Andy James

Times and Seasons

November 16, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
preached on November 16, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It doesn’t take much these days to figure out that we’ve entered a new season. The trees show it off well—we’re well past the peak of fall colors, and the remaining leaves will disappear completely over the next couple weeks. The air is starting to show it too—after a fall that at times felt more like summer, it finally seems cold enough to be headed into winter very soon. And the days are showing it as much as anything—between the end of Daylight Savings Time a couple weeks ago and the generally shorter days that come at this time of year, it seems like we’ve shaved two hours of sunlight off each day in only a couple weeks! So where there is clearly a new season around us, the apostle Paul is right to say that we don’t need anything written to us—we know exactly what he is talking about.

Even beyond this shift in seasons that is so obvious around us, other things are changing, too. The midterm elections of a couple weeks ago are signaling a change in politics in Albany and Washington that will have limited immediate impact but may change things for us over the long term. The circumstances of our lives are shifting and changing in ways that we can’t always see when we’re dealing with the details of them up close but that can’t be missed when you take a step or two back. And even the world of our church is changing in ways that we don’t fully understand or see as leadership and generations shift, the world changes around us, and God keeps calling us to work and act in this day and age.

As constant a reality as change is in our world, Paul’s point may be a bit different than the shifting times and seasons of our world. Rather than focusing on the signs of the times and the marks of the changing seasons, Paul seems to encourage the Thessalonians to be thinking about and looking for “the day of the Lord.” The “day of the Lord” is surely nothing new to the Thessalonians, and it should come as no surprise to us, either. It is a longstanding concept of biblical time that is quite distinct from “the Lord’s Day,” which comes every Sunday. The day of the Lord is a bigger thing that reflects a day of judgment and transformation. It was first mentioned by some of the prophets of the Old Testament, and later John the Baptist and Jesus picked up on it in their own teaching and ministry. In the early church, in the time of Paul, the day of the Lord was assumed to be coming any day, and it is clear from some of the writings of Paul and others that people were starting to get frustrated that it had not yet come.

So here Paul assures the Thessalonians that the day of the Lord is coming, but that seems almost like a secondary point to him. Because they have been waiting longer than they thought they would have to wait for this day, because they are starting to feel the effects of their faith in their daily lives as the people around them respond to them differently, because the urgent sense of expectation that came at the time of their conversion has begun to shift to a more patient and measured—and even difficult—way, Paul here encourages the Thessalonians to be prepared for this day to come by living faithfully every day. He insists that it is on the way and will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, like labor pains coming upon a pregnant woman, with no way to escape the realities of this changing time and season.

But Paul is certain that the Thessalonians are ready for this sudden day that is to come. They are already living in the light, aware of everything that is emerging around them. They are already awake for the coming of this new day, open to the movement of the Holy Spirit as things shift and change in the world. And they are already equipped with everything they need to approach the fullness of this new day, with the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation. Ultimately, Paul’s hope for himself, the Thessalonians, and all comes from his confidence that “God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”

For us, in our own time and season, separated from Paul’s words by nearly two thousand years and nearly as large a gulf of culture and experience, our preparation and readiness for the day of the Lord is necessarily different from and yet guided by Paul’s encouragement to the Philippians. The day of the Lord seems as distant a possibility as ever, yet Paul’s insistence that it will come as a thief in the night or as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman should still give us pause if we think that it won’t come at all. There is certainly a time ahead when God’s judgment upon individuals, institutions of society and even the church, and our whole world will become clear in that time when God completes the transformation of all things begun in Christ.

But as real as that time promises to be, it isn’t part of our experiences and our lives quite yet. And so we are called to be ready for such a time, to work on getting our house in order, to keep our eyes open for the things ahead, to stay awake and be ready for the things ahead. This preparation is not so much about setting up booby traps or burglar alarms to warn us when the thief approaches in the night but rather more like having the bags packed so we can be ready to head to the hospital when the labor pains begin—and to keep changing the things in that suitcase based on the changing times and seasons of our world. This preparation involves faithful living in our daily lives, the promotion of justice, peace, and righteousness in the broader world, and our attention to the work of salvation being lived out in our lives and our world as we stand with those in need of a new way in their lives. The great St. Augustine, in reflecting on this text, even suggested that our readiness is critical as the day of the Lord comes

So what is this day which the Lord has made? Live good lives, and you will be this day yourselves.

We are not the day of the Lord on our own, but we can be a part of making it real in our world.

As we join in this work of getting ready, we can also be encouraged by the confidence that Paul offers the Thessalonians. We belong to the day, Paul says, and we have everything that we need to keep awake and be ready for the day that is coming. Even more, “God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.” When we face the challenges of our lives and our world, when the powers and principalities that obstruct God’s reign seem to have the upper hand with God and with us, when pain and hurt that seem to overtake us so easily, God is still with us, giving us everything that we need to be ready for the day of the Lord as it nears us and our world.

The life of faith that we share does not excuse us from the pain of the world or remove the hurt from our lives, and any attempts to write it off as “part of God’s plan” or something that will “work together for the good of those who love God” denies the real challenges of life for those of us who live awaiting the day of the Lord. This pain and suffering, though very real, will not have the last word. Our destiny will not be decided by these things but rather will emerge as a new and different way of life through Jesus Christ, and we can live in confidence and hope, placing our fears and concerns in their right place, trusting that they will not reign but rather than God’s new life will indeed be ours.

So as the seasons change and new times come, as our world emerges into a new and different day, as we wait and work for the transformation of all things, may God strengthen us in hope for this new day ahead so that we may be a part of the day of the Lord as all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

November 2, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 John 3:1-3
preached on November 2, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate several different kinds of storytelling. As a child, I tended to enjoy those stories that had a clear beginning, middle, and end, stories that began “once upon a time” and ended “happily ever after.” As satisfying as those sorts of stories can be, as I’ve grown older I’ve started to also enjoy stories that are a little less “finished,” stories that leave a bit more of the beginning and end to the imagination.

These latter kinds of stories can be a bit frustrating. Sometimes you just want to know what really happens to a character that you have come to know and love, but there’s no obvious ending in sight! However, I’ve come to realize that these stories are often the most realistic, as sometimes things aren’t quite that clear in the stories of our world and especially of our lives. As hard as we may try, we may not be able to understand how everything fits together. We may look back and look forward and still not have the whole picture of things. And we may wonder how things will end in a story—or for us, too.

Our scripture reading from 1 John this morning centers around our story with God, and it fits very well into those stories that have a clear beginning, middle, or end, those stories that leave us scratching our heads and wondering how everything will come together in the end. For the writer here, the past, present, and future of our stories will all connect, but not in ways that we will immediately understand.

The past where this story begins is almost unimportant for John. Our individual histories and stories are all wrapped up in “the love the Father has given us,” in the love that makes us children of God, but that’s about all he says about them. The present of our stories is fully wrapped up in just that, too, in our status as children of God that is very much ours here and now. And yet amidst all that confidence from the past and present, the future of our stories is a bit unclear, as “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” As much as we might have images like our bulletin cover this morning, with heavenly mansions, streets paved with gold, and reunions with loved ones, these visions are incomplete revelations of what is ahead for us. Not only do they miss the parts of our lives on earth that still lie before us, they ignore John’s reminder here that we simply don’t know what heaven will look like, what exactly will happen when we die, or when or even how our stories will end. Our human minds cannot understand these things that are beyond our knowledge and comprehension. All that is certain, John tells us, is that “when [Christ] is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” In that day, our vision will be clear. Through God’s power, our lives and our world will be made new. And as God guides us to this new life, our story will be complete.

John’s look at the stories of our lives is a wonderful way to start thinking about the multitude of stories that are on our minds today. Today on All Saints’ Sunday we remember the many stories of our sisters and brothers in the faith who have journeyed with us along the way. We especially remember the faithful witness of George Lenz and Jackie Danas, two of our own number who died over the last year after sharing a portion of their stories with us as we journeyed together in the faith, giving us wisdom and hope to walk a little further along the way together. Their two stories are only the beginning of the great cloud of witnesses who have walked before us and beside us—those who have shown us even a little something of what it means to be children of God. I suspect that each of us can point to any number of people who have been a part of the stories of our lives and have guided us to new and deeper understanding of God’s love for us.

But these stories do not stand alone. All these stories—and our own, too—are a part of God’s one big story, part of God’s divine plan not so much for each of our lives but for the life of the world, part of God’s new revelation and new creation that is coming into being through Christ. So today we also begin a time of thinking about our own stories, about the ways in which God has been at work in our lives to show us how we are God’s children now and to give us a glimpse of the things yet to come, about how our individual stories link to the larger ones around us, to the story of this congregation, our broader church, and all creation.

It’s easy to dismiss our stories as unimportant or uninteresting, but we are all God’s children now. We all bear a portion of this story in our lives. We all are a part of what God is up to in our world. Each of us has a part to play in the ongoing revelation of God’s story, and when we listen to one another’s stories, we get a little better glimpse of how we are connected to one another and to God. Over the coming weeks, starting next Sunday, we’ll be hearing the stories of some of our sisters and brothers who walk this journey of faith with us. They will tell us how God has been at work in their lives, both in this congregation and beyond. They will help us understand a bit of how they see God claiming them as God’s children here and now. And they might just give us a little glimpse of the things that are ahead for us in our common stories as we move into the days that God is preparing for us. If you’re interested in telling your story to us as part of this process, come and talk to me, or if you’re not, at least prepare yourself to hear from some others who walk with us a bit of the way as we get a better picture of how God’s story gets lived out in our midst.

As we live out God’s story here, as we embody our status as God’s children now, as we keep our eyes and hearts open to what is ahead, God’s story flows through us on the journey of faith. It is, then, our privilege and our responsibility to respond. So the last part of God’s story among us today comes as we consider our stewardship commitment for 2015. For some people, giving money to the church is like writing a check to any other charity, but I believe that what we give here is an important part of our story with God. Our gifts are our grateful response to the wonderful story that God has placed in each of our lives, and by God’s grace, our gifts too become part of God’s story in our midst. As we begin making our stewardship commitments for 2015 today, I hope and pray that you will think of how these gifts are a part of your story with God. Ultimately, our response to God’s presence in our lives is measured less by the size of our financial gifts and more by the depth and breadth of all the things that we bring to God along the way.

So may our story with this church and our story with God be broadened into this new day. May we look back to all the things that have made our story what it is before today, to all the saints who have shared a bit of it with us along the way. May we look around us now with gratitude for all the ways that we are God’s children here and now. And may we look forward to a day that has not yet been revealed and yet will be a most wonderful revelation when we will see the fullness of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Everyone Needs a Good Pharisee

October 26, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 and Matthew 22:34-40
preached on October 26, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I spent most of this past week being a good pharisee. Last Sunday after worship, I flew to Louisville, Kentucky, for the annual Polity Conference of the Presbyterian Church (USA). This conference brings together presbytery staff and stated clerks like me to talk about the rules and regulations of our church and how we live them out. Most people would find the discussions quite boring and esoteric, but for folks like me it can be quite interesting! Then yesterday, I spent the day at Stony Point Center attending part of the annual synod assembly of the Synod of the Northeast, where we also talked rules and regulations all day long as the synod considered new bylaws and sought to implement a new understanding of their mission. I think all this attention to church law over the past week probably solidifies my qualifications and perhaps even my reputation as a good pharisee.

Now in Jesus’ time, the Pharisees were one of several groups of Jewish leaders who brought a particular focus to their religious practice. They along with the Sadducees show up in our text from Matthew this morning. The Sadducees were mostly known for their belief that there would be no resurrection of the dead, and the Pharisees were known for their attention to Jewish law. The Pharisees had a pretty negative reputation with Jesus, and that has carried over to his followers. They were always challenging him on his actions and interpretations of the law, always seeming to try to catch him in a mistake that would give them the chance to declare that he was not a faithful Jew, always pushing back on his words and actions that seemed to imply that the law was only a guide and not something that needed to be followed carefully.

So it is no surprise that one of Jesus’ last encounters with the Pharisees in the gospel according to Matthew comes as they ask him to identity the greatest commandment in the Jewish law. Matthew tells us that this question was meant to test Jesus, but even so it’s still a surprisingly good question. No matter what you think about the law, it ought to be a good thing to consider which commandment is the greatest among them all. As much as the Pharisees may have been trying to quiz or entrap Jesus here, they also picked a question that is pretty open to differences in interpretation and an issue that actually matters for the life and practice of faith.

So when they asked him to identify the greatest commandment, Jesus responded quickly and thoughtfully, giving not just the greatest commandment but the second-greatest, too. First, he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence,” with all your heart, soul, and mind. Jesus chose what might be to some an obvious response—this commandment, understood to have been offered by Moses as part of his own summation of the law toward the end of his life, stands very prominently at the center of Jewish life and liturgy. The Pharisees could find no objection to this at all.

While they had just asked Jesus for the greatest commandment, Jesus continued and offered a second commandment that “is like it:” “Love others as well as you love yourself.” This was perhaps a more unexpected choice, but it was still very much in keeping with Jewish law and Jesus’ practice. This specific law to love neighbor is buried in a longer list of the more obscure commandments in Leviticus, a book known today more for its restrictions on idolatry, eating and cooking techniques, sexual practice, and cotton-polyester blends, among other things. However, most of the commandments near this particular one focus on treating others and especially the poor and outsiders with respect, honor, kindness, and justice. When Jesus lifted up the command to love neighbor as self alongside the command to love God, he made it clear that attention to God’s commandments means attention to God’s people, too.

Jesus then concluded his discussion of the greatest commandment by insisting that these two commandments are more than just the greatest—they are the pegs on which everything else hangs. Without these two commandments, the other ones mean nothing. Without the perspective that these commandments offer, everything else is just legal mumbo-jumbo. Without the center of love for God and love for neighbor that we find here, everything else falls to pieces on the floor.

So the Pharisees of Jesus’ time were likely a bit astonished at his moves here, but what really matters in all this is not Jesus’ ability to interpret the law but rather his wisdom to sort out what is really important in all of it. For Jesus, the specific details of the law clearly mattered far less than the broad scope of it. The principles of love for God and love for neighbor that lay behind the law mattered far more than any particular provision. And the emphasis on love as right relationship with God and neighbor took much greater priority for Jesus than any policy regarding Sabbath observance, any restrictions on eating or cooking techniques, or any prohibition on wearing blended fabrics.

So even from my somewhat biased place, I think we need a few good Pharisees these days. We need people who can help us understand what God’s commandments lead us to believe and to do. We need people who can open the texts that define us in new ways and help us understand how they can be more than law books to be followed carefully. And we need Pharisees who can remind us that all the law that we follow hangs on these two pegs—these two laws—of loving God and loving neighbor.

In another account of this exchange in Luke’s gospel, Jesus goes on to offer a definition of neighbor by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was an insightful moment, because Jesus’ questioner was challenging him to define “neighbor” as narrowly as possible. In the same way, I think we could bear some similar attention to the definition of “love” here, for we too are tempted to define love so narrowly or find ways to limit our love for one reason or another. What does it mean for us to love God and love neighbor nowadays? How do we deal with the challenges of this word in our world where it is so easily defined as a human feeling between two people, with all sorts of limitations and possibilities that might emerge from that? How do we experience and show our love for a God who can seem so distant and disconnected from us and our world? And is it even possible to love our neighbors in this world where we are so easily paralyzed by fear of them—by fear that they might have a deadly virus, by fear that they look or act or love differently from us, by fear that they might harm us as we help them, even by fear that we might be opened to new and different ways of life as we encounter them along the way?

The temptation for Pharisees like me is to put even matters of love for God and neighbor into a law-based way of thinking, to give specific guidelines for what this love might look like and what it should not look like, to set up laws and rules that define love for God and love for neighbor in specific, quantifiable ways, to codify our fear because we are afraid to love. But the Pharisees of every time and place must instead welcome the ambiguity and uncertainty of love—love that can’t be checked off a list, love that can’t be defined by simple laws or limited by human understandings, love that defies human limitations, breaks any restrictions on it, extends beyond our own understanding, and shatters our fears of the other, all because it is divine love, shaped and formed and directed by God and shared with every neighbor we can imagine.

So I think we need some good Pharisees—people who understand these two pegs of love of God and love of neighbor, people who can open us to the broader gifts of love as we direct our attention, affection, and devotion to the divine, people who can show us a broader understanding of what it means to be a neighbor to everyone we encounter, people who can remind us that all that we say and do must reflect our love of God and our love of neighbor.

So may God guide us to understand all the more these greatest commandments, how we are called to love God and love neighbor, so that we might live in that kind of real and deep love each and every day. Thanks be to God! Amen.

143 Years of Identity and Witness

October 19, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
preached on October 19, 2014, in celebration of the 143rd anniversary of the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There’s a wonderful picture of our congregation that greets everyone who visits our church website. We took it on the front steps of the church three years ago as part of our 140th anniversary celebration, and I love it for so many reasons. First off, everyone is smiling! We had just finished a festive worship service and were preparing to make our way to a wonderful banquet on a beautiful day, so everyone was having a good time. Second, there is incredible color throughout the picture. There is a vibrancy in the colors there that brings out so well the multicolored fabric that makes us who we are as a congregation. And third, I love that picture because it is so inclusive of our congregational family. It includes several people who are no longer a part of our worshiping community due to distance, age, or death. But on top of that, it includes some special guests, like the Moderator of the Presbytery of New York City at the time, members of my family, representatives of other congregations who worship in this space, and even one of our former pastors, who all came from far and wide to be a part of celebrating the life and work of this congregation. While they may not be worshiping with us every Sunday, they are nonetheless an important part of our identity and witness as a congregation as we are connected to one another and those beyond.

Our scripture reading this morning also speaks beautifully of identity and witness, as we hear the apostle Paul giving thanks for the identity and witness of the faithful congregation of the Thessalonians. Over the course of these ten lovely verses, Paul lifts up the Thessalonians’ identity and witness as things worthy of celebration, and he uses these as the springboard for his larger message that continues throughout the rest of the letter.

Paul identifies the Thessalonians first and foremost as “a church in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” connecting them to the broader group of saints gathered in so many places who bear witness to the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ. Then he names them as brothers and sisters beloved and chosen by God, people whose identity and hope is caught up not in any action of their own but in the gracious and merciful action of God. As such, they become imitators of Paul and his colleagues and of the Lord, remaining faithful amidst trying circumstances and becoming an example for others to follow along the way.

This faithful witness of the Thessalonians is the second major theme of our text for today. Paul is deeply impressed by the Thessalonians’ “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” He is convinced that the actions that are emerging out of their identity are bearing real fruit, that other people are seeing the things that the Thessalonians are doing and are being inspired for their own faithfulness. These faithful actions are becoming clear not just in the nearest cities of Macedonia and Achaia but in places beyond, too. Their proclamation in word and in deed is so clear that Paul says “we have no need to speak about it,” and news of their welcoming spirit is spreading quickly among all the faithful.

Identity and witness matter for us today just as much as they did for the founders of this church in 1871 and for the Thessalonians nearly two thousand years ago. Like the Thessalonians, our identity must be caught up in the relationships that connect us to one another and the broader community, in our understanding that we are beloved children of God, and in our confidence that God has chosen us for the particular purpose of bearing witness to God’s work in the world. When we see ourselves in this way, we are challenged not to dwell on the years that are behind us but to look ahead to the new things that God is doing in us and through us in the days ahead. When we carry this confidence with us, we are reminded that the life that we share in this place is not due to our own actions or the actions of those who have come before us but rather because of God’s gracious love that inspires us to give all glory and praise and honor to God for these amazing gifts. And when we carry this identity with us, we find that we are not alone in this work and so are encouraged to join in working for the transformation of all creation alongside all who seek a new and different way together.

This identity is the root and source of the witness that we also inherit from Paul, the Thessalonians, and two millennia of sisters and brothers in the faith. Just like those who have come before us in this place over the last 143 years, who we are informs what we do, and what we do is inseparable from who we are. We are called, then, to join with the saints of every time and place in the “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” All that we say and do in the coming years of ministry in this place should reflect all these things, this blend of committed work and confidence in something beyond our labor, this mix of divine intervention and human action, this hopeful attention to changing this world and preparing for the next. And we are called to act so that others can see the new and different way of life that God is bringing into being for all the world through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The identity and witness of this congregation has sustained us for 143 years in our work and worship. We gather here to learn more about how we are God’s beloved children and how we are chosen for service and salvation. We learn here how God connects us to others who share our confession and who seek to live in faith, hope, and love. We come together in this place to be strengthened for the daily living of our faith. And we work together from this community so that our witness might be magnified into the world and that others might see the faithfulness of our God who loves us and calls us to new life.

As we celebrate even this minor anniversary, it is good and right for us to pause and give thanks for the years we have shared together in this place—but it is even more important for us to ask God to guide us as we approach the years ahead in our life together. We certainly have much to celebrate, not the least our continued existence as a congregation in a day and age when keeping the doors open, the heat on, and a pastor employed is a substantial challenge. Yet the same identity and witness that have sustained the life of this congregation since that first gathering in 1871 challenge us to do something more than just exist, to open ourselves to God’s new thing emerging in our midst, to commit ourselves to being witnesses of God’s presence in our lives and in our community, and to work with one another and with our sisters and brothers so that God’s peace, justice, love, mercy, and grace can be all the more real in our broken world.

So, my friends, as we celebrate 143 years of ministry in this place today, as we remember a few of the faithful servants who have been an integral part of our life together through presence and service, may God also guide us and inspire us in the days and years ahead, so that these 143 years might be only the beginning of the faithful witness to God’s love, justice, peace, and hope emerging from this place. Thanks be to God! Amen.

A Warning and A Promise

October 12, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Exodus 32:1-14
preached on October 12, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The people were frustrated, and Aaron didn’t know what to do. His brother Moses had left him in charge while he went up on the mountain to sort things out with God, but Moses was taking longer than anyone thought, and people were starting to think that he—and God—had forgotten about them.

They had put a lot of trust in Moses and his God, after all. They had uprooted themselves from their homes in Egypt to follow this man who had come back to rescue them after a vision from his God in a burning bush. Things in Egypt may not have been perfect, but at least the situation there was known and understood. It was no wonder they thought that he had abandoned them!

So Aaron tried to make the best of things out in the wilderness and looked for a way to calm them all down as they waited for Moses to return. He remembered what his brother had done before he went up on the mountain in gathering the riches of the people to create the ark of the covenant, so he called the people again to bring him their gold jewelry to create another symbol of what had rescued them from Egypt, figuring that this would calm them down a bit. He then melted all their gold down and made it into a golden calf, which he placed before the people as a reminder of all that they had been through.

“These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” he proclaimed. This gold, taken from the ears of your wives, sons, and daughters, made your departure possible. This golden calf, created by human hands, saved you from the tyranny of the Pharaoh. The riches of this world can have all the glory for where we are and where we are going.

To bring his master plan of calming everyone down to a close, he declared that the next day would “be a festival to the Lord,” and so they set aside their grumbling and complaining and replaced it with burnt offerings, sacrifices of well-being, fine food and drink, and general revelry and happiness, seemingly directed at God.

We can be frustrated and feel abandoned too, and we too struggle with what to do. There are many people with deep faith who still find themselves distant from their understanding of God for one reason or another. In these moments, our impatience so easily shows, too: we try to move the Holy Spirit along; we get Jesus to hurry up and come back; we wonder why God’s ways are so complex and take so long to become clear to us.

While we don’t often craft golden calfs to be the objects of our worship and adoration amidst our frustration about God’s delay, there are still plenty of times when we misunderstand the source of our gifts and give glory to ourselves or other people rather than to God. In these kinds of moments, we too are guilty of the kind of idolatry that we can so clearly identify in this story from Exodus, even if we aren’t taking our gold rings and turning them into objects of worship. We still have a “human tendency to idolatry and tyranny,” as our Book of Order puts it, a desire to place our human ways above God’s ways, a feeling that we can make it on our own without God’s help, a certainty that we have all the answers figured out for ourselves.

This idolatry has much less to do with any particular images of God and everything to do with all the things that we try to substitute for God in our world when God seems distant or we are frustrated. This idolatry is not about any fancy gold items in our midst that might be intended to enhance worship but rather about the ways in which we, like the Israelites, think that we can save ourselves. And like the Israelites, our idolatry is not resolved simply by setting aside a graven image but by reordering our lives so that we honor and glorify God for all the gifts that God has given us.

Now when God saw what was going on down in the wilderness while Moses was up on the mountain, God was not at all pleased. If the frustration of the Israelites in this moment ranked at an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, God’s anger and frustration toward them was at 11! When God saw their perverse actions, their disobedience, their idolatry, and their glorification of other gods, God was ready to destroy them, and so God turned to Moses and instructed him to immediately go back down the mountain. The divine tirade ended with a commitment to a different way with them:

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.

Even after all that God had done to bring them out of Egypt and into the wilderness, God was ready to leave the Israelites wandering in the wilderness and start from scratch with Moses.

Moses, on the other hand, had other feelings about all this. After hearing this divine temper tantrum, Moses pleaded with God to rethink this planned abandonment of the people of Israel. Moses didn’t seem to have mercy at the center of his mindset here—I suspect he was as frustrated as anyone with their behavior! Moses instead appealed to God’s sense of honor and God’s memory of the generations who had come before. What would people say about this God who had brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt only to get angry at them and abandon them in the wilderness? How would anyone else, even Moses, ever trust this God’s promises to anyone else if God gave up on the promises that God had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

In response to Moses, God “changed [God’s] mind about the disaster that [God] planned to bring on [the] people,” giving them a reprieve from the destruction they might have faced, demonstrating a moment of openness to human intercession, defending God’s own sense of honor in the world, and showing a bit of grace and mercy to a people who had seen so much already.

This strange and unexpected demonstration of God’s anger and grace here gives us a deeper vision of who God is and how God relates with God’s people in all times and places. Here we see God both angry and gracious, demonstrating an incredible mix of emotions in God’s interactions with God’s people. Here we get a glimpse of how deeply God is hurt when God’s people go astray, because only deep love could stand behind such deep hurt. And here we see God responding to human pleas to take a different approach, giving us confidence and hope that God will hear our prayers and respond with similar grace.

So this story gives us both a warning about the dangers of idolatry in our world and a promise of God’s steadfast love and faithful grace. We are rightfully warned about God’s jealous nature even as we are reminded of the depth of God’s grace. We are reminded that we are called to place our trust in nothing other than God as we are reminded of how trustworthy God truly is. And even amidst our missteps we are given hope that God will hear our prayers to give us a reprieve and show us the way to new life. This story calls us to renewed faithfulness in moments when we are frustrated and feel distant from God’s presence, to a way of life that acknowledges the sovereignty of God in all of life and living when we are tempted to make gods of other things in our life and living, to respond to the idolatry and tyranny we see in the world with actions that “work for the transformation of society by seeking justice and living in obedience to the Word of God.” And this story calls us to deeper confidence in God’s promises, to renewed trust in the mercy and compassion of God, to a new understanding of how God’s grace takes shape and form amidst our missteps along the way.

So may we hear both the warning and the promise of God in this story—a warning against disobedience and idolatry that deny the sovereignty and goodness of our God in our world and a promise of deep grace that responds to our intercessions and shows us a new and different way every day—so that we might give all glory to God as all things are made new. Thanks be to God! Amen.