Word to the Wise
Thursday, March 6, 2008 - Thursday in the Fourth Week of Lent
[Exodus 32:7-14 and John 5:31-47]The Lord said to Moses, "Go down at once to your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved. They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, "This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt!"
One could get the image in one's mind that Moses is standing in front of an angry God with the bull-worshiping people down the slope on the other side, with God yelling, "Lemme at 'em! Get out of the way! Lemme at 'em!" Moses is pleading with God, saying, "Hey, don't you care what the Egyptians will say? They'll mock you and say, 'Some God HE is! We could have saved him the trouble!'" "What's more, do you want to be a promise-breaker like these stiffnecked knuckleheads? Remember, you told their ancestors that you were going to make them, and not just me, a great nation." God relents. Then Moses goes down and inflicts a rather creative and severe punishment. He grinds the idols into powder, makes a drink with it and makes the people drink the powder down! Hey! Remember! They broke the covenant with GOD and made a fool of Moses! They'd better be glad it was Moses who punished them! The pattern here is not much different from the pattern in Genesis. Humans get a notion that they can have their own way and create a God (or Gods) of their own design! In the case of Adam and Eve that God was themselves! In the desert, they decide that the absentee God up on the mountain with Moses is keeping them from getting on their way, so they decide what that God looks like, make a model of him, have a liturgical dance and proceed on their way. One can imagine that weak-willed Aaron began to cave in and gave them what they wanted. There are at least two warnings to heed here. Pastors need to be aware of the tendency of the "people" to want religion served to them according to their appetites or designs, and that these desires can, at times, be expressed in very threatening ways. Pastors and pastoral leaders also need to remember that the covenant relationship with God is of GOD's design and not the people's! Faith is not Burger King! We don't have it OUR way! We have it GOD's way or we don't have it at all! Creating a consumer-designed God is a recipe for disaster. Aaron is not our model here, Moses is. The lesson is for everyone, but for each according to his or her own role! AMEN
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