Exodus 32: 1-14
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Ordinary Time –
First United Church – Sermon by Rev. Caela
Simmons Wood
When I
began college, there was a new academic program at my university that was
getting a lot of buzz. They were heavily recruiting many of us to take the
introductory course in Leadership Studies, and I did. I decided not to pursue
the program further because I came to the conclusion, over the semester, that
some of the skills you need to be a leader can be learned, but most of them you
either have or you don’t.
For the
better part of the past two months, the Revised Common Lectionary has been
following the tale of that great Jewish leader Moses. He’s always been one of
my favorites. I can’t help but love him – his humble, yet royal, beginnings;
his willingness to stop and look at a burning bush; his unwillingness to see
himself as special and set apart; his fierce anger; his uncertainties; his
heartfelt conversations with God; his mistakes.
He’s a
leader for the ages. One that will never be forgotten.
In today’s
passage, we see Moses during one of his truly mountaintop moments. He is, quite
literally, on the mountain with the Holy One. He’s been up there for quite some
time, receiving the Law from Yahweh. His followers linger below. Moses’s
brother, Aaron, has been left in charge and, like a substitute teacher on his
first day in a new classroom, he’s certainly feeling the pressure from his
students.
The
people are worried. Formerly enslaved people, they know little about how to
exist on their own. Traumatized by generations of mistreatment, they are fully
accustomed to being told what to do. They traded in their masters for Moses
and, along the way, have grown dependent on his leadership. Now that he’s been
gone for a while, they’re unsure if he’s coming back and, like a young child
left too long at a new babysitter’s house, they allow their anxiety to rear its
ugly head and they throw a little tantrum.
The go
to Aaron, their second-in-command, and command him to make them some new gods.
The fear behind their outburst is that God has abandoned them. They have
followed this strange deity and his messenger to the middle of nowhere. They
have traded in some measure of security for absolute uncertainty. And now that
Moses is gone, they feel certain God is gone, too.
If you
asked most biblically-literate folks what idol the Israelites created in the
dessert, they’d tell you it was a golden calf. But I would also submit to you
that they had an idol long before they made that calf. Moses had come to
represent God to them. So much so, that when Moses was gone, they thought God
had left the building, too.
Aaron,
primarily motivated by his own fears and insecurities simply does what the
people ask him to do. He doesn’t even stop to think it over. He doesn’t consult
with anyone else. He just does what they ask. He makes them an idol. Certainly
not the poster-child for leadership, huh?
Who
knows what motivated him, precisely? Some would argue that he feared for his
life. It was an unruly and large group of folks. Maybe they would have killed
him if he hadn’t complied. Or maybe he wanted to be more popular than his
brother. Or maybe, just maybe, he simply loved the people and wanted to make
them happy. Anyone who’s ever given a child a second or third cookie just
because they looked so cute when they asked for it knows what it feels like to
just want to give someone you love what they want. Maybe that was Aaron’s
motivation.
Regardless, he catches the people’s contagious anxiety. Fearful that he is now left completely alone to tend to these people, he does what they ask – even though it’s not good for them.
A change
of scene to the mountaintop and we, the hearers, discover what we should have
remembered all along. The people are not alone. God has not left them. God is
right there with them, watching their anxiety. And God is not pleased to
discover they have so quickly lost faith in the presence of the Holy.
God goes
on a little rampage, speaking frankly to Moses. And then, the moment we’ve all
been waiting for is here: Moses takes the lead.
Let’s
remember that God chose Moses to lead because God saw something special in
Moses. Long before Moses knew he could lead the people, God did. I have to
wonder, though, did God ever expect Moses to turn around and lead God?
Because
that’s what happens here.
We have
a tendency to still want to think, for some strange reason, that God is
unmovable – but this passage (and
several others in the Bible) say just the opposite.
What I
love about this passage is not only that Moses changes God’s mind, but that he
does it in such an artful way. Clearly, God knew what to look for when selecting
Moses as a leader.
Moses
responds to God’s wrath with two questions. Anyone who’s ever learned anything
about how to teach knows that questions are the way to go. Moses asks God to
remember that these people belong to God, not Moses. And he appeals to God’s
pride, cautioning God that many will be watching how God responds to this incident
and hoping that they will see a God of grace, not a God of destruction.
Finally,
Moses makes a direct plea – asking God to remember that God has already
promised the ancestors – Abraham and Sara, Isaac and Rebecca, Israel and Leah
and Rachel and Bilhah and Zilpah – that their lines would continue.
God
cannot transfer this covenantal promise to Moses – it’s already been given to
the Hebrew people.
And it works. At least for the time
being, God relents. God listens to Moses. God is moved by a mere mortal.
Leadership at its finest.
I wonder if they ever used this
passage in any of the classes in Leadership Studies at my alma mater. If they
didn’t, they sure should have.
************
Moses was and is revered by the
Jewish people for his leadership. Jesus loved him, too. Generations of
Christians have learned from him.
We humans love to examine our
leaders. On really good days, we learn real lessons from them and are inspired
to emulate them. On not-so-good days, we are crippled by them, using their
amazing superpowers as an excuse to sit around and do nothing, because, after
all, I’m no Moses. Or Steve Jobs.
It’s been astounding to watch the
outpouring of support for Steve Jobs these past few days. It’s not exactly a
great time to be a billionaire CEO in our culture, but there was something
about Steve Jobs that many seem to have truly loved.
Sure, many of us simply feel a
connection to him because he has touched so many facets of our every day lives.
The first computer I ever had in my home was an Apple IIc. Steve Jobs designed
it in his garage and it came into my home. In so many of our homes today you’ll
find tangible evidence of his legacy – iPods, iPads, iPhones, macbooks and
more. Even those of you who don’t have any Apple products have been affected by
the way his company has changed the way media is consumed and shared in our
culture.
Steve Jobs, in his simple black
turtleneck and jeans, was, for many, evidence of what can happen if you mix
creativity with genius, business-savvy with bravery, understanding the consumer
with caring about the details. He seemed to have it all. A unique gift to the
rest of us.
As far as I know, Steve Jobs wasn’t
Christian. I think he may have dabbled in Buddhism. But he emulated, in his
life, one of the key characteristics any Christian leader should have: freedom
from fear.
Jobs went to Reed College for one
semester and then dropped out. He was a little scared when he did it, but he
knew there was something else out there for him. In his 2005 Commencement
Address to Stanford University, he explains how so many of the things that
happened in those years after he dropped out made him into the person he would
later become. He says he couldn’t connect the dots, while looking forward, but
looking back he could see he was headed on a path.
It takes courage to move forward into
the unknown. It takes strength to shush the voices that tell you you’ll never
find a job if you drop out of college. It takes guts to talk back to God when
you’re standing on a mountaintop and God is really angry.
Leadership is not for the faint of
heart.
Another brave man died this week.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was the last living co-founder of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference. Like Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy before him,
he moved forward into immortality this week. He was one of those other great
leaders in the Civil Rights movements. You know, the ones you can see standing
next to Dr. King in all the photos if you know to look for them.
Shuttlesworth was a little spicier
than Dr. King. Civil rights biographer Diane McWhorter said that, “Shuttlesworth was in the vanguard of direct action,
pushing towards confrontation. King was the person who could really deal with
white people and was more conciliatory.”[1]
Shuttlesworth’s obituary
in the L.A. Times noted that, by his
own count, Rev. Shuttesworth was bombed twice, beaten unconscious, and jailed
more than 35 times.
How’s that for
fearlessness? Shuttlesworth was able to lead, free from fear, because of his
abiding faith in God. Shuttlesworth, unlike the Israelites in the desert, never
lost sight of God’s abiding presence.
Again,
from the L.A. Times obituary:
Shuttlesworth often said that he "tried to get
killed in Birmingham" to draw attention to the injustices. His rough-edged
approach alienated many of the more bourgeois elements of the movement, but he
made no apologies. God, he said after the explosion that nearly took his life,
"made me bomb-proof" and blew him into history.
But we’re
not all called to be Fred Shuttlesworth or Steve Jobs or Moses, right? Right.
We’re not.
On our
best days, though, we can look to these fine leaders as inspiration and listen
closely to what God might be calling us to do.
I do
believe we are all, at one time or another, called to lead. Whether it’s
leadership in your profession, leadership in this community of faith,
leadership in your family, or the simple, elegant leadership of simply living
your life in a way that bears testimony to God’s grace and love – we are all
called to lead. God needs leaders.
I have
watched this week with great fascination as the Occupy Wall Street movement has
crept across the nation. One of my UCC clergy friends, Rachel, was at the
protests on Wall Street this past Wednesday evening. A slight woman in her early
30s, she absolutely looked every bit a leader while standing there among the
crowds wearing her clerical collar and holding up a sign that said, “On earth
as it is in heaven.”
She said
she and her friend intend to make other signs that take from the Lord’s Prayer,
“Give us this day our daily bread.” “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil.” “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Rachel
said she saw a woman with a sign that said, “I’m 84 and mad as hell” and
another, 40-something woman who had a sign that said, “Wall Street woman
questioning my own corruption.”
On a good
day, leaders inspire us to get off the couch and do some leading of our own. On
a good day, we forget our excuses – that we stutter, that we’re only 23, that
we’re too busy going to doctor’s appointments, that we’re not sure people will
follow us.
On a good
day, we remember that God needs leaders and we tentatively step forward to
answer the call.
On a good
day, we remember that our strength comes from the never-absent presence of the
Holy One. God is on the mountain, yes, but God is here with us, too.
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