Sermon 10/9/05
Idol - Exodus 32:1-14
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Last week, we heard Kay share a reading from Exodus where God
speaks the ten commandments to the people of Israel. God gives these ten basic
rules, ten rules for living to help order the Israelites and keep them faithful.
Today, we find out how quickly things went downhill, and how quickly the
Israelites were ready to toss the commandments out the window when it became
difficult to follow them. After the people heard God speak the commandments,
Moses went up onto the mountain where we read that he received from God the
commandments in written form, on the tablets. While he is apart from the people,
“delayed,” we read, the people apparently get impatient and anxious, and figure
they’ve seen the last of this Moses-character. So they ask Aaron to make gods
for them to be their new guides. “As for this Moses,” they say, “we do not know
what has become of him.”
Aaron, for reasons I can’t quite figure out, complies with their request. I
would have figured that Aaron would have had enough direct contact with God not
to doubt God’s continued presence. But Aaron actually advises the group,
collecting gold from them to melt and shape into a calf. “These are your gods, O
Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” They build an altar, make
offerings to the golden calf, and sit down to eating, drinking, and revelry.
Naturally, all of this does not please God. We can imagine that God, who had
appeared to the people in so many direct and powerful ways and who had led them
safely out of the land of Egypt where they lived as slaves and watched their
children be killed by a jealous Egyptians rule – we can imagine that this God
was shocked, disappointed, angry with the people for their betrayal,
faithlessness, and blasphemy. We read that Moses reminds God that God and Israel
have a special relationship, and God in God’s grace continues to hold to the
covenant, even when Israel breaks it so completely in their idolatry.
Personally, I’ve always thought that this story was a strange
one, one with a warning that we didn’t need. How could the people worship a
golden calf? How could that give them any comfort, and how could they find in
such an image a substitute for the real presence of God in their lives? How
could a people who had experienced God’s care over their lives and their futures
in such dynamic ways – being freed through the Passover from death during the
plagues, being led through the Red Sea to safety, being guided by God, pillar of
fire, cloud going before them, being fed by God with manna from heaven and water
from rock – how could they worship a statue? It doesn’t make much sense to me.
And idolatry hardly even seems like a current day problem.
Maybe people did these strange behaviors in Old Testament times, not knowing any
better, but us? Do we need to worry about idolatry? Anyway, how likely is it
that one day we’ll walk into the sanctuary and put a golden animal up front here
and call it God and worship it instead of worshipping God our creator? But, of
course, we don’t get off the hook so easily. We do make idols today, and the
fact that we have trouble seeing and admitting our idolatry puts us in a
dangerous situation.
What is idolatry? Understanding this passage, this text,
begins with understanding what it means to make an idol of something. In the ten
commandments we read, “I am the Lord you God . . . you shall have no other gods
before me . . . You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of
anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in
the water under the earth.” Sometimes we get in the precarious position of
trying to rank sins. What are the worst sins you can commit? The worst things
you can do? Such a task is not very fruitful, but if we were to make a list, we
might be surprised to find that we’re meant to put idolatry at the top of that
list. To make an idol, to idolize something is to worship or adore something, to
be devoted to something in a way that separates you and God, in a way that
indicates something else is more important and more central to your life than
God. And putting something else before God is the one thing God most often works
to have us not do.
Do we put things ahead of God? We may answer that our faith
is our number one priority in our lives, but I suspect that the people of Israel
would have answered the same. After all, their entire identity as a people was
constructed around following religious instructions for every part of their
life, and defined by their special relationship with God. The issue, as usual,
is one of words and actions matching. We may say with our lips that we have no
gods but God, and worship nothing and no one but God. But what do our actions
say?
If we begin with a general look around our society, I think
we can easily find evidence of idol-worship. We even have our own TV-craze,
American Idol, where we literally manufacture and vote on a person to name as
our musical idol. If American Idol is not your thing, perhaps you can think of
something else that draws your attention. Maybe it is an athlete that you are
passionate about. Maybe you idolize a movie star, an actor or actress.
Sometimes, we know more trivia and facts about our favorite team or favorite
star than we have ever known about the scriptures or the stories that make up
the Bible.
But what about in our own lives? What about in more serious and concrete ways?
What forms of idolatry do we see there? For sure, I think we idolize our things
and possessions and our money. We spend a lot of time worrying about how much we
have, what we don’t have, and how much more we really need so that we could just
be happy. Especially, perhaps, we idolize the idea of financial success. Our
careers are tied into our idolatry, and we nurture a real workaholic culture,
where extra hours are worth it because of the perceived rewards we can gain. I
think we idolize our country, our American way of life. Certainly in the last
couple of years we have seen a healthy patriotism and love of homeland be
replaced by an aggressive nationalism that has us elevating our home, our
country, above all else. I wonder, too, if we make idols of our families.
Families can make the most tempting of idols, because we do hopefully place our
families very high on our lists of priorities. But sometimes putting our
families first means putting our faith much lower on the list, and the result is
harmful to faith and family, when families lack the spiritual centers they need.
And I wonder if we can even make an idol of the church. Do we get so caught up
in the way we worship and the way we always do things and the way we do the
business of the church that we forget our purpose? We gather to worship God our
Creator, and to become disciples of Jesus Christ. Anything else that we
prioritize first in the life of our church is idolatry!
Why do we do it? Why do we put other things before God? For the Israelites, the
worshipping of other gods was a return to practices they had left behind them in
Egypt. Idolatry also represents a return to what is most comfortable for us, a
return to whatever is easy. It’s easy to be devoted to things that are other
than God – things other than God are quite less demanding on us than God is. If
we worship God, God is an authority over us. If we choose to worship other
things instead, they too can have power over us, but somehow we feel we’re
getting away with something. What we get away with is something that ultimately
costs us a lot more than any payment God requires of us – we get away with the
gnawing inside of us that lets us know we’re empty of anything that is truly
filling and truly satisfying.
We need to put the things in our life in the proper places.
Our passions and loves can be used in service to God, and retain their status as
tools, not idols. We are gifted and graced by God in so many ways, and we do our
best work when we use these gifts to serve God and serve our brothers and
sisters in our human family.
Who or what is worthy of our worship, our praise, and our
devotion? Why would we waste our time paying tribute to anything less than one
who drew us into being, who knit us together as a unique creation, who formed
the universe and everything we see in it? How silly it is for us to substitute
anything or anyone else as the center of our lives than God. It’s true –
worshipping God means that God has authority in our lives. Instead of running
from the power God has over us and the place God is meant to have in our lives,
we are called to embrace God’s role as the center and ground of our being.
Who’s your idol? Hear, O People of God – the Lord your God is
one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and
strength and mind. Have no other gods before our God.
Amen.