CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH
Rev. Fred
Weimert October 12, 2008
When God Becomes a Totem
When a baby
is new born…
communication with the larger world
usually takes the form
of crying, for attention…
If a child
is hungry they cry…
If they are
thirsty they cry…
If they need
a diaper change,
they cry…
If they are
sick they cry…
If they are
sleepy they cry…
If they are
bored or ready to get up
they cry…
And a parent’s task is to try
as best they can
to decipher
just which need
is
being expressed
in
the cry of this or that moment.
Eventually you get better at this
form of communication,
but troubles can come
when a child is colicky…
communication
becomes garbled.
The real problem with this cry
language
is that even infants
get better at
understanding this form of communication as well.
and
eventually they may discover
that
if they cry…
they
can get whatever they want…
That
is unless the parents
make
a commitment to
after
checking all the basic needs…
They
must be willing to let the baby cry
for
a while…
at
times.
Parents
have to do this,
because
children need to learn…
They
can’t always get their way…
Because
they need to know
the
brutal life truth…
You
can’t always get what you want.
The
Rolling Stones taught us that
about
40 years ago,
although
they may not have been the first:
“You can't always get
what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need.”
That
is a bit of truth
which life teaches us,
which we really need to learn to
accept
even if we don’t like it….
and even if we don’t believe it
all the time.
I mean most
of us grew up
reciting
the 23 Psalm…
“The Lord is my shepherd…
I
shall not want.”
So whose
right… the Psalmist or Mick Jaeger?
Hey,
we’re in Church…
It
has to be the Psalmist…
It
can’t be Mick Jaeger…
can
it?
So which is
right…
“The Lord is my shepherd,
I
shall not want…?”
or…
You can't always get
what you want
But
you might find…
You
get what you need?
There are modern
translations
which appear
to be trying to push the 23rd Psalm
in
the direction of the Rolling Stones…
The Jerusalem Bible:
“Yhweh
is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”
The Message
Bible:
“God,
my shepherd!, I don’t need a thing.”
The one I like best
is
a quotation from Rabbi Harold Kushner,
in
his book on the 23rd Psalm:
“The Lord is my shepherd, what more do I
need?”
But then a
few pages later Rabbi Kushner,
who also wrote Why Bad things Happen to Good People,
In Talking about a song
by Garth Brooks
entitled “Unanswered Prayers”,
A
song which looked back over life and concludes…
“some of God’s greatest gifts
are
unanswered prayers.”
On thinking about this
song Rabbi Kushner adds:
“Maybe these words,
like the opening line about God being the reliable shepherd/parent who will
keep us safe, are really more of a whish than a compliment paid to God. Maybe what we are doing is longing for a life
with no more longing, a life in which we will, in fact, lack for nothing
because God will have provided us with all we need.”
pg. 32
I believe
“The Lord is my shepherd”
And I have had the great
good fortune
not to ever
truly ever have known
serious,
life threatening want…
But I am not sure I want
to go as far
as the
Psalmist goes in Psalm 37: 25…
a
verse I frequently hear people quote:
“I
have been young,
and
now am old,
yet I have not seen
the righteous forsaken
or
their children begging bread.”
Yesterday
was the thank you dinner
for the volunteers of ACTS…
It
was held down stairs in the Social Hall.
I would be willing to bet
that
most of those people have seen
good
people…
people
no more unrighteous
than they or we are…
who
have been forced by circumstance,
to
come to ask for bread
for
themselves and their children.
Right now ACTC is seeing
more than 1,000 people/month.
and their
ability to meet these needs
is
daily more and more challenging…
What I am
saying
is that as a nation we are coming
into some difficult times.
We can look for people
to blame…
and there is
plenty of blame to go around.
Or we could even blame
God…
Maybe even
fashion another,
more suitable god…
One
who gives us what we want.
In difficult
times…
in times of stress…
We, like children, do
cry out…
for God…
or
any listening ear.
Hear the
Hebrew Bible reading:
Exodus 32: 1-14
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."
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."
So
all the people took off the gold rings from their ears,
and brought them to Aaron.
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!"
When
Aaron saw this,
he
built an altar before it;
and Aaron made proclamation and said,
"Tomorrow shall be a festival to
the LORD."
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
LORD said to Moses,
"Go
down at once!
Your people,
whom you brought up out of the land of
Egypt,
have acted perversely;
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!'"
The
LORD said to Moses,
"I
have seen this people,
how stiff- necked they are.
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."
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?
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.
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.'"
And
the LORD changed his mind
about
the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
Here ends the reading…
This is a
great story.
Not just because of Moses’ strong
defense of the people,
or God’s willingness to
rethink the planned destruction.
I love the story because of its
subtle little innuendoes…
The way the whole
question
of who brought these people out of
slavery
is
up for grabs:
The people say it was
Moses:
“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."
And God even appears to want to agree
these
are Moses’ people:
“Your people,
whom
you brought up out
of the land of Egypt,”
But Moses doesn’t let God get away
with that:
O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people,
whom you brought out of
the land of Egypt
I love the way Aaron is ready to
give this golden calf…
that he just
created…
credit
for the whole thing:
"These are your gods, O Israel,
who
brought you up
out of the land of Egypt!"
Another
subtle little gem…
Is the way the story describes the
care with which Aaron
had fashioned this calf:
He
took the gold from them,
formed it in a mold,
and cast an image of a calf;
Then later
in the chapter
beyond
where we read
when Aaron
is confronted by Moses
The creation of the idol takes on a
new miraculous twist:
So I said to them,
'Whoever has gold, take it off';
so they gave it to me,
and I threw it into the fire,
and out came this calf!"
It was a miracle!
Who could blame Aaron
for thinking
“This must
have been God’s plan.”
I love this
story
because it captures in such simple
fashion
what happens to us
when we are
under stress…
and
we don’t know where to turn for help…
and
so we turn to our simple little superstitions…
When I was in college running
cross-country
I use to wear my high
school golf shirt
turned
inside out
underneath
my college jersey…
just
a little good luck charm.
And do you know what this is…
(Baseball hat turned inside out)
it’s a rally cap.
When your
team is down by 3 or 4 or more runs
in
the eight or ninth inning…
everyone
in the dugout turns their hat inside out.
If it works out and you
win
you say to
yourself… cool… it works…
we
have to remember this next time.
And if you lose you say
to yourself
wasn’t that
silly…
and
you turn your hat back right,
saying
no big deal…
nothing
ventured nothing gained…
and
you do it again next time,
or
something else equally stupid.
In extremis situations
if you had more time
or the
resources…
you
might make a golden calf,
a
little totem.
If it didn’t
work…
and
get you what you wanted…
you
might add another animal next time…
maybe
on top…
until
you had a totem pole.
All your
little superstitious totems stacked together,
and
if it didn’t work…
you
might scrap it.
but
nothing’s lost,
because
it’s just something
you whipped up.
It
really wasn’t God…
It
really wasn’t worship.
But when
your God is the creator of the heavens and the earth,
and fear and trembling
or pain and
suffering come…
It
is so much more difficult.
because
we have to examine our self
to
see if we are the cause of the trouble…
to
see if we need to change…
and
if the source of the fear or suffering
is
beyond us.
Then
we have to put on our wedding garments…
and
wait, even in suffering
for the bridegroom to come.
All
the while serving
the
one for whom we wait…
so
anxiously…
a
waiting which is caught up
in
the darkness of those days
between
Good Friday
and
Easter Sunday
between
the crucifixion
and
the resurrection.
Dark
fearful days…
days
of waiting behind locked doors
which
promise no real,
long term, protection.
But all the
while
in
the back of our minds
words
swirl…
“I
will never leave you or forsake you”
“Nothing
can separate us
from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So may we
live in Christ
in
faith, hope, and love. Amen.