Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith
October 19, 2008
Golden Calf Cocktails Genesis 33:1-6, 12-17
I spent half the day yesterday trying to come up with a clever and humorous opening to the sermon, and I just couldn’t think of anything. I toyed with the idea of mocking the presidential candidates, but the late-night comedians are doing their usual satisfactory job on that front. Then I pondered whether I could find some way of twisting a stupid criminal story in the Press Republican into a lead-in, but I just couldn’t figure out how I could make a love-sick sex offender who stabbed himself to get a woman’s attention into an object lesson for the day. “Here’s my number; call me when you get out, lover boy!”
So after I went out for a walk to try to clear my head, it dawned on me that the story itself is clever and humorous enough without trying to complicate the whole thing. So here we go. You’ve all seen the classic movie “The Ten Commandments” by Cecil B. DeMille, haven’t you? The one where Charlton Heston played Moses, and how Moses led the people of Israel toward the Promised Land? As the movie comes toward a thrilling climax, Moses ascends Mount Sinai to meet with God and to receive the Ten Commandments, which would serve as a pivotal moment in the history of legal codes.
As you may remember, Moses ends up being gone longer than anyone had expected, so the people started getting restless. You know how hard it is to sit around with nothing to do. So someone got the bright idea that rather than just sit there and wait for Moses to come down off his high and holy mountain, they should move ahead. And the first thing they wanted to do was to make an idol of the god that had brought them out of Egypt. Never minding the fact that they had already been told that this was an extremely bad idea, and that God would find this to be incredibly offensive, they went to Aaron, the second-in-command, and told him what they wanted to do.
At the very moment that Moses is consulting with God about this elaborate week-long ordination ceremony whereby Aaron and the priests would be consecrated and ordained, Aaron is melting down jewelry so he can craft the idol that the people want. While Moses is putting the finishing touches on the extravaganza of celebrations for the ordination, Aaron is getting out the tools he needs to put the finishing touches on the golden calf coming out of the fire. And just as Moses is getting his stuff together to make his trip back down the mountain, a party is breaking out down below.
The party scenes might be some of the most memorable moments in cinematic history; I personally believe they were the inspiration for the party footage shown in John Belushi’s classic movie, “Animal House.” Mind you, this had to be one monumental party: Moses could hear their raucous singing half way down the mountain. So Moses comes fuming back into camp, where he’s greeted with some pretty wild and wanton scenes of people who have had way too much to drink, and he responds by dashing the stone tablets on a rock. In the movie, the golden calf then explodes, which is far more dramatic and interesting than the biblical account, which tells us simply that Moses burned it and made it into a burned golden calf cocktail which everyone had to drink.
Needless to say, the party mood had subsided by now, and people were no longer sick from drinking too much; now they were sick from the nasty aftertaste of the burned golden calf cocktail. When Moses goes to find Aaron to confront him for his role in the golden calf episode, Aaron’s answer is just as priceless as the sex-offender’s reason for stabbing himself:
Moses said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?” “Don’t be angry with me,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” Exodus 32:22-24
What a lame excuse! “I threw the gold into the fire, and the next thing I know, this golden calf pops out! It was like magic or something.” We probably shouldn’t be too hard on Aaron, though. It’s obvious that he was still under the influence, whether it was the booze or the gold talking, we’ll probably never know. From there, Moses gathers a group of devoted folks who are just as horrified as he was by what had happened, and they went around the camp killing the ringleaders, about three thousand people. That’s the problem with parties that get out of control: it’s always such a headache and a nightmare the next day, and the clean-up is a killer.
There’s another counter-plot to the story-line that Cecil B. DeMille overlooked, but our biblical author makes a special note of it. When God is meeting with Moses and sees what the people are doing down below, God gets fed up with them:
I have seen these people, and they are stubborn and rebellious. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you (singular) into a great nation.”
Any parent who has had to deal with a stubborn child who repeatedly gets into trouble can identify with God’s frustration: “Okay, I’ve had it,” says the one parent to the other. “I’m going to kill them, so you might want to leave now.” Fortunately, Moses was able to talk God down, but God was still pretty steamed. God tells Moses in so many words,
I’m going to keep my promise, so go on up to the Promised Land. I’ll send an angel ahead of you to clear the land. But I’m not going with you, because you’re a bunch of immature and rebellious people, and I might have to kill you along the way.
I know that this was way before the era of modern psychology, and people hadn’t been enlightened yet by years of psychotherapy like I have, but I find myself wondering if maybe, just maybe, Moses wasn’t quite tuned in to hearing God as clearly and accurately as he thought. What if, and this is a really big “if”, Moses was projecting some of his inner thoughts and feelings onto God? What if Moses was hearing his own frustration echoing through the voice of God? What if Moses was conflicted by his leadership role, and torn between his vision for what God could make of this people and the messy reality of the primitive yahoos he had in front of him?
What if there was a part of Moses that wanted to strangle these fools, and press forward to start over again, all by himself? Fortunately for them, Moses took the higher road, and struggled mightily to focus on the ultimate good for the largest number of people. But no matter how hard he tried, the temptation kept arising to make this all about him, and not the people he was leading. So even in today’s reading, God is still talking to Moses in the singular: My presence will go with you (singular) and I will give you (singular) rest. Once again, Moses has to focus on the vision, and not on the unpleasant reality in front of him or on his own narcissistic needs: Then Moses said to God, “If your Presence does not go with US, then do not send US up from here.” In other words, “if you’re not going to be there with us, God, then I’m not interested in going.”
All of which brings us to that aggravating question I’m always asking when I’m preaching: what does any of this have to do with us? The only reason it’s so aggravating to ask that question is that whenever I put it out there, I feel compelled to answer it. It would be a whole lot easier to preach pointless sermons, but that’s like sitting through a pointless movie or reading a pointless book. So let’s go back to the beginning, to the politicians who make such easy targets for our mean-spirited fun. They can’t help themselves: they’re mentally ill. No, really. Haven’t you ever asked yourself: “Who in their right mind would ever want that job?” Don’t you see? Nobody in their right mind would run for president, so the people who do run for president have some psychological issues.
As for the sex offender who stabbed himself in hopes of getting the attention of a woman he was interested in, he’s got her attention now. Who among us hasn’t done something foolish in the light of a flash of inspiration, only to realize too late that it was the booze talking, or that the flash was a warning sign of a psychotic break from reality? As for restlessness, I get restless sitting in traffic or plodding along behind someone who is driving way slower than the speed limit. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to help God out by taking matters into my own hands and pressing ahead with plans or ideas that fit into my long-term goals, but don’t necessarily come anywhere close to what God wants to see happen.
So I can see myself doing something rash when I’m restless or impatient to see something happen. And when confronted by someone who is angry over something I have said or done, my brain often slips into neutral, and the most outrageous things come out of my mouth. Has that ever happened to you? Granted, I don’t recall ever saying something as foolish as Aaron or the sex offender, but then my memory can be quite selective in terms of what it chooses to store in my brain cells. And our capability for trying to dodge the blame for our bad choices is monumental in its scope.
I’ve also discovered that when my anger burns hot, I prefer to think of it as righteous indignation. That way, I can be all the more smug about being right, and simply by inserting the word “righteous” into the phrase, I can even apply a veneer of holiness and godliness in being right. Every church that I’ve ever been in has at least one individual who vexes the congregation and tries the patience of the holiest of saints gathered in the holy glow of the stained glass windows. Fortunately, compassion usually restrains the urges, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked my compassionate conscience to step aside so I can smite someone with a holy blow. You may recall that the disciples wanted to do this at one point, literally begging Jesus to call down fire from heaven.
Like Moses, though, Jesus was able to move beyond his own narcissistic needs to continue striving toward the ultimate focus, which was to accomplish the greater good for the largest number of people. And so, like Jesus coming out of the wilderness after his time of testing, like Moses coming down off the holy mountain to be confronted with primitive and derelict behavior, we come together from the places where we have encountered God only to face the surrealism of what we call the real world. Day after day, we strive to hear a clear word from God, we strain to see the hand of God at work in our lives or in the lives of the people around us.
We struggle to maintain a vital connection to the God of Moses, of Jesus, and of the saints both ancient and modern. We pore over their words, hoping for a glimpse of the divine energy that infused them and generated the enthusiasm that seems to escape us. We agonize over our vision of what we believe God wants to do, and we want God to hurry it up so we can see it happen in our lifetimes. But like Moses, like Jesus, we constantly run the risk of wanting to make this divine venture about each one of us (singular).
The clear message, the difficult message, the message that both challenges us and inspires us is this: if we make it all about our own issues and ideas, then we will be no better off than our narcissistic politicians or your pastor’s pointless sermons. But if we can choose to focus on what will achieve the greatest good for the largest number of people, then miracles can happen. And that’s where I want to be headed. How about you?
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