Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
The Person for the Job
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October 11, 2020, “Fearless Generosity: For Such A Time As This” series.
Text: Exodus 32:1-14
Ever experienced a moment when it felt like no one was at the wheel? Like you’re either stuck in neutral or careening toward a cliff with no one who seems to be there to do anything about it? Well, the Israelites are there. God is up the mountain and Moses went up there, too. And there’s not been a peep from them for forty days and forty nights. The Israelites’ response to this reflects a common human tendency when feeling powerless and miserable and faced with waiting and uncertainty and silence: they get impatient and fickle and make some seriously questionable decisions.
The Israelites—aided and abetted by Moses’s brother Aaron—decide they’ve had enough of not having things in their own hands, of not controlling the timeline and the journey’s itinerary. And so, driven by some perverse nostalgia and an even more irrational trust in the values represented by a golden bull—an image made of riches gleaned from the Egyptian empire—the people throw God over for a sacred cow.
Now just to be clear, the people have already received the 10 commandments (Ex 20); they have also pledged, on multiple occasions, with great gusto, that they will live according to the words God has given Moses. And, OK, it’s been a while they’ve been waiting—but likely not seven months of COVID isolation!—(I digress) Anyway, here they are in some ancient version of “burning man” out in the desert… perhaps thinking that their own wealth and creativity and ideas and the god they make for themselves will lead them into a future that is better than what that other God had promised. I can imagine this kind of conversation at the foot of the mountain: “That God is hard to understand. And this Moses—he seems to have done all he’s capable of. Whatever. And why did we think that God was so great again? Where is that God right now? And what has that God done for us lately? We’re the ones who’ve been doing all the heavy lifting. So our strength and vision and experience are enough. The gods made from our stuff, the gods that are familiar, the gods that can be held with a leash of our own imagination, are so much more predictable and manageable than the God who is free. Let’s make some golden gods and party!”
None of this is really that shocking. In fact, it’s all rather painfully familiar. How many of us have been tempted to worship at the altar of sacred cows—the old, familiar ways? How many of us get impatient with God and are tempted to throw God over? How many of us catch ourselves paying homage to the bull market and worshiping at the altar of the almighty dollar? How many of us or those around us pine with nostalgia for some illusory past in which we try to convince ourselves that things were better and easier? This is all very human and familiar—whether it’s the 13th century BCE or this seemingly God-forsaken 2020. No surprises here.
What does seem shocking in the story we receive today is that God is so ready to do the people in. But if anyone’s paying attention, this God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whose name is I am that I am and I will be who I will be, the God who chose to be in a love relationship with a people who were from the other side of the tracks—this God is passionate and perfectly free to feel all the feels… and often does! God’s first reaction is to disown his people (v. 7) and then proceeds to propose raining fire on the people, their party, and their gold statue and to be done with it. This God gets hurt and angry and disappointed and all the rest.
Good thing Moses was there. And Moses was there with God because, evidently, God knew who was needed as a partner in the relationship and in the work with this people. Way back at Horeb when God first spoke to Moses from the bush that burned but not consumed, God was clear that Moses was the person for the job. Perhaps it was because Moses proved he could hang in there with a God who hot as a firecracker, who had the capacity to consume things with fire, but refrained from doing so… Who knows?
That’s certainly what he does in this instance. In the face of God’s burning hurt and rage, Moses acts as the people’s advocate and as God’s advisor. On the surface, Moses appeals to God’s political reputation: “Do you really want the Egyptians to think you were just kidding about your love and compassion for the people Israel? Do you want the Egyptians to think you are a hypocrite, that you are evil?” But Moses is connecting to something much deeper. Moses says, “remember.” Remember those you have loved through the ages, those to whom you promised your presence, your providence, your love. Remember. Remember who you are.
A few weeks ago, I received my first ever topic request for a FaceBook Live “Ponderings from the Purple Parlor.” The question I was asked to address is basically “Why doesn’t God punish people who do harm?” or, as I boiled it down, “Why do good things happen to ‘bad’ people?” As I reflected on these questions, I was clear that it really comes down to what kind of God we have. What kind of God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Miriam, Esther, Ruth, and Jesus? As I’ve already shared, this God is passionate, sometimes burning with love and other times with wrath. And yet, the story we tell is that even when our God has been forgotten, ignored, betrayed, and defied, even when our God has to watch beloved ones do silly, selfish, cruel, destructive things, even in all that, our God doesn’t abandon or destroy us. And God doesn’t coerce or manipulate us. But really wants to be in a relationship—and for that to work, everyone has to be free to choose, free to give and to receive love and care. The God of our spiritual tradition may have moments of rage and disappointment and grief, but is—at the end of the day—compassionate and merciful, abounding in steadfast love.
And that is lovely when it means that we receive compassion and mercy. It is not at all emotionally satisfying when we look around at those who are happily worshiping their golden bulls and making themselves gods and living the high life, all the while defrauding the poor and demonizing the marginalized and using people as commodities and poisoning the earth.
And here is where I’m kinda stunned at Moses. Because notice that in the midst of the divine fit God says to Moses, “and of you I will make a great nation.” How tempting is that? After all, the people dancing around the bull in the valley have been blaming Moses for every little thing since they crossed over on dry land. And being the Patriarch of a great nation would mean enjoying the good things of life—privilege, wealth, and more. It could have been very emotionally satisfying at a certain level for Moses to see the people get punished by God for their lack of gratitude, for the ways they hurt him, for taking him for granted, for their fickleness and sin, for being so quick to forget.
But Moses doesn’t forget who God is. Moses doesn’t forget that God spared his life on more than one occasion, that God called him—a stutterer—to speak in the halls of power, that God knew he was a murderer and still honored him with a mighty task to participate in the liberation of those in bondage, and with an intimacy with God that gave him strength. Moses doesn’t forget who God is—a God who receives the cries of the suffering, who is gracious and merciful, who provides manna in the desert and water from a rock, who refuses to stand by while beloved ones are oppressed, who lifts up the lowly, and makes a way when there seems to be no way.
So instead of egging God on and cashing in on God’s pain-inspired offer to make Moses king of the castle, Moses—in a stunning act of humility and faithfulness—says to God, “Remember.” Remember who you are.
God must have known that Moses—even with all his imperfections—was the one God needed on that stretch of the journey for such a time as that time on Mt. Sinai. In verse 14 we are told that after listening to Moses, God “changed God’s mind.” The word here, vai·yin·na·chem, has echoes of repentance, of feeling sorry for something. God remembers what is true, remembers God’s own heart of love and compassion and how much the people have already been through.
In such a time as this, a moment of crisis on so many levels in our land and in our world, it is important to remember what is real and what matters most of all. Remember what kind of God we serve. For it is the image of that God imprinted upon all flesh. And it is the love, justice, and compassion of that God we are made to enact in the world. Remember. Remember that the awful headlines do not represent the whole of the human family. Remember. Remember how God has been gracious and merciful to you when you didn’t deserve it. Remember. Remember when God has brought you through and helped you cross over. Remember. Remember when somehow you had enough to get by when you couldn’t believe it was possible. Remember. Remember that God has called you and empowered you to be yourself in the world, to offer your strength and vision and humor and talent and brilliance and creativity and kindness to the great work of mending and making a more gentle world. Remember.
Remember that you are a part of God’s family and your family name is Beloved. Remember. Remember that you are the person God needs right now to step up, to serve, to give, to pray, to love, to advocate, for such a time as this. Remember. Remember that even when it seems that things are stuck or careening toward a cliff or mired in greed and conflict and violence and fear, God has promised to see us through to a place of new life and restored community. Remember. And then go ahead and throw a party, giving thanks for that God of ours who will never let us go.
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