I’m an eternal optimist. I like looking on the bright side.  I love to dream the seemingly impossible.  You can spot optimists pretty easily.  Watching the US Open last Sunday afternoon, I spotted one in the crowd of spectators watching Tiger Woods make his run at one of golf’s major championships.  If you were watching, you probably heard him.  He seems to show up at every tee box at every golf tournament across the country.  Tiger steps up to the ball, ready to tee off.  The crowd is silent because the course management has hired some guy to hold up a thingamajig that means “be quiet”.  Tiger’s in his back swing…silence.  Then, “whoosh”, the down swing and the pop of ball being blasted off the tee.  Immediately you hear the eternal optimist in the crowd yell, “In the hole!”  Never mind the fact that the hole is a mere five hundred yards away.  Tiger is good…no doubt the best…but even my eternal optimism becomes a little skeptical at that point.   

 

We all have our breaking points I guess.  We all can only believe so far before we turn it off.  It’s impossible we say…I’ve never seen it happen.  If I can’t see it, I can’t believe.  We all want to see, don’t we?  We all want something to believe in.  Infomercial gurus know this about humans and they are all over it.  There’s always a new diet shake out there that will revolutionize your body.  Just a little powder in 8 ounces of water is all it takes.  Drink it just before bedtime.  Go to bed looking like Free Willy and wake up looking like a greyhound.  They have all of those miserable before pictures next to those perky after magic formula shots.  The caption in the tiniest letters at the bottom of the screen says it all, “Results not typical.”  Even so, they know that seeing is believing and in those hopeful “after photos” we start picturing the possibilities for ourselves. 

 

Salespeople know this “seeing is believing” concept as well.  I heard of an ambitious vacuum cleaner salesman who went door to door with his own unique sales tactic.  He knew that if people could just see what his vacuums could do, if they could just hold it in their hands, they would believe.  His technique of sales was to get his foot in the door of a prospective home and throw a bag of manure on the entrance carpet before the resident had a chance to object.  This seemed to work pretty well for this man.  As fate would have it, one day the salesman approached a home, knocked on the door, and as the elderly owner of the home answered the door, he threw a bag of manure on the carpet. Before the woman could object, the salesman explained: "Lady, this vacuum is so powerful, and I have so much confidence in its ability, that I believe this vacuum will pick up every speck of this manure or I will personally get on my hands and knees and pick up every speck by hand."  To which the lady replied, "Well, come right on in, young man. We don't have any electricity."[1]

It’s not just television infomercials or door-to-door salesmen.  When you go to the doctor’s office, you like seeing that medical diploma on the wall.  When you need a lawyer, you want to see their record book.  When you get your car fixed, you want to see the old part that supposedly had only a couple of blocks of use left on it before it was going to blow up the entire northeast side of Indianapolis.  Our souls long to believe…we were created to believe…but our eyes too often trump the soul. 

 

That is the case for our ancestors, the Israelites.  We make a big deal about this story.  A golden calf, a bull, an idol… no-no’s to be certain.  They should have known better.  After all, Moses had only recently come down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments.  Note numbers one and two:  “You shall have no other gods before me” and “You shall not make any graven images of me.”  That seems pretty clear.  “Depend on me alone,” God says.  No idols, no cheap imitations, no bull.  Moses thinks all is under control.  Things are going well.  So he plans to head up the mountain again.  He’s got a conference to attend and God is the keynoter.  He leaves all six hundred thousand Israelites under the watch of his brother and Senior Associate Pastor, Aaron.  Moses is on his way to learn how to pastor this first ever mega-church.  He’s not messing around up there…it isn’t a camping trip.  Moses is doing hard, exhausting work with God.  When he returns, he would hold the future of the people in his hands. 

 

It wasn’t long before people got restless.  I can hardly blame them.  They are a tired people.  They’ve been wandering in the desert for forty years.  It’s hot, they have blistered feet, the kids are getting grumpy.  They’ve been living on a diet of manna for a long time.  It doesn’t matter how you serve it… mashed manna, manna sandwich, manna casserole surprise…it’s still manna.   And they are salivating for the land of milk and honey that has been promised to them.  Moses was supposed to lead them there but let’s be honest at this point, maybe he’s not coming back. 

 

So the people turn to Aaron.  “We’ve got to keep going, Aaron”.  Make us something that can stand in for God…something that can lead us on…something we can see, feel, something to believe in.  I have no clue what Aaron was thinking.  Maybe he was desperate.  Maybe the pressure of leading that many people was getting to him.  Maybe he was uncertain if his brother would come back too.  So he devises a plan.  Give me all of your jewelry.  Gather it up and I’ll see what I can do.  He melts down their gold jewelry and then becomes a sculptor.  Art is all about interpretation and it’s hard to knock a guy’s artistic creation but how Aaron came up with a golden calf is beyond me.  Animals certainly held meaning for other things in those days like fertility and strength so maybe that’s what Aaron was going for (strong like a bull).  You can imagine the unveiling.  “Take a look at this, my people”.  “I’ll give you something to see, something to believe in, something to follow.”  And voila, “I call it Holy Cow.”  Harry Carey must have been somewhere among the crowd.

 

It’s hard not to laugh.  It does seem ludicrous.  But if I laugh, I’m not laughing at them, I’m laughing with them.  I’m not that much different than these ancestors of mine when it comes to wanting something to see and believe in.  When you lose touch with God… when you can no longer see him, touch him, hold on to him, we start looking for something more tangible.  You look for something that can replace his goodness, the peace you once knew, the promises he offered.  It’s not so much that the Israelites wanted another god…they didn’t.  They weren’t setting out to worship an idol any more than you and I set out to worship the idols in our lives.  They just wanted a symbol…something that represented the one true God they desperately longed to know.  It is our story too.  “We take our experience of God and melt it down into something that will get us where we want to go, something that fits our lifestyle, our needs, our cultural priorities.  And we call it God.”[2]             

 

It is easy to jump to materialism at this point as the ultimate American idol.  One author certainly agrees as she defines materialism as “looking for inner fulfillment in outer possession,” the notion that “discomfort can be alleviated by something external—a baby bottle, a blanket, a bicycle, a B.A., a B.M.W. or eventually, another kind of bottle.”[3]  We get this.  You don’t need me to tell you that we struggle with these types of golden calves in our lives.  There’s always “stuff” out there, a bigger this, a nicer that, which we begin to covet to the point where we believe it to be a necessity.  These are things we possess; things we can hold on to; things we can seemingly trust.  These are things we drift toward when we are tired, when we are feeling down about ourselves…when we don’t want to think anymore.  They are a quick fix to happiness.  But the fix doesn’t last.  It only leads us in miserable, empty directions…but you know this already.  

 

Idolatry has as much to do with our identity as it does our possessions.  If I asked you the question, “How do you define yourself?”, your initial response might help you see your golden calf.  We all have our sacred cows; our prejudices, political ideologies, our religious preferences.  We build calves of our calendars.  We become enslaved to schedule-keeping to the point that we feel there is no way out.  Professionals can build calves of their work, afraid of the insecurity of trusting God for their identity.  Some make a significant others their golden calf believing they are incomplete without them, even in Christ.  Some build calves of achievement and success finding no worth outside of what they can do.  I meet regularly with people devastated that their calf has failed them…that their job is going away, that a relationship is ending, that their accomplishments are not what they used to be.  We get so engulfed by these things that we are unable to see life on the “other side” of these calves.  They were things we could hang on to, things we could see, things we could believe in…at least we thought so.  We put them in front of us thinking we could follow them…that they would lead us to the Promise Land.  But when they’re gone, we’re left wondering what to do next.

 

In the meantime, while we have packed our bags and are heading off, following the newest calf we have created for ourselves, God is still up on that mountain.  God is drawing maps for life that we are just too busy to read because we’re caught up in our own things. 

 

I’ll be honest, it’s hard to wait at the bottom of the mountain.  You get your life rolling in a certain direction and you want to keep going quickly…even if you’re not sure where you’re going.  It has been said that we travel the fastest when we are lost.  “Get that calf out there before us and let’s chase it.”  But God is doing something here in Exodus.  He’s establishing some boundaries between heaven and earth to assure us that God’s promises and identity are not tied up in something as cheap or temporary as a cow, a job, or six pack abs in seven minutes.  God is working under the assumption that we will trust him to reveal Himelf to us as we are ready or that we will melt down what little we know of God and follow that.  God is hoping for the first option because He knows there is only one way out of the wilderness.  We can either roam the desert, living by sight, chasing idols or we can live by faith and trust God to take us to the Promise Land. 

 

I know it is tough to live amidst the mysteries of God; not knowing if you’re doing the right thing or going the right direction.  It is popular in many circles these days to preach you to prosperity, to fix your life, to build for you a god that you can see and grasp.  I always wanted to preach those “how-to” sermons.  You know the ones:  Seven Steps to Happiness or How to Buy Stock like Jesus or How to Have a Beautiful, Wealthy, Well-Mannered, Family of Perfection.  Stay tuned, those sermons may come later this summer.  But if they don’t, how do we go on?  How do we worship and follow a God that we cannot see? 

 

What if we allowed room for the mystery of God to work within our lives?  What if we trusted God to reveal to us what we need when we need it the most?  What if we would see God, not with our eyes but with our souls; in our everyday experiences?  It is like the two walking on the road to Emmaus with Jesus in disguise, “Did not our hearts burn when he walked alongside us?” Have you ever had one of those moments?  You have shared with me on numerous occasions:  “I can’t explain it…I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I know it was God.  I know God was with us.  God is up to something.”

 

That’s enough to hold you at the bottom of the mountain waiting for God to reveal more of the mystery.  That’s your daily bread, that’s enough.  Don’t melt it down into something you can see…some fad you can latch onto for a time…something cheap that you can control or manage; something that can’t stand through the hard times.  Those cheap imitations will fail us every time.  Those idols start whispering to us, “God doesn’t hear you.”  “You are alone.”  “Nobody cares.”  You find no grace in those gods. 

 

Amidst the mystery of God, however, grace finds us.  God does come down the mountain.  For our ancestors, God comes to them in the form of Moses.  Moses would lead them on and continue his mission in helping God become real to his people.  God comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ who, like Moses, “pleads to God on our behalf not to destroy us on the spot but to give us a second chance, to have mercy on those who dance even still around their golden calves while the real thing hangs on a tree.”[4] “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” Jesus says from the cross.

 

Somehow the pleading works.  Mercy is demonstrated.  Another chance is offered.  I don’t know why.  It is one of those mysteries that we should just be thankful for.  A new diet drink will always be out there.  Vacuum salesmen will still be armed with bags of manure.  Tiger fans will still holler, “In the hole.”  As good as those may seem; as much as I like to see and hold onto something I can believe in, I’ll hang onto the mystery of God.  I’ll wait at the bottom of the mountain.  And even when I can’t see, I’ll believe.  After all, I’m an eternal optimist which is not all that hard to be when you have faith in an empty tomb.   

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