In Sunday’s first reading the people of Israel are in the midst of their exodus journey, their own dark passage through the wilderness. They are experiencing losses: the loss of their homes and the loss of a sense of direction as they wander for years in the desert. They often fear they will lose their lives, forgotten by a God who seems to have deceived them.
Like many of us who are feeling the anguish of loss and perhaps a lack of direction, they turn to false gods, false loves, in order to alleviate the pain. They build for themselves a golden calf and begin to worship it rather than the true but invisible God.
God threatens to destroy them, but Moses calls on God to remember the covenant that God made with their ancestors. Moses’ courage in facing God, and facing his own perhaps earlier doubts about God’s care for him and the people, resulted in God’s not punishing the Israelites.
Moses intercedes.
NARRATOR: God spoke to Moses.
GOD: Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved. They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it, and crying out —
PEOPLE: This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!
GOD: I see how stiff-necked this people is. Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation.
NARRATOR: Moses implored God —
MOSES: Why, O Holy One, should your wrath blaze up against your own people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power and with so strong a hand? Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and how you swore to them by your own self, saying —
GOD: I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky; and all this land that I promised, I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage.
NARRATOR: So God relented in the punishment God threatened to inflict on the people.
Exodus 32.7-11,13-14
- When have you turned to “false loves” that failed to bring you true comfort and healing?
- Recall a time when you, like Moses, cried out to God for help.