- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Exodus 32:1-14

Harry Caray, the famous announcer for the Chicago Cubs, was a colorful and popular figure. He was the first to start the singing of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. When someone hit a home run, he would always say, "It might be… it could be… it IS! A home run! Holy cow!" The phrase "Holy cow!" was an important part of his vocabulary because it kept him from using profanity on the air. He was so well-known for the phrase that his autobiography was entitled Holy Cow!

After our reading from Exodus 32, we can imagine that his famous phrase was used long before Harry Caray. The golden calf of Moses' day was a futile attempt at having a real holy cow!

Our passage begins with an absent leader. Verse one says, "When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain…

Moses had scaled the heights of Mt. Sinai to meet with God. His absence, however, for over forty days caused great unrest and consternation among the people of God. The people of Israel were growing anxious. Like children whose parents are out of their physical sight, the anxious Israelites panicked, thinking they had not only been abandoned by Moses but also been abandoned by God.

The people depended upon Moses as a trusted confidant, leader, and friend. But now he had deserted them at the base of Mt. Sinai and they were afraid. They were riddled with questions: Would he return? How long would he be gone?

For what seemed an eternity, the people waited and wondered about their well-being. The insecurity in the camp hovered over them like a thick cloud. The most pressing issue was not the leadership of Moses. The issue was his absence. And in response to his absence they veered off the path of faithfulness.

The funny thing about leadership is that it's more noticeable when it's missing than when it's present. There is a scene in the film The American President when an advisor played by Michael J. Fox tells the president, played by Michael Douglas, that the people want leadership! He says, "In the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert to a mirage and when they discover there is no water, they will drink the sand."

One of the reasons our church is doing well just now is that we have excellent leadership on our Cabinet. Good leaders are stakeholders who conduct the business of the church with seriousness, but without conflict. They discuss matters openly, express their differences, then they reach consensus and everyone supports the final decision. That's the kind of leaders that we have and that we must insist that we always have in the church. I am thankful that we do not have an absence of leadership in our church.

Next we find that the people of Israel turned to a new leader and a new god. With great uncertainty that permeated the camp, the people of Israel turned to Aaron and demanded that a new god be formed. Verse one says, "…the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, 'Come, make gods for us…'"

The people of Israel needed the physical presence of their leader, Moses, and they desired the spiritual presence of their God. In their moment of anxiety, the people were willing to make an unholy substitution. They were willing to exchange Aaron for Moses, and a golden calf for God.

They were a forgetful and rebellious people. They were quick to assume that God had abandoned them, so they were willing to abandon their God so that they could create a god with their fingerprints upon it.

Our feeling of the absence of God is one of the most dangerous moments in our spiritual lives. It is not unusual to feel that God is absent, though it is most often that we are absent from God and not the other way around. There are many instances like this in the Bible when the people feel that their God has abandoned them, but feelings are not reality.

God never abandons us. God may be silent. God may not answer our prayers the way we want them answered. Life may not go at all the way we had hoped. But God is always there for us, undergirding every moment of our lives with love and strength.

Romans 8 asks, "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" Then Paul answers his own question by saying, "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Instead of trusting in the God who had led them out of Egypt, instead of waiting patiently when God seemed absent, instead of remaining steadfast in faith, they turned to their own gods - a god with handles - a deity on their own terms.

Verse four says, "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!'"

In the shadow of Mt. Sinai the gods were forged and an altar was built. The next morning there were offerings and orgies. It was an unholy episode for a supposedly holy people.

Golden calves are with us still, you know. There has problem never been a better time to talk about our golden idols than this time of economic crisis. Every seems to know that greed and deregulation are responsible for the economic meltdown. Extreme wealth has become the idol of too many people in charge of the financial markets. But the lure of easy money has filtered down to all of us.

While I am personally quick to blame the CEO's and executives who were in charge of the financial institutions who made the risky loans and put together loan packages without collateral, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek magazine spreads the blame to all of us. In last week's issue, he wrote:

"Since the 1980s, Americans have consumed more than they produced- and they have made up the difference by borrowing. Two decades of easy money and innovative financial products meant that virtually anyone could borrow any amount of money for any purpose. If we wanted a bigger house, a better TV or a faster car, and we didn't actually have the money to pay for it, no problem. We put it on a credit card, took out a massive mortgage and financed our fantasies. As the fantasies grew, so did household debt… The total has doubled in just the past seven years. The average household owns 13 credit cards, and 40 percent of them carry a balance…"

We have excused ourselves by saying that we are just making a living. We are claiming the American dream of materialism. We are even professing the capitalist claim that greed is good. But it has clearly gotten out of hand and our idolatry of materialism has come back to haunt us.

Did you even notice that when someone really makes a lot of money, we say, "They have made a killing?" Interesting phrase, isn't it?

Some people have turned making a living into making a killing, and it has had a very negative impact on hundreds of thousands of people. One lady in our church told me recently that her income had been cut in half by the downturn in the stock market. Those who made a killing by walking away with their multi-million dollar golden parachutes have taken their money from retired ladies in our church! Their golden parachutes were golden calves!

We've talked about golden calves and golden parachutes. I'd like to talk about Golden Dancer. A Broadway play entitled Inherit the Wind features a character named Henry Drummond who relates an incident that happened in his childhood:

"That was the name of my first long shot: 'Golden Dancer.' She was in the big side window of the general store in Wakeman, Ohio. I used to stand out in the street and say to myself, 'If I had Golden Dancer, I'd have everything in the world I desire.' I was seven years old and a very fine judge of rocking horses. Golden Dancer had a bright red mane, blue eyes, and she was gold all over, with purple spots. When the sun hit the stirrups, she was a dazzling sight. But she was a week's wages for my father. So Golden Dancer and I always had a plate glass window between us. But let's see -- it wasn't Christmas -- it must have been my birthday. I woke up in the morning, and there was Golden Dancer at the foot of my bed. Ma had skimped on the groceries, and my father had worked nights for a month. I jumped into the saddle and started to rock -- and it broke! It split in two! The wood was rotten; the whole thing was put together with spit and sealing wax! All shine, and no substance."

Turning to another character, Bertrand Cates, on stage, he says, "Bert, whenever you see something bright, shining and perfect-seeming -- all gold with purple spots -- look behind the paint."

In the play, Henry Drummond uses this symbol to convey to Bertrand Cates the importance of the search for truth and the exposure of people and ideas for what they truly are. But I want to suggest that golden calves are always made out of spit and sealing wax. They always offer empty promises. We climb the latter of success to get to the top only to discover that there is nothing there.

The Bible calls us to worship the one true and living God. It is a terrible thing when we exchange loyalty to the true God in order to create a god based upon our own desires. The consequences are dire and the lack of fulfillment makes it all the more futile.

Meanwhile, Moses, the old leader, was camped in the presence of God atop Mt. Sinai. Little did he know that his people had forsaken their God. It is astonishing to note that in one fell swoop everything sacred and holy within the people of Israel was forfeited.

God proceeds to inform Moses of the betrayal of the people. God's anger over the rebellion is kindled to the point that God wants to destroy all of the people, with the exception of Moses.

Verse ten says, "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."

Here is where a remarkable conversation takes place between Moses and God. Moses quickly resumes his posture as leader, for he engages God in an intriguing defense on behalf of the rebellious people. His defense is passionate and at times confrontational.

Verse 11 says, "But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, 'O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people…?'" Like Job, Moses has the nerve to question God!

Then Moses offers two arguments to try to change God's mind on this matter. First, he appeals to God's reputation with the Egyptians. He asks, "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’?" God had showed great power in delivering the people of Israel out of the hands of the Egyptians. What would it look like if God now destroys them? What would the Egyptians think of Israel's God?

Secondly, he says, "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.'" Moses reminds God of the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Surely, God would keep one side of the covenant even if the people had failed on theirs.

Then boldly, Moses says, "Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people."

And God listened to the reasoning of his impassioned servant. "And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people."

Remember that Abraham had also negotiated with God over the innocents in Sodom. "Would you destroy Sodom if I can find 50 righteous?" And then negotiated his way down to 10, which ultimately he did not find.

Here Moses clearly persuades God to change plans, and it worked. It is a reminder that our prayers do matter. God listens. God responds to our prayers. God changes. We should never underestimate the power of prayer.

The story of the golden calf can remind us to have faith when God seems absent, know that golden calves, golden parachutes, Golden Dancers are made of spit and ceiling wax, and our prayers are powerful enough to change God's plans.