Making Meaning in the Wilderness
Exodus 32:1-14
1 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." 2 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." 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took the gold from them, formed it 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!" 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord." 6 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. 7 The Lord said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 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!'" 9 The Lord said to Moses, "I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 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." 11 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? 12 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. 13 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.'" 14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
It’s taking longer than expected. So .much. longer. I don’t know how long I thought it was going to take, but whatever it was, we passed that point long ago. We stayed in our houses as death passed through. We ate the meal that was supposed to strengthen, sustain, and holds us together in connection. We escaped from one cruel master only to find ourselves in this vast wilderness of uncertainty and wonder now if we’ve made the right choices, whether we followed promises of life that can be trusted or whether it was folly.
He’s still not back yet. It seems nothing has moved at all. Do we keep waiting? Has this relationship gone sideways? Maybe he’s not coming back? Maybe we should try something else? Where is God? Where is Moses, our leader? Why is it taking so long?
God appeared to the people previously in the cloud and in the fire (Exodus 13:21; 24:16-18), and in the theophany of smoke, lightning, and thunder on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:16-19), but God has not been as visible or present since then. As Hebrews 11:1 says, faith is the conviction of things unseen, but the people reflect a deep human desire -- even a need -- for something tangible. And with Moses at a distance, the people want to see (a) God.
They ask Aaron to make “elohim.” Most English versions translate this word as “gods,” but it can also be translated as the singular noun, “God.” Are the people asking for Aaron to create for them other gods to follow, or are they asking for Aaron to make them a physical form of God? To make a visible sign of invisible presence?
The ancient Egyptians and the Canaanites also held images of a bull to represent sacred power. Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe some piece of that could still help them. Maybe it’s an attempt to hedge their bets, maybe it’s an honest yearning gone awry – good intentions that miss the mark.
I always thought the golden calf was an easy tie to the idols we create - the power of consumerism, white supremacy, tribalism, social media, or a litany of other addictions to functions as God over our lives. This big umbrella of idolatry is certainly one I fit under too, but it’s so big that I can also kind of conveniently distance myself from it. I know that I’ve thrown my own gold earrings into the pile, but at the end of the day my part melds indistinguishably into that of others that almost makes me feel justified in the whole thing in a “well, they did it too and my contribution wasn’t as much as theirs anyway” kind of thinking. But in this particular moment, I find myself with a little more compassion for the wandering Israelites.
Away from the traditions and landmarks we usually rely on for meaning and direction, we still long for something that will remind us who we are and what we’re about – as ourselves, as people of faith, as a community, as +KINDRED. We are wandering in a strange land without shared sustained laughter at birthday parties or baby showers, without the resounding applause and boisterous dancing that follow wedding vows, without hugging and holding one another as tears flow from worry or loss. In this wilderness we cannot hear the notes of one another’s consolation in the songs of lament at a funeral or linger together over the little pimento cheese sandwiches at the house afterward. As +KINDRED, without our communal tables and lingering together on the porch, around the dishwasher and in the doorways, without seeing one another in the flesh, witnessing and experiencing the glory of the vast diversity of Christ’s body among us…we feel disconnected from our own identity and purpose. I’m no Moses, but I can understand the challenge of the community still feeling connected to pastoral ministry that happens out of sight, and often without anything tangible to show for it.
Where is God when the physical presence and signs and people we rely on for meaning are absent? Who are we, who will we be when we no longer have the physical and relational landmarks that once guided us? Along this journey there have been milestones, stories, and experiences we haven’t been able to share or mark in the same ways and not only does it cause us grief, it causes us to question what matters, what we can rely on, who we even are. Perhaps it has us feeling both frantic and foolish for sitting at the foot of a mountain, expecting something good to still be possible. We’ve been betrayed or let down so many times before by the hollow words of leaders that we’re wary of more of the same. We long for something we can see and hold and have near, something that will save us from this feeling of being tossed like a falling leaf caught in the wind, or something that will allow us to feel anything at all.
So we try to cobble together meaning as best we can on our own. We throw our valuable energy into the yearning hope that one more episode, one more scroll, one more drink, one more purchase, one more activity or accomplishment…will either satisfy our longing for meaning or help us forget its absence, but in the end it is still a hollow mold.
The object of a golden calf isn’t the actual problem. In fact, the irony is that over the last 8 chapters of Exodus that represent the 40 days and 40 night that Moses was on the mountain with God, and while the people were yearning for a tangible connection to their identity, meaning, and belovedness…God was giving Moses written word on stone and instructions for a tabernacle made of gold that would be a way for God and God’s promises to be something they could see and hold and have near. God was all along working to give them what they needed as God’s people. Longing for such things, even creating such things and reveling in them isn’t what is perverse, it’s the ways in which we try to create such things APART from God that is turning aside from the way God commands and creates us. It’s the ways we strive to have God work on OUR terms and appear as WE would envision that reveals the stiff-necked way of empire still lingers in our hearts. I would chastise the Israelites from my moral high horse for their addiction to control if I didn’t have such profound empathy for the human propensity to control what you can when things feels out of control.
It’s what follows that not only reminds the people who they are, their beloved belonging, and what still deeply matters, but reveals who God is, the endurance of God’s promises even in brokenness, and their capacity to change everything.
We are created in the image of God who apparently reflects our being in feeling all the feels. There’s a little bit of denial when God says to Moses, “YOUR people have done this” as if they ever stopped being God’s people too. There is fierce anger and bargaining. God is showing signs of grief… for the deep sense of disconnection among the people, their identity and purpose which stems from their relationship with God. God is shown as feeling a complex mixture of emotions, but still ultimately none more powerful than love. This translation says that God changed God’s mind about the disastrous wrath, but the Hebrew reads better as “God relented of the disaster.” God releases this anger from taking up the driver seat. The relationship will certainly need tending to and repair, but God remembers that it is more than its worst moments. And so what is left? What remains more enduring than the hurt and its ripples? It is a love that binds us together beyond anything else. This is the enduring nature and promise of God.
It is not only for the sake of the Israelites that this love prevails, but also for their enemies in Egypt. This persistent love is not only a witness to this one tribe in the wilderness, but even to their oppressors. Not only for one people, but all people. It is the love that was promised generations ago, has continued through the ages, and guides the way forward when we’ve lost our way. It is a love that reminds and remembers us when we forget ourselves.
Things look and function differently than they did before, but God has not forgotten us. Even when things seem still and stagnant, God has not stopped working to bring about goodness that goes through our bones and life that grows even in desert places.
God has not and will not abandon us, but is still moving among us.
+KINDRED is still feeding people, body and soul.
You still belong to this holy family…not because of what you can cobble together or create, but because alongside the divine, we love you so much.
My prayer for us tonight it this: may we still yearn for the nearness of God, relent of our ways to push forward apart from God, and remember our enduring and sacred belovedness that reflects God’s being and movement in the world. Amen.