God, Gold, and Idols | A Sermon on True Stewardship
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin for the people of Saint George’s Episcopal Church on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (A) on Sunday, October 11, 2020
Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23.
Pastor William Sloane Coffin once said that if he walked into a church as a visitor on Sunday and the pastor announced that it was Stewardship Sunday and that she was going to preach a sermon on stewardship, he, Coffin, would immediately bow his head and pray fervently for brevity.
Well, spoiler alert, this is a stewardship sermon. If you’d like to take a moment to pray for brevity, then I accept that.
It is stewardship season, and yet to label it this way might be perpetuating a misunderstanding about what true stewardship is; true stewardship knows no season.
Stewardship is, after all, the acknowledgment that we have been entrusted with something precious, called to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and challenged to place our trust in God and God’s work in the world and in this community.
If we come to think of stewardship as something to be checked off a list and relegated to fall giving, we have missed the mark. What if we viewed this season, instead, as a gift? As a time of discernment, a time to think purposefully and prayerfully about what we trust, what we hold central in our lives, what we worship.
Because, if this is a stewardship sermon, it is also a sermon about God, and Gold, and Idols [1].
For many weeks, our lectionary has offered the story of Exodus.
And, of course, Exodus tells us that God’s beloved people were suffering under the bitter rule of Egypt’s Pharaoh. And it tells us their liberation by the hand of God.
A fierce battle with Pharaoh is waged and won. The Red Sea is parted, and God’s people are washed clean. God journeys with them through the wilderness, a firm presence and provider. The people of Israel stand on the precipice of transformation, as they say farewell to their past and greet a future of promised freedom.
And yet, this is also not the end. We know what comes next. Moses leaves to be with God for God’s people. And God’s people, well, they don’t fare well in his absence. As one preacher puts it:
Meanwhile, back in the valley, the Israelites are growing restless [and] . . . impatient. We can suppose danger is in the air, because . . . valleys are not known for their [safety] in the Bible . . . the people were weak. And the valley’s shadows overwhelm. [2]
And so the people, God’s own people, When they saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come make Gods for us” (Exodus 32:1).
They gather their gold, gold which has, mind you, been plundered from Egypt. The gold of their oppressor and of their oppression. And they create an idol of it. A false God. They’ve returned without even noticing to worshipping the things that once held them in bondage. As the psalmist notes,
And so they exchanged their Glory, for the image of an ox that feeds on grass (Ps. 106:20).
When you put it like that, it all seems so short-sided, so forgetful, so fickle, so ye of little faith.
But the Israelites aren’t just bored or ignorant or any of the adjectives we might use to discount them or to distance them from our own experience, they are instead fearful, left in a precarious position with little idea about how to move forward in a world turned upside down – and that is quite understandable and relatable.
We too fear uncertainty. Here and now, far removed we think from the time of God and Gold and Idols, we stand in our own sort of valley. Open to the elements, looking at an unknown future and finding ourselves tempted to turn back, tempted to cast false idols out of things we know won’t really bring us love, or life, or freedom. Tempted even to make the past, the good old days, an idol. Tempted to create false worlds for ourselves, worlds that we can control, trust, be certain of.
Times like these pull back the curtain, so to speak, and give us a glimpse of the truth. Certainty, at all times, is just a myth. We never really know what the future holds. And, yet, we are desperate to shore up what we know and what we have, to put our anxieties to rest, to predict and to plan and even to plead:
Come, make Gods for us, who shall go before us.
Let me be clear. The fact that we long for certainty, long for something to put our trust in, that is not a bad thing. We are, after all, only human. Planning and acting is necessary in this world and it is helpful to have some certainty. When we don’t, we grow fearful, our perception distorts, things begin to grow smaller: the world, our capabilities, our resources, even our perception of God and neighbor.
Fear tempts us to turns inward and tells us that we are alone and so we begin to act like we are alone – and to grasp about for anything that we can cling to, rely upon, trust, until golden calves litter the landscapes of our lives.
Our bank accounts, political parties, parenting styles, stock portfolios, volunteerism. Our community. Even our denomination, our church, our own ideas about who God is. Nothing is off the table.
The Israelites put their trust in golden calves, but not before they put their trust in Aaron, and before him, Moses. A trust too big to hold Moses and Aaron’s human imperfections. Because, Moses could not see their pain, fear, need from up on the mountain. Moses is not God. And Aaron, well, he doesn’t push back at all against their request. Perhaps he too is fearful, or perhaps he likes being suddenly useful, in control, the one whom all eyes turn to. Perhaps he too needs the comfort of the golden calf even as he serves as one.
Because people too can be idols. Our mentors, partners, politicians, priests – all of them, all of it.
That’s the thing about golden calves, “the raw material,” as preacher Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “is almost never a bad thing. It is usually a good thing—like gold—until . . . it is made into the ultimate thing— like God.” [3]
This is where stewardship, the season, can prove very useful as a time of discernment around what or whom we serve, in what or whom do we place our trust. And to enter it now, in this time of collective and realized uncertainty, what a gift. The world turning upside is quite the cure for idolatry.
Friends, over the next few weeks you will hear more about stewardship from us – from this St. George’s community of which you a vital part. I pray that this might be a time of discernment for all of us – a time to really explore what our bank statements, calendars, words, relationships say about what we value, what we hold central in our lives, and what we worship.
A time to ask ourselves what it might look like to live in the generosity of love and to accept the freedom that comes when we let go of idols of all shapes and sizes and put our trust in the Lord, always.
Amen.
The image is The Golden Calf by Arthur Boyd. Boyd re-imagines the Biblical story of the golden calf in an Australian landscape, transposing the scene to his own surroundings in the tradition of the Netherlandish master Pieter Brueghel, whose work he knew through reproductions. Read more about the image here: https://cv.vic.gov.au/stories/creative-life/an-art-history-of-australia/the-golden-calf-painting-by-arthur-boyd/
[1] The title of this sermon is borrowed from The Very Reverend Sam Candler.
[2] The Reverend Meghan Feldmeyer, “Tainted Love,” a sermon preached in Duke University Chapel, Oct. 9, 2011, https://chapel-archives.oit.duke.edu/documents/TaintedLove--10-09-11_000.pdf.
[3] Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Chicago: Cowley, 1995), 139.
