Note: Each Thursday, I'll be looking at one of the lectionary passages for the upcoming Sunday. Today, we're looking at Exodus 32:1-14.
It is incredibly easy to shake our heads at the people bowing down before a golden calf. Really? You are going to worship something that was made out of your earrings? You are going to call that your god?
Our common takeaway is that there are tons of ridiculous objects that we worship in God's stead. We lay our lives down for material possessions. Our praise and worship often comes in football stadiums. We genuflect before our iPhones. The list could go on. And it's true. We sometimes dedicate our lives to things that are far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far less than God.
So we tell ourselves that we're going to put God first and shuffle along to another passage.
Yet...
There is a part of me that wonders if a deeper story with a more resonant message is lurking underneath. What if those people were trying to do something more than create their own gods. What if they were trying to give substance, form, and tangibility to God? What if they looked at the golden calf and thought they were worshipping YHWH?
You could make a case either way with the text. Yet there is that moment in verse 5 where Aaron declares, "Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD." (that's an attempt at replicating the typeface that indicates we're talking about YHWH and not shouting, though I suspect Aaron had to shout to speak to so many people). So there's room in the text to suppose that at least some of them were trying to worship God and not just create their own off brand deities.
That situation, of making God in an image that we can form and comprehend, cuts a lot deeper. How often do we make God in our image? How often do you, I, and so many other Christians assume that God is like us? How often do we think that God is contained to our tribe, our churches, and our people and could not possibly be found outside those walls?
It happens quite often and everyone does it. Conservative and liberals (though I dislike using those categories) cast God in their image. There are people that think God can only be worshipped in hymns and other who think that God can only be worshipped through the modern music of the day.
It plays out in who does our preaching and scholarship too. Why does God often seem like an American middle class white guy? Because it is typically American middle class white guys who get the most attention around here (says the American middle class white guy). That is a box. It would also be a box if we listened solely to women or African theologians or ministers from Asia. There are so many ways that we try to put God in a box.
On their album Beautiful Things, Gungor has a song called "Cannot Keep You." The lyrics begin:
they could not keep you in a tent
they could not keep you in a temple
or any of their idols, to see and understand
we cannot keep you in a church
we cannot keep you in a Bible
or it’s just another idol to box you in
God is far too big for us to comprehend. We cannot box God in. We cannot get a full grasp on who and what God is. We cannot keep God. The God we serve is a wild God and, despite our best and sometimes good-intentioned attempts, cannot be domesticated.
Yet we try to contain God. Our reasons can vary. Some want control. Some just want something simple in a world that doesn't always make sense. Regardless of why we try to box up God, we end up with an empty box: a golden calf that is far away from the Real Thing in whom we live and move and have our being.