This Empty Feeling

Exodus 32:1-4 NRSV

32 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, 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.” 2 Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 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!”

*********************************************************************

Timothy was in my very first Sunday School class of 2nd - 5th graders at Treasure Coast Christian Church in Port St. Lucie Florida..  And every time we read a story, like the story of Moses floating down the river in a basket, or David defeating Goliath, or Noah and the Ark, when I asked who the main character of the story was, Timothy would shout, “Jesus!”   I would have to explain that Jesus wasn’t in that story, that he would come along later in the book.  Timothy would always be a bit disappointed, because he really loved Jesus.

One of the problems we sometimes encounter is trying to lay our 21st century understandings on events that occurred long ago.  The Exodus began something like  3,500 years ago, and about nearly 1,500 years before the resurrection.  It’s hard for people of our time to wrap our minds around the way people thought, and especially, how they understood God in those days.  So we come to the story of the Golden Calf, and we try to understand why they would demand that a god be made for them.  Didn’t they understand that their God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, couldn’t be represented by anything living.  Well, no.  They didn’t.  They didn’t have the 10 Commandments yet. They didn’t know God had a rule about that. They didn’t know a lot about their God Yahweh because they had been under Egyptian rule for some 400 years.   One of the members of my previous church used to ask me all the time, “How could they forget about God?”  

If you are not taught something, you don’t know it.  It’s not like they had books. Frankly, we don’t know a lot about how Abraham and the other Patriarchs understood God, or how they worshipped God, or what they taught their families about God.  We do know that even Jacob’s wife Rachel felt it necessary to steal the god statues from her father’s home, so she obviously didn’t understand much about Jacob’s God.  We also know that for some 400 years the tribes of Israel were ruled by people whose gods were represented by statues and paintings.  So when they started getting frightened that maybe Moses wasn’t coming back - because he’d been up on that mountain a long time - it makes sense that they would want something they could see and touch and understand.  So Aaron had them give up all their jewelry, and from those offerings he made a figure in the shape of a calf.    Today’s reading cut off with Aaron presenting the calf to the people, and saying, “Here are your gods.”  It goes on to say, “When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.”   6 They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.”  The Hebrew word translated here as Lord is a word that is used only to describe the God of Abraham, not any of the other gods who are mentioned in scripture.   In their minds, this calf is the representation of their God, the one that Moses was talking to.  Here is a figure to adore, and to make sacrifices in front of, and celebrate over.  This is what they were used to, so this is what they wanted.   They were shocked (and terrified) when Moses came back with the word that God was angry with them.  “But, Moses, we’ve always done it this way.”   Well, Israel, it’s time for something new.

What they did have, which is very clear from this passage, is a need for God.  In our Wednesday Bible Study we were talking about the practice of the ancient Greeks of putting an altar to The Unknown God in their temples.   Our assumption is that they knew something was missing from their pantheon of gods, so they always included this one that they didn’t know.  We talked about how that indicated that they had an empty feeling - a God shaped hole - within them that needed to be filled, and that the gods they knew weren’t sufficient.  

So the people of Israel cheerfully gave up their golden earrings - the accumulated wealth of their family - so Aaron could make the calf.   They literally gave it up for God.  They were happy to donate what had taken possibly years to acquire, in order to have a god, in order to fill that empty place inside of them.   They gave cheerfully, and selflessly, and worshipped this God they didn’t understand the best way they knew how.  How were they to know this is not what God required of them?  (They weren’t.  No one had told them yet.  Moses was still on the mountain.)

What is this empty feeling?  Even those of us who are Christians and belong to a church and show up for worship services regularly and tithe and do all that stuff,  still sometimes find ourselves grappling with that empty feeling.  Sometimes we try to fill it with stuff - with food or spending or activities or people or exercising.  Sometimes we try to fill it with volunteering.  We believe ourselves to be giving selflessly, giving of ourselves with no expectation of reward.   

This week on Facebook my friend Frank Lopez started a discussion asking whether selflessness and selfishness were truly different things, or whether they were, in fact, the same thing.  His point was this - that even if we are giving of ourselves, our money, our time and talents with no expectation of recognition or reward;  even if we do these things anonymously so no one can possibly know who it was gave or did that good thing; we are still getting something out of it because, quite honestly, it feels good to give, to volunteer, to end the day knowing we have done something that will make life better for someone.   So, are we truly being selfless, or must we call these actions selfish?    I don’t have an answer for you.  We each get to grapple with that one for ourselves.  I will tell you though, that I don’t mind a bit selfishly enjoying the good feeling that comes when someone else benefits from whatever it is I have done.   

The people of Israel gave generously in order to have a focus for their worship - a calf.  It was the wrong thing to do, but the motivation came from that empty feeling they had, that God shaped hole within that required a focus for their worship, for their love, for their devotion.   

If I asked Timothy what was the important thing to remember from this Scripture lesson, I’m pretty sure he would have smiled and shouted, “Jesus!”  For Timothy, everything was about Jesus.   And he wouldn’t be wrong.  John Calvin said, “We ought to read the Scriptures with the express design of finding Christ in them.”   So where do we find the Christ in this passage?  

The people of Israel felt empty inside, alone, deserted by Moses, fearful and uncertain.  And because of these feelings, they reached out to Aaron, the brother of Moses, asking him for something that would fill that hole, that empty place.  They were in a hurry.  They didn’t know how long Moses would take on that mountain.  They didn’t know or trust either Moses or God quite enough to just wait, to just have faith that sooner or later they would receive what they need.   They were willing to give all they had to fill that hole, but they weren’t willing to simply wait for what they needed to come to them.   

If we would fill that empty space, that God shaped hole that comes to everyone now and then, we will wait.  We will have faith that God is there, even when we feel alone.  Even when we feel deserted.  We will remember that after centuries of living in slavery, God saved the Children of Abraham, and led them out of captivity.  And we will remember that after many more centuries, when the people of the world were still living in sin and solitude, God sent Jesus the Christ to teach and save the entire world, to fill that God shaped hole in all of humanity.  And because we remember these things, because we believe that Jesus is the Christ, we will wait for the right time.  We will be patient, knowing that whatever we need to fill that empty place will come, it will be provided by God, when the time is right.  And while we wait, we will continue to offer our gifts and talents to the Lord our God, so that they may be used in the best possible ways, to further God’s work in the world, bringing peace and understanding to our neighbors.