Then, the real fun would start.
For the next couple of days, in the midst of the other work of being a Pastor, I would live in those texts, often walking to the Sanctuary to walk around, trying out phrases, reading the text aloud (which can REALLY change how you read) and seeing what ideas would jump up. Often, those ideas followed the initial line of thought for the bulletin somewhat... but occasionally, the impulse would go in another direction entirely.
I usually started those sermons with an apology that what the people were about to hear would NOT be following the expected course they'd read in the bulletin. Some of them would roll their eyes at me, others would lead forward. Typically, if the Holy Spirit interrupted my usual rhythm to take me in a different direction, the result was pretty good, at the very least, they knew it would be interesting.
Exodus 32:1-14
The Text:
The Take:
God and Moses then descend into what can only sound to us now like a pair of parents arguing over their children. If you are a parent (and have a partner in that endeavor) you likely WELL know what it is to go home and have your partner inform you of what YOUR child did in your absence. That context is worth remembering... I have occasionally muttered to my wife "That's it, this time I kill her," about our daughter, but that is never the meaning, and my wife never has taken it as such. It's frustration voiced in hyperbole, not murderous rage. (Let me step away from the keyboard to confirm that she knows that... yup, confirmed!)
So while it is certainly POSSIBLE that God was just about to go down the mountain and wipe out the Hebrews once and for all, it's at least worth a second to consider that something else might have been going on.
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
The Text:
The Take:
Philippians 4:1-9
The Text:
Matthew itself is widely called the Gospel to the Jews, intended as a Christological apology to the Hebrew people in a time of chaos and transition, so you're not making wild assumptions when you say that Matthew's intention likely was NOT "Oh well, no more Jews" in the kingdom.
The end is telling, though. Here the doors are, open wide, but then the Master sees an invited guest who did not dress appropriately, and has them bound and thrown out. Here IS an invitation lost... you can't just show up, you need to make an effort.
When we look at Idolatry, we often see it as this dumb thing. What are those people doing, worshiping a lump of metal! We looks especially at the sin of the Hebrews in Exodus in such a dismissive way. "Hah, God had JUST helped them escape from Egypt and now already they're making up a new God to follow and giving that God credit? How dumb can you be!?"
But when we treat the sins of the People of God that way, we minimize the risks. They were dumb, we are not, and so we fail to take the warning of the text at face value.
Some might have been surprised at my minimizing of the sin of the Hebrews in the Take on that particular text, but I did so because it is important to keep in mind what really happened. The Hebrews had reason to believe that Moses was dead, and Moses, to that point, had been their most visible reminder of the presence and commandments of God. In their minds, they probably weren't replacing God... they were replacing MOSES.
But Moses was a flesh and blood guy who spoke with the LORD and could tell them when they were going right or wrong, a Prophet. An Idol had no opinions, had no agenda, was an empty object upon which the desires and biases of the people could be projected, and thereby deified. They took the living, breathing God and replaced God with an inanimate lump of gold, in the image of a creature which, while powerful, was also non-threatening.
I think that sin is one that is not only understandable in our modern context, but also prevalent. Many of our older representatives of the LORD have moved on and in their place we have placed Idols. We tell ourselves we are still worshiping the same God, but in place of a God with desires, drives, and commandments, we have started worshiping something inanimate, something unchallenging, something that permits us to project our own angers, fears, and biases upon it.
In North America today, that idol is often Americana, a rose-colored glasses version of an old America which was once "great." We lionize our old morality, our old religion, our old social structure as a better time, and as that gilded material starts to harden in the mold we start to see any deviation from it as a deviation from the will of God, even when God's scriptures again exhort us to seek out what is good, true, and pure, we instead cling to the status quo, to what is familiar. We say the word God, we sit in buildings we call Churches, but all the while we worship nostalgia, rather than the God announced in the scriptures.
And because we have learned to worship what is familiar, what is comfortable, it never occurs to us that we might be called upon to CHANGE ourselves as we answer God's call. And when God sees us, no different at the banquet table than we had been at any time in our lives and asks why we didn't even think to wear our Banquet robes, we have no answer.
Because the idols we worshiped never told us to change, it never occurred to us that we might need to.