The Two Ways: Idolatry vs. Mystery

Exodus 32:7–14 NRSV

7 The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 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!’ ” 9 The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” 11 But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, 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.’ ” 14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

I had a moment once, when I was up in the mountains, oblivious to the world around me, taken up by the beauty of God’s creation and processing a moment of great change in my life.

It was weeks before I would come up here to Bellingham, WA to attend Western Washington University as an undergraduate student. My father and my best friend from high school had taken a two night, last hurrah, backpacking trip into the North Cascades, off of Highway 2. We’d camped alongside a beautiful lake, explored the forest, and enjoyed each other’s company as we both prepared to go off to school and my father prepared to watch his son move out of the house. It was a sweet time, a time I still look back on with fondness.

And like Moses, there came the time to head back down the mountain. Our call was less direct than Moses’, simply time to head home. But as we wandered the single track down, the movement became more urgent. We happened upon some other hikers as they made the ascent into the woods, who stopped us and, with earnest and somber faces, asked us, “have you heard what happened?”

We looked at each other and then back to them, replying, “No, what?”

With some resignation, some despair, and some deal of outright confusion, the hikers replied — “It sounds like World War 3 is starting. Planes just hit the World Trade Center towers in New York City. There are reports that the Pentagon has been attacked. It’s all over the news.”

Needless to say, we hurried down the path to my dad’s truck, where we listened to the news reports all the way home that afternoon of September 11, 2001.

I’m sure most of us remember where we were that day. We remember who we were with, what it felt like to hear this shocking news, and the urgency we felt to know how to respond.

Other events strike us like this. Just this week, the world went into mourning as Queen Elizabeth II died, the longest reigning monarch in modern times.

Or I remember how I was sitting down at the Firehouse Cafe, just down the street, when we heard that Michael Jackson had died.

I also remember standing in my home’s entryway, halfway down the stairs of our split level house, when the chair of the St. James Pastoral Nominating Committee called to invite me to meet this congregation and be welcomed as their new pastor.

Or the moment when Stacy walked into the classroom of History 274, our sophomore year of college, and our world’s collided.

Of course, these moments are a mixture of tragic and beautiful, hopeful and world-changing.

And so we think also of Moses, the man who had led God’s people out of their bondage in Egypt, getting the call by God to go back down from Mount Sinai to find his people worshipping a bronze calf, an idol of their own making.

“Go down at once!” God says to Moses.

The phone rings: the news is…cancer.

A letter arrives: I’m saying my final goodbyes.

An old friend walks in the door: I’m here to say I’m sorry.

All of these inflection points are so important as they shift and realign our lives.

What I’m struck by is that there are some of these moments where we see a shift occur and it causes us to shut down, to fall into despair, and lose sight of our purpose.

And there are other moments that call us to rise up, to live in the way of life, to step forward to see where God will lead. To trust.

The People of God longed for a clear picture of God’s presence and affirmation that they were following in the right way. They had the pillar of fire, which guided them by night, and the great cloud, which led them by day. But they had sent Moses up the mountain to get the real picture ironed out — they wanted firm, chiseled, defined ways of understanding God, of seeing God. They wanted certainty.

When that certainty didn’t come quickly enough, they took matters into their own hands. They melted their gold down and made an idol, a physical representation of the power they expected God had. But we all know this was a lesser god, a lesser, incomplete image of the divine, made by human hands.

We hear in the 10 commandments that God decrees that the people must have no other God before God. That God should not be made into an image, a visual representation, because it is always inadequate, because we can never name or visage the God with the unspeakable name.

And yet, we try. They tried to make a God that would look like the gods of the people around them, with power and might of a bull. And it turned to disaster.

This morning, I’m going to say a couple of things that I imagine might be unpopular. I’m sorry, but I hope you’ll see the deeper truth here.

The people of God made an idol to replace God when God was not as visible as they would have liked.

In much the same way, when we reflect back on September 11, 2001, we can see multiple idols of the American empire which were cast down. The World Trade Center towers, and all they represented, were an idol to economic power, to mammon, the god of money. The Pentagon, the center of American military might and strategy, is an idol to power, to war and conflict. Even think of the airplanes that crashed that day — are these not idols to our ability to control and powerfully deliver goods and people across immense distances, idols to our success and ingenuity?

And doesn’t it hurt when our idols are attacked, torn down?

The saddest piece is the people who were sacrificed because of those idols. The deaths of so many innocent people because of conflicts over what the right idols are.

I’ll say something else that’s possibly taboo — when we mourn the death of a monarch, we are mourning the loss of an idol. Elizabeth was a remarkable woman, a power and a unique, gracious leader that the world needed. As a human being, made in the image of God, she was certainly one to look up to and admire. Amen? But to mourn the loss of a monarch, a queen or king, is not to look at the person, but rather the station and its power. This is what the people of Israel longed for, an earthly monarch who would represent God somehow. And in longing for this, they made it into an idol.

So how do we hold these great moments of change, not as times when we worship idols that are cast down, but rather as moments of great meaning that God places in our lives?

Last week, I introduced this idea of the two ways: the way of life, and the way of death, that God’s people must choose between, always seeking to follow in the way of life.

Idolatry is a way of death. Buildings fall and of course, as idols, they shatter. The certainty of military or technological or economic might, it falters as well.

What the people are left with, is something else entirely. It is the way of life, but it is definitely not always clear to us.

Instead, we are invited to find the mystery of God as our way of life.

God does not live in idols or temples or even the names we try to give God.

God is in mystery, in the unknown, yet the inkling of goodness and mercy that we catch glimpses of.

Now, before you all dismiss me for undermining the World Trade Center or somehow besmirching the queen’s dignity, hear this: The people behind those offices and positions of power, the real ones who are seeking to follow in the way God has made them to be, they are what we must focus on, the real humanity behind the institutions, the hope and the memory of those who would give anything for God’s calling.

But this territory is much less certain, much more difficult to see or articulate.

What we’re talking about now is mystery.

God invites us into relationship, but not a clear and always defined relationship. God’s way is mysterious and we are challenged to learn to embrace the unknown with God, a God who cannot be cast into an image, a God who leads by fire and smoke, a God who knows us intimately at our deepest core, but does not always show us with clarity every next step or the trajectory of our lives. The God who we worship is the God of mystery and wisdom, power and might.

I want to close with another popular image or idol or archetype.

How many of us have seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Well, if you don’t recall, at the end of the movie, Indiana Jones (played by Harrison Ford), must navigate a series of challenges to reach the inner chambers of a temple which holds the Holy Grail, the chalice Jesus was said to have used at the last supper meal.

Dr. Indiana Jones is a man of great reason and intellect. As an archeologist and treasure hunter, he relies on his wits and studies to help him find his way.

But as he passes through each challenge, he comes, finally, to a great chasm which he must cross. There is no rope to swing across, no clear path. And he is told that he must trust and have faith. The moment is charged with mystery. How will he cross the chasm? Will he jump, will he fall?

After much agonizing, Indiana closes his eyes and takes a faithful, trusting step forward — onto what?

He steps out into the unknown, into mystery, into trusting that something beyond him will catch his footfall.

And so, with providence and chance on his side, his food lands on a stone. Camouflaged amongst the rocks is a narrow stone bridge which joins the sides of the chasm. Trusting footstep after trusting footstep, he makes his way across, not with any certainty, but by embracing a mystery of what is yet unseen, footstep after footstep.

The way of life is to embrace this kind of mystery with God, as well. It is much easier to set up idols and institutions and offices that hold endowed power. It is much more difficult, yet also much more faithful, to instead step out in faith, trusting that God, the God of mystery, will hold us and guide our every step.

May this be our way. Amen.