Sermon:
October 13, 2002
All Services

Scripture:
Exodus 32:1-8      
Exodus 32:19-24

In this week’s copy of Steeple Notes, I wrote of the Bible that has become my old friend. As I read through the text in preparation, I realized that I had never used this particular Bible in writing a sermon. 

Seminary teaches us to use much more sophisticated and scholarly versions. But there is something about the meter and rhythm of the text we grew up with—regardless of the scholarly critique—that draws us home. It’s like walking up onto the porch of your grandparent’s farm. Deep within you know you are in a good and familiar place—you are home. Alexa Fry, a young woman in the youth group, refers to that feeling as “the steaming cup of white hot cocoa” feeling. The Psalmist who wrote Psalm 38 must have known something of the same feeling when he wrote: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Ps. 38:8)                       

In holding this friend, I feel a kinship with those who grew up reading the King James or Revised Standard Versions, and together we have some idea of what it will be like for the boys and girls who received their Bibles this morning as they grow up with their New International Versions. Indeed, may they taste and see for themselves that the Lord is good, and discover their place to come home. 

This morning, the text might sound a little different. I’ll be reading from “The Way,” the Living Bible Translation. We are in Exodus. Moses has led the people out of Egypt. They have passed through the waters. In the wilderness, they have received manna from heaven. God has provided water from, of all improbable places, a rock. And the Israelites have reached Mount Sinai. 

Moses, with his assistant Joshua, climbs the high mountain to talk with God (24:13). And there he stays for 40 days and 40 nights—in biblical language, “a long, long time.” In his absence, he leaves his brother Aaron in charge. 

Now, I must admit I have no brothers. And in growing up with an older sister who quickly became disenchanted with the idea of having a little brother, I don’t recall ever wanting one—much to the relief of my parents. But I am the father of a daughter who has a brother, and I think she’d concur that there are times, with brothers, that things just seem to go rapidly downhill. 

Our reading this morning is from Exodus 32:1-8, 19-24. 

When Moses didn’t come back down the mountain right away, the people went to Aaron. “Look,” they said, “make us a god to lead us, for this fellow Moses who brought us here from Egypt has disappeared; something must have happened to him.”

“Give me your golden earrings,” Aaron replied.

So they all did—men and women, boys and girls. Aaron melted the gold, then molded and tooled it into the form of a calf. The people exclaimed, “O Israel, this is the god that brought you out of Egypt!”

When Aaron saw how happy the people were about it, he built an altar before the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a feast to Jehovah!”

So they were up early the next morning and began offering burnt offerings and peace offerings to the calf-idol; afterwards they sat down to feast and drink at a wild party, followed by sexual immorality.

Then the Lord told Moses, “Quick! Go on down, for your people that you brought from Egypt have defiled themselves, and have quickly abandoned all my laws.”

When they came near the camp, Moses saw the calf and the dancing, and in terrible anger he threw the tablets to the ground and they lay broken at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf and melted it in the fire, and when the metal cooled, he ground it into powder and spread it upon the water and made the people drink it.

Then he turned to Aaron. “What in the world did the people do to you,” he demanded, “to make you bring such a terrible sin upon them?”

“Don’t get so upset,” Aaron replied. “You know these people and what a wicked bunch they are. They said to me, ‘Make us a god to lead us, for something has happened to this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt.’ Well, I told them, ‘Bring me your gold earrings.’ So they brought them to me and I threw them into the fire, and…well…this calf came out!” 

* * * * * 

“And…well…this calf came out.” 

Moses was God’s mediator in the people’s eyes, their sole contact with Yahweh. If Moses was gone, they needed a replacement. And so, in essence, the calf became, for them, God’s representative. It is debated among scholars whether they were worshiping another god—violating the first commandment of the covenant, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2)—or that what they had done was make an image with their own hands and lift it up as their mediator, thus believing they had made their own connection to Yahweh (Ex. 20:4-5). Either way, they had forsaken the relationship they had been offered by the God of their deliverance. 

Moses sees all this, then he finds his brother. “What in the world did the people do to you to bring such a sin upon them?” Aaron’s response is nonchalant: “Don’t get so upset, brother. One thing just led to another, and…well…this calf came out.”  

Developmental psychologists (like Piaget, Rogers, Kohlberg and Kegan) have known for years that as our brain develops—as we experience more of the world around us—what we understand as reality and the way we reason changes significantly. When our daughter McKenzie was one, she loved to play peek-a-boo. She’d cover her eyes, say something like “peek-a-boo” and giggle with glee as she “discovered” us, as if for the first time. In her “one-year-old mind,” when she covered her eyes and you were out of sight, you were really gone. You no longer existed. As adults we know that people do not disappear. But her reality was different. 

Peek-a-boo has been played for generations. It’s fun to pretend something isn’t there when it is. It’s so adorable and seemingly innocent that it’s hard to give it up. 

“Officer there must be something wrong with your equipment.”

“Dad, I don’t know how the door got banged up.” 

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”   

Peek-a-boo!           

As adults, it seems our problems often begin when we don’t recognize the illusion of peek-a-boo for what it is. The story is told of a young woman who was shopping for a greeting card and handed the clerk her choices. The first one read, “To the one and only man in my life.” Her second choice read, “To the one and only man in my life.” Is it plausible that she planed to give the first to her lover, and the second was meant for her grandfather? Certainly it is plausible! But it’s just as plausible that she was buying two cards, for two men, each believing they were the sole romantic interest in her life—because that was what she was telling them! And maybe believing, herself. 

The tendency to deceive ourselves—our proneness to close our eyes and believe all the scary monsters of the soul are gone—has no respect for gender. Nor is it bound by age or the position we hold. Each and every day subtle, and not so subtle, temptations are placed before us. We can close our eyes, pretend it’s a perfect world, and say, “Not in my life.” But before we know it, the very thing which in our confidence we were sure would never get a hold of us, not only gets a hold but takes up residence, digs its ruts in and tears our lives apart. 

Imagine that you have laid a new sidewalk. You’ve taken vacation time to clear the ground. You’ve set the forms, hauled the cement by wheelbarrow, worked the surface and tooled the edges. It’s beautiful! You’ve invested yourself in a job well done. In the spring you notice a few seedlings from the maple tree nearby. Maple trees grow pretty fast, you know. I remember my grandfather’s home and how, over time, the trees had literally broken and lifted the sidewalk out of place. All that could be said was, “Who let those trees grow there?” 

When it’s in our own lives, though, when there is no one else to blame, in the end all we can say is: “I don’t know what happened…a calf came out.” 

Aaron’s calf is also our calf—all those things that attempt to separate us from God, separate us from one another in our relationships, that entice us to forget Whose we are, and the difference it makes to be the people of God. Because when it comes right down to it, what the calf is doesn’t matter. It can be a woman, a man, a bottle, or the way we covet a job, a promotion, a sack of gold. It can be our pride or arrogance, or it can be our reluctance to simply say “No.” At the end of the day, it won’t matter if, to our embarrassment, it is strewn publicly for all our friends and neighbors to see, or if it is hidden so deep that you think no one knows but you. Whenever we play peek-a-boo—pretend the real struggles of life are not the very things we wrestle with—we’ve already lost.   

Some would say the deceiver’s only desire is to make us stumble and fall—but that’s a mere skirmish. The real objective is found in that while we’re down, we begin to believe that we can never get up—that we’re alone, cut off and can never be whole again. Success for the deceiver is that we would fear exposure in God’s light, more than we do the dark. 

But the Good News of Jesus Christ is that: 

• As many times as we fall—and we all fall,

• As much as we hold the absolute up as our goal—while not one of us is righteous,

• For those of us who, as Paul would say, “Do not do what we want, but do the very thing we hate” (Rom. 7:15),

Christ says: “I am the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 9:15). “In me you can begin again. You can live—struggles, failures and all—as a child of God. Standing in his redeeming light with eyes wide open and never again play peek-a-boo with a calf.”   

That’s a “steaming cup of white hot cocoa feeling.” 

That’s a “Welcome home.” 

That’s grace. 

Thanks be to God! Amen.