Morning Prayer: Tom Lyda Choral Amen Hymn of Faith *Seek Ye First* Witness of Scripture: Exodus 32: 1-14 Anthem *Praise the Lord* Diemer. FCC Chancel Choir Sermon *Melting Down* David Spain
Recorded on October 15, 2023
The story is told of Rabbi Hillel that he was challenged to summarize the entire Torah in one sentence, to which he replied, “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another—this is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary, now go and study.”That may be more than one sentence, but it is a good summary. Something similar has been said of the book of Genesis—that the first book tells the story of God and humanity, and the rest of the Bible is commentary. As it is with Hillel and Genesis, so it is with the Ten Commandments—the first one is all we need and the other nine are commentary.
Refreshing our memories, the first commandment begins with context--“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;” and then the commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”Perhaps the nine following commandments identify the many threats and challenges to keeping that first commandment.No graven images (or idols) because it is tempting to take something or someone and grant them greatest value; no wrongful use of God’s name because people can and do use God’s name to justifyun-godlike impulses; keep the Sabbath because the impulse of work and demand never ceases; honor your ancestry because when respect and decency is not practiced in family, it is unlikely to translate anywhere else; killing solves nothing and always makes life more brutish; honoring our pledges of fidelity not only cares for the other but also respects the self; taking what is not yours and lying about your neighbor destroys relationships because without honesty and truth there is no healthy relationship; and envy distorts both one’s sense of self and turns the other into an object. The nine commandments following the first have a consistent thread—idolatry is the core concern. If humanity could better manage its impulse toward idolatry...but alas, not easily done.
Years ago, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, commenting on another issue opined, “I can’t give you a definition of it, but I know it when I see it.”Contrary to how we might casually think of idolatry, it is difficult to identify, and that is what makes it insidious.Frederick Buechner offers one of the better descriptions of idolatry when he wrote, “Idolatry is the practice of ascribing absolute value to things of relative worth. Under certain circumstances money, patriotism, moral principles, family loyalty, physical health, social or intellectual preeminence, and so on are fine things to have around, but to make them the standard by which all other values are measured, to make them your masters, to look to them to justify your life and save your soul is sheerest folly. They just aren’t up to it.” (Wishful Thinking, p.40)The lure of idolatry is its promise of a good greater than it really is.
Today’s story from Exodus is quite obviously about idolatry—the image of a golden calf is recognized as sign and symbol of idolatry even if one is not familiar with this story from Exodus. To be fair, the story feels a bit cartoonish, but as serious a subject as idolatry is best approached with some disarming humor, because rare is the one who readily admits or even recognizes idolatry. As the story is told, Moses has been away for a longer than expected time and the people in the wilderness are growing restless. We might look at their behavior with disdainful disbelief—they had been liberated from slavery by God who opened a pathway across the sea, their hunger had been fed with quail and manna and their thirst had been slaked with springs of water coming from the ground. Guided with a cloud by day and a fire by night, what more did they want or need as sign of God’s steadfast presence? From our perspective we think we would be satisfied by one of these signs. But memory tends to be short-lived, and fear has a long reach. No more are these signs present, and their trusted if not always patient leader is gone…what has happened to him in the desert? It would be easy to sit in judgment, but we recognize that fear, uncertainty, loss, change are stock elements in idolatry’s roiling cauldron. No one is exempt from those very human and very common experiences. Vulnerability is a prerequisite for idolatry, because it becomes so easy to grasp onto something, almost anything that seems just a little bit bigger than the moment we are facing.
It would also be easy to blame Aaron as a failed leader, and he is not innocent.But he was in a spot, surrounded by susceptible and frightened people grasping for something, people whose mindset might toss him out if he did not deliver something, almost anything. So, the story says he tries something so absurd, yet so revealing—but it does not work. “Bring all your gold jewelry to me; we will melt them down and form them into a mold of a calf.” Well that is silly, an absurdist move. No one will go after that. But the people do…this, they say is what saved us from Egypt. Aaron responds appropriately. He builds an altar in front of this collection of their own stuff, now the projection of their worship; and he says, “It’s been a full night and we’re all tired and frenzied. Let’s get some sleep, and tomorrow we’ll have a great feast to God…not to the image but to God.” His good counsel fails—the next morning the people are up early, not worshipping at the altar of God Aaron has made but reveling in the god of their own making.Maybe Aaron could have done something else, but powerful is the pressure of the status quo or the conventional perspective or the calf in the hand worth more than waiting for Moses to return from the bush. The god of immediate satisfaction is not a 21st century development; however, our times have almost deified immediacy and made impatience a virtue.
We understand needing a focus for worship. We are creatures of this earth; our faith is incarnated and tangible. In a world that often feels less secure and more uncertain, we yearn for stability, something to hold onto. As long as we remember no object, no space, no person is ever completely sufficient, then idolatry can be managed. Sadly, too often religion has traded faith for idolatry—dogmatisms that destroy, Biblical approaches that demean and demand unthinking loyalty, denominations that separate and exclude, traditions that elevate some by birth or gender or any number of other criteria that lord one over the other, codifying a sense of superiority and creating a caste of inferiority. What underlies this is the same impulse that helped fabricate the golden calf of so long ago--fear, uncertainty, loss, change, vulnerability. We can all be susceptible if the conditions are dire.
Perhaps the conditions don’t even have to be dire; maybe they only need to be constant, the drumbeat of a perspective to which people succumb. We know about these conditions—echo chambers that reinforce lies as facts or half-truths as all truth; shouts of irrationality that portray civil discourse as weak; ideologies that demand total allegiance not only by adhering to a belief but also belittling all other perspectives; provincialism that does not stop at protection but also distances, demonizes, and dehumanizes. These daily idolatries, more shadowy than dancing around a golden calf, can lure people to kill for their cause, to annihilate for their ism, to refuse to critique their perspective or listen to another. Idolatry is life out of balance—the elevation of anything inferior above the presence of God’s love. Perhaps a simple litmus test is this—“What is it—if we were invited to build a place, and endow and invest it—that we would place as the centerpiece of our devotion, the centerpiece of our worship,” asks Peter Gomes? (Strength for the Journey, p. 92) The question is important, because what we praise and what we worship gives shape to what we become. The golden calves of our making never demand anything of us, never grow us, and exist only to serve us in our desires; worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does just the opposite—demanding something of us, always seeking to grow us, and calling us to serve not for our desires but for God’s good way and humanity’s good will.
So, how can we respond to the ever-present lure of idolatry? Well, if there was an easy answer, we would already be doing that.Perhaps it can be helpful to keep in mind three truths. First, while we need objects and places for worship, those objects and places serve as vessels and avenues to help us see God. Think of worship as a window—faith does not look at the glass or the specks on the pane as all there is to see; instead, faith looks through the window to what is beyond. Second, religion over the centuries and the Protestant tradition of the last 500 years has built into it the anticipation of reform. Disciples of Christ recall Jesus came to reform and renew faith.“You have it heard it said…but I say to you,” Jesus preached in his first sermon, according to the gospel of Matthew. Built into the marrow of our faith is the courage to reshape and reform. James Russell Lowell said it so well in his 1854 hymn “new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; they must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.” (To Us All, to Every Nation). As we keep abreast of that truth, we recall Jesus’s central command and truth for faith—to love God and to love others. Perhaps this is the best antidote to idolatry. And third from today’s Exodus story, an admittedly odd sounding exchange to our ears. God, according to the story is ready to be done with this ‘stiff-necked people,’ but Moses interjects and invites God to remember the covenant God made. It is a persuasive argument, and it is a good practice for all of us as well. As God reaffirms God’s covenant with us, so we gather in worship to reaffirm our covenant with God, to remember it is God who has made us, God who loves us, God who seeks us, God who calls us to be light and love to the nations.Remembering whose and who we are can help us resist life’s many idolatries.
One more thought. When Moses returns from his trip and sees the carousing around the calf, he takes the gold statue, melts it down, mixes it with water, and has the people drink it.Well, that is a bit odd, and yet it is not; for it reminds us that anything of our making can be consumed and is not worthy of worship. Maybe that helps keep us from melting down.