Fashioning gods

October 12^th, 2014      “Fashioning gods”        Rev. Heather Jepsen

Exodus 32:1-14

          This morning we continue our journey with Moses and the Israelites.  Last week we read about the 10 commandments.  In a great show of power and might, in the midst of what appears to be a volcanic eruption, the voice of God speaks and the people are gifted a law.  The people have agreed to this covenant but it only takes a few days before their memories fade. 

          Moses has been on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights talking with God.  God has been busy expanding the 10 commandments.  Not only are the basic rules given, but also all of the little details about what happens when you lend money to someone, or how many festivals they should celebrate each year.  You will notice we’ve skipped more than 10 chapters of material, and the honest truth is that this is some pretty boring stuff.  As the people wait below, God drones on and on to Moses about all the details of the tabernacle Moses is supposed to build.  From the details of the curtains, to the type of wood to be used in each area, to the detailed descriptions of all the decorations of the priestly garb; God appears to be paying very close attention to every little detail of the worship space and totally ignoring the people below.

          Just like modern readers of the scriptures, the Israelites start to get bored.  Moses is gone and this is taking forever.  Are they all just supposed to sit around and wait?!?  The people start harassing Aaron, Moses’ brother and second in command.  “Come on, make a god we can worship.  Who knows what happened to Moses?  Let’s do something else.”

          Aaron gathers an offering of all the gold in the camp.  Rings, earrings, and necklaces are melted down in a fire and Aaron uses the tools of a metal worker to form a golden calf.  He himself seems confused as to what this all means.  At first he tells the people “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”   And then he says “Tomorrow shall be a festival to Yahweh.”  So is the calf a new god or simply a stand in symbol for the God Yahweh?  No matter what it is, it is certainly a big “no-no”!

          Now I’ll admit I have a strange sense of humor, but I have a hard time imagining this next scene without laughing.  Meanwhile, up on the mountain . . . God is sitting up there droning on and on like an interior decorator who can’t get over the curtains when suddenly, “Oh snap, what are your people doin’ down there Moses?”  “My people?!?” Moses replies, “You were the one who brought them out of Egypt.  Those are your people, brother!”

          It’s not supposed to be funny, but it sounds to me like God and Moses are acting like an old married couple.  God clearly says to Moses, “Your people, who you brought out of Egypt are sinning!”  And Moses clearly says to God “No, You brought them out of Egypt with your mighty hand.  You are the one who made promises to them!”

          No one is happy about this big Golden Calf festival.  The Israelites are whooping it up so loudly that when Moses and Joshua descend the mountain, Joshua thinks the people are under attack.  Things have gotten way out of hand and Moses accuses Aaron of letting the people run wild.

          This is a strange story with a lot of strange characters, and the parts that aren’t funny are actually really scary.  God is acting a bit out of sorts here.  When God finds out what the people have done, God is so angry that he wants to kill them all right then and there.  He basically tells Moses to get out of the way so he can burn up the whole nation of Israel with fire.  “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.”  God is going to kill the whole population, and start again with Moses.  That doesn’t sound like the God I know.

          God seems to have forgotten himself and the promises he made.  Moses has to remind God, that God made commitments to this very people.  “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.”  Moses reminds God of covenant, and God finally relents and changes his mind about what kind of disaster he would bring on the people.  We read at the end of the chapter that God sent a plague on the people, instead of death by fire.

          Moses too, is acting a bit out of character.  On the one hand he is reprising his traditional role.  He stands between the people and God, as mediator, a place he is very familiar with; and he argues with God on behalf of the people of Israel.  But when Moses descends the mountain, his wrath and desire for justice mirror the initial reaction of God. 

In the parts of the scripture the lectionary leaves out, things get really scary.  Moses is coming down the mountain and he is so mad at the people he smashes the tablets that God himself had written the Ten Commandments on.  He then takes the calf statue, burns it up, grinds it into a powder, and he makes the whole company of Israelites drink it.

Things get even worse than that.  Moses calls for followers and the sons of Levi come to his side.  He then calls them to get their swords and “Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, your neighbor.”  Moses has ordained a blood bath in the name of God’s justice.  Even more offensive, the willingness of the Levites to kill their friends and family is what earns them a spot in the priesthood.  “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, and so have brought a blessing on yourselves this day.”  That’s certainly not a priesthood I want to be ordained into!

Of course, the third really interesting character in this story is Aaron.  When I began studying this passage this week I kept coming back to the same question, “What in the world was he thinking?!?”

But, the more I thought about it, the more I seemed to understand where Aaron was coming from.  At first I saw a duality between Moses and Aaron; sort of a “good pastor / bad pastor” routine.  Moses is the good pastor because he is leading the people in the holy ways of God, and Aaron is the bad pastor because he is leading the people to sin. 

If only it were that neat and simple.  The stories of the Bible are a lot like our own lives in that they are never simple and they are often messy.  By the end of the chapter, Moses turns out to be the bad pastor because he encourages people to kill their families, friends, and strangers even though they are all equally guilty of participating in the Golden Calf fiasco.

In fact, the more I read the story and thought about the characters, the more I began to identify with Aaron.  The people are restless, they need a focus.  The calf might have been a bad idea, but the desire to have a festival to the Lord, the desire to refocus the people’s energy into a celebration of God, their redeemer, was a good idea.  Moses had been gone for 40 days and it is really hard to understand God’s plan which seems to be for everyone to just sit around and wait while he discusses interior design.

Communities need leaders to function.  Absent leaders can’t be leaders.  And worship communities need a place to focus their worship.  Aaron builds an altar.  The calf is a misguided focus for sure, but the people gathering around it is not so different then the way we gather around this cross each week.  This is a place to focus.  Cross, table, font, pulpit; they are all concrete things that help draw our attention to God.  Aaron takes a wrong step with that calf, but his intentions were good.

I wonder how many pastors take a similar wrong step with good intentions.  I am thinking of Joel Osteen for example, preaching a prosperity gospel because that’s what people want and need.  I am thinking of the way the Catholic Church lifts up saints and popes, for people to pray to, because that’s what people want and need.  I think of the ways churches rally around issues like abortion and gay marriage while ignoring issues like poverty, homelessness, and hunger; because that’s what people want and need.

In fact, this week I was thinking of the ways that I might skew the faith to please the people around me.  What issues do I lift up and what things do I choose to ignore?  Perhaps I try too hard to soften the justice of God, to soften the horrors of the cross, and to soften the rough edges of the stories we tell.  In what ways have I inadvertently fashioned a calf for the people to worship, because that’s what people want and need.

Perhaps all religious leaders are a lot more like Aaron, than we would choose to admit.  We all have a tendency to fashion God in such a way as to appeal to the most people.  We want to give the people a God they can worship, a God they can love.  And sometimes that means leaving out all the scary stories, like this one about a forgetful vengeful God and a Moses who authorizes slaughter of the very people he has come to serve.

As we continue to study Exodus, we continue to be challenged with the picture of God we find here.  From the killing of the first born in Egypt, to the drowning at the Red Sea, to the plague that strikes the camp; the God of Exodus is one who holds power through the threat of death.  This is a God to be feared.  This does not appear to be a God of love.

It is good to remember that all these stories together, Old and New Testaments make a whole picture of the God we worship.  We can’t just pick out the warm and fuzzy Jesus parts and call that God.  We need to remember these stories too, and we need to take our God seriously.  We need to be honest and aware of the idols we have created, and of the gods we have fashioned to suit our own needs.

Thanks be to God for these frightening and strange stories that have the power wake us up to who we are, and who we have made our God to be.  And thanks be to God that the overarching story of the scriptures is one of love.  When we have got the God picture wrong, which we probably do most of the time, God offers us forgiveness and grace anyway.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.