15th Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 32:7-14
The small snippet of Exodus here is probably pretty easy to preach on. God sees sin, is incensed by it, but willing to listen to reason and repent of plans for destruction when Moses brings up the fact that a promise was made. Reading the rest of this section of Exodus (chapters 32-34), however, is really hard. Some of the hard stuff:
- The religious professional Aaron goes along to get along, melting down
gold, declaring a festival and generally just keeping the people happy until
he can hand off the congregation to the senior pastor again. When called
to account, he says first, "You know how evil these people are" (32:22) and
then about the idol he says, "I threw [their gold] into the fire and out
came this calf" (32:24). Way to take responsibility, Aaron.
- Moses is a nice guy in the lectionary piece, but then when he gets to the
foot of the mountain, he exercises the very wrath that God was able (for
the moment at least) to repent of. He incites a civil war, ordering those
who are "on the Lord's side" to "Put your sword on your side,
each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and
each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor" (32:27).
- God does repent of the impulse to wipe out the Israelites, and God renews the covenant in chapter 34, but on the way to that renewal, God still "shares the wrath" a bit. The Lord says, "Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book" (32:33) and to keep that promise, the Lord sends another plague (32:35), not on the Egyptians this time, but on his own people.
I know I wouldn't have done any better as a leader—or perhaps even as a follower—on that way-too-long family camping trip in the wilderness, yet these details of the story are still really hard to read. I might just avert my eye from these parts of the story, but then I remember something Diane Jacobson has said about the Old Testament: how odd it was for the Jews to keep telling stories that showed their screw-ups in living color. Grafted into Israel, we have joined a people who have practice telling the unvarnished truth about ourselves, our leaders and even our not-always-easy-going God.
Recent Comments