The Reverend Ellen Hill
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Lectionary readings
Whenever we have passages like the one in this morning’s Old Testament lesson which feature ancient Biblical characters like Moses and Aaron, it’s really easy for me to dismiss them and to convince myself that they have very little to do with our modern contemporary lives. That was my reaction the first time I read these lessons and began to work on this morning’s sermon. Frankly, my initial intention was to preach on the Gospel. You see, I’d just dismissed this lesson from Exodus which struck me a little bit like a second century B.C. soap opera.
Just look at the plot of this morning’s lesson. The Israelites are fed up! They’ve been wandering around in the wilderness for a long time. Moses has disappeared and hasn’t been seen for some time. He’s supposedly some where up on the mountain. So they approach his brother Aaron, who’s been sort of Moses’ first lieutenant, and they tell him that they’re getting tired of hearing the stories Moses has been telling them about his encounters with God. This unseen, distant intangible entity that Moses keeps insisting is looking out for them telling them to do this and then to do that. They’re sick of this God who doesn’t deliver. They want a god they tell Aaron like the gods of the other people around them. Maybe a god like the Canaanite god who seems much more accessible and accommodating. So they begin to lean on Aaron, pleading with him, “Come on Aaron, find us a god we can relate to. We want a god like other people’s gods. Who knows whether this brother of yours is ever going to show up again.”
And so, not surprisingly, Aaron does what we all do under enough pressure because I think that most of us basically dislike confrontation. We have a need to be liked and admired by the people we’re in a relationship with and I think that’s especially true when we’re in a leadership position. So Aaron begins to bend to the pressure.
The part of the story which isn’t in your lesson goes like this. Aaron says, “Okay. Look if all of you will take the gold earrings from the ears of your wives and your daughters I’ll make you a god like the gods of the people around us. So he takes those earrings, melts them down and makes a statue of a golden calf which the people then begin to worship.
In the mean time, God, who’s been in conference with Moses, looks down sees what the Israelites have talked old Aaron into doing and blows up. God tells Moses, “That’s it!” He’s says he’s through with the Israelites. “They’re stiff necked people” he says and he tells Moses to go away and leave him alone so that God’s wrath may burn hot against the Israelites and consume them! But the story doesn’t end there because Moses comes through and shows himself to be a great and courageous leader who demonstrates the profundity of his faith in God. He doesn’t back away in the face of God’s wrath even though God’s made it clear that he’s not holding Moses responsible for the Israelites disobedience. So Moses really doesn’t have to take God on but he does. He reminds God of God’s long relationship with the Israelites and he reminds God of God’s loving nature.
As a result of Moses’ arguments God relents and agrees to spare the Israelites. It’s a great story and there are a number of things that should make us realize that this is also a story about you and me as well. In the first place the story makes it clear that Israel’s existence is solely due to God’s grace. Nothing the Israelites have done has entitled them to be favored by God and that’s also true for us. Some of their leaders, like Aaron were fallible and couldn’t be counted on in the sense of making sure that they didn’t get themselves involved in activities which would bring disaster upon them. That’s also a reality to which we can certainly relate. And finally God, and God alone, is the one thing that is steady, dependable, faithful and always ready to forgive and to allow us to turn, yet again, one more new page so that we can start over. It’s Moses’ unshakable faith in God, in the face of God’s righteous anger, that enables him to save the Israelites. Moses trusts God and has confidence that God’s love and grace for the whole of the created order is something that one can depend upon.
Martin Luther once said, “If I were God and the world treated me as it has treated him I would kick the wretched thing to pieces!” What makes Moses so great is that he does what Aaron and the people were unable to do. What so often you and I are unable to do. Moses was faithful. He gave his devotion and worship only to God and he didn’t allow himself to be seduced by other gods or other idols. That’s an incredibly tough thing to do. In many ways I think that it’s really the central dilemma of our times.
It’s tough to be faithful to an unseen God. It’s hard to give sacrificially of ourselves and our possessions to that God and to follow the commandments we’ve been given. And the reason it’s hard is because idol making, exactly what Aaron did with that image of the golden calf, is a constant part of human existence. We all have idols. The things that we count on to protect us and save us. The things we know are going to sustain us. I’ve often thought that’s the reason that poor people, third world people, are so very often so much more devout that you and I are. God is all that they have. They don’t have the possessions you and I have. They don’t have the education that you and I have which may seduce us into a kind of secular atheism because we can intellectualize and explain all the things that humble people attribute to God.
Churches get sucked into the same kind of idol making and we do that by making things comfortable and being careful that we don’t challenge or confront any of your idols. The truth is that it’s tough as a priest to try to live into the Moses role when it’s so much more pleasant and so very much easier in the short run to play the Aaron part. And that’s especially true in the fall when most churches approach the stewardship season. It’s not fun to make people uncomfortable which talking about money in church inevitably does. Look how uncomfortable some of you got when Abel began asking us at the offertory to give generously to support our ministries here at Messiah.
It’s hard to get us to refocus and remember our story. That story which reminds us who we are and whose we are. The story that reminds us that God has called each one of us into life and God has also given each one of us a purpose. Again and again in our lives our God has delivered us, provided for us and loved us unconditionally. Our problem is that it’s so easy for us to be seduced by the other gods around us. Those gods in our culture which are infinitely more popular and far more commonly accepted than this old fashioned God of ours. Our faith teaches us that human beings have been created in the divine image and we’ve been bound to our Creator by a covenantal relationship which is blessed by the miracle of God’s grace in the power that is implicit in the possibility of forgiveness and new beginnings.
Here at the Church of the Messiah we are at a new beginning. During these next six weeks as we move through the stewardship season you’ll be confronted by things that are mailed to you describing parishioners stewardship stories and by preachers both lay and clergy who’ll share with you their stewardship witness. If we are honest we’ll admit that we all know that it’s imperative that we grow our pledge base if we are going to move forward under our new rector into another century of exciting ministry here in the city. We all know that we need a full time associate, that we need to care for this building which is such a treasure, and that we need to fund the ministries which enable us to carry on Christ’s work here in the world. We cannot bank on auctions which may or may not deliver large sums of money for our budget because auctions are dependent on whoever attends in a specific year and their willingness to bid on the items which have been donated. Our financial pledge base must be enlarged so that we can support the ministry we’re called to do.
What all of this means is that in the coming weeks you’ll be asked to look at your own life and to assess honestly where God and God’s work, as demonstrated by this parish’s ministries, is in your list of priorities. Do you have other gods you worship? Other gods who consume your time and your financial resources which may in fact be golden calves? Idols which draw you away from God. Talking about money in church always makes people uncomfortable and yet it’s what makes our very existence in the world possible. Nothing that you hear from this pulpit or read in the stories parishioners share regarding their stewardship witness will seek to make you feel guilty or put pressure upon you in any way. The only challenge which faces you is the same challenge which was placed before the Israelites. The challenge to ask yourself whether it’s God your Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer who has first call on your time and your money or is it other gods which surround us in our culture and are infinitely more appealing and popular than that old God of Moses.
As I finished working on this sermon I couldn’t help but think of one of Ted Loder’s prayers which beautifully reminds us of what this lesson and the coming weeks of our stewardship season try to teach us. Let us pray. O God of fire and freedom, deliver us from our bondage to what can be counted and go with us into a new Exodus toward what counts but can only be measured in bread shared, swords becoming plowshares, in bodies healed and minds liberated. In songs sung and justice done. In laughter in the night and joy in the morning. In love through all seasons and great gladness of heart. In all people coming together and a kingdom coming in glory. In your name being praised and in our becoming individual Alleluias through Jesus Christ..our Lord. Amen
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