The text of the sermon is below the video.

Sermon Preached Sunday October 11 2020. Goldsboro Episcopal Churches Online. The Reverend Alan Neale.

“Now is the season of our discontent”… made even less glorious as the time in which Christians and Churches are compelled to mention the unmentionable… money! Even though our blessed Lord Jesus spent more time talking about money than any other one subject; we feel, to quote a young friend of mine from years ago, we feel it is “rude, crude, impolite and socially unacceptable” to consider our relationship with money.

In contrast I think of a charismatic church I once attended where, at the time of the offertory, each of the congregation danced to the front of the church, singing as they danced, to place their offering before the Lord. I know, you want to know if I joined in the procession of pious and praiseworthy plentitude… yes, I did!

Today’s very exciting reading from Exodus 32 prompts me to ask myself, and you, two questions?

Question 1: Where do I place my trust?

Question 2: Where do I place my treasure?

In the absence of their charismatic, imposing leader Moses, the people are becoming restless and bored. Now, restlessness and boredom are rarely good soils for sensible, creative, holy behavior. It was, for instance, when David was restless and bored that he gave himself over to lust, deceit and murder – II Samuel 11! So, parents, beware when your children say they are bored. And, ministers and pastors, beware when those in your care tell you they are bored.

Exodus 32:1 (Message Translation) “When the people realized that Moses was taking forever in coming down off the mountain, they rallied around Aaron and said, “Do something.””

Their fickle, fidgety, flighty emotions led the people of God to abandon their true God and in her/his place they placed their trust in the most ridiculous of substitutes. A substitute of their own making and creation, a substitute that reminded them of both their oppression in Egypt and in Canaan (for the golden calf is a representation of the Egyptian bull god Apis and of the Canaanite fertility god Baal). This was a pathetic, wretched, ludicrous substitute for the living God – a substitute that was immobile, impassive and inert.

Once upon a time, Oscar Wilde heard a man boasting, “I am a self-made man”. Wilde responded, “Well, that relieves the Almighty of a terrible responsibility.” How foolish to entrust ourselves to what we have created in thought or action, as physical idol or psychological concept! And yet this is what the people of God have done throughout the centuries and in stiff-necked fashion they have refused to change, to bend, to reflect or to repent.

Contrast the living God who pleads with us to give her/him our trust. The living God who rescues and liberates us constantly (for all too often we find ourselves in “a land of Egyptian oppression”, the living God who presents us with a path for our health and welfare, and the living God who can be passionate to a point where prophet and psalmist plead for mercy and where the Hebrew mind offers us the mystery (the engaging mystery) of the Lord who changes her/his mind! (Another time…).

Exodus 32 “2-4 So Aaron told them, “Take off the gold rings from the ears of your wives, sons and daughters and bring them to me.” They all did it. He took the gold from their hands and cast it in the form of a calf, shaping it with an engraving tool.” By the way, Aaron pushes Moses way beyond the bounds of credulity when, defending his actions, he says to Moses, “24 “So… I threw it in the fire and out came this calf.” Surely Moses said something considered like, “Yeah right!”

Though awfully misled, misguided, and mistaken at least the people recognized this basic tenet of a thoroughgoing and honest spirituality… the one in whom we place out trust must be the one to whom we offer our treasure. Anything else is foolishness at best, hypocrisy at worst.

Now, I’m not quite sure why the men of God expected such sacrifice from their wives, sons and daughters but apparently gave nothing of themselves. But then sometimes it’s easier to expect others to make sacrifices… sacrifices of time, sacrifices of talent but especially sacrifices of treasure to maintain the lives of our churches and to enable them to grow in work and witness and worship.

Exodus 32 is a sorry tale of how the people of God misplaced their trust and misplaced their treasure but, and this is to their credit, at least they got involved with enthusiasm (even revelry) in the process. Far more sorry is the tale of Christians and Churches where God is ignored and Giving is overlooked all based on the classic theme… “as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.”

These ongoing and wretched days of COVID-19, in which hundreds of thousands in this country have lost their lives physically and emotionally, these days have challenged us to ask some profound questions of ourselves; and it’s there we begin… not with others, but with ourselves.

Do I trust in the living God?

Will I give in gratitude to God to maintain and enlarge the mission?

One thing we know, unlike Aaron, “it won’t just come out a golden calf, it won’t just happen… like that.”

AMEN