The time that Moses spent on the mountain with God discussing and receiving God’s covenant for the people is one of the most extraordinary and important moments in the Bible.
We’ve touched on some elements of that story in recent weeks, but it deserves a closer inspection this morning.
Moses’ mountain top experience happened,you may recall, while the Israelites were making their way out of Egypt and the physical, mental, and spiritual slavery that they lived with there for generations. Guided on the journey by God, the people had miraculously crossed the Red Sea, received manna from heaven, and quenched their thirst with water from a stone.
After about three months, the people reached what the Bible calls “the wilderness of Sinai,” a rugged and mountainous landscape that, somewhat confusingly, is within the boundaries of the modern nation of Egypt.
Entering Sinai, God revealed the divine intentions.
This is how Exodus 19 puts it.
On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai…Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’” (Exodus 19:1, 3-6a)It might not give us a warm fuzzy feeling, but God’s language here truly is intimate. In fact, the passage reads something like a wedding proposal. In essence, God is saying, “Look, we’ve been through a lot together, I love you very much, and I’d like to make this official.”
Author Thomas Cahill elaborates,
the great God YHWH, who alone has dominion over all, here adopts the posture of a suitor, one who woos a demanding woman, patiently explaining how highly he values her and how exalted he foresees their life together. The people are being prepared for something more than they have already experienced. (The Gift of the Jews, p. 135)That new beginning was a covenant relationship and what follows in the scripture is the disclosure of the new relationship’s terms and expectations–the Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, guidance for worship and community life.
It’s a scene that ends with a really beautiful verse–Exodus 31:19.
[And] when God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. (Exodus 31:19)“Written with the finger of God” Amazing, right?
Like I said, as far as big moments go, this is as big as it gets, but while Moses and God were having a heart to heart on the mountain top, down below, the people were sending flirty messages to their ex.
Frustrated that Moses had been on the mountain for so long, the people asked his brother Aaron to “make gods” for them, which he did by melting down gold they had carried out of Egypt and casting it into the statue of a calf or a bull, a form of an idol that was nearly ubiquitous in the places the Israelites had been and where they were going.
What happened, therefore, can be understood as a result of the same mindset that led the people previously to complain that it was better to have food and to be a slave than to be free, but hungry.
It was a mindset that revealed the people were willing to stick with something familiar, even if they knew it would hurt them, rather than take hold of that which was liberating, but unfamiliar.
Comforted, then, by the well known image of a golden calf, the people cut loose.
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. (Exodus 32:1-6)Again, Thomas Cahill helps us understand what’s going on here.
He writes,
What follows is an orgy of prostrations, animal slaughter, feasting, drinking, and as the Book of Exodus puts it discreetly, “reveling”--that is, sexual indulgence in the manner of pagan liturgy.He continues,
[The people] have mistaken [the Creator] for his creation…With a little ingenuity, we might even conclude that they succeeded in breaking all Ten Commandments–but even five out of ten is a pretty good average for so short a time. (p. 149)The golden calf unleashed a stampede of debauchery, and it elicited an intense response.
First, God saw what was happening and was furious.
Moses successfully convinced God to calm down, but then lost his mind with anger when he went down the mountain and saw for himself what the people were up to.
He smashed the stone tablets upon which the finger of God had written.
He ground up the golden calf, put it in water, and made the people drink it.
And then he went back to God and basically said, “I hope you’ll forgive them, but if not, just get me out of here.”
And God said something like, “I’m not gonna lie. This is a really big deal, but I’m not giving up on my people..”
“Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf…” (Exodus 32:35)
By now you’re probably thinking, “Good Lord, Pastor, couldn’t you just tell us one of those stories about Jesus today instead?”
I will. We’ll get there. But first, as wild as this story is, we really do need to deal with the Golden Calf.
Maybe the way to begin is to note that while we call it the Golden Calf because of its association with this specific scene from the Bible, in the big picture, it really was just a golden calf, one of many such idols dotting hearts, minds, and religious landscape in that time and place.
All across the area that we call the Middle East, different cultures represented various gods in their pantheons as a bull or a calf.
Archeologists and anthropologists even have a name for this phenomenon. They call it “regional bovine cultic activity,” which is a great way to make worshipping a statue of a cow sound totally mundane and commonplace.
Usually, these gods were associated with thunderstorms, strength, virility, and fertility.
In Egypt–again–where the Israelites had lived for generations, there were at least three of these bull gods.
Now, did the Israelites think they were worshipping one of these Egyptian bovines? Maybe. Maybe not.
But were they mimicking habits and religious practices that they saw in Egypt or had heard about there? I think that’s clear, and I think that the impulse to reduce their extraordinary relationship with the God of the Exodus to the ordinary stuff of idols and revelry is the reason the golden calf inspired such a reaction.
That’s why the story ends with a plague.
God was warning the Israelites that if they wanted to eat like slaves in Egypt and worship like slaves in Egypt, then they were going to end up like Egypt, far from the path to freedom and renewal that God’s Covenant made possible.
The scandal of the Golden Calf is that it revealed the people would stick with something familiar, even if they knew it would hurt them, rather than take hold of that which was liberating, but unfamiliar.
The question for us is, “Are we willing to make a different choice?”
Are we going to continue with lifestyle habits that leave us tired and depleted and expect to suddenly start waking up in the morning feeling refreshed and invigorated?
Are we going to resurrect failed blood and soil policies from history’s trash heap and expect that, this time, they’ll actually lead to a better future instead of tragedy?
Are we going to run it back with ministry models and ideas that have left the Church irrelevant, undisciplined, and unable to make disciples who are so firmly anchored to the rock of Jesus, his love, and his grace that they can resist the popular siren songs of the age?
Are we going to leave behind the familiar, but harmful in order to embrace God’s liberating mystery?
Now here’s that story about Jesus I promised you.
In the course of his ministry, at the time when the crowds were really starting to notice him, Jesus issued a famous invitation, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
I don’t think anyone who heard that invitation had a golden calf slung over their shoulders, but I have no doubt that many had been carrying far heavier weights for a very long time.
Griefs and disappointments, anger and rage, worries, fears, regrets, broken hearts, broken dreams—Jesus has a way of seeking out people who have been carrying baggage like this for so long that it’s come to define how they see themselves and what others think about them.
It’s the kind of stuff that does nothing for us, but we can’t imagine ourselves without—like the way the Israelites dragged memories of slavery with them into the wilderness.
To weary and heavy laden spirits like these, Jesus says, “Put down those burdens, leave them behind, and let me help you stand up straight again.”
He said,
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)One of the hardest decisions people ever make is the decision to walk away from what’s familiar, even if they know it’s no good for them.
But Jesus says your freedom, your future–that you–are worth more than even all the gold that glitters.
So put down that burden. Leave it behind, and let him help you stand up.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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