Pentecost 18A (Exodus 32:1-14)  10/12/2014

Several years ago I was on a business trip to Cardiff, Wales (this occurred many years ago, in a land without smartphones and GPS…imagine that?). I had been to Cardiff a few times before this trip, but always a short trip during the middle of the week. This time around I arrived on Saturday and had a good part of the weekend free before starting work on Monday. I thought this would be a great chance to see Llandaff Cathedral, the cathedral church of the area and a place that has been holy Christian ground since the early sixth century. Sunday was a beautiful fall day and I decided to set out right after lunch. I decided it might be nice to walk to the cathedral on this beautiful day, so I asked the man at the front desk if the cathedral was close by…”yes, the cathedral is just down the road,” was the cheerful reply. Wonderful, a nice walk to the cathedral! My only pair of shoes were leather dress shoes, but the nice man at the front desk said the cathedral was “just down the road,” so I was sure I would be just fine. I walked through the city center and began walking down a road that led to a large park. After about 20 minutes of walking, with no cathedral spire looming in the near distance, I decided to ask a passerby if I was headed in the right direction; “Oh yes, the cathedral is just down the road,” pointing in the general direction I was headed. As I continued on my pilgrimage, I must admit I began to think more about a taxi than the beautiful cathedral that was promised to be “just down the road.” I was also beginning to think my definition of “just down the road” was significantly different than the nice Welsh people I had met along the way. After nearly three miles of walking, I finally passed through a clearing and the grand walls of the cathedral stood just beyond a cluster of trees, quietly sitting in a little neighborhood of its own. A beautiful spot for a cathedral church nearly 1000 years old, but not a good place for finding a lift home! My cathedral pilgrimage had just started and I found that I was already a bit confused, tired, and short of patience from the long road traveled.

Confused, tired, and short of patience might describe the Israelites in our first reading today. The Israelites had been through a lot: they had traveled across the desert lands of Egypt and Palestine, they had experienced times of hunger, and they had met foreign people who were less than happy to see they coming. As difficult as many of these experiences were, the Israelites had God faithfully by their side. God had declared them to be his people, his children whom he would never leave…leading the way for them with visible signs of God’s presence. Now, however, we hear the Israelites have run out of patience as they waited for Moses to return from his journey to the top of Mount Sinai. Moses had departed a long time ago to receive God’s covenant with the people of Israel; 40 days and 40 nights (biblical symbolism for a very, very long time) had passed and the Israelites’ patience was gone…they were looking for a “new” sign of their own choosing, I suppose not so different than my prayers for that golden taxi…I mean, yellow taxi. They needed a sign, a symbol; their attention had drifted and their desires needed to be satisfied…the faithfulness of God seemed too far away. So they convinced Aaron to help them create their own sign of divine presence and the golden calf was born; their personal desires were fulfilled and their covenant with God was broken, even as it was being made on the heights of Sinai. The Israelites turned aside from the unknown future with God and sought things known and valued in their midst; and we might understand their desire to seek the known and valued things in life, after all there is a particular comfort and control in this approach. Confused, tired, and short of patience: the Israelites has gained what they wanted and lost what they needed…their covenantal relationship with God.

God’s anger burned bright and the future of the Israelite nation was in great jeopardy. The loss of relationship and the rejection of his people filled God with emotions we do not often attribute to a loving and gracious God. The author of Exodus heightens the impact of the loss of relationship with God by providing us with a great range of emotions. But in the midst of this tragic breakdown, Moses remained a faithful presence to both God and his people, mediating a way that would lead to the restoration of relationship and love. Moses has been given to us as a faithful man of God, a faithful man of his people, a man who understood living in the desert and searching for things unknown could be challenging…no matter if your personal desert or uncertain future was 4000 years ago in Palestine or stands before us today. Moses prayed to God in remembrance of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and of the promises God had made to them and their descendants. This prayer was the turning point in the story, for as Moses recalled our connection with God we remember we are connected in relationship with God and with each other. This connection gives us the courage to sit in the middle of uncertainty and know that God is present. Author and spiritual guide, Henri Nouwen, wrote of this type of patience in this way: “patience is the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.”^[i] Nouwen’s idea of patience, a holy patience, can be difficult to follow at times, especially if we face the unknown alone. Alone we search for comfort in things that are known and present in our midst. We are blessed, however, to be connected in faithful relationship with God and this community; so, we are not alone. We are blessed to have so many gifts and talents in this community. As we continue together in ministry, ministries old and new, I pray we will continue to grow and search for God’s presence among us in new and exciting ways. Together we are one body as we share our many gifts in faithful witness to God’s love in the world. AMEN.

^[i] Henri Nouwen, “The Spirituality of Waiting”