Sermon:
October 10, 1999

Scripture:
Exodus 32:1-14

The story is told of a newly commissioned Navy officer who was quite proud of his accomplishments. He'd worked very hard to get to where he was, and he was feeling really good about it. In fact, he thought he knew just about all there was to know about being a Navy Commissioned Officer, and he really had reveled in the fact that now that he was on the top, all of those under him succumbed to his every wish.

One stormy evening as they were out in the middle of the ocean with the battleship, the Navy officer was walking the bridge and he noticed that there were lights from another vessel coming in his direction from out of the distance. And so he became concerned about it and called for his signalman. He asked his signalman to send a message out across the water to the other vessel. In that message, he asked him to say: "Alter your direction 10 degrees to the North." So the signalman sent the message out, and a few minutes later a message came back, saying: "Change your direction 10 degrees to the south." Well, the captain, knowing full well that he was in full rank, said to the signalman: "I want you to send another message out. This time I want you to say: `Change your direction. I am the Captain speaking'." Whereupon, they sent the message out, and the reply came back: "You change your direction. I am the Lighthouse speaking."

Some of us have an easier time than others changing direction in our lives. Some of us face it eagerly. Others of us drag our heels, even when it is our choice, or for our own good. Regardless of whether or not we welcome the change of direction in our lives, the reality is that we all face changes or turning points. Some of those changes might be changes in marital status, changes in jobs, changes in location in which we live, changes in family make-up due to a loss or a child growing up and moving out, changes in habits or in lifestyles. It is also a reality that in every change (whether we welcome it or not), there is a period of time known as that in-between time or that transition period which can often be difficult. And yet it is how we respond to these periods of time that are most pivotal to the outcome of the change.

Today's scripture passage finds the Israelites in one of those in-between times in the midst of change. Prior to today's passage, the Israelites have been pretty darned excited about the change. After many years of bondage, they are ecstatic about the turn of events that their lives have taken since Moses walked into the Pharaoh's palace with a stick that one day and began to show his power. Moses is their hero. He had freed them from their slavery. And since they've been following Moses around, they have seen great sights and had wonderful adventures ... the parting of the Red Sea ... the bringing of food from the skies ... and the bringing of water from a rock. It's been a pretty exciting trip. They have seen great sights and are eagerly ready to worship this new God that Moses is teaching them about. Yet despite the excitement and all the good things that have happened, today's text opens with a very disgruntled group of Israelites. In today's text, they find themselves alone. Alone in the wilderness. Moses is gone. Someone has said that he went up to the mountain to talk to God, but that was days and days and days ago, and he hasn't returned. And so they're really beginning to wonder: "Is he up in the mountain or has he sneaked off in the night and left them alone?" They're grumbling and they're fearful and they're questioning. "Was it wrong to trust Moses?" "Was it really such a good idea to leave Egypt?" "Did we make a mistake?" They even began to pick Moses apart, wondering about his leadership. And though they knew that life was terrible in Egypt, at least they knew what it was.

So, not knowing what else to do, and very much afraid of being alone, they grab for the familiar, the past, the known. What do they do? They go to Aaron, who is Moses' sidekick, and they say to Aaron: " I want you to build for us a golden calf." In other words, "We want you to give us back that which we worshipped before." "Give back to us what is familiar. For it was this that we worshipped when we were in Egypt." And wanting to fill up the frightening unknown, they get this calf built and then they begin to make all kinds of noise and party and rivalry in order to take care of their fears. But the scripture says that when God sees what the people have done, God decides God's going to destroy them. And God calls them a stiff-necked people ... meaning, to move in one direction while looking back over one's shoulder.

I want to pause for a moment to interject my own bias and gut reaction to this Scripture. I don't know about you folks, but I don't particularly like this passage in the Bible. I have never liked violence. I refuse to watch any kind of movies that have to do with war or shoot `em up and particularly I hate the violence against animals in movies and will not watch an animal beaten at all. I don't like violence in the Bible either. I was raised in one of those churches in which the minister pounded the pulpit and told us we were all going to hell unless we were forgiven of our sins. And I abhor the thought of a violent God. I'd much rather hold onto the image of God as a loving and caring God.

Yet, did you know that this is only one of over a thousand passages in the Old Testament which portray God in violent acts of punishment? And there are still one hundred other verses where God had someone else do the killing? In fact, violence is the most often-mentioned activity and the central theme in the Old Testament Scriptures. And so being a person who preaches the lectionary when the lectionary comes around, I found myself having to struggle with this text in order to the able to preach it. As I struggled with the text and the anger in it, it occurred to me that the text really centers around one climatic sentence. And that sentence being the one in which God turns to Moses and says: "This is a stiff-necked people. This is a people who are moving in one direction while looking over one's shoulder." Further study of what this phrase means leads me to believe that the passage is one which has something important to say to us, each of us, about the turning points in our lives and how we are called to respond to them.

So I invite us to go back and look at this story again. As I said, the passage opens with the Israelites grumbling. Why are they grumbling? Because they're scared. Because they are in the wilderness alone, and they're scared. They're scared of the unknown. They're grieving what they had. They are experiencing the lost ties of where they were. And they can't yet see what the future holds. And so that unknown and the aloneness makes them scared. Not knowing what to do with it, but knowing that it is terribly uncomfortable, they start looking for places to fault the change. Someone to blame. Something to blame. And when that doesn't work, they try to go back to what was. By asking Aaron to build the calf. Anything that they can do in order to get some sense of control and familiarity back into their lives.

Yet isn't it ironic that as much as they complain that God has abandoned them, it is precisely the wilderness which time and time again in the Bible is referred to as the place at which one experiences God. When we experience changes in our lives, there is a point at which we too find ourselves in the wilderness ... caught between what has been and what we can't yet see in the future. It is natural for us, like the Israelites, to panic, to look for places to find fault, to pick apart or to try to go back to what was in an effort to reestablish some central control and familiarity.

Yet I wonder. I wonder if the Israelites had simply waited in the quiet of the wilderness with their fear and their uncomfortableness what they might have heard and experienced. What might they have heard and experienced if they could have trusted to wait in the quiet and the unknown? But they don't do that. They push it away. They build a calf. They begin to make merry. The Bible says they reveled or they had an orgy. Isn't it interesting? Sometimes, denial can be very deceiving. And yet the reality is sooner or later, denial catches up with you.

I'm reminded, probably in my own anxiety of preaching this week before you, of the minister who went to a new church. And he was experiencing some of that anxiety. He was in that "in-between time," between having been in a church that dearly loved him and moving into a new church that he wasn't quite sure about, and they weren't quite sure about him. And not really wanting to stay in that moment of "in-between time," he decided that he knew exactly what he was going to do in order to get the congregation to be fully convinced that they would like him. He decided that the answer to that was to go and to visit everybody he could possibly visit. And then, on top of that, to write the most outstanding sermon that he had ever written before he went into the pulpit the first time.

And so he spent hours and hours and hours out visiting all of the people and hours and hours and hours of preparing the sermon. And he got up that Sunday morning, and he delivered the sermon. After the service he stood outside the door, and a woman whom he had visited that week met him at the door. She said to him: "You know what? You are such a warm pastor." And he thought to himself: "Ah, well, that visiting paid off well." Then she said: "And not only that, you're a model preacher." And he thought: "That's pretty good, too." So he went home. That afternoon he was thumbing through the dictionary and he looked up "warm." It said: "not so hot." Then he looked up "model." And it said: "a small imitation of the real thing."

Sometimes denial can be deceiving, but sooner or later it catches up with you. In this passage, God is not deceived by the denial that the Israelites are experiencing. In this passage while the Israelites are in denial of their fear and their anger, interestingly God acknowledges it and claims it for what it is.

Now from an early age, I was taught and I imagine you were, too, that anger is not an okay thing to have. To raise my voice, to talk back to my parents or to snap at them and slam the door was a good reason to give me something to be angry about. In many ways, many of us as children were also taught that God is a loving God ... one who is always right, who we should not question, who always has our best interests at heart, who is all-knowing and all-powerful and completely worthy of our trust, and if we don't trust God or if we are angry with God, it indicates a lack of our faith. Therefore we dare not be angry with God or our parents or at least we dare not admit it. Instead, we learn to hide it ... to stuff it ... to disguise it in such things as compulsive or addictive behavior, depression, anxiety or passive/aggressive behavior. We learn to displace it by taking it out on other people or things that are far removed from what we're really angry about. And such methods of handling anger, according to psychologists and marriage counselors, are among the main reasons that we suffer in our country so much divorce, domestic violence and abuse.

In today's passage, God, by God's own example, offers an alternative to the Israelites and to us who try to deny our grief, anger, fear and other emotions related to change in our lives. God demonstrates that to acknowledge our feelings, to own them and to move through them, is okay. And Moses' response to God's anger illustrates the promise of what happens when we really do acknowledge those feelings for what they are. Look at what Moses does. In response to God's anger, Moses listens and hears God's pain and acknowledges it. And then Moses listens and hears the Israelites' pain and anger and acknowledges it. And then Moses reminds both of them of their covenant with each other and appeals to God's mercy and faithfulness for reconciliation.

What does that say to us? Perhaps God's example reminds us that in the wilderness-like transition or "in-between" parts of our lives due to change we are invited to 1) acknowledge our feelings; and 2) to wait upon the one who promises to intercede and be present with us in them. That one being none other than Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. It is then, through him, we are empowered to move forward, not looking over our shoulder, but with renewed faith, purpose, vision, commitment and courage. May we call upon the one who intercedes for us in the midst of the changes in our lives.

Let us pray: Oh God, we recognize that our lives are full of turning points. Some are larger and more dramatic than others. Some are welcomed, while others are resented. Some are frightening, others painful, and still others exciting. But, whatever the changes, always there comes in them a point in which we find ourselves caught between what has been and what is yet to be. And these points can be lonely, frightening and disconcerting. Help us to recognize the importance of allowing ourselves the opportunity to surrender to the silent unknown ... acknowledging our grief or other emotions, and waiting upon your Holy Spirit who promises to be present with us and empower us to move with faithfulness, strength, commitment and renewed vision. In Your name we pray. Amen.