One of this week’s daily Mass readings was a familiar one found in Exodus 32. As the story unfolds, Moses is on the mountain chiseling out the 10 commandments, while the Israelites are down below, getting rather antsy.
Whenever I heard this story in the past, I suspected these people were taking advantage of Moses’ absence. While the cat’s away the mice will play, am I right?
The priest’s homily, however, turned that notion on its head and gave me a brand new perspective.
As he posited, far from being mischievous kids out looking for trouble, what if the idol—the golden calf—was not something they’d ever intentionally planned on? That, instead of yucking it up while Moses was away, they were mired with worry and fear, anxiety and uncertainty.
Perhaps they were riddled with thoughts like, Why isn’t Moses back yet? How long will he be gone? Will he ever come back? And if he doesn’t come back, then what?
As they waited around plagued with woe-are-we thinking, those fears and insecurities prompted the Israelites to look for some form of comfort, security, and certainty. They longed for something—anything to help them cope with their reality. Enter the golden calf.
And this is the part that brings the story out of Exodus and into the 21st Century world, reminding us that the Word of God is very much alive.
How often do we become anxious or fearful, scared or angry? How often do we look for a way to ease that pain, in whatever form it takes? And much like the Israelites, instead of turning to the Divine Physician, we turn to our own golden calves.
Maybe we doom-scroll or mindlessly waste time to avoid something we don’t want to do. Or we eat or drink in excess, searching for comfort in that second slice of cake. Maybe we throw ourselves into work or live at the gym. Perhaps we sleep the day away or binge-watch every season of The Office. Ah, and one of my go-tos: the I’ll-do-it-myself attitude of individualism, because God must not realize how important such-and-such is. The -ism words and -holic words could go on and on.
Such are our golden calves. And I’d dare say most of us never intentionally set out to create these calves, but alas here they are.
During this season of Lent, maybe God asks us not to burn our idols but rather look to the pain that we’d have those idols mask. To sit in silence with God and work through our human frailties—our pain—with him. To seek healing through the Divine Physician rather than masking our symptoms with distractions.
And as we walk through that fire, may our great God through which everything is possible melt our idols and transform them into offerings.
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