Why Golden Calves Don't Work
a sermon based on Exodus 32: 1-14
by Rev. Thomas Hall

Stories. We all have them. Stories about our personal experiences. Family stories that we’ve heard a hundred times. And even our congregation has stories about itself. Stories give us perspective, teach us values, give us the courage we need to go on, and shape identity—tell us who we are.

Exodus contains two large stories about Israel. Our modern day Egypt excluded, we might call the first story, How Israel Got Out of Egypt. But the second story could aptly be called, How God Got Egypt Out of Israel. The first story took only a moment—called the Passover. You remember how thousands of slaves escape from their taskmasters in Egypt. Run out into the desert and through a series of extraordinary events gain their freedom. God, of course, is the One who orchestrates their dramatic escape from Egypt. But the interesting part of this first story is that never once do they get to meet personally the God behind the powerful acts that results in their freedom. Never once do these runaway slaves discover who has invited them to be free people. All their neighbors can see and touch their gods, but not these freed slaves, not Israel. Their neighbors could appeal to their little gods, but not these freed Israelites. Their neighbors could appeal to their little statues of high quality metal. So understandably, these runaway slaves yearn for a big visual of their God. So the first story ends with thousands of refugee Israelites finding freedom from Egypt and now they are on an awesome journey toward a new world lead by their God.

That’s the first story. The second story is about how God deals with the baggage that Israel carries with them from the land of bondage. It’s one thing to be saved from something, but quite another thing to straighten out snarls that constantly trip us up and rob us of full freedom to follow God. Getting saved can be as close as crying out a two-word prayer, "Lord, save!" but to gain freedom from addictions and the sins that have eaten away at our lives, well, that may take a little longer. This morning’s second story in Exodus reminds us that God is not just interested in getting us saved and on our way to heaven, but God is also interested in untangling the knots and snarls that bind and choke our lives. That takes a little longer. So in this second story in Exodus, these freed slaves are about to meet this faceless, shapeless, unapproachable God who has delivered them from Egypt "You want to meet God?" Moses shouts to them. "Fair enough. God wants you to meet you too! So get ready. Get cleaned up and meet God tomorrow at noon. Formal attire required. No shirts, no shoes, no service." So everyone puts on the Ritz; they are looking good next day.

The sun is blazing when God walks near to them. They are so frightened when they see God’s fireworks display of smoke and thunder and Mystery that they cower and ask Moses to speak as God’s translator, lest they die. They weren’t expecting such an awesome God. No cute little face here, no precious metals kind of god, just a lot of Presence. So Moses relates to them God’s rules for successful living—the Ten Commandments. It’s the top of the list that has to do with this second story:

I am the LORD your God
who brought you out of Egypt,
where you were slaves.
Worship no god but me.
Do not make for yourselves images
of anything in heaven or earth . . .
Do not bow down to any idol or worship,
because I am the Lord your God
and I tolerate no rivals.

After reciting the words that used to line the hallways of every school in America, Moses preaches one very long sermon as he tries to illustrate what those rules might look like in their daily life. Must have taken a couple of hours or so, but when Moses clears his throat and finally says, "and in conclusion," the Israelites offer their own Response to the Word: All that you have said we will do, we can live with these rules," they shout back.

Moses says, "Okay. Good. Now I’m going to go back and speak with God for a final few moments and then we’ll get on with our freedom march." A few moments? The text indicates that Moses stepped into the prayer chapel for forty days and nights. That simply means, "a long time." (Just ask Noah how long forty days are living with orangutans and komodo dragons, et al.) How would you like it if I stepped out during the final hymn today in October and returned to give the benediction on December 1st. Forty days is a very long time to go without leadership. Well, the first week is tolerable with Moses being gone. Everyone is buzzing about their encounter with God. But by the third week experiences have waned and tension rises. The kids are fighting and everyone is sitting around in the sparse shade grumbling. Grazing land is now at a premium. Mutiny is already being broached around several campfires.

"Hey, Levi." "Yeah?" "Have you seen those Midianites over there? They’re so lucky. They get to carry God with them. He’s so small they can carry him in their book bags. Cute little thing. Must be nice. Whenever trouble lurks why they can just pull their little fella out and say a prayer to him or have a worship service and see their god right there in their midst assuring them that things will get better. And have you noticed how the rain seems to fall on their crops as much as it falls on ours?"

"Yeah," Ephraim admits. Sure is a nice thing to have a portable god and all. Why maybe we could work out an arrangement . . ." So at midnight the next evening, Levi and Ephraim sneak across the border to the Midian camp and carry back with them a gunny sack with a heavy calf mould in it. They gather the leaders and confront Aaron. "We’ve got a problem. What’s become of Moses?" they glower. "No Moses, no God." "Yeah, we need a new god that is a little more manageable, one of those ATM 24/7 gods. We need something we can see, feel, and worship—we’re done with Moses and his god. You be our leader, Aaron, and make us an approachable God. Then they dumped the contents from their gunny sack and Aaron stared at the calf-mould. "Those nice Midianites over there want to help us get started."

Not one to run from danger, Aaron immediately panicked and caved in to their demands; he had all the Israelites throw their gold jewelry into a huge pot over a fire. Once the gold was melted down, it was poured into the calf-god mould. That’s when the trouble really heated up. Once the people could actually see their god, could touch it and kiss it, they were elated and threw a wild orgy kind of party. The speechless calf was placed in the center of the festivities of the "Festival to the Lord," and became an instant speechless celebrity. An hour into the party and you’d have to look twice to see if you were staring into the eyes of an oppressor from which the Israelites had been liberated or into the eyes of a freed slave. Could no longer tell them a part. Like that strange scene at the end of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, when the pigs had become the very thing that they had so hated and despised in humans, and like the closing scene in Lord of the Flies when polished school boys, without leadership, had become primitive and warlike cannibals, so Israel with their new "tame" and quite visible god, lost all recognition of who they were and what God had done for them. And though the story ends with dialogue and negotiation and a renewal of the covenant between and Israel, it would always be one of the darkest stories in their history.

Well, that’s the story, but what does it teach us about God and ourselves? One important lesson: God is Mystery. The Israelites thought they had a handle on God—judging by how their neighbors shaped their gods. But they discovered that the God that they are in covenant with is first of all a Mystery—a God who defies our understanding. God is not the Man upstairs, but the Maker of heaven and earth. The more we discover how large the universe is, the more Mysterious and Terrible my understanding of God grows. The greatest sin is to conceive of a god that is tame, domesticated, predictable, and cuddly.

J.P. Philips wrote his classic, Your God is Too Small. This theologian had made the astonishing discovery that too many of us worship a puny God—a god shaped more by PC conceptions about God rather than being shaped by the God revealed in the Bible. We’ll always have the tendency to want to feel God, to form a god that we can handle, experience, and control. But we can’t do that with the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible speaks about can never be fully known, though we can glimpse some of God’s love toward us in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. John Calvin once said that there are no such things as atheists, only idolaters. Humans will always make gods and worship them—money, other people, nature, the environment, a job, a house, retirement, our vocations, knowledge. But this story reminds us that the God of the Bible is not worshipped in buildings made with stones, nor can God be contained by even the heavens. That there is no universe large enough but what our Creator stands outside of it, holding the whole thing together by the Word of his power. So our sin can be revealed in the shaping of a more manageable, more predictable, more visible god. And so we end up with a very tame god, shaped by the jewelry of our opinions and imaginations rather than by being judged and shaped by the God of the Bible.

I think that is one of our challenges when we come to worship. Our passage asks us what kind of god have we come to worship this morning? Do we tremble before our God? Do we allow this God who claims us to shape our lives, to remove the entanglements from us? Or have we settled for something less than our Mysterious and Terrible God?

Hear the Good News! Though our ancestors in the faith struggled and collapsed in a moment of crisis and confusion, the last chapter does not end with dust and judgment. For God once again enters into conversation with Moses. And it is Moses who recalls the first story about how marvelously God had "saved" his people—for a purpose. Eventually, God will again promise his presence to Moses and to the Israelites. And once again these runaway slaves will stand in covenant with God. And that is very good news for us too! For those of us whose god is too small—the Great God says, "come and follow me." To those who are still entangled in the sins that even now is disintegrating our lives, our Awesome God says, let me help you. And to those of us who have despaired even of life itself, our Saving God says, I can take you out of Egypt—if you will call upon my name. For whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Amen.