Pentecost 19 - Oct 7

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

People always say, “don’t love anything that can’t love you back.” Well, I have a confession. I’ve got an unnatural love…of books. Call me a nerd, but if there is one thing that you could accuse me of worshiping other than God, it is a good book.

And let’s be clear about this, I’m not just talking about any quick love affair with books. I’m talking about full-blown, over the top obsession. If you’ve ever been in my office here at church, you’ll see an entire wall full of books. And that’s only about half of the books that I own. Big books, small books, old books, new books, I love them all. And I love to read them.

There are days when you can’t get my attention because I’m lost in the pages of a paperback. And don’t even get me started on when the books I’m reading happen to be not just one book, but a series of books.

Books are my golden calf, like the Israelites in today’s lesson I have my very own, self-made miniature god of my own design. For some, it’s the Vikings; for others it’s the next latest and greatest technology. For me, it’s books.

When God led the Israelites out of slavery and sent Moses down to them with the Ten Commandments, the Israelites thought God’s laws were good for a while. But then Moses went back to God and the Israelites got worried he wasn’t coming back. So, they decided they’d better make their own god: a golden statue of a little calf; something to worship, something other than God.

The Israelite’s very first commandment, to not have any other gods except the one, true God, was broken in the first 20 minutes after God gave them the commandments. This is the story of humanity. We won’t let God be our God. Instead, we have to make our own.

And we love to design our own gods. Americans especially love this. We live in a Burger King culture: “have it your way,” is the slogan. We design, we create, we shape everything to our own purposes, our own designs. We’re so good at it, in fact, that we start to create little golden calves, little gods, out of the very things we create. Human ingenuity is great for a lot of things, especially when that ingenuity is put toward serving the good of others. But, we also like to put a whole lot of energy into things that serve only us and suit our own fancy: iPhone, iPad, iPod. We like things especially we they are me, my, and mine.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about how my life would completely implode if I lost my iPhone. My life depends on my iPhone. At least that is the lie I like to tell myself.

You see, instead of letting God tell me whole my God is, I like to tell God what my gods are. The first commandment first comes is a pretty big promise, God says,, “I am the LORD your God.” With that first promise, God promises to be our God, even when we go about making our own. It’s only after the promise that God gives the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods.”

And how many of us has made a god out of a human tradition? Jesus called out the Pharisees when he said in Mark chapter 7, “You ignore God’s commandment while holding on to rules created by humans and handed down to you…clearly you are experts at rejecting God’s commandment in order to establish these rules.”

One of the greatest sins of the church today is that it looks at its human traditions and rules and forgets that these are not God’s rules, but our own. We’ve created them. We hold on to them. We worship them. It is a sorry state of affairs when we do so, too, because God has given us the commandments, and he put the first one first for a reason.

So this whole business about creating other gods or designing gods to suit our own fancy is an important one. We are addicted to it, we think it will save us, we try desperately to cling to all these other false gods that we hope will give us what we want. But what we want is never what we need.

In our lesson for today, Moses was going up to have another chat with God, just after God led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and then sent Moses down from the mountaintop with the Ten Commandments. As Moses did so, his trusty sidekick Aaron was stuck with the grumbling Israelite people, he was the man in charge. But as any good pastor knows, you’re never in charge when you’re the pastor J

Aaron watched the people as they quickly turned from their one, true God and worshiped some other god that they could design. They pulled off all their gold jewelry and told Aaron to make them a little statue of a calf. After all, that’s what all the cool kids in town worshiped. They should worship something like that, too.

The people turned to something they could see. Forget this invisible God who sends us laws to follow, we want a god who we can see; we want something we can touch, something that we can make with our own two hands and with our own gold. We don’t want God, we want a god; a god among many gods who we can manipulate.

And when God finds out about the Israelites and their little golden calf he calls up Moses and does what any frustrated parent of an unruly bunch of teenagers would do. God says, Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'"

This is how it works in our house, too. When we get frustrated with the kids, Katie or I will call each other up and say, “come and see what your kids have done!” You can’t hardly blame God for the reaction.

But thankfully the Israelites have someone who can stand between themselves and the wrath of God. Moses himself steps in and reminds God that it was God’s people that God brought up out of the land of Egypt. Moses intercedes for the people. He makes a plea on their behalf, that God would not be angry, but instead remember his promise to make them a great nation.

And just as Moses interceded on behalf of the Israelites, so we too have our own intercessor. In all our golden calf making, in all of our attempts to have it our way, we have someone who intercedes for us, who pleads for our lives before a God who has every right to be angry with us. We have God’s only Son, Jesus Christ who pleads for our lives.

And not only does he plea for our lives, Jesus Christ has actually wiped clean our sinfulness. It is as though God has never seen us as people who worship other gods.

Of course, this is what baptism is for. As we hear over and over and over again, Jesus Christ has come to us, forgiven us our sins, and welcomes us into eternal life with a promise. A promise that God will not deal with us by his wrath, but by his love. And he will be gracious to us and grant us a gift. In baptism, we first receive this gift and this morning little Brooklyn is given that great gift of forgiveness and welcome. 

Thanks be to God. Amen!