Standing Firm on Jelly Legs

            October 11, 2026

Exodus 32:1-14

            The first half of our Exodus passage this morning is very familiar. The second half is perhaps not what we would expect. I invite you to listen carefully for the Word of God as it speaks to you this morning from Exodus as the people demand that Aaron make them gods.

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            Like last Sunday’s passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians where he held up everything that was so important to his understanding of who he was… his circumcision, his ancestry, his zeal for the law… and then declared all of it rubbish next to knowing Christ and being known by Christ… I read this passage from Exodus and I see the same theme here. The question of identity. Who am I? Who are you? Who are we together? And the question is not just directed at those things we think are vital and unquestionable about ourselves… this passage asks the same questions of God.

            As we’ve been visiting this story from Exodus off and on for the past few weeks… what we’ve seen is a period of disorientation for the Israelites.  Who are they?  Yes, they have been freed from slavery, but freed to be what?  They’ve stepped into an unknown wilderness with nothing more than some future promise.  They are following a God known to their ancestors… but who has been silent for hundreds of years while they were enslaved in Egypt.  Now this God leads them with pillars of smoke and fire.  This God fights for them, sending plagues upon the Egyptians to secure their release… parting the sea so that they may safely cross… and then bringing the waters crashing back down upon Pharaoh’s chariots… bringing to a definite end their former life in Egypt… bringing an end that identity.  If only it was that easy.

            But… during their time in the wilderness… the signs of God’s promise haven’t been building a newly felt sense of trust between them and this God of their ancestors.  When they are hungry… they complain that there was food enough for them in Egypt.  Then his God provides food for them… sure.  When they are thirsty… they quickly complain there was water enough for them in Egypt.  Then this God provides water for them… sure.   But when they leave behind the real security of that last water source, instead of trusting in God to continually provide… they quickly complain again.  

            Now their wilderness journey has led them to this God’s holy mountain where Moses has gone up to receive the divine blueprints for this people… the law that is meant to shape and forge a new identity for them… to mold this people into this God’s people.  But Moses is delayed… and the people all too quickly turn to Aaron with the demand that he make gods for them. Why?  My first thought is that the Israelites do this because it is what they know. Although we know the bigger story, we need to remember how these are a people who were forged in Egypt. This is how it would have been done in Egypt.  This is how communal anxiety creates certainty for itself. Images are created for what is beyond comprehension.  An idol gives focus… gives something tangible onto which we can project our faith, our fears, our desires. Looking into a golden calf reflects an image of us back to ourselves… not necessarily who we are, but who we wish we were.  Sometimes those desires aren’t so pretty… but the idol isn’t there to judge… the idol is there to deliver.   

            Despite all God has done… despite the plagues, the sea, the manna, the water… they still feel like displaced slaves… an unmoored people standing at the foot of a mountain belonging to an unknown God… a people standing in an unknown and uncertain wilderness without a guarantee of certainty to take them into tomorrow.

            Can you see yourself in these people? Can you identify with them? Perhaps feel a bit of empathy… a bit of understanding… as they command Aaron to construct their gods for them… to tell them only about the gods they already want to know… the deliverables they want to receive from their idol?  Look at us as Christians today… at us as the larger church that extends beyond the walls of Parkway. Look at all that God has provided and done for us as we have been freed from the slavery of sin. And yet look at the gods we have fashioned for our faith journey today… the gods of certainty that promise quick or absolute answers, the gods of productivity that tell us we don’t have time to wait for God, the gods of grievance that bind us together through resentment rather than hope. These are our golden calves. These are the identities we forge when we fear the wilderness more than we trust the promise.  What gets reflected back at us through our idols are also not very pretty all the time.

            What truly are our identifying marks as a Christian people?  What forges our identity today?  The gods of Aaron’s making today… what have they proven to be as the years of our lives have gone by?  What has happened to us as Christians every time we have declared our trust in some new golden calf and sought its certainty over the freedoms of grace?  

            I feel like the same answer has come back to us time and again… the same answer that the Spirit spoke through Paul in his day when they argued over the necessity of circumcision.  Circumcise your hearts and not your flesh.  There’s some scripture for you.  Your tiny tin gods have no power… but the power of God will come to you when you trust in the love of God.  The gospel is still waiting for you to go and faithfully proclaim it… and it alone to the world… instead of being hucksters for the latest shiny, new theologically certain idol.  A bit of gold.  A bit of patriotism.  A bit of politics.  A bit of middle class economic fears.  All with the fire of cruelty to our neighbor to melt it down all nice and shiny.

            Maybe the people brought out of Egypt simply didn’t know any better. Or maybe… maybe… there is another way of looking at this. Maybe we make idols because… as the passage says… we are a stiff‑necked people. A stiff‑necked people who will not follow after… no matter what is provided. Maybe the calf reveals not spiritual ignorance but spiritual rebellion… a heart that wants a god who looks like us, who blesses our desires for control, who sanctifies our need to lead rather than follow. We are not a people who reflect the God on high. We want a god who reflects us.

            Moses is delayed. With the calf before them, the people will leave this mountain behind and forge their own path through the wilderness. The calf rewards strength, spectacle, and dominance. Having an idolatrous knowledge of good and evil, they will create a form of righteousness and justice that will give them favor and the blessings they seek.  The calf… growing into a bull… strengthens the strong and weeds out the weak.  Useless are the poor in spirit, for they scavenge after and weaken the strong.  Useless are those who mourn, for they need to get over it and move on.  Useless are the meek, for they will be trampled upon and forgotten.  Useless are those who hunger and thirst after a different righteousness, for they only distract us with their complaining about things that do not need to change.  Useless are the merciful, for they only give hope to the hopeless.  Useless are the pure in heart, for they only delude themselves.  Useless are the peacemakers, because they will always fail in the face of true evil.  Might makes right.  We are to be more than conquerors.  

            What could Moses possibly bring down from that mountain that will be better than the calf our gold has created?  

            Isn’t that the real question behind the idolatrous Christianity of this moment?

            What could Moses possibly bring down from that mountain that will be better than the calf our gold has created?  

            Then comes the scene between Moses and God that is unfolding on the mountain. “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” The angry God of wrath and destruction. The stereotypical God from the Old Testament, right?  In the story, God makes that offer to Moses… to get rid of these troublesome stiff‑necked people and start over with Moses and make a whole new people for God from his descendants.  These descendants of Abraham have become a real disappointment.  Why should God expect anything better to come out of them in the future?  Maybe the descendants of Moses will do what they could not.  Maybe the descendants of Jesus will do what they could not. 

            Thankfully Moses in this moment is wise enough to reject this offer from God.  Unfortunately, in their idolatry both the ignorant heart and the rebellious heart would have readily taken God up on the offer. Even standing at the foot of the cross, the ignorant heart and the rebellious heart would not have seen the unmerited and unearned love… the grace and mercy in the cross as the greatest power of God… but would have seen instead wrath and the opportunity for the destruction of others.  How many churches… believing that they stand in the place of Moses with this offer before them… how many churches do you know that implore God to bring down destruction on all others while through them… and them alone… a new people of God will be forged.  Only we… only we are God’s true people… only we are truly worthy.  Only we will escape the wrath that all others deserve as God starts again with us… or saves only us and destroys the rest. 

            By far the most unexpected section of the passage is Moses standing between divine wrath and human rebellion. Moses doesn’t defend the people. Moses reminds God of God’s own identity. You can’t wipe out the people… no matter what they’ve done… no matter how many calves they construct… because you are a God who made a covenant. Not a covenant based on their goodness, but a covenant rooted in your faithfulness. This is who you have revealed yourself to be. And it is upon that identity that the God of wrath and destruction changes his mind.

            As a Christian, I can imagine Moses now pointing to the cross. Telling God how this cross… what you revealed about yourself through this cross… this is who you say you are. It doesn’t matter how many times these stiff‑necked people call for you to be a different god… a god that suits them… or a pale imitation of whatever calf they are currently constructing… you are the God revealed in the cross. That is your identity. And when the people standing at the foot of the cross finally let go of their identity as slaves to sin and follow you by taking up their own cross to be servants of grace… then that will finally become their identity as well.  Amen.