Bless us, O Lord, with your illuminating presence at this time. Guide our hearts and our minds that we might be able to participate more fully in your divine life. Amen.
Moses is gone. Some time back, he left his people and went up Mount Sinai to talk with God. The people, of course, had to stay all the way down here, because it was believed that if the unfaithful or unclean were to encounter God's holiness, it would be too much for them to bear and they would die on the spot. So Moses went up while the people waited here…and waited…and waited…and waited.
Actually, they waited for a really long time. I would dare say it seemed like an excessively long time. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the people may have begun to wonder whether he was going to come back. Could it be the case that even Moses was not able to stand in the presence of God? Could it be that he encountered God, and died as a result of it? Maybe. If he had died, how would they know? It's not like he's going to tell them.
Worse yet, what if Moses was up there and he died because he angered God? God had been known to have a temper from time to time, and if Moses had angered God, that meant that God's wrath would eventually trickle down to them since Moses was their leader. If this was the case, then they had better find a way to appease God's wrath so that they didn't get smitten next.
"I know," someone may have thought, "We'll get Aaron to do Moses job." And so they go to Aaron, en masse, and demand, "Make us a god who will go before us in battle."
Now, this must have made Aaron very nervous. After all there were many upon many of them, but only one of him. What's he to do, really? Think about it. These people are scared. They got to appease God pretty soon lest divine fury overtake them. What they need is an emergency worship service.
It seems as though Aaron knows he's in quite a predicament. On the one hand, he knows that he should wait it out. That's what they were told to do. On the other hand, he is afraid of what might happen to him if he tells the people no. Let's face it, he knows what he should have done, but he caves due to fear. He is more afraid of the people than he is of God.
So, he does what priests do: he puts together a worship service, the type that they expect. The basic worship service in the ancient world would entail things like…an image of the divine. Let's start there. Bulls symbolize strength and fertility, so that should work. Next, we need a blood sacrifice. After all, that's how ancient gods are appeased isn't it? So, we have the whole bloodletting thing. And fertility gods often have temple prostitutes, because joining with these holy women was a way to win the good favor of the god and increase the chance of divine abundance.
Well, it's a plan. Albeit bad one, but it's a plan…born of impatience, and a complete misunderstanding of who God is and what God wants..
Perhaps, when we read the Bible, we see that the greatest danger always facing the people of God is that of idolatry. And one of the reasons that it is such a danger is that when people usually engage in it, they do so because…they are trying to do the right thing. In the Bible, it's usually not a matter of people saying, "Oh, that God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I've just had it up to here with that God. I'm going to go ahead and worship a different God, one that is more exciting and more about me." See, that's not what happens. Rather, people usually engage in the act of idolatry because they are trying to "worship" God, but they haven't got a sense of what God is all about, and therefore can't get who God is.
The people went to Aaron more than likely because they wanted him to intercede on their behalf before God. They brought their sacrifices because they wanted to do the right thing before the eyes of God. They were symbolically giving life back to the source of life where it came from. Isn't this what worship is all about? They were joining with temple prostitutes because that's what religion in their day is. Isn't that what worship is all about?
This people was doing the best that they could, as best as they could understand, to be pleasing before God. They were trying to do the right thing, to truly be a religious people. What could be wrong with that?
But, as we often see in the Bible, there is true religion and false religion (though more often than not the difference is revealed in hindsight). In the ancient world, religion primarily revolved around appeasing the gods or doing something to get divine favor.
I sometimes wonder how confused observers must have been in the 1st centurywhen this new Jewish cult arrived who claimed to follow Jesus of Nazareth, the one whom they called the Christ. According to them, because of the work of Jesus, that whole idea of what religion is, is now null and void. If that's your idea of religion, then drop it they might say. Now religion is different.
Indeed, according to James, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for the orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world."
If you want to be a truly religious person, then be a person who loves. Be a person who loves those whom others don't want to love: the outcasts of society, the marginalized, the impoverished, the abused, the hopeless. If you want to be a truly religious person, give of yourself, spend of yourself, in ways that others dare not do, because it is not in their interest so they can't find it in them. If you want to be a truly religious person, engage in the mission of God, which is to make a real difference in this world by advocating for those who have no voice who long for hope and cry out from the depths of their souls "how long, O Lord?"
This [indicating the religious trappings of the surrounding sanctuary]] isn't true religion. This is wood, and stone, and brass, and ivory. It's pretty, sure. It's fun, yes. But is God going to love us any more just because we showed up here today? No. God's not going to love us any more or any less if we showed up here every Sunday, or no Sunday's at all. We don't win God's favor by coming here. We don't get any more blessing because we took an hour or two out of our schedules and dedicated it to God. Life will not get easier because we showed up here.
Quite the contrary, as Christians we know that because of the work of Jesus Christ, none of that matters in the grand scheme of what true religion is, for as James says, "Religion [or, worship] that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for the orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world."
Do we want to worship God? I certainly hope so. But we need to do so on God's terms, in the sanctuary ascribed for Christians, out there in the midst of everyday life. Keep your ears tuned for the cry for help. Keep your eyes open and watch for those who might need you. Keep your heart open, they you might sense where God is calling you to go next on the mission of God, so that, as we go into the world, we can truly worship God.