The first edition of the 10 commandments.
In last week’s homily I hinted that God had to have two goes at writing the 10 commandments. The first lot met a catastrophic end and this is how they came to be destroyed.
Moses goes up the mountain to get the 10 commandments and leaves Aaron his offsider in charge. It must have been quite a trek, or God had rather a lot to say to Moses, or perhaps Moses had rather a lot to say to God.
Suffice it to say, that Moses is delayed and is gone for about 6 weeks.
After all this time the people get twitchy and say to Aaron. “Come, make gods for us; as for this Moses, we don’t know what has become of him”
Aaron thought. Yeah, good point. .. What could possibly go wrong?
So Aaron says ‘Take off all your gold and bring it to me.’ Aaron forms a mould and casts the image of a calf. The people are delighted and say “Voila! This is our God who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.” Aaron throws a party to celebrate with burnt offerings and in a rather intriguing line ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play’.
Meanwhile, back on the mountain, God gets to hear about this and he is not happy. He’s been usurped by a hand-made golden calf. So he says to 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 worshipped it and sacrificed to it. Step aside Moses so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.’ I told you he was grumpy.
Moses goes in to bat for the people and points out to God that this would be bad PR.
‘Hang on a minute God…Why should the Egyptians say, “It was with evil intent that God brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce wrath God; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.’
So the Lord changes his mind and Moses goes down the mountain to sort it all out.
As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.
Then he interrogates Aaron.
Aaron’s response is a classic.
You know the people, are bent on evil. They said to me, “Make us gods, 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.” (So it's their fault. They came to me). So I said to them, “Whoever has gold, take it off”; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire and out came this calf!’
In other words, the people have always been a bit wicked, you were gone for such a long time (so it’s sort of your fault too Moses) and well .. the people whinged to me for so long and we just threw the gold into fire and Hey Presto, Abracadabra, out came this calf. You can’t argue with that… Can you?
There’s a bit more mopping up in this story, but I want to draw out the following points.
First, the inability or at least, the desire to sit still and wait patiently for the Lord is a very difficult thing. For some reason we expect God to be just as busy as we are. But it would seem that for God, not every day has to be crammed filled with action-packed miracles.
Secondly, remember this bit?
‘Moses took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.’
Just as we enjoy savouring the fruits of the Holy Spirit… love, joy, peace etc. we sometimes find ourselves tasting the fruit of our foolishness and the taste we discover is not at all pleasant.
There was an echo of this in a speech by President Kennedy in October 1962.
“We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth”
Thirdly, With Moses and the Cloud of Presence gone, the people craved a visible, tangible something. They also needed a place to gather, to offer worship and sacrifice.
Our ache for the physical, touchable, and seeable is fulfilled and finds its completion in, the incarnation. God giving his physical, touchable, seeable Son because he knows how fickle we can be.
And here at this altar once more, He gives himself in palpable, touchable, broken bread and wine poured out. He gives of himself not in a flashy golden calf, but in little defenceless things because only the fragile and the helpless and the feeble things meet us just where we are. It is this powerful self-emptying love that transforms us into Him, even as He is transformed into us, as He always was and always will be, forever and ever Amen.