Exodus 32:7-14

16 Pentecost / Proper 19 / Year C

Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson

The lectionary during the season of Pentecost brings us yet another set of interesting and hard scriptures to examine. Perhaps the most difficult of all these texts is the story we have here from the Old Testament book of Exodus. Indeed, God is angry in this story and on the verge of wiping out the very people that he saved from the Egyptians, the very people that walked through the middle of the Red Sea on dry land. // But why? Why is God angry? Last week we talked about what it was that irked Jesus, but in our story this morning we run smack dab into perhaps the one offense that causes steam to blow from the ears of God our Father; that offense is idolatry.

In our story this morning, Moses, the spiritual leader of the Israelites, has gone up to Mt. Sinai, to commune with God the Father. But in his absence, the people panic. He had been gone a long time and they weren’t sure that he was ever coming back, so they turned to Aaron, Moses’ brother and a priest, and they said, “Get to work friend and do your job; make God real to us!” So Aaron asked the people to strip all the gold off of their bodies, their rings and earrings, and give it to him and he melted it down and made for them a calf, a golden calf. When the idol was complete the people said, “Israel, here is your God who brought you here from Egypt.” And Aaron then built an altar before the statue and the next day God’s people offered sacrifices on that altar to a god they could touch and see. // How offensive is that? After all the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did for his people, after the manna that rained from heaven and the quail that literally fell into their laps and the water that gushed from the rocks; after all this they still couldn’t and didn’t believe. The spiritual immaturity of the Israelites in the dessert was legendary. And yet their community, as dysfunctional as it was, really wasn’t all that different from our own.

We have become more sophisticated, however, in our idolatry. We don’t have any need for a golden calf to dance around. But our needs are no less material in nature and our fear is not less real. For some that calf can be as simple as the BMW parked in the driveway or the exclusive address or the amazing view from the living room or the square footage of our house or even the club membership; whatever it takes to show the world that we have made it, that we’re important, that we are successful.

My generation and perhaps the generation before my own, like the Israelites so long ago have a real sense of entitlement, a real sense that we are somehow owed a good life. And so we mortgage ourselves to the hilt in order to buy an image, so that we don’t have to say that we can’t afford to do whatever it is we want to do or whatever it is that our friends and neighbors expect us to do. The good life is having it all. And so we sell our souls, literally, to make sure that we do have it all. The fear is that we won’t be allowed to live our lives to the fullest, to have every experience that a human being should have before we pass on to the next life. Self-actualization is the key and we want to reap all its blessings, especially if we are the ones paying for it.

There is more to this golden calf, however, than those who are trying to be self-actualized and buy an image or show their neighbors just how successful they are. There are those out there who are trapped in a cycle of poverty for instance, those who find themselves scrounging for food and rent day after day and month after month, year after year. The Israelites were poor too, having to rely on God for their daily necessities. I can only imagine how powerless they must have felt. And yet the cycle itself often becomes the idol, not wanting to risk change, even change for the better, for the inferior life that is known and predictable. Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that the children get caught up in this cycle and it is perpetuated for generations.

Why is God angry you ask? God is angry because we have the promise of an abundant life and we settle for so little. We go about our daily lives taking God’s grace for granted as we go about making false gods out of our fears and our insecurities. God is angry because we don’t believe that real sacrifice is important and real prayer and faith comes only when there is a crisis that is beyond our control. God is angry because we are not willing to pick the cross and walk with Jesus to Golgotha understanding that the cross is the only way to peace and abundance. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian of the middle 20^th century,

Cheap grace is the preaching of…forgiveness without repentance, baptism without Church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which one must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs us our lives. It is grace because it gives us the only true life.[i]

Self-centeredness or self focus is the death of the spiritual life. We can’t have it all, it is not possible and even if it were, it is not worth the anguish to get it. God calls on us, as he did the Israelites, to take an eternal perspective, to recognize that we must sacrifice for those who come after us and have a larger vision than the one that simply impacts our own lives or the lives of our immediate family.

Indeed there is really good news here. God wants us to participate with him in this kingdom building, he needs us. He wants our hands and our minds to help build something that is greater than ourselves, something that will last not only a lifetime, but forever. He needs our hands and minds. What an amazing thing to know, that God needs you and me. But such interaction with God doesn’t come without a cost. If we choose to follow God instead of worshipping the idol, it will cost us. It will cost us the image that we spend so much time projecting to others. It will cost us the comfort of the familiar. Indeed, it will cost us our lives.

In Jesus Name; Amen.