09/14/2025 ~ Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost ~ Proper 19 ~ Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 51:1-10; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10 ~ OR ~ 09/14/2025 ~ Holy Cross ~ Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 98:1-5 or Psalm 78:1-2, 34-38; 1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 3:13-17 ~ YOUTUBE VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUrKzj8LkE4 ~ VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/1120408761

False Gods

“Yahweh, God, said to Moses, ‘Go down from the mountain now! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves, acted perversely; in a very short time they have been quick to turn from the way I have given them; they have made for themselves, cast for themselves an image of a calf.’” — Exodus 32:7-8.

Those of you who know my wife, Bonnie, know she has an outstanding sense of humor. She agreed to marry me which proves she has an outstanding sense of humor.

Another example of her sense of humor: back when I first entered Seminary she would be asked ‘Why did Joe decide to go to Seminary?’ Bonnie’s response: “Well, he needed to find some way to justify his collection of Bibles.”

But I was interested in Scripture way before I had a collection of Bibles. By my early twenties I had already read a lot about the Bible and its origins. That gave me a fairly good grasp of what happened in the course of the one thousand years plus it took for this collection of writings to come together, what we today commonly call the Bible.

Please note, despite outward appearances (the Pastor hold up a Study Bible) the Bible is not one book, one work. It’s a group of books, works, collected in the course of a thousand plus years, written and edited by multiple authors and editors, most of whose names we don’t really know.

Further, within those books there are many forms of writing— poetry, prose, lyrics, parables, history, ritual, story-telling— to name just a few. Each form comes with its own stylistic and linguistic parameters and baggage. And of course, not one word of it is written in a language with which most of us are familiar.

What I just said is not some kind of specialized knowledge you get in seminary. This is common knowledge, accessible to anyone interested in discovering it, the kind information you might get in an undergraduate course in the Bible as literature.

That leads to a story about my time Seminary, a place where you become an old timer, get to know the ropes, pretty quickly. After I had been there just a year I took a new student, someone who was about my age and also a second career person, under my wing.

A short time after the semester started I got an emergency call from him. He had just left his first Hebrew Scriptures class, shocked beyond words. Why? The professor talked about what I just said— the Bible, a thousand years, multiple authors, etc., etc.

It was a revelation to him. A faithful church person, he had even been the Moderator at his church but he said he had never heard this before. (Slight pause.)

I think it’s possible he’d actually heard this information before, maybe even in church. But that thousand years, multiple authors stuff does not fit our cultural picture of the Bible which can be summed up with this phrase: one inerrant book— a cultural picture.

Because that’s our cultural picture people often ignore basic information about Scripture, refuse to process it or cannot process it. Thereby, it’s not that these facts get rejected. They are not even heard because our brains get trapped by the culture.

Falsehoods cherished by the cultural replaces facts because of cultural blinders. Put another way, cultural blinders produce false gods. (Slight pause.)

We find these words in the work known as Exodus: “Yahweh, God, said to Moses, ‘Go down from the mountain now! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves, acted perversely; in a very short time they have been quick to turn from the way I have given them; they have made for themselves, cast for themselves an image of a calf.’” (Slight pause.)

The episode of the golden calf comes quickly on the heels of the Exodus event, itself. Scholars say the Exodus event is the pivotal, central episode of the Hebrew Scriptures. Please note: popular culture says the central episode of the Hebrew Scriptures is Moses receiving the “ten commandments.” It’s not.

In fact, our culture’s central event of the Hebrew Scriptures— those “ten commandments”— are not known in Hebrew as the ten commandments but as the ten words. The Hebrew language does not even have a command tense.

Now, the golden calf, this statue the Israelites create, reflects an image of a god which would have been common in the era and the place where all this happens. That cultural given is one reason the Israelites would have readily (quote:) “…worshiped it and made sacrifice to it…”

The golden calf is a familiar god, a common god in the culture which surrounds the Israelites. And it is, of course, a false god.

The problem with false gods, cultural gods, is they do not reflect any kind of true, accurate, deep or spiritual reality. On the other hand, what makes false gods so attractive, tenacious and even emotionally satisfying is they do reflect cultural reality.

So from a Biblical perspective any cultural god is suspect. Why? Cultural gods point toward a “what”— a calf for instance. God, you see, is a person with Whom we are in relationship. If we are in a real relationship with God we, by definition, trust God.

After all, what kind of relationship or trust can really be had with a golden calf? And since we cannot trust false gods, when we do worship false gods— and we do worship false gods— that lack of trust produces one thing and one thing only— fear.

You see, the biggest, most important and sinister calf for the Israelites and for us is not something as tangible as a statue. The biggest, most important and sinister calf for we humans is fear.

Indeed, why were the Israelites worshiping a golden calf? Fear— Moses had disappeared onto the mountain. They were worried their leader wouldn’t come back.

Thinking of Moses rather than God as their leader is their first golden calf. Then creating the golden calf they choose to go down a path toward fear, the ultimate golden calf.

To make anyone or anything more important than God leads to worship of the cultural god called fear. A lack of trust in God eventually and always translates into fear. (Slight pause.)

For a moment I want to address how trust and love intertwine. First, it’s sometimes said the opposite of love is not hate but apathy. Apathy is when you don’t even care enough to hate. But I think the opposite of love is neither hate nor is it apathy. The opposite of love is fear. (Slight pause.)

It’s probably obvious from how much it’s covered in the media that we live in a society wracked with fear. Fear is rampant in our culture. I think fear is rampant in our culture because we worship calves, false gods— a lot of them— especially fear.

Indeed, the list of the cultural false gods in modern society is long and easy to compile. Our false gods might include sports, television, celebrities, politics, security. I’m sure you can each supply your own list of false gods. I don’t need to do that for you.

The next thing I need to say about love and trust— and love and trust being intertwined— is that you cannot love without trust. You cannot trust without love.

In the wedding ceremony I use when the partners exchange covenant promises the words say they will love and trust each other in what they already know and they will love and trust each other in what they do not yet know. The bottom line: love and trust can and must transcend mere knowledge. (Slight pause.)

To summarize, the real false god, the most prevalent false god in our world, in our culture, is fear. And there are a lot of people today who would send and sell that message: you need to be afraid.

Of course, not only does the society worship fear. Fear tries to drive away love by trying to make a mockery of it. But we Christians— we Christians believe God is love. What a novel idea— God… is… love. Amen.

09/14/2025
Elijah Kellogg Church, Harpswell, Maine

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is a précis of what was said: “Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch writer, a Christian who, along with her father and other family members, helped many Jews escape the Holocaust during World War II. Her most famous book is The Hiding Place. This is a quote from her writings. ‘Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.’”

BENEDICTION: Eternal God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our striving for justice and truth, to confront one another in love, and to work together with mutual patience, acceptance and respect. Send us out, sure in Your grace and Your peace with surpasses understanding, to live faithfully. And may we love God so much, that we love nothing else too much. May we be so in awe of God, that we are in awe of no one else and nothing else. Amen.