Two weeks ago I posed the question, What is God like?
This week, our reading from Exodus prompts two questions in me: Where is God? And, what do we do when we feel God is absent?
Our reading from Exodus 32 is one of those split-screen scenes. We have the Israelites camped at the foot of Mount Sinai, with Aaron left in charge over them. While Moses is up on the mountain, and has been for several weeks at this point, talking with God and receiving the Law.
And the people are getting a little antsy. That prevailing anxiety in the Israelites since they left Egypt is flaring up again. They don’t know what has happened to Moses, is he still alive? If he’s not alive then, what are we doing? Where are we going? Who is this God that has led us here?
And so in this anxiety they return to old ways, old patterns. This idea that God is spirit, who sometimes appears as flame, or cloud, is too nebulous. We need something concrete, tangible. So they ask Aaron to make them a Golden Calf.
Now, there is a lot of debate as to what the Golden Calf is. Some scholars are of the belief they are constructing the idol of an Egyptian or Canaanite god, many of whom appear quite bovine in form. Others argue the calf is a platform or pedestal for their God, Adonai, to appear on. The text is a little murky on this.
But what we can know for sure is they want a concrete thing that they can worship and make offerings to. Which was the ritual practice of the neighboring traditions at this time.
Because how much more reassuring is that? Having something you can see and touch. Where is God? Right over there in the calf idol. Is God on our side in this battle? Why surely, because we are carrying the calf ahead of us. Far more reassuring than this God who appears as a cloud and then vanishes, or appears as a flame and is gone.
Where is God? This is a question we might sometimes ask in wondering, but has an acute urgency in times of anxiety or crisis. Because it’s in those times we want something firm to cling to. When we are buffeted by the storms of the world, here is something to which we are firmly tethered.
And there may be moments when the Spirit of God feels close, present, as near to us as the person next to us in the pews. When we can feel the Spirit’s breath on our neck, or moving through us, or moving through all that which surrounds us.
And there are times when that Spirit might feel like vapor. A gas that has escaped up into the atmosphere. Inaccessible. Distant. Everywhere and yet, nowhere.
And so what happens in those moments? Well, sometimes we make golden calves.
Sex, money, status, titles, power. Not in themselves bad things. But when worshipped in the place of God they become idols.
When they become the things we turn to for comfort in times of anxiety. They become graven images that draw us not into God, but further separate us from God.
But I think the most worrying thing we do is when we make God, and Jesus himself, into our own Golden Calf. When we bend and mold and gild Christ into the way we want him to be, rather than allow him to bend and mold and gild us into the way he wants us to be.
When we ask that old motto: What would Jesus do? And the answer seems to be Jesus would endorse the exact things that we want to do. Jesus would vote the exact way we vote. Somehow every Christian has Jesus take their side.
No matter what side we are on, let us always approach that particular question with fear and trembling.
So, if we are not to turn to these idols, whether they are substitutions for God, or a God made in our image. Where do we turn? What do we do when we feel God is absent or inaccessible?
The Good News is that God does not leave us comfortless.
In the narrative of Exodus God has already given Israel detailed plans of a place to worship God. A place where God assures Israel of God’s presence. A tabernacle, a tent in the wilderness, and an Ark placed within it, upon which will sit the Glory of God. It was always God’s plan to dwell among God’s people. That wilderness tabernacle will, over the centuries, become the Temple in Jerusalem. The inner sanctum of which, the Holy of Holies, was understood to be the footstool of God’s heavenly throne.
But that temple hasn’t stood for nearly 2,000 years. So, where do we find God?
Again, God has not left us disconsolate.
Forgive the very priesty answer but this is the very reason we have churches. In this place, and more importantly, among these people, God has given us the means of accessing God. And not one method but many means.
Maybe you are a heady type of person. And your means of accessing God is through the written word, through theology, through thinking thoughts of God. You can find that in this place.
Maybe you are a sensory person. You are drawn to beauty and you are drawn in through the beauty of this space, whose 100th anniversary we celebrate today. The stained glass, the arches, the linens, the vestments, the music, all the beauty of the holiness. All our mere attempts to stimulate the human senses to the presence of God. You can find that in this place.
Maybe you are a mystic, a sacramental type. And you are drawn to the rituals we enact in this space. And Christ has given us the assurance that through the power of the Holy Spirit, he is truly present in the holy mystery of the Eucharist. You can find God in this bread and this wine.
Or maybe, you find God in the faces of others. Knowing that all of us are created in the image of God. And that when two or three are gathered in the name of Christ, Christ is in our presence. That is why we come together on a Sunday as a community, or on a Saturday morning to expand our idea of community. To seek the face of Christ in the face of our neighbor. You can find God here.
These are not idols we have constructed, these are gifts we have been given. These are not structures and mechanisms to pin down God, but places where we can be brought into a spiritual place where God finds us.
But I am not naive. Sometimes we do all of it and still don’t feel it.
We sing the hymn. We take the bread. We look our neighbor in the eye. And we feel nothing.
This is where the Israelites tripped. They didn’t build the calf because God was gone. God was on that mountain the whole time. They built it because they couldn’t feel God, and they read that as absence. The calf was a demand for certainty.
But faith is not about certainty. It’s about trust.
Trust looks like showing up on a Sunday when you’re not feeling it. Coming back when the bread just seems to be bread. Some weeks it will be there, and some weeks it won’t. Come anyway. And on the weeks you can’t believe it yourself, let the person next to you believe it for you. That’s what we’re there for.
Then, every so often, especially when you’ve stopped expecting it, God shows up. And you get to be surprised and delighted.
Where is God? Here. Whether we feel it or not.