is this the way you make me
ask for something more
The truth is, we’re not so far removed from today’s scripture…
The people in today’s scripture are waiting for Moses’ return. Eventually, their anxiety gets the better of them. In an attempt to settle their nerves, they concoct a little token God.
Which goes about as well as you’d expect.
Despite knowing better, though, we still see the contours of our own lives in this story. Although, not in the way we expect.
Like the people in today’s scripture, we are waiting, too. Aren’t we? We’re waiting for the return of that old abnormal. And like the people, we’ve grown weary and agitated.
While we may not have made any literal golden calves, we have had the same impulse.
In fact, if you read today’s passage closely, you can’t help but notice just how conflicted the people are, too. They really do seem sincere in their desire for worship. And Aaron’s efforts to keep the debacle on the up and up are genuinely valiant. But in the end, the pull of angst and alarm is too much for them. In no time, their worship deteriorates into idolatry.
Idolatry, something that looks a lot like worship, but at its heart is nothing more than an altar to our own impulses run amok…
Left to our own whims, even our religious ones, we almost always go astray! In our rush to calm our religious jitters, we settle for all sorts of imitations. Imitations that lead to idolatry.
It isn’t that we’re not religious enough. It’s that we’re too religious! Religious in all the wrong ways, and about all the wrong things.
…Honestly, though, none of this is enough to actually help you. Is it? It’s not enough to know better. If we learned anything at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, it’s that information isn’t enough!
Like Aaron, we already know substitutes aren’t the real McCoy. And we even know acting like they are is a surefire recipe for disaster. BUT when the wildness of the wilderness bears down on us, that knowledge CAN’T save us! It won’t keep us from concocting token gods to try and relieve our distress.
What we need isn’t a lecture. We need the real thing! Something, or someONE, who can finally extinguish this restlessness of ours. Someone who can actually deliver what all our impulses are really after, God…
Well, get ready. Get ready because, in Jesus’ cross and resurrection, that’s precisely what’s happening!
In Jesus’ final pulse and heartbeat on the cross, he took all our misguided impulses all the way to their deadly end. He died. And when he was buried, so was the power of all those old compulsions. And when he was raised, so was our new life in him!
By your baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus has taken the contours of your life and folded them into the shape of salvation! The shape of his cross!
In Jesus’s death, you have died! Not a week from some Tuesday. But right now. Now that old life of yours, addicted to all those old religious impulses, is dead and buried!
And in Jesus’ resurrection, you have been raised, too! Raised to new life where true Easter alleluias are actually sung. And not to relive your anxiety, either. But to praise God for what God has done!
God has transformed the wilderness of these COVID days into the place where true faith is actually given and received! The place where our old religious trinkets are finally buried and Jesus’ life-giving cross is taken up!
This is God’s special blessing. God’s blessing amidst their absence. The way of the Cross. What Jesus himself experienced when he cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”
…I know, the old you in you doesn’t want this. Which is a can’t-miss sign this is from God and not your own whims! The old you in you wants an easier god. But those imitations never really satisfy. And Jesus has come to give you the genuine article. The one true God!
Your longing isn’t fulfilled by sedating this tension. It’s fulfilled in the midst of it. By the one who takes it upon himself, and transforms it into the shape of salvation! The shape of his death and resurrection. In that order. The shape of the cross.
…So, receive your blessing:
By the power of the cross may it get harder from here. And in the process, may all God’s promises only become all that much more firm.
May this moment be more than just one more thing. May it be the very power of God at work in your life, creating God’s very best gift—death and resurrection.
May all your religious accoutrements finally be buried. And from that fertile ground may true faith blossom.
May you find in all this nothing less than the great adventure of faith.
So now, go in peace, your faith has made this well.
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