At Mount Sinai: Two Kinds of Reassurance
Our parasha contrasts two ways religious people like us seek reassurance from God.
The incident of the Golden Calf illustrates an unproductive, familiar, but ultimately destructive way of seeking divine reassurance. It involves reverting to the familiar, staying stuck in the past.
The children of Israel are disoriented Moshe is away from them, atop Mount Sinai, gone for who knows how long? They want reassurance, so they ask Aharon to make them a God they can see, a familiar God, a Golden Calf. Of course, this calf is a reminder of the idolatry of Egypt. It is reassuring because it is familiar. It’s a projection of their needs and wishes, a God, made in their own image, But we know it is wrong. It leads them away from a true knowledge of God into pagan excesses and sensationalism. It invites God’s judgment.
And by the way, it seems clear that they are not looking for another God. They are instead seeking to make their relationship with God more manageable. They want to represent the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a golden calf. They don't want a God of mystery. They want a familiar God, a God they can manage
And they are not the only ones who do this. Often we do the same thing.
Sometimes when we are stressed, even when we are bored, or when we are out of sorts in some way, instead of reaching out for a deeper engagement with our God of mystery, we want to wrap ourselves in the familiar.
That’s the first path of reassurance. We might call it the spiritual security blanket
Meanwhile, on Mount Sinai, Moshe also seeks an entirely different kind of reassurance. He is overwhelmed with the burden of leading a huge and fractious people. He begs God, הַרְאֵ֥נִי נָ֖א אֶת־כְּבֹדֶֽךָ –– “I beg you, show me your glory!” This plea is vastly different because Moshe is not asking ADONAI to reconnect him with the familiar, as in the incident of the Golden Calf. Instead, he asks HaShem to lead him into the unknown, to reveal aspects of Himself that Moshe does not yet know.
He is begging, “take me further in the knowledge of you.”
The same choice confronts us you know all the time, but especially in times of stress and uncertainty. Amidst the uncertainties of life, do we seek reassurance by reverting to the familiar? Or are we prepared to reach out to God that He might reveal to us aspects of Himself, and his capacities that we have yet to encounter?
We are absolutely living in a time when people are claiming God as a ratification of their own opnions and preferences. They have got God DOWN and whether you want them to or not, they will pass on to you exactly how God wants you to think, how he wants you to act, who God wants you to hate. And especially, how God wants you to vote.
They have God in a box, but when you unpack the box inside you will find a golden calf recycling old truisms.
In and around the Messianic Movement we also have a Golden Calf problem. SOME people imagine that when we dress God and Yeshua up in the clothing of Jewish thought and Jewish life, that we have him domesticated––that we know him better, more deeply, and even more predictably than others less enlightened. We have a manageable God whom we should know we cannot restrict to our own understanding of Jewish categories. Those categories are good. But when we think we’ve got God DOWN, we are in trouble even if we are frolicking around our chosen cal.
What we have is not the roaring Lion of the Tribe of Judah. We have a domesticated pussycat. And that’s much more comfortable, This is not true of all of us, and it is not true all the time, but it is a danger that surrounds us. Domesticating the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is something we should avoid.
The challenge for me and for you today is to make the prayer of Moshe our own: “Show me your glory.”
There on the top of the mountain, Moses seeks another kind of reassurance. It is the opposite of the people at the bottom of the mountain who want to wrap themselves in the familiar, projecting the IMAGE they already have of God and then crafting it in gold.
Moshe is way ahead of them. He wants to discover what he does not know about God. That’s the core my preaching concern today.
Do I want to discover what I do not know about God? Do you? Or are we satisfied with the way we have experienced him and the way he is being merchandised to us and therefore just want to wrap ourselves in the familiar like some sort of security blanket decorated with nice knit pictures of a golden calf?.
In times of darkness, are we looking for a security blanket or burning bush?
Think it over.
One comment on “At Mount Sinai: Two Kinds of Reassurance”
Leave a Reply
Previous Post
« DOES IT MATTER HOW WE LIVE?
Thank you so much for this. I am guilty of forgetting God cannot be fully known, fully understood.
You have reminded me to be both at peace and engaged in the active pursuit of knowing Him according to His ways rather than mine.
I was looking for information about the month of Elul and found this to remind me to seek renewal through Him.