Unholy Cows: Exodus 32:1-14 - Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

When Moses was up on Mount Horeb with God, the Israelites worshiped a golden calf.

But why a calf? What possessed Aaron to portray God as a cow?

Did a calf part the Red Sea? Did God rain down cheese instead of manna in the wilderness?

It’s outrageous to us, but it wasn’t outrageous for them.

Golden-Calf by Gerard Van der Leun on flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Cows have been worshiped for thousands of years. To this day, our Hindu neighbors revere cows as sacred.

When the Israelites were in Egypt, they witnessed their enslavers worshiping the bull-god Apis, the god of fertility and harvests. Like every other idol, its worshipers believed they could compel Apis to grant them his favor through proper worship, sacrifice, and rituals, many of which were not what we would describe as “family friendly.”

While Moses was up on the mountain with God, the people grew restless. They’ve already faced hunger, thirst, and enemy attacks, and the Promised Land was nowhere in sight. Constantly, they complained and wanted to go back to Egypt, having already forgotten how bad life had been there.

Whenever the people became rebellious, Moses cried out to God, and God intervened. With Moses absent, Aaron chooses to give in to the people’s impulses. He told the people to give him all the gold jewelry they were wearing, and he made for them a golden calf just like the ones the Egyptians worshiped. He declared “these are your gods who brought you up out of Egypt.” The next day would be “a festival to the Lord.”

What happened next was not the bovine intervention Aaron had been hoping for.

God was so enraged at his that he was determined to destroy them, until Moses intervened.

Their sin was more than just a lapse in judgment in thinking that God was a cow. This was an outright rejection of God, and everything God had done for them. They were worshipping the likeness of the gods of the people who enslaved them.

Then there’s the gold they donated to Aaron to make the calf. After the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, the Egyptians gave the Israelites their gold so that they would leave, and the plagues would stop. God treated this as reparations for four centuries of slavery. But the people sacrifice God’s gift to an idol.

As dumb as this sounds, please understand: Aaron and the Israelites weren’t fools. They were people just like us in desperate circumstances. Their survival depended on a God they could not see, touch, understand, or predict. But the golden calf was different. This was a god whose likeness was familiar to them, who was fun to worship, and whom they thought they could manipulate to satisfy their needs and wants.

We do not worship cows, though an argument could be made that we do, considering how many fast-food hamburger “sanctuaries” litter the landscape. But we take God and remake God into a deity who is more a reflection of our wants and desires, as opposed to us reflecting what God wants and desires.

Something you need or want? There’s a cow for that. Unholy cows make you successful; they make you popular; they give you power and control; they make life fun and pleasurable.

Unholy cows can be people, like cult leaders, millionaire evangelists, politicians, and celebrities. We desire so strongly to be like them and to have what they have that we hang on their every word, without question. We buy their merchandise and wear their name and likeness on our clothing. We give them power, and they give us happiness.

Here’s the problem: you become what you worship.

God was not overreacting when God was prepared to destroy his people for their idolatry. When you have a people who are beholden to a god they basically made up, nothing is sacred. All kinds of evil have been committed by people who believed they were doing God’s will, including Christians.

History’s greatest monsters either believed that they were God, or that they were fulfilling the will of whoever or whatever they believed was God, whether that god was a deity or some depraved mythology or ideology like Nazism or communism.

When you bow down at the altar of an unholy cow, you are not exercising your mind. You are not seeing truth. You see evil in what is good, and good in what is evil. When the Israelites rebelled, they saw Moses and God as their enemy; not their savior.

As sinners, we have barnyards of unholy cows. We need God’s judgment to expose them and grind them to dust. And we need God’s Spirit to restrain us when we are in the throes of our anxieties or our ambitions, because that’s when we are most vulnerable to their empty promises.

The fact remains that while the journey through the wilderness was frightening and dangerous, God was faithful. When they cried of thirst, God gave them water. When they cried of hunger, God fed them. And when they gave themselves over to idols, God forgave them.

How do you trust God in the face of danger and uncertainty? You remember what has done, because grateful hearts see God. Then, you remember what God has taught. God didn’t give the Ten Commandments to spoil everyone’s fun. When you obey God, God can fulfill his promises. When you do God’s will, God makes a way through the wilderness. When you trust God, you are already in the Promised Land.

Always remember you will become whatever you worship. Don’t be an unholy cow. You are a child of God, created in the image of God. To worship Jesus is to become like Jesus. It’s a question of who you trust, who you desire, who you cling to, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. God’s way is the best way through the wilderness; the only to a brighter future, a better world, and abundant life.