(Sermon preached on 14th May 2023 – Photo is of a plastic cow painted in gold airfix paint!)
So, the Golden Calf – that’s one of those obvious stories we were told as children – its got some great colouring in – and its obviously a visual demonstration about why you do not want to be breaking the 2nd commandment – “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below, you shall not bow down to them or worship them”.
There is a reason as to why you do not want to be making an idol and that is because at the beginning of creation God says ‘I am making you in my image’. God has already made an idol of himself, an image, and it is you. Male and Female He created them.
So when we make an idol of God, we are not returning the favour, we’re doing a disservice to each other, we are disconnecting ourselves from each other and from God, we’re belittling how we see each other, how we see God, how we see what life is about.
We do do it. All the time. We create all sorts of idols – different things – usually they are things – sometimes they are activities – these Idols have a way of absorbing our effort and time and energy –
and they give very little back –
we are not better people because of them –
we are entertained, we are distracted from our worries, but very few of these idols help, encourage, bless
and the result is that we become a little like the gods we worship
and so I fear that it can lead us to have a poorer view of ourselves, of each other,
and we are then less equipped to help, encourage and bless.
I wont tell you not to make an idol, not to worship an idol, I will tell you to pray – search me Lord – pray for God to help you spot them, and help you let go of them, they are so addictive.
Listen to the language of the people – “Where has Moses gone? The Moses who brought us up out of Egypt”.
Moses would say I didn’t bring you out of slavery it was God – but there is this need for some sort of physical embodiment of God – and God understands this – that’s why He made us in His image,
its why He called on the tribes of Israel to be Ex 19v6 – a kingdom of priests, a holy nation – the whole lot – all 12 tribes – not just the one tribe of Levi – the whole lot were supposed to be priests – people who connect you to God. Imagine that, a whole nation where everyone is helping everyone else to live life to the full, to stay connected to God.
But the people despair and grumble, “where is Moses”, and they give up on Moses and his God – and picture the irony here – they are camped at the foot of the mountain and the mountain itself is covered in a firey cloud and so – wrote the late Rabbi Sacks: this is the one time in all of history where God has revealed Himself to a whole nation –they refused the invitation to go up the mountain with Moses – so only Moses and Joshua – go up to collect the Ten Commandments –
but there has to be something extra painful about giving up your faith when all the evidence you could ever wish for is staring you in the face. There is God on that mountain. But no, lets invent some other gods.
There is a sadness in all this. Here is a short moment of peace. No one is oppressing them, no one is attacking them, they have no diseases, no snakes, this is an idyllic moment of peace – okay so there’s no Moses, and there’s no Miracles, but just for a moment all is well and they don’t need it.
But they can’t cope – and they give up on God and Moses.
I find this dispiriting and challenging – what is it about us that struggles with the simple quiet life of just getting on and living.
So, we see the failure of leadership in Aaron – he is peer pressured into keeping the people happy so he asks for some gold.
When the Israelites left Egypt they were given gold by their Egyptian neighbours, so more than likely this gold is also symbolic of things they received as they left their life of slavery.
But its one thing to take the Israelite out of Egypt, can you take the Egypt out of the Israelite? Can they learn to live without Egyptian gods, without idols? We become Christians and we struggle with the new life even though it is one that is filled with true life and real freedom.
And so Aaron makes this bull – maybe he didn’t have enough gold so it’s a small bull, its just a calf –
maybe Aaron was making not so much an idol as a chair or a table – by which I mean that in the ancient world very often gods would be depicted as standing on the backs of bulls, well here’s a little bull, and standing on this calf is Nothing, this is an invisible God.
So you can see how Aaron could have made an excellent Anglican fudge here of creating something that to his mind is wrong but not very wrong – he hasn’t made an image of God – he has made a table for the invisible God to stand on.
I find it astonishing that Aaron survives this story and isn’t killed himself. I find it astonishing that he’s given a sideways promotion – so that he gets to be in charge of worship and priestly duties – Perhaps the upside of all this is that God’s forgiveness is very great.
But Note the emotions in this chapter. The people wonder where Moses has got to and so they think about giving up on God.
So God repays the favour and says Maybe I’ll give up on you.
And Moses is left as the in-between person, trying to process his own emotions – which he does by getting very angry, by crushing the gold into flakes and making everyone drink it – that sounds like a punishment –
but Moses is still angry and he thinks that what’s best next is some violence – a purging so in a crowd of 600,000 by the time that everyone has got the message that this party is over, there are 3000 dead. Perhaps we should be impressed that that’s all who died, that there’s no further battling within the tribes.
I do not think that Moses processes his own anger very well. Note that by the end of the period of wandering through the wilderness, God will say to Moses that its time for him to stop here, to die, to let the Israelites go on into the Promised Land without him.
Meantime, God’s anger and the insult of the people is placated by Moses’s prayer and fasting. So Moses leaves the Camp for another 80 days to pray.
It is odd how the writer of Exodus has put this Golden calf story here in ch 32 – Moses goes up the mountain, in ch 19, 20, – gets the 10 commandments and a bunch of other commands about how to keep the sabbath, how to have a good festival, how to look after each other including social responsibility, forgiveness, rules about treating slaves, about worship and building a worship space, a tabernacle.
And then comes the Golden Calf incident whilst Moses and Joshua are up the mountain. And then pretty quickly after this, ch 33 onwards we have the reminder of how to build the Tent of Meeting and so on.
So this raises the question – What are you building? What are we building?
The people are busily seeking entertaining gods when what they should have been doing is building the tabernacle.
Build something holy or unholy?
For some its about cynically sarcastically belittling projects that try to improve the world – ‘it’ll never happen’ – for some it is literally war where they like to destroy reputations or if they have the weapons for it destroy whole countries –
but the call of God is to be building – building a Holy Nation, a kingdom of priests , an understanding for how we treat people , even slaves, how we stop work for a sabbath break, for a festival.
The people are eager to be building their golden calf when what they should have been building was this Tent of meeting.
So 1. Don’t make an Idol – its so easy to preach but I do love an idol as much as the next person – they amuse us, distract us, and often we don’t notice how they rob us often of money, energy, of hope and love.
We don’t need to make idols because God has already made an image of Himself and it is you, and at creation God says It was good.
So let this image be enough, enough to make us appreciate each other, made in the image of God, let this image be enough to give you some self-respect and some respect for each other – enough to see each other as a gift to you and enough for you to be a blessing to each other.
- Moses is not a great role model here of how to process your anger. But he is a good example of prayer, even of self-sacrifice – this is where he offers to be blotted out of God’s book instead of the people (Ex32.32)
Perhaps this is what makes Moses a better leader than Aaron. Moses loves the people so much that he will not give them what they want, but will lead them to what is good for them.
3rdly is the question of What are you building?
Are you helping us, as a community, work out how we can be a better blessing to the community or do we find it easier to be like the grumpy muppets on the sides, looking down.
So please God, search us, search me, help me to see where I have made an idol to distract me from what you’ve called me to.
Please God help us, help me to see in each other your image – to see each other as a blessing and to endeavour to be a blessing
Amen.