Smitten? Exodus 32:1-14, 10/15/23
Smitten?
Exodus 32:1-14
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 these from them, formed them 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 a 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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Do you remember being a teenager? Those awkward years when you aren’t exactly a child anymore but you’re not quite an adult? Do you remember testing the boundaries—the limits placed on your freedom because of your not-quite-adultness?
I was a pretty good kid, but like a lot of teens, I enjoyed testing those boundaries from time to time. So one evening at the age of 15 (not yet at legal driving age), I found myself home alone—Dad was at work and Mom was out with a friend, her car in the garage. This was way too easy! Home alone. Parents not expected back for a few hours. Car in the garage with the keys in it. So I called up my friend Beth and told her I’d be picking her up in 10 minutes! And so I did! Grand theft auto, teenager version. I picked Beth up, and we did what all the cool kids did in my town: we cruised from McDonald’s to Burger King and back again.
When I read about the Israelites in this story from the book of Exodus, I can’t help but think about them like teenagers. Moses has stepped out for a bit, and they just can’t help themselves. They feel compelled to test the boundaries of their freedom without Moses there to supervise them.
Where is Moses, by the way? He’s up on Mt. Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments from God. And do you remember the very first commandment? “I am the Lord your God; thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
And what’s the very first thing the Israelites do when they realize Moses isn’t there to babysit them? They create a god. The 2.4 plus million Hebrews collect their gold jewelry, undoubtedly including what they had plundered from the Egyptians before their escape, they brought their golden jewelry to Aaron, and they built a golden moo cow. Then they made sacrifices to the moo cow, because I guess golden moo cows need that? And they had a great celebration worshiping the moo cow god they fashioned with their own hands.
Now let’s pause right here, because I think it’s easy for us to look down our noses at these ancient people and their moo cow god. We’re far more refined, far more erudite than these ancient people, right?
Not so fast.
The word “worship” means simply to ascribe “worth” to something. We human beings are wired to worship. We are meaning-seeking creatures, therefore, we assign value or worth to lots of things: items, people, ideas, causes, money, health . . . and the list goes on and on. If you want to know what someone worships, you could take inventory of how he or she spends their time and how they spend their money. Our calendars and our bank accounts are tell-tale signs of what we find to be “worthy” or valuable.
Taking this train of thought a step further, I started to wonder how most people spend their time and money. Here’s what my internet sleuthing revealed:
· The top three monetary expenses for Americans? 1) housing, 2) transportation, and 3) depending on how you track it, it’s either insurance, pensions, healthcare, or food.[1][2]
· The top three ways Americans spend their waking hours? 1) working, 2) leisure, 3) household activities.[3]
Americans may not worship a golden calf, but how different, really, is our relentless pursuit of the “American Dream?”
This is the question a former student of mine, Rev. Dr. David Platt, asks in his New York Times bestselling book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream.
“What is Jesus worth to you?” he asks. He points out that “it’s easy for American Christians to forget how Jesus said his followers would actually live, what their new lifestyle would actually look like. They would, he said, leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily. But who do you know who lives like that?” he asks. “Do you?” He asks his readers to “consider with an open heart how we have manipulated the gospel to fit our cultural preferences.”
Would you agree with that premise? That we “have manipulated the gospel to fit our cultural preferences?”
I think he may be onto something. When I think about it, I wonder if we’re really that different than these ancient Israelites, worshiping a golden calf.
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So there I am, driving around in my mom’s diesel-fueled Buick, Beth in the passenger seat, blasting out Duran Duran with the windows rolled down, checking out all the hotties between Burger King and McDonald’s and back again.
Freedom is fun! Now I was smart enough to keep an eye on the time, to make sure I got home before my mom arrived from her outing. So I dropped Beth off at her house, pulled into the garage, set the radio station back to a reasonable volume on the country station, removed all evidence of my crime, and went inside. Can you guess what I found? There was my mom. She. Was. LIVID! I was certain she was going to kill me. And if she didn’t, my dad would.
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So there were the Israelites, dancing and drinking and having the most fun since Egypt with their shiny new golden moo cow. Now, they know the rules. They’ve already been told the Ten Commandments. But Moses isn’t there! Who’s going to enforce the rules? Like rebellious teens throwing a raucous house party when the parents are out of town, the Israelites are having a big ole’ time as they actively break the first and most important commandment: “no other gods.”
Now, the next part of the story is fascinating. God tells Moses to go down from the mountain because the people have made a golden calf. God tells Moses that God plans to unleash wrath, that it will “burn hot” against the people.
And like a mom and dad debating over how to handle a rebellious teen, Moses and God debate how to handle the Israelites. God is hot; Moses attempts to calm God down. “Turn from your fierce wrath,” Moses implores God. “Change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.” And you know what? It worked! At Moses’ urging, God changed God’s mind. But if you continue reading, it’s not so clear. Either God changes God’s mind once again, or Moses enacts his own sort of vigilante justice against the people. Moses calls together men from the tribe of Levi and tells them to kill their brothers and their sons and their neighbors. We read that 3,000 men are killed that day in a massacre. In the last verse of the chapter, we are told that (in the NASB), “The Lord smote the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made.” (Exodus 32:35)
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“The Lord smote the people.”
This is the kind of language that often turns people off the Old Testament. And I get it.
“The Lord smote the people.”
I have heard it said, and maybe you have too, that “the Old Testament God is a violent God.” “The Old Testament God makes it a sport to go around smiting people here and there.” (And there’s no better word to convey this idea than the word, “smite,” am I right?)
Let’s ponder this idea for a moment. Do you think God’s nature changed at some point in the intertestamental period between when the Old Testament was written and when the New Testament was written? Or did human understanding of God’s nature change? I suggest it was the latter.
Here’s the thing about human nature and our God-conception—while few of us have fashioned god from golden calf—most if not all of us have fashioned god in our own image.
A violent people fashion a violent god. A loving people fashion a loving god. This is and has always been the case. We humans attribute horrific human atrocities to God’s will, God’s design, God’s punishment, God’s sport of “smiting” us when we make a mistake.
This . . . creating God in our own image . . . blaming God for the worst of our human nature . . . THIS is what it means to “take the Lord’s name in vain.”
You could argue with me, and say, “Look! It’s right there in the Bible! ‘The Lord smote the people.’” To which I would say, “You’re absolutely right! And who wrote the Bible?”
People. People wrote the Bible. And what do people do? We fashion God in our own image.
I love how Anne Lamott nails this truth: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
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So when I got home from my rebellious teenage grand theft auto joy ride, there was my mom. Arms crossed. Livid. I thought for sure my mom was going to go “Old Testament” on me, that I was going to be “smitten” with the long arm of my parent’s law. And I suppose I was. I can’t remember. Was I grounded? Were privileges taken away? I really can’t remember. But I do remember this. I wasn’t killed. I wasn’t “smitten” by my parents. Whew!
Thanks be to God for mercy! For the mercy of loving parents and for God’s own mercy. Even when we take our freedom for granted. Even when we worship false idols.
Here’s what I want to leave you with today—I challenge each of us to consider who we believe God to be. Is the “god” we’ve fashioned a reflection of our own self? Have we fashioned “god” in our image? Or are we ever willing, ever ready for God to reveal God’s self to us? I pray the latter.
I close with a poem I’ve entitled, “Our Own Divine”:
OUR OWN DIVINE
Mirrored by our self-conceptions, we all craft our own “divine,”
Shaping gods in our own image, throughout the sands of time.
Angry, violent, ruthless people craft their angry gods above,
While hearts of grace and gentleness conceive a God of love.
To the violent, god is thunder; to the hateful, god is war—
Their godhead wields his vengeful deeds, spews hatred from his core.
With hands that tremble, eyes that dart, small men forge their mighty swords,
Convince themselves that God approves their bitter, hostile words.
But loving souls, whose wells run deep, their hearts both kind and pure—
They craft a God who values peace and love which will endure.
In sacred texts they see a thread of mercy and of grace,
A caring God who burns with love for every human face.
These ideas, like modern idols, in our psyches take their place,
We worship them in temples, mosques, and church, our sacred space.
It is rare for us to fathom, as we must from time to time:
Is our “god” in our own image? Or is our “God” Divine?
In our thinking, in our feeling, may we always seek the truth,
Not confine god to our image, a narrow, finite booth.
For the gods we make are mirrors, they reflect our very souls;
The myst’ry of Divinity? A vast and boundless whole.
[1] https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/personal-finance/articles/these-are-the-average-households-7-biggest-expenses/
[2] https://www.ramseysolutions.com/budgeting/american-average-monthly-expenses
[3] https://www.deputy.com/blog/how-americans-spend-their-time