Golden calves

This week's verses are Exodus 32:1-6:

When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Get up, make us gods that will go before us. As for this fellow Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him!”

So Aaron said to them, “Break off the gold earrings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people broke off the gold earrings that were on their ears and brought them to Aaron. He accepted the gold from them, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molten calf. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow will be a feast to the Lord.” So they got up early on the next day and offered up burnt offerings and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.

 

Here we have the classic story of Aaron making the golden calf to appease the restless people. His brother Moses had barely been gone a short while. To us, it seems ridiculous and inexcusable to create a Canaanite idol and worship it, when God has explicitly told us not to make and worship idols.

But put yourself in Aaron's shoes and you can find yourself sympathizing: Your brother is away for a bit longer than usual. You don't know if he's coming back. You're in a comfortable leadership role in your community. And people want some religious customs like they've seen in other communities so that they can feel at home. So you give them what they want in order to keep them around, right? You can still call it Christianity or whatever, even if it's something else.

This is a pattern that repeats throughout history. We are given a period without revelation and in the restless silence we "innovate." Maybe we introduce some pagan rituals. Maybe we water down our morality with something else. Maybe we just play down the whole Jesus thing and make it a sort of social club for folks who want to be seen as good people.

At no point did Aaron deny his faith with his words. He still talked about celebrating the Lord. But despite his words, it was his actions that betrayed him. 

 

He wanted to keep the numbers and make the people feel welcome and comfortable. That part was noble. The problem was that he wanted it more than he wanted to honor God by obeying the command not to make and worship idols. That part was wickedness.

We do this in our own lives too sometimes. We replace Christianity with going to church. We replace our daily obedience to God's commands with a weekly ritual, as it God only lives in the church building and we're visiting him the way we might visit our senile grandma at the nursing home, because it's the nice thing to do. Or maybe we trade out our Christian morality for the moral fashions of the world around us.

Aaron's actions, and the actions of the Israelites who followed him, make God angry enough to kill them all. They have abandoned Him.

 

They never wanted him in the first place. They just wanted religion. If it wasn't for Moses interceding the way Jesus intercedes for us, they would have all been destroyed.

So, what's your golden calf? What liturgy have you introduced into your life to reassure yourself of your goodness apart from God? What moral habits of the world have you adopted that conflict with what God requires of us? God has no place for other gods, and he has standards for how we live. Get rid of your golden calves and turn to God only.