Last week’s Lectionary Torah reading was the story of The Golden Calf, which is a really familiar story to a lot of folks who grew up in church. But I think that there’s a lot of depth that can be missed within it if you just stick with how it’s usually taught. Because it’s not just about idolatry. It’s about a people wrestling with knowing that God is there, God’s tangibility. So they made a new god. I’m going to be reading from Exodus 32:1-14:
32 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” 6 They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel.
7 The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 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.”
11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” 14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
During seminary, my Torah professor, Dr. Charles Rix, told me over dinner one evening that he did his doctoral dissertation over this story. His central argument was that this is actually meant to be read as an ancient comedy! Because when you really think about it, it’s completely over the top and ridiculous. God’s chosen people – whom God had freed from slavery in Egypt, parted a sea to help them escape Pharoah’s slave patrols, led them through the Wilderness for forty years visibly in the shape of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, fed them manna on the ground each morning – these people who have been privy to YHWH’s very visible power for years have been asked to wait for Moses and God to have a chat on the top of a mountain. They are gone for a while, and the people just announce that they are going to worship something else. They know YHWH is with them. They have seen the miracles themselves. Seas have parted. And Moses leaves camp for a few days and look what happens.
So Aaron, who at this point is acting as their high priest, is suddenly asked to just make them new gods because YHWH has apparently gone off to buy smokes with Moses. And Aaron does something really interesting here. He doesn’t just say, “sure let’s do it. Let’s make you some new gods!” He tells them that the Golden Calf is the God who led them out of Egypt. So Aaron isn’t denouncing YHWH, he is trying to be a good priest and is actually trying to act pastorally. He’s just doing it in a hilariously bad way.
Meanwhile, in the next scene, YHWH finds out about this and seems to have what might be a panic attack(?). YHWH seems to completely lose Their mind. Go down at once! Your people…have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it… 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. And Moses has to actually calm God down! He reminds YHWH of the Covenant that YHWH made with Abraham, how They said that They would never abandon Abraham’s offspring.
So we have the people who start demanding new gods who don’t abandon their kids, we have the Creator of the Entire Cosmos who has to be talked down from a panic attack by Moses while Aaron, Israel’s high priest, is busy trying to get his people to worship YHWH by actually worshiping an idol. It’s a hilarious and bonkers scene overall. It’s like an ancient sitcom. You can almost picture Moses as Seinfeld being a voice of reason to YHWH. And YHWH might be George, because George is always freaking out. And Aaron is Kramer completely messing everything up in the most ridiculous way possible.
The way that this story is usually talked about is that Moses leaves and goes up a mountain to speak with God and the rest of the people get tired of waiting on him and just decide to suddenly start worshiping a golden idol in YHWH’s absence. Moses and God get mad and violence ensues. And there is truth to that interpretation. That’s not necessarily a wrong way to read it. But I think that just taking that away from the story removes a lot of the humanity from it, the real lived reality of human experience. What comedy does, on the other hand, is humanize stories. It points out the crazy nuances and dials it up to eleven.
Dr. Rix also talks about how the Golden Calf story is actually like a “literary release valve” (Rix, 2) for the Israelites, which is also something that comedy does – it releases pressure. Rix describes the party that the Israelites throw around the Golden Calf as an example of carnival (Rix, 1). In Exodus chapters 25-31 the people are portrayed as robots. They don’t speak and are given the instructions to build the Tabernacle. They are given prohibitions against building it the wrong way, with the threat of death if they violate the Sabbath. There is nothing in those chapters about the Israelites’ needs, wants, desires, or agency. There is nothing in those chapters about the Israelites state of well-being at all! They are just seen as Tabernacle-building machines (Rix, 2, 3).
But then we get to this story and everything suddenly changes. The overall mood suddenly shifts in a dramatically different way. Moses and YHWH leave and the robots break free and have a carnival! The pressure that was built up over all of those chapters of rule-following and bland instructions and death threats gets to be finally released! And then, in the chapters immediately following this story, and after all the violence by Moses and YHWH has settled, the people are actually enthusiastic followers of YHWH again.
Rix presents carnival as a period of singing, dancing, and celebration. It’s what happens when oppressed or suffering people suddenly break free. It’s what happens when celebration breaks out after a long period of toil. Carnival levels hierarchies, and it builds strong communities better than strict adherence to purity codes. Everybody is on the same level when the pressure release breaks. Aaron’s just some idiot along with the rest of them (Rix, 2).
The people wanted a leader who showed them that they cared by actually listening to their needs, not just handing them instructions and expecting them to work like machines. And this distance between the leader and the people became complete when Moses disappeared for a long time. That is actually the perfect time for that built up pressure to suddenly and dramatically break.
The people wanted a tangible god who would actually take their well-being into consideration. So they ask Aaron to make them new gods. And Aaron decides, in a snap decision, to meet them and YHWH in the middle and say that the Golden Calf was actually a depiction of YHWH. But the problem here is that the people didn’t realize that they had actually significantly minimized God by trying to make God into a physical object. Making YHWH into a tangible relic actually makes God less than what God is.
Because up until this moment, God has been depicted as 1) a Pillar of Smoke leading them through the Wilderness by day; 2) a Pillar of Fire leading them by night; 3) a Burning Bush that talks but doesn’t burn up; 4) the Creator of the entire Cosmos; 5) the Sender of horrifying plagues; and 6) the Sender of magical manna from Heaven. God is magic! God is the Mysterium Tremendum. God is the Wind that blows over the surface of the Deep. God is a Divine Mystery of Love. God is Queerness incarnate. And making God into a statue actually de-queers God. It makes Them understandable. It makes Them even controllable. Perhaps YHWH’s anger wasn’t just the result of Their people no longer obeying Them but also because it contains Them, and Mystery cannot be contained.
A manageable god can be manipulated. It can be manipulated by powerful people to do whatever they want. If the people had somehow managed to contain the Infinite into a Golden Calf, they could make the Infinite their tool. Any tyrannical dictator could rise up and seize that power for themselves. Any lunatic could wield the power of god for whatever ends they saw fit.
And we’ve seen what can happen when powerful people try to make God into a controllable force. Powerful people have tried to do that for thousands of years – using their little gods to terrify everyone underneath them so that they do what they are told. It’s like using the Lord’s Prayer as an advertisement to bless military violence against Iran and Venezuela. It’s like tear-gassing people at a church just so you can pose in front of it holding an upside-down Bible so your followers think you actually believe in anything other than yourself. It’s like claiming that we are a Christian nation (when there is no such thing) and declaring public executions. God have mercy.
If God can be controlled, minimized into a Golden Calf, then there is no hope for anyone. If the Creator of the Cosmos is just a sword to be used by whoever is in power, then there is no escape from the violence of imperial oppression. A god who is not queer divine mystery is no god at all and we are truly alone, at the mercy of whoever is in power over us.
That’s what caused YHWH to freak out. Their people did not understand the chaos that they were asking for. They did not understand the ramifications of demanding a god who can be hefted and molded by human hands. And when YHWH realized that Their people didn’t get something that is so crucial, that you don’t want someone to have power over your Creator, YHWH completely loses it for a few verses. George Costanza is left stammering.
The God who I know is not a god that can be contained. Ours is a queer God. Because a god that can be easily figured out or seen or heard is a god that can be used to hurt people. God is a knowing that can unspeakably move us. God is the peace that speaks to us in the breeze. God is our Creator and our Sustainer. God is love.
God is transcendent and completely present with us at the same time. God suffers alongside us and rejoices alongside us. God is dancing alongside us, laughing alongside us. God is the Tremendous and Terrifying Mystery at the Heart of All Creation and was a pooping baby, if you go the Trinitarian route. God is with us and God is beyond our attempts at control.
I know that God is present among us because I feel God every time I talk to someone in my congregation, Simplicity Christian Church. I know that God is present because sometimes the breeze feels like He’s kissing me on the cheek. I know God is present because She speaks to me through opportunities and possibilities. But I’ve never seen God in a vision or heard God in a voice. God has never been limited to the tangible for me. Instead, God has always been a Mystery Who is close enough to whisper into my ear.
Calling for a public execution, even when that call ends up rescinded, are a sign of the deep fear and insecurity of a decaying regime struggling to maintain its grip on the world. Like Rome’s crucifixions, they indicate that the regime has no faith in anything other than themselves. They do not believe in the Presence of the God whom they claim to follow. Their violence is a golden idol, and they would not make idols if they really believed in a present God.
May we be people who are aware of God’s Presence with us. And may that awareness sustain us in these hard times. When powerful men tell us that God is their sword to be wielded against the oppressed, know that that god is a tiny little reflection of their own insecurities. That god is just a golden idol that only reflects their fear. But may we be people who are not afraid, who know that they are loved by a God who is beside and within them. Amen.
Work Cited:
Charles M. Rix, “Song and Dance: The World of Carnival in the Exodus Story of the Golden Calf,” Leaven (Pepperdine University) 21, no. 2 (2013), https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol21/iss2/10.