civil and religious
laws of God, the laws that were to form
them into a nation and govern them as a people.
But abruptly and sadly, a
catastrophic tragedy struck—all because they thought Moses had been on the mountain too long!
Instead of trusting God and waiting upon Him, the people chose to take things into their own hands, do their own thing, and go their own way.
And thus, we have the sad and terrible tragedy of the golden calf.
Does it sound familiar?
Can we relate to the people of Israel?
How often do we lose our faith and trust in the God Who has chosen and delivered us, and instead choose to take matters into our own hands, do our own thing, go our own way?
And what happens when we do this?
Not only do we miss out on the good
plans God has for our lives, we also fail to love God and our neighbor and experience the abundant life Jesus offers.
“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.’”
In other words, they were looking for a quick fix.
Something to fill that god-shaped void--anything would do.
So, Aaron makes a golden calf and proclaims it as their god or gods.
And we watch as they move back into the realm of darkness and confusion in no time flat.
It sure can happen fast, can it not?
One moment we are being rescued
from slavery to sin and death by
following the Risen Christ, the next we find ourselves, once again, in
bondage to the very things that caused us so much pain and confusion in the first
place.
We live in a society, a world which is rife with self--absorption and materialism.
We try to live our commitments to worship, read the Bible, pray and serve others and we find a real freedom in this.
We find ourselves growing and
maturing as human beings.
We find ourselves becoming new creations.
Then the going gets tough, and our faith is tested.
When this happens, do we continue to abide in our true sources of strength, or do we quickly run to our golden calves—the malls, politics, the television,
the internet, the refrigerator, anger, self-pity, self-absorption, money, the local drug dealer?
The quality of our Christian
journey’s…
…the quality of our lives…
…and the effectiveness of our witness
for Jesus Christ depends upon our
choices.
We Christians, today, are just as
susceptible to the lure of the golden calf as the Israelites were so long ago.
What is your golden calf?
What is my golden calf?
It is not difficult to be lured away by
the golden calves of this world.
We are surrounded by a plethora of
things which cry out for our devotion, and when we allow ourselves to focus on these merciless idols we quicklyfind ourselves drifting away from God.
And as we drift away from God we
begin to forget what it is that is truly
meaningful in this life.
We find it harder, if not impossible to follow the teachings of Christ.
Soon, instead of turning the other
cheek we are the ones doing the hitting.
Instead of forgiving others without
limit, we hold grudges that build walls
between ourselves and our fellow human beings.
Anger and jealousy engulf us, anxiety and insecurity enshroud us and we find that our Christian faith doesn’t mean so much to us anymore as we grope around in the darkness of our world—where our relationship with God has
been broken and blurred.
And we return to living life in the carnal, sinful, fleshly sense…
…which only brings us doom, gloom,
defeat, and ultimately—death.
In our Old Testament Lesson for this morning the peoples’ actions deserved
condemnation.
They had turned away from God, but God, ultimately, does not turn away from them.
The Bible is our story.
We, like so many who have lived
before us, are groping for relationship with God.
And oftentimes we get off¬ track, we chase other dreams…
…other dreams which are just that—dreams…
…which will soon turn into nightmares
until we come to the point where we stop, repent and return to our one true source for strength…
…the kind, compassionate, grace-filled and loving God Who never stops
calling us into new life with Him.
It’s about grace and judgment isn’t it?
The judgment comes as God allows us to live into the consequences of our own decisions to take things into our own hands.
The grace abounds as we accept the free gift of God’s unmerited invitation
which allow us to live in God’s decisions and reap the wonderful benefits of God’s plan for our lives.
God is calling everyone of us to throw away the golden calf— whatever that may be, for you and for me, and instead to embrace the salvation and abundant life made available to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In doing so, we will find ourselves walking in the Promised Land!
As we bow our heads in prayer, I want to ask you to think about that golden calf that haunts your life and seeks to steal your joy, along with God’s purpose for your life.
Now give that golden calf to God.
And walk free.
