— A Sermon by Robert W. Prim —
~~~ 19th Sunday after Pentecost ~~~
Exodus 32:1-14
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When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.
The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 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.” But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your 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.’“ And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
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This story of the people of Israel and the golden calf
is shameful.
The story is a piece of communal history
that does not reflect well on the family of faith.
The Ten Commandments had just been given
and within a short period of time
the children of Abraham and Sarah are dancing …
not to the glory of God but
around a hand-made shiny trinket, a golden calf
fashioned by a leader all too ready to indulge
the evil impulses of a tribe stoking the fires of grievances.
The Word had been made clear –
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol.
But Moses stays away on the mountain for forty days
and the people grow so impatient
that they start carousing around
a mother load of their own making.
The story is shameful.
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The fact that this story is shameful begs the question –
Why is it that Christians and Jews tell it over and over again?
Why is it that Christians and Jews keep this story
as part of the sacred canon of Scripture?
Does it not make more sense
to keep such family secrets hidden away?
Does it not make more sense
to accentuate the positive
and eliminate the negative?
No. It is a good thing that the story is told over and over again
because it is an important reminder to us now
that history – in church and state –
will repeat if not honestly faced.
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Our national history, the United States of America, has lots and lots of beautiful stories to tell – stories of courage and wisdom. We have people fleeing religious persecution to form a more perfect union where church and state are separated. We have founding fathers and mothers with insights that remains instructive even unto this day. We have patriots who will live free or die. These are the stories we tell of our own national formation, and they are good stories. We should keep telling these stories.
Yet, to focus on the positive and pretend the negative does not exist is a formula for a repetition of prideful mistakes. We are more equipped to move into a brighter future toward the beloved community if we are willing to face honestly the evil and fearful sides of our national story. To name the evil is not a hatred of America or the Church; rather, to name the evil is to love our country and our faith communities enough to want us all to grow in wisdom and toward a more perfect union. It is a form of love to name the mistakes.
For example,
we should never forget
the near genocide wrought on native Americans,
the enslavement of imported human beings from Africa,
the internment camps for Japanese Americans during WWII. We should never forget
the importance of immigrants to our economy
and yet the abject poverty
in which many of those immigrants live
if they can survive the perilous journeys they make
to come to our country and the discrimination that is all too evident.
We should never forget
the violent reactions to people of color and of minority sexual orientations demanding civil rights.
We should never forget
the willingness of powerful people
to use political power to suppress voters
who might vote against the status quo.
We should never forget
the willingness to allow and encourage white supremacy groups when it serves political ends.
We should never forget
the dismissal of facts and science
in order to prop up a toxic view of masculinity
that leads to the unnecessary deaths of our fellow citizens.
(And, by the way, we should never forget
that the church has aided and abetted
all of these shameful moves in our politics.)
These are not happy memories and some of them are fresh and ongoing, but they can be instructive if we face them honestly and work to be better. Our nation and our churches can become more fully our better selves if we remind ourselves of our failings, sins, imperfections.
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The story of the Hebrew people and the golden calf is shameful, but it is real. There is truth in opening ourselves as individuals, communities, churches, and nations to the sinful side of our nature. If we fail to be honest and fail to tell stories that remind us that we are not perfect then it becomes easier to reach the fraudulent conclusion that our will, our power, our prejudices are the Will of God. Without recognizing our own limitations and sinfulness we will soon fashion gods out of our own fears, hungers and desires, and lots and lots of suffering will inevitably follow and we will be mere revelers in our own destructive tendencies.
The story of the Israelites and the golden calf reminds us in a very basic way that honesty as a people, honest reckoning of our history as church and nation is the best policy and the most loving way forward. It makes good sense to tell this story of the Israelites and the golden calf over and over again because the story lures us in the direction of humility and rigorous honesty with ourselves and one another.
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At a pastors’ conference a few years ago, Dr. Tom Long, professor of homiletics at Candler School of Theology, reflected on our tendency in the church to remember our strong moments but forget our failures. He wondered out loud why it is that we put up plaques to remind us of glory days, but never put up plaques to remind us of our sinful behavior. He wondered if it would not be a helpful thing (and I don’t know if it would be or not) to have a plaque that read –
At this time and place
we acted in fear not in love.
At this time and place
we closed our doors rather than opening them.
At this time and place
we chose to be less
than what God called us to be…
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All of us are a mixture of good and bad, truth and lies, glory and sinfulness. If we are to be ourselves, in the best and most wholesome sense of self-understanding, then we will need to be reminded of our tendency in the direction of creating idols, of dancing around false gods and leaders, of being blinded by tribal affiliations that lead to supporting and defending the indefensible, of falling short of the glory of God.
The truth is –
We, too, have thrown rings and jewels
into the fire of Aaron’s kitchen.
When we become aware of our sinfulness then we are more able to turn from our sins and be made whole in the mercy and transforming power of the One who leads us, even though we be stiff necked, from slavery to freedom.
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September 27 and 28 in the Jewish calendar was Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is a high holy day in the Jewish year; it is “the Day of Atonement.” Yom Kippur is a day for honest reckoning. It is a day for repentance of sins and is kept by prayer and strict fasting. Yom Kippur is a day to remember national and personal sinfulness, and a day for turning toward God and asking for forgiveness. The following is a prayer that comes from a book called Gates of Repentance, and it is a prayer for Yom Kippur. This sermon – and its call for honesty with ourselves and one another – ends with this prayer:
Now is the time for turning.
The leaves are beginning to turn
from green to red to orange.
The birds are beginning to turn
and are heading once more toward the south.
The animals are beginning to turn
to storing their food for winter.
For leaves, birds and animals,
turning comes instinctively.
But for us, turning does not comes so easily.
It takes an act of will for us to make a turn.
It means breaking old habits.
It means admitting that we have been wrong,
and this is never easy.
It means losing face.
It means starting all over again.
And this is always painful.
It means saying, “I am sorry.”
It means recognizing that we have the ability to change.
These are terribly hard to do.
But unless we turn,
we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways.
Lord help us to turn,
from callousness to sensitivity,
from hostility to love,
from pettiness to purpose,
from envy to contentment,
from carelessness to discipline,
from fear to faith.
Turn us around, O Lord, and bring us back toward you.
Revive our lives as at the beginning
and turn us toward each other, Lord,
for in isolation there is no life. Amen.