The One True God
Pentecost 20 NL3
October 6, 2024
Our Savior’s, Faribault, MN
Exodus 32.1-14
God is angry and the word angry doesn’t begin to cover it. God is ticked off, mad, and decency prohibits other words that could express God’s anger. It hasn’t been long since God has liberated his chosen people from slavery in Egypt and parted the Red Sea so they could cross safely, preventing the Egyptians from following. Along the way, God has provided for their every need. The people have just agreed to a covenant, essentially what we now call the Ten Commandments plus other guidelines for living together. Then in just a few days the people replace Moses and God with a false image of that very God.
However, we need to understand that God’s people are scared. They’ve left the familiarity of the only life they’ve known, albeit an excruciating one. Now they number in the tens of thousands wandering in the wilderness. They are eating unfamiliar and rather uninspiring food (manna) on a day-to-day basis. There are enemies and wild animals all around, waiting to attack. Furthermore, their leader Moses has been gone 40 days, ostensibly chatting with God. They don’t know this God very well, and they’re not so sure about Moses either. They’re scared, and can we really blame them?
When you’re scared you do stupid stuff, and sometimes when you’re mad you say stupid stuff. The people are not yet a cohesive nation, more a collection of tribes. And though God is the God of their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they’re just getting acquainted with this God after a long absence and haven’t caught the vision that God has for them yet. So, they don’t exactly throw out God and Moses. Rather, they make an image, one that they can see and touch and bow down to. Unfortunately, Moses’ brother and right-hand man Aaron doesn’t have the backbone to deny them.
In hindsight and with 3,000 years of wisdom behind us, it is easy to judge the Israelites for their apostasy. But our story today invites us to consider those ways we do the same, if not as blatantly as the Israelites. We need to ask, how does our fear cause us to put faith in poor substitutes of the One True God? We know that possessions and leaders are not our saviors, but how do we do stupid things, trusting in things that don’t deserve our trust.
One example that concerns me and other pastors deeply is a growing movement called Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism is a complex phenomenon in our country, but essentially it is understood as conflating what it means to be a follower of Christ with being a citizen of this country. This sermon doesn’t have the wherewithal to go deeper than to express concern and invite you into exploring this. Pr. Drew and I would be willing to discuss this further.
Back to the text. I think that the reason God is so mad is that God is deeply hurt by the peoples’ rebellion. When we love deeply, as God does us, it hurts deeply when we’ve been betrayed. God’s declaration to Moses that he will “consume them” shows just how hurt God is. But, as some theologians point out, God’s command to Moses to “let me alone” also shows an openness for more conversation. And Moses shows us just how open and vulnerable God is, to love, to talk, and to risk being hurt over and over again.
Those of us who are a certain age have had the experience of riding in a car with our siblings and fighting in such confined spaces, especially on long drives. After a while, one of our parents would say, “Don’t make me come back there!” I’ve seen billboards that ascribe a similar sentiment to God as it says, “Don’t make me come down there!” Yet, we as Christians believe that God ultimately does just that in his Son, Jesus Christ. We believe God so loved the world that God has come down, not to condemn us and the world but to save it.
If you are in a scary place right now, know that God is with you, all evidence to the contrary. And if you wonder if God is mad at you, know that God’s heart is broken because of all the brokenness in this world, and that he sent Jesus to love us and show us the way to wholeness and healing. In a few minutes, we will have concrete experience of that love as Jesus again comes down to us in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. This is not an image of God but the One True God made present for us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
