Golden Calves, the Banquet Feast, and Spaces In-Between

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost, October 11, 2020 by the Very Reverend Tyler Doherty.

One of the most interesting details about the whole debacle under Aaron while Moses is up the mountain is that it takes place in an in-between time. Moses, we read, is delayed. There is an uncomfortable pause in the action that up to this point has been coming thick and fast: walls of water at the Red Sea, Miriam singing her heart out, clouds by day, pillars of fire by night, manna from heaven, water from the rock. It’s been graciousness, provision, and abundance on full display. But now, the Israelites have to wait. Moses is taking a little too long for their liking. And in Moses’ absence things go wildly off-the-rails.

Blaise Pascal, way back in the 1600s wrote, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” What we do in those in-between times, is as important, perhaps more important, than what we do when we’re busy and task-oriented. It’s those in-between times that present us with the greatest opportunity, and the greatest danger. For the Israelites, Moses’ absence triggers their fear that God is not with them after all--“Is the Lord among us or not?” they wondered aloud a few weeks ago. Moses, as God’s representative, has always been there with them to reassure them that God is indeed present, and active, even if they can’t see, or believe it. With Moses delayed, they fall prey to their worst fears--that this whole Exodus thing is a sham. That Moses has really brought them all the way here so that their children can die of thirst. That they would have been better off making bricks under Pharaoh where at least they had those pots of flesh.

So fear takes over and they fill the empty space, the pause, with idolatry. They collect up their earrings and fashion for themselves an object, something tangible to worship and to which to offer sacrifices--a Golden Calf. Now we might think that these are just the actions of an ignorant people. Who, after all, would worship a Golden Calf these days? But there is a reason why the first commandment--You shall have no other Gods than me--heads the list. Everything flows from what we give central place in our lives. We are what we worship. And the dangers of idolatry are as real and as  death-dealing now as they were for the ancient Israelites. 

What happens, for example, when you worship exponential growth and unrestrained profit? Well, your oceans fill up with plastic, species die off at the rate of 150 per day, your air becomes unbreathable, oceans rise, ice-caps melt, and the cradle of biodiversity becomes a dusty ranch for feeding the wealthiest nations’ appetite for bacon cheeseburgers. You end up with a society where the few live lives of unimaginable luxury--steaks encrusted with 24 karat gold leaf--while others are left without food, shelter, access to doctors, or a living wage. The ten commandments aren't a list of arbitrary rules imposed from above by a depotic God who just wants to see if the members of his hobby project ant colony can do the impossible. The ten commandments are simply what works if we want to live a peaceful, fruitful, abundant life whose hallmarks are mercy, justice, and loving-kindness to all.

Remember our psalm from last week? It started with proclaiming the glory of the heavens and moved to extolling the sweetness of the law--”More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold, sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb.” The law leads not to miserable rule-following servitude, but to “wholeness” and “soundness.” Just as everything in nature follows its beautiful course, so a human life that walks with the law as the lantern for its feet finds itself in accord with the way things are meant to be. The law, simply put, works. And when we put something other than God at the center of lives--power, possessions, prestige--things don’t go so well. We find ourselves out of kilter, wobbly, and causing undue harm to ourselves, others, and God’s good creation. Anything but the living God, the Lord of Hosts, at the center of our lives ultimately deadens us. The Israelites, through worshipping the Golden Calf, anger God, certainly, but it’s the anger of seeing someone you love pursue a path that will lead to their misery and death. The Israelites choose death over life and God’s anger is one big forehead slap followed, of course, by the unremitting desire to show them the way of life, to plant them by streams of living water that they may bear fruit in due season with leaves so preternaturally green they can withstand any heat.

Which brings us back to Pascal’s reminder that, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” What do we do with the empty spaces in our lives? Do we fill them with doom-scrolling and mindless distraction (food, TV, Netflix bingeing, or alcohol)? Do we check out and daydream or sleep? Do we obsessively mull over the past? Do we fret about the future? Do we busy ourselves with restless activity whose primary motivation is to prevent us from feeling the groundless discomfort of the in-between? What would happen if the next time we caught ourselves doing that we chose to do something different than reaching for the Golden Remote Control, or the Golden Smartphone, or rehearsing the Golden Litany of Offense against our high-school nemesis? What would happen if we simply made a little space for God to get at us? What would happen if instead of filling the empty space we settled into the apparent discomfort of the in-between? What would happen if we said, with Jesus, “Into your hands I commend my spirit” let ourselves be loved? What would happen if, in the quiet of our rooms, by ourselves, we made contact with the deluge of free, unearned, merciful grace that is always on offer beyond/behind/beneath the tired old stories we tell ourselves?

You see, the invitees to the King’s wedding feast for his son, all think they have better things to do. Their excuses are really rather comical. They are the biblical equivalent of being told by the young woman whom you have been courting that she can’t go to the drive-in and grab a milkshake at the Malt Shop because she has to wash her hair. Interestingly, their reasons all reveal what they have at the center of their lives, what they secretly worship. One goes away to his farm--he likes to be productive like a good worker bee. One goes to his business--he worships the clink of coins in his coffers. But what they miss is the greatest, free, banquet ever provided, the banquet of Divine Love that’s been in full-swing since before the world began. They think they can do better under their own steam. They want to earn their way into the banquet, and that, my friends, is one thing that prevents them from entering. Accepting their acceptance, unmerited and undeserved, completely without reference to their well-padded and frequently updated resume and LinkedIn profile, is the only thing missing from them realizing that they are already at the party and all they have to do is show up and dance. 

Now some of you might be wondering about the poor sod who gets thrown out for his lack of sartorial correctness. If this is a parable of boundless grace, of everyone without exception being invited to the banquet, how come this guy ends up in the outer darkness for a wardrobe malfunction? It was the custom in those days for the host to supply the wedding garment, much like how the groomsmen today go to Tuxedo Junction to get fitted before the big day. It’s free. Paid for. And it looks great. The point is everything the man needs has already been given. It’s finished. It’s accomplished. It’s all over but the shouting--or in this case the dancing. Hell is reserved for those who refuse to sit in the Heavenly Places with Jesus, but even then God doesn’t give up on them. The invitation to the banquet went out before the creation of the world and remains extended even when we’re in the outer darkness with a flashlight without batteries. Hell, as Robert Capon, writes, is 

radically unnecessary: there will never be any reasons, from God’s point of view, for anyone to end up there, precisely because God in Jesus has made his grace, and not our track record, the sole basis of salvation…. The entire world is home free at the eternal party. The only ones who will not enjoy the Marriage Supper of the Lamb are those who, in the very thick of its festivities, refuse to believe they are at it (462).

So what happens in those in-between times when Moses takes a little too long on his hike up Mount Sinai, is of crucial importance. If we can settle into those in-between times and not fill them with Golden Calves, the chances are we’ll at some point come to the earth-shattering realization that everything we put in the place of God is a poor substitute. Our reputation. Our bank account. Our so-called accomplishments. Our influence over others. All of it pales in the face of the recognition of the startling fact that Christ Jesus has made us his own and cancelled our debts. In the quiet of a still room all by ourselves, we suddenly see that we’ve been at the eternal party the whole time and that all our efforts to earn our way there only took us further and further away. If that sounds too good to be true, it just means your God is too small or you think there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Let’s dance.