The Golden Calf

sermon by Torin Eikler
Exodus 32:7-14 Luke 15:1-10

Carrie and I graduated from seminary not too long after American Idol had hit its stride. First Kelly Clarkson, then Rueben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino, and finally Carrie Underwood had been voted into stardom, however short-lived, by the popular vote. And as we prepared for our senior banquet, the powers-that-be (that being Carrie and a couple of other students) decided to spoof the show by using the theme of the “Golden Idol” for our dinner.

There were several well-written skits by students and professors that helped us remember our time together with laughter and well-intentioned ribbing. And, of course, there was a competition which, I am sorry to say, I did not win. But my part – the most important part, I might add – was to be the voice of the sponsor: the golden calf.
We’ve all seen the wondrous power of the great I AM: the many plagues on the harsh task masters of our past, the part of the sea and the destruction of our pursuers, sweet water from the rocks of the desert, and manna from the heavens themselves. What mortal would not stand in awe of such mighty works and the one who performed them? Who would not overflow with praise and thanksgiving for a response to our communal prayers?

Still, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to hear the problems of our daily lives? Wouldn’t it feel good to lay your offerings at the feet of one who is sure to hear each one of your prayers? Shouldn’t we find someone else with whom to share all the little things – someone without such big things to worry about? Shouldn’t the great I AM have a Sabbath too?

Why not pray to the Golden Calf? Join the herd, you know you should. (picture the prudential bull galloping up full of strength and inspiring confidence.)

I have to admit that I really enjoyed the effect I had on people, especially when I put on my cow hat with the flashing red eyes. It was a lot of fun, and, of course, it was all in jest. But after dinner, I was reminded about how serious a subject we were playing around with. One of my professors told me about his previous experience in advertising and why he quit. “Our tendency to find or create our own little gods really is very dangerous,” he said. “I finally had to stop when I realized that my work was drawing people away from God. Just when they most needed to seek him out, I was putting idols in front of them instead.”

Okay … he’s a little bit of a downer sometimes, but he so darn earnest that you just can’t be upset with him. And his comment got me thinking…. We all know that idolatry is bad. It’s the very first of the Ten Commandments, and I’m sure we’ve all heard sermons on it more times than we can count. So, why do we seem so intent to latch onto things or people in place of God?


I hope you hold onto that question and take it with you because my professor was right … this is dangerous territory. If your own life experiences aren’t enough to make that clear, the scriptures are almost as full of stories about people who suffer for their idol dalliances as they are stories of people whose faith is steadfast. Usually we less about the people themselves and more about God’s response – which is never good – but we can learn from their mistakes.

In today’s scripture, for example, it is very easy to distance ourselves from the Hebrews in the story by writing them off as bad people. After all that God had done for them: freeing them from Pharaoh with the riches of Egypt weighing down their wagons, opening a path through the waters, showering them with food, and bringing forth fresh water to slake their thirsts; after all of that they turned around and made the golden calf, worshiping at its feet with burnt offerings and singing hymns of praise. How much worse could you get. If this were a melodrama, we would be “boo-ing” them!

That dismissal is so easy partly because we don’t hear the whole story in one piece. We just get bits and pieces from time to time and so we don’t carry the people with us. We don’t feel the joy and pain and fear of their struggle. But it doesn’t take much for us to find ourselves in their experience if we just slow down a little bit and fill in the gaps as we remember what they have been through.

Yes, the Hebrews had been liberated from four hundred years of crushing slavery, but they had also been forced to leave their homes. They had taken a wealth of gold, jewels, and other treasures, but what good were they to a people wandering in the harsh scrub-land of the wilderness? They were just one more thing slowing them down and adding to the trials of the journey.

On top of that, they were chased by the most powerful army in the world. They nearly starved despite the livestock they brought with them (it takes a LOT of food to feed hundreds of thousands of people). More than once, they had come close to death for lack of water in the wilderness. And they had been forced into pitched battle with a king who sought to make them slaves again. Each time, they were saved by the power of the One God working through the hand of Moses. Finally they settled down for a break from their travels at the foot of Mount Sinai where Moses shared the terms of the covenant (to which they agreed) and consecrated them as the chosen people of God.

Then, he disappeared up the mountain.

In Egypt they had known back-breaking work and terrible treatment, but it had been familiar. There had always been enough food and water, and they had known what to expect from life. In the wilderness, they had known nothing but uncertainty. They had become a travel-stained, wearied people beset by hunger, thirst, violence, and illness, and they had no place to call home. They had only the hope of God’s promise to protect them and lead them to the Promised Land, and the embodiment of that hope was Moses.

Is it any wonder that as day after day went by with no word from their leader their faith began to waiver? All alone at the foot of a shaking mountain swathed in a cloud of smoke and lightning with the pall of anxiety and fear growing gripping them more and more tightly, is it surprising that they looked back at the stable, steady, predictable years in Egypt with some sense of regret? Maybe … just maybe, they could create something like that for themselves. Maybe they could take control of their own lives for the very first time instead of obeying orders or following a prophet to God-only-knows where. Maybe what they needed was a more predictable, more tangible god to pray to – a god like those that governed life in Egypt.

Can you feel it, the weight of that fear … the rising sense of worry and anxiety about what the future will hold? Have you ever felt it in your own life … when the plot of your story left you standing in the shadow of an unknowable power hidden from your sight? Have you ever felt a sense of urgency that led you to make your own way down a path you control?

Perhaps it’s a little bit harder than we thought to condemn the Hebrews, but there is still no denying that it is dangerous to place our trust in our own control rather than trusting God.


I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the film, “What Dreams May Come,” but I hope that if you are not, this sermon may encourage you to watch it. It is one of my all-time favorites both because of the brilliant and whimsically colorful world in which it takes place and because of the deep theological questions it asks … but doesn’t really answer.

Most of the movie takes place in an afterlife where each person’s “world” is controlled by his or her own imagination. But the main line of the story returns again and again to a woman who has lost her children in a car accident. She blames herself, and the weight of her grief and self-condemnation quickly turn her into a depressed, panic-attack ridden shadow of her former self. She gets through her days as an art museum curator through the support and encouragement of her husband. But just as life is beginning to take on joy and color again, her husband is killed trying to help others injured in a major pile-up on the way to her office.

Once again depression and self-loathing take over her life, and she drifts deeper and deeper into the shadows of the valley of death. As despair and anxiety overwhelm her, she comes to the point where she chooses to end her own life (the only thing she feels she can control) in order to end the pain.

As you might guess, she ends up in the afterlife as well. But where her children and her husband were freed by death to make of their new life whatever they most desired, she was trapped in the world as she had experienced it – condemned to an eternal hell by the power of her own imagination and her need for control.

Upon learning of his wife’s fate, the husband sets out on a quest to save her – something that has never been accomplished before. He travels to the land of lost souls, crosses the horribly gruesome landscape, and enters her world. Against all odds, he manages to wake out of her dark dream of suffering and draw her back into the light of love.

And so we have a Hollywood-style happy ending. But, real life is rarely Hollywood, and though our scripture today ends on a happy note – God repenting his wrath thanks to the heroic efforts of Moses on behalf of the people – the story goes on. When he came down from the mountain, Moses called on those who remained faithful to become the priests of the One God at the price of killing their brothers, friends, and neighbors. Three thousand were slaughtered that day, and the people came down with a plague brought on when they were made to drink the ashes of the golden calf. And that was just the beginning of Israel’s story of prideful idolatry and the suffering it caused.


Are we really any different? Do our lives speak of a more faithful commitment to the covenant? None of us have a golden idol secreted away in our homes (at least I hope not), and most of us do our very best not to worship money or power or whatever other idol we can think of. Yet we all feel fear and anxiety, don’t we? We all feel like there is something missing – a gap that needs to be filled in our lives or in our souls. What do you do when those specters rise up within you? Do you wait for God or do you take matters into your own hands? Do you seek out a deeper relationship with the Spirit or do you fill the void with the next new toy or cause or distraction?

I wonder if we are aware of how often we turn to idols because we feel the need to do something ourselves rather than trusting in the promise of grace and mercy that is our true hope. I wonder what that does to us. I wonder where that takes us. What lies at the end of our story?

Will we choose the path of faith that follows in the footsteps of self-less service, or will we trust in our own wisdom and the idols we create for ourselves. Will we live into the covenant promise of peace and joy that reigns over life in the Kingdom, or will we join the herd, building step by painful step our own private hell – our own corporate hell on earth?