The Dance of the Golden Calf from the Hortus Deliciarum
Sunday, October 15th was my first Sunday back in the pulpit after my trip to Germany. In this sermon I related some of the things that I saw in Germany to the story of the golden calf. Many thanks to my dear friends, the Revs. Sylvia Carlson and Susan Rothenberg for covering the pulpit while I was gone.
Exodus 32:1-14; Matthew 22:1-14
Sermon
Good morning. It’s great to see you folks again. Truly, I’m glad to be back. Thank you for allowing me the time off and for being so gracious to my friends Sylvia Carlson and Susan Rothenberg.
I’m a history nerd; most of you know this by now. And most
of you know that the main reason for my trip to Germany was to engage with our
religious history. Sure, I drank some beer while I was there, but it was the
history that I was chasing after.
On October 31st, 1517, Martin
Luther published his 95 Theses, a list of charges against the Roman Catholic
Church. By publishing these charges, Luther set off a chain of events that
would lead to the Reformation. This is one of the most important events in
Western history in the last 500 years. The Presbyterian Church comes out of the
Reformation.
This is the portal door to the Schlosskirche, Wittenberg, where Martin Luther is said to have nailed his 95 theses. The Schlosskirche was mostly destroyed in 1760; it was rebuilt in the late 1800s, so this is not the original door.
Being a history nerd, I wanted to be in Germany because this is the 500th
anniversary of this event. I wanted to be in Wittenberg, the place where Luther
was when he wrote and published the 95 Theses. I wanted to see the cathedral
door where he is said to have nailed the document. I wanted to see his house.
And I wanted to see the pulpit where Martin Luther preached. I wanted to see
and touch the history and the person who changed our world.
I offer this up, in part, because I think we need to have a
little sympathy for the Israelites. It’s so easy to sneer at them and think, “How
could you be so foolish? Why can’t you see all the wonderful things that God
has done for you?” But that’s not fair—and it ignores our part in the story.
First, we have to acknowledge our perspective; most of us
have heard these stories in church for years and some of us have read them over
and over. We know this story. We know the Israelites will eventually cross into
the Promised Land; they don’t know this. And if we forget parts of the story,
we can read it again. The Israelites couldn’t read their own history. It wasn’t
in writing and most of them couldn’t read. They had stories that had been
handed down from one generation to the next. They had Moses, who had led them
out of Egypt. They had manna and quail every day, but they didn’t have a god
that they could see or touch. They didn’t have a temple or an altar; a place
for proper worship.
So, the Israelites made a statue, a golden calf. “This
statue, at last, they can see and touch. They can bring offerings before it,
feast and dine with their chosen god, and truly celebrate with this god the
miracle of their deliverance.”[1] They had Moses, but they
don’t know where he is, so they want some other god to which they can give
thanks and praise. They want a god like the Egyptians had.
But God has commanded them not to make any idols or graven
images. God’s chosen people are not to worship any other gods; they are to
worship God alone, they are called to place their full and complete trust in
God. These are the First and Second Commandments:
I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall
have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for
yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or
that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You
shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a
jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and
the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the
thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus
20:2-6)
Sometimes we miss the governing language of the Ten
Commandments, the very reason for the Commandments: “I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The
Israelites are free because God brought them out of slavery. God did this to
fulfill the covenant with Abraham. The Ten Commandments provide order for
relationships; the Commandments tell God’s chosen people how they are to be in
a right relationship with God and with one another.
This is a new covenant between God and Israel, but the
Israelites can’t even remember the First and Second Commandments. Almost as
soon as they entered into this promise with God, they broke the agreement. And
God is angry. Very. Very. Angry.
The gold that the Israelites used to make the statue of the
calf—they took that from the Egyptians. Actually, extorted might be a better word. They kinda stole it from the
Egyptians as they were leaving, along with silver, and some extra clothing. That’s
a problem. The gold and silver don’t serve any purpose on the journey through
the wilderness.
On a deeper level, then, the sin of the Israelites is that they
haven’t let go of Egypt. The gold and silver were valuable to the Egyptians.
The Egyptians used these precious metals to make jewelry and religious symbols,
and the Israelites end up doing the same thing! They use the gold and silver
just as their captors did! When they made the golden calf, the Israelites were
showing God that they could not or would not let go of their identity in Egypt.
Yes, they were happy to have their freedom, but they still wanted a little bit
of Egypt. They weren’t ready to let go and live into the freedom that God had
granted them.
Honestly, I think we have a big problem with idolatry in
our society, too. I think we have made so many idols that we aren’t even aware
of all the gods we’ve made. Nor are we aware that we’re worshiping them. I’m
going to come back to this theme over the next few weeks, but first, I want to
offer some context.
In the old section of Wittenberg there’s a town square
that’s dominated by two statues; one is of Martin Luther, the other, Philip
Melanchthon. I wonder if Luther
himself would be comfortable with having a statue in his likeness, or if that
would seem to be a little too close to idolatry for him.
The statue of Martin Luther near Marienkirche
Now I’ll admit, I went to Wittenberg as a little bit of a
fanboy. I wanted to see the pulpit where Luther preached—and I did. It’s in Marienkirche, Mary’s Church. And yes, I
got goosebumps when I stood under that pulpit. But I also know the dark side of
Martin Luther. Like so many other Europeans of his day, Martin Luther was an
anti-Semite. He didn’t like Jews; his writings were filled with contempt for
Jews; he saw them as hypocrites. He didn’t rise above the prejudice of his age.
This is the pulpit in Marienkirche; Martin Luther preached from this pulpit.
In that same square in Wittenberg, the very next day, I saw
a protest—against a monument of sorts. The protestors weren’t calling for the
removal of the statues of Luther and Melanchthon. They were calling for the
removal of the Judensau. The Judensau is a bit of German folk art.
These are depictions of a large sow, a female pig, nursing human beings. These
items usually take the form of stone carvings on the walls of churches and
cathedrals. The people that are depicted in these carvings are Jews.
The Judensau is,
at its core, a piece of anti-Semitic propaganda; it’s a public slander to all
Jews. Remember, pigs are considered unclean in Judaism; Orthodox Jews are
forbidden to eat or handle pigs. So, the Judensau
is a visible reminder to the German people that Jews were to be treated with
contempt. This is an ugly part of German history.
Some Germans want to remove these depictions from German
churches and cathedrals. I guess they want to say that Germany has moved beyond
these parts of its history. Or maybe they want to purify the church. I didn’t
know enough German to understand all of the banners that the protestors
displayed. Regardless, the hatred and contempt that underlies the Judensau is utterly at odds with a
building dedicated to the love of God in Jesus Christ. Anti-Semitism has no
place in Christian practice. The Judensau
is an idol dedicated to a hateful prejudice that is still with us.
That’s the thing about idols—we don’t always realize that
we’re worshiping an idol. We celebrate things without realizing that they’ve
become idols. One of my pastor friends has a simple test for idolatry: if you
can’t discuss it, you have an idol. If someone challenges you or calls you out,
and you change the subject or attack the messenger, you have an idol.
I suppose the argument for keeping the Judensau is this: it represents a shameful piece of German history,
and it shouldn’t be removed because it serves as a tangible reminder of the
shame of anti-Semitism. That’s an interesting argument. It’s not an argument
that I hear in defense of monuments for Confederate generals.
What I do hear is a lot of people arguing that we can’t
erase our own history, so monuments to Confederate generals shouldn’t be taken
down. That’s it. End of discussion. If the citizens of Richmond, Virginia or
Charlottesville, Virginia decide to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee,
somehow the entire history of the Civil War will be erased.
Yesterday, I decided to check the catalog of the Monessen
Public Library. It lists 2,324 titles under the subject heading, “United States
History Civil War, 1861-1865.”[2] That’s just in the
Monessen Public Library.
Just as we can’t have a little bit of idolatry, we can’t
have a little bit of history, either. We can’t claim that these Confederate
statues celebrate our history if we don’t examine that history. ALL of that history.
On December 24, 1860, South Carolina became the first state
to secede from the Union. That day, the South Carolina legislature published a
document called the “Declaration of Immediate Causes
Which May Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal
Union.” The first grievance that South Carolina raised was that some
northern states failed to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act and did not adequately
work to return runaway slaves to their southern masters. The document goes on
to assert that the northern states have conspired against the southern states
in an effort to take away their human property; that is, to end the institution
of slavery.[3]
Thus, South Carolina was forced to secede, because to remain in the Union would
mean the eventual end of slavery.
The articles of secession from Georgia, Mississippi, and
Texas say much the same thing: that the northern states refuse to return
fugitive slaves to southern states. The declaration from Mississippi also
states:
Our position is
thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material
interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far
the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These
products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an
imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the
tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow
at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long
aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation.
There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a
dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our
ruin.[4]
These documents speak of
property rights; they speak about protecting the institution of slavery.
Alexander Stephens
On March 21, 1861, Alexander Stephens, the Vice President
of the Confederate States of America gave a speech about the reasons for the
Confederacy. This is called the “Cornerstone Speech.” The Confederacy,
according to Stephens:
Our new government is
founded upon exactly [this] idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone
rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that
slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.
This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon
this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.[5]
That was the Confederate
Vice President saying that the Confederacy was founded on the idea of white
supremacy. Stephens would go on to assert that the Confederate states were
fighting to preserve the institution of slavery. This is why the Confederate
states seceded and went to war. That is the cause that those Confederate
generals fought for.
In our Old Testament lesson, God wants to destroy the
Israelites for their idolatry, but Moses implores God to turn from his wrath,
to stay his hand. Moses reminds God of the promises that God made to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, who was renamed Israel. To destroy the Israelites, God would
have to go back on the promises he had made, and that’s enough for God to
change his mind.
As Christians, we are called to do the difficult work of
reconciliation. As Presbyterians, we affirm that separation is sin. To do the
work of reconciliation, we have to repent from the sin of white supremacy,
which separates us from a lot of people. We also have to repent from the sin of
anti-Semitism.
Detail from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin
Over the last 70 years, the Germans have worked very hard
to acknowledge the crimes of the Holocaust. They do not pretend that it didn’t
happen or that it wasn’t so bad. They are honest about their role in history,
though there are still some Germans who advocate hatred and violence—just as
there are white supremacists in this country who shouted anti-Semitic
statements as they marched in defense of Confederate monuments.
We can’t have just a little bit of history, and the past is
still with us. Until we repent from our idolatry, we can’t complete the work of
reconciliation to which Christ calls us. Like the Israelites, we must turn away
from the idols we have made, the idols that prevent us from seeing the image of
God in every other human, the idols that blind us to the unpleasant parts of
our own history. God will always be faithful to us; we must respond by turning
away from our idols and toward God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world, the world
today. We are called to go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and
love and reconciliation. Do not return evil for evil to any person, but know
that we are all loved by God, and that we are called to reflect that love to
everyone we meet. Go forth and be the salt of the earth and the light of the
world. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!
[1]
Anathea Portier-Young, “Commentary on Exodus 32:1-14,” retrieved from: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3442
[3] “Declaration
of Immediate Causes Which May Induce and Justify the Secession of South
Carolina from the Federal Union.” Retrieved from: http://www.teachingushistory.org/pdfs/ImmCausesTranscription.pdf
[4] “Declaration
of Immediate Causes Which May Induce and Justify the Secession of Mississippi from
the Federal Union.” Retrieved from: https://web.archive.org/web/19980128034930/http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html
[5]
Thomas E. Schott. Alexander Stephens of
Georgia: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press (1988),
p. 334.
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