Pentecost 19 (NL3) John B. Valentine
Exodus 32:1-14 October 11, 2020
“IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME .....”
On the short list of the most-haunting phrases in the whole of human history is this one:
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
+ + + + +
Seriously! From my own personal history ... I’d put down:
• Going down to the local church parking lot with one ‘68 Chrysler New Yorker ... two skateboards ... two so-called ‘friends’ ... and two water ski ropes tied to the back bumper of said car. What could possibly go wrong???
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
• Or maybe with the yahoos in my scout troop while at beach camp ... tossing a mostly empty can of lighter fluid directly into a bonfire just to see what might happen. Again ... what could possibly go wrong???
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
But it’s not just adolescent boys who make decisions like that ... no ... sometimes major corporations make those sorts of choices as well!
• Just ask the folks at Kodak ... who were the first to develop the technology not only for digital cameras ... but for what would ultimately become the cell phone. Instead of taking that technology and running with it ... those folks decided to sit on their new developments ... because they saw these digital technologies as a threat to their existing product-lines.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
• Or maybe the folks at Blockbuster Video who turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix for a mere fifty-million-dollars back in 1998 ... a company that is now valued at over two-hundred-billion-dollars last I looked. Any of you darkened the doors of a Blockbuster lately???
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Or maybe from the annals of history ....
• The Ratification of the 18th Amendment banning the manufacture, sale and transport of intoxicating beverages in these United States at the urging of the Temperance Movement ....
• Or Mao Zedong’s so-called “Great Leap Forward” for Communist China back in the 1950’s ... which resulted in the death of like forty million Chinese citizens ...
“They seemed liked good ideas at the time.”
• Or that stolen kiss at the office party ...
• Or that fifth glass of wine before a short drive home ...
• Or that honeymoon which the couple whose marriage I officiated at last weekend took to Cancun during the height of the hurricane season ...
“They seemed liked good ideas at the time.”
+ + + + +
Suffice it to say ... the human capacity to make poor choices can fill volumes.
But I suspect FEW of those ideas seem as bereft of wisdom as that lesson which Karen read for us just a could of minutes ago.
You see ... this week’s Bible reading came from the Book of Exodus ... that book we spent the summer walking through.
And this story from Exodus 32 comes:
• After God calls Moses to help let God’s people go .... and
• After the plagues and the Passover and the miracle at the Red Sea ... and
• After the initial wanderings in the wilderness and the Ten Commandments and all.
Speaking of which ... do any of you perchance remember just WHAT the first of those Ten Commandments was and is?
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”
And the second one?
“You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”
Those two are fairly clear ... aren’t they?!?!?!?
But what happened in the lesson we just read?
Moses is taking a little longer up talking to God on the mountain than the people initially anticipated ...
And the people seem to be getting a little bit restless ... they start to worry ... and then somebody comes up with the idea to make some gods of their own ...
• And that idea becomes a groundswell ...
• And that groundswell becomes a protest movement ...
• And ... soon enough ... it percolates up all the way to the top of the org. chart!
Such that “the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, ‘Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’”
And Aaron ... Moses’ own brother ... says “What a good idea! Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to this new Lord.”
And they rose up early the next morning ... and they offered burnt offerings to this golden calf ... and they sat down to eat and drink ... and rose up to revel!
To which I can only say ... "It must have seemed like a good idea at the time."
Because ... as the story continues ... it becomes painfully clear that ... whereas there are lots of times in the Bible wherein God says that God is ready to disown this stiff-necked people ... this is the spot wherein God actually DOES disown God’s people ... until Moses argues him out of it!
That were it NOT for the forgiving grace of God ... that this WOULD be the end of the story.
+ + + + +
Actually ... all of those "It seemed like a good idea at the time” stories that I referred to earlier ...
In hindsight ... what do they make us want to say?
Perhaps “How could they be so stupid?” ..... no????
And in this story from Exodus 32 ....
Do we not find ourselves saying “How could they be so stupid?” .......
But whereas hindsight is most often accompanied by 20/20 vision ... along with the awareness that leads us to wonder “How could they be so stupid?” ... we don’t much seem to learn!
For we may not actively be taking our silver and gold and melting it down to become statues that we in turn worship ....
We HAVE nonetheless mastered making golden calves by putting our wants, our needs, our thoughts, our dreams in place of those of God!
+ + + + +
I mean ... I did a Google search earlier this week ... asking the Internet what it was that “we have made an idol out of” ... just to see what I might get back.
And the results are pretty telling!
According to Google’s search engine:
• We have made an idol of progress.
• We have made an idol of freedom.
• We have made an idol of success.
• We have made an idol of our military.
• We have made an idol of our families.
• We have made an idol out of our past.
• We have made an idol out of one or the other of our political parties.
• We have made an idol of science and education ... of democracy and celebrity.
• We have made an idol of our own opinions.
• We have made an idol of money.
• We have made an idol of the Bible.
• We have made an idol of tolerance.
• We have made an idol of youthfulness.
• We have made an idol of our children.
Which ... to my ears ... is mostly a reminder not that Google is so smart ... but that we ... as in ‘all of us’ ... are still in the business of making golden calves all these years later.
+ + + + +
But ... somehow ... while we’re down here engrossed in the calf-making business ...
Moses is up on the mountain ... arguing with God ... arguing ... pleading ... praying ... working to put things right:
“You have every RIGHT to be angry, Lord .... But turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.”
“And ... instead ... remember the promises You made ... “How you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’”
In fact ... it would appear to be this very story that Luke alludes to when he recalls ... in the middle of the crucifixion narrative ... that Jesus said “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
For ... even today ... the only effective remedy to our stubborn insistence on selfish behaviors is forgiveness ... is grace ... is a God who will do for us what we are unwilling ... and ultimately unable ... to do for ourselves.
You see ... by virtue of our very nature ... we humans are capable of doing some unbelievably stupid and prideful things.
And we are incapable of living into the call of the very commandments which God and Moses were setting in stone up on the mountain.
And the only remedy to that reality is the grace and forgiveness of God.
+ + + + +
There is no eluding the fact that we live in a world which ... in many ways ... is not as it should be.
• It is broken.
• It is rife with sin and evil.
• It is filled with ‘golden calves’ ... some of our own making ... some of our neighbors’ making ... some of our society’s making ... some – I suspect – even of our church’s making!
• It is chock-a-block full of things which ... at the end of time ... we’ll look back on with 20/20 vision and say “It seemed like a good idea at the time!”
Rumor has it that there was this English writer and lay theologian by the name of G.K. Chesterton who ... back at the beginning of the last century ... was asked to contribute an essay to a journal on the theme, ‘What is wrong with the world?’
In response to the editors’ inquiry ... Chesterton allegedly wrote an essay which consisted of two whole words.
Chesterton’s response? “I am.”
You see ... Moses was right.
• There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t make another golden calf.
• There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t worship false gods.
• There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t need the forgiveness and grace and undeserved goodness of God.
• And there isn’t day that goes by that God doesn’t give us far more than we either desire or deserve!
Thank God that God remembers God’s promises even when we don’t!
