Sermon
of November 6, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Exodus 32:1-14
“Lost"
There’s a show on ABC called “Lost” that I started to watch last year when it began. I watched a couple of episodes. It’s about a group of people who had landed on or ended up on a deserted island after their plane tore apart over the ocean. Throughout the first few episodes people were fighting each other, bickering, trying to make plans to get off this deserted place, and had fears of a great beast that was lurking somewhere around there. And I got sort of bored after a while because I didn’t get to see the beast. I wanted to see the beast and they didn’t show the beast, and I don’t know if they’ve shown the beast yet, but I’m not watching it anymore.
But it reminded me of something that we struggle with as people. We struggle sometimes with being lost. If you’ve ever gone hiking there might have been a point when you got off the trail a bit or got on a trail you didn’t expect to be on and felt at least momentarily lost. Probably all of us at one time or another have been driving in an unfamiliar place and found ourselves going down a road we didn’t intend to go down or in a state we didn’t intend to be in and found ourselves lost. I was thinking about what my most vivid memory of being lost was, and it was being lost at the New York World’s Fair. You can imagine that. I was probably ten years old or eight years old and I was supposed to be with my cousin. He decided to go somewhere else and so I was by myself at the New York World’s Fair at eight or ten years old. I did get found, but it was just one of those memorable experiences. It was a pretty big place and pretty unusual place to be lost.
The experience of being lost, I think, almost always can bring with it feelings of fear and anxiety. I think that’s what’s going on here with the people of Israel in the story we just heard, the story of the golden calf that the people begin to worship that’s made by Moses’ brother Aaron while Moses is up on the mountain. I believe that they went in that direction because they were afraid and they were anxious. Here they were in this place that was a foreign land to them. They were in-between their old home of Egypt and not yet to their new home of the Promised Land in Canaan. They were on their way but they were in a place they had never been before, and their leader was missing. The one who had led them and promised to take them and promised to be their guide and to bring God’s direction to them was up on top of the mountain. There they were at the bottom of the mountain and he wasn’t back yet, and they felt lost and abandoned and they became fearful and anxious, and that’s what led to the golden calf. They wanted something to bring them security and they weren’t finding it the way they wanted. So they had Aaron fashion this golden idol, which was against the laws that Moses was bringing down to them about making idols.
So I believe that often we have a feeling of being lost, whether it’s being lost in a place or even if somebody’s feeling lost emotionally or spiritually. We get that way sometimes, and there is a fear or an anxiety that comes along with it.
Well, I also believe that this feeling of being lost is not about geography, it’s not about where you are on the face of the earth, because even though that’s sometimes how we frame it and how we think of it, I don’t think that’s really what being lost is all about. Because you see Aaron and the people of Israel and Moses were all in the same place essentially. They were all in this wilderness of Sinai and yet the people are anxious and fearful and feeling lost. If you want to get an idea of where they are geographically, it would be something like starting in Seattle and trying to get to Chicago, and finding yourself on that route down in Houston instead. That’s about how far away they were from where they were supposed to be. Instead of going in a straight line they were 200 miles out of the way of where they should be, in a place they knew nothing about.
But that wasn’t the source of their fear and anxiety and feelings of loss. I don’t believe, because as I said, they’re at the base of the mountain, Moses is at the top, and Moses isn’t afraid. They’re fearful, they’re anxious, they have to build a golden calf, something to bring them security, but up on top of the mountain is Moses and Moses isn’t afraid. You want to know how much Moses isn’t afraid? He’s arguing with God. Most people think they’d be kind of fearful and anxious in front of God, but Moses is arguing with God. He’s not afraid, he’s contending with God: “Oh your fierce anger is burning hot against these stiff-necked people,” Moses is saying, “but give them a break.” Well, again, that’s not what it says in the Bible, that’s Ericson’s interpretation of it, but basically Moses is saying withdraw your fierce hot anger against these people and do not execute your wrath against them. In the end God goes along with what Moses says and God’s wrath is withdrawn.
So Moses isn’t fearful or anxious at all; Moses is bold and courageous on top of the mountain, and therein gives us the key to how not to feel lost – to be aware of the presence of God. That’s the only difference between these people, other than being on the ground and up on the mountain. They’re in the same geographical place, but the people down below feel that God is not with them and Moses knows he’s in the presence of God. Enough so that he can argue with God. That’s the difference about feeling lost: if you feel you’re in the presence of God, you can feel not lost. You may not be where you want to be, but the fear and anxiety that come with being with lost are not there. If you feel apart from God, that’s when the feelings of lost can come in powerfully.
The good news today is that Jesus brings us a message later on about God’s presence that makes the feeling of being lost not so difficult. In those days, the old days, in Moses’ day, the feeling was that God was kind of confined. God was not with the people. God was up on the mountain with Moses so Moses felt OK because that’s where God was. The people did not feel that God was there. They later on felt that God was in the tabernacle, maybe in the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was or later in the temple. They had this feeling that God was confined in space and time to a particular place: the temple, the tabernacle, on a mountain, in a burning bush—somewhere like that—that God was in just one place at one time and if you weren’t there you didn’t have God’s presence with you. But Jesus brought a message that God is not confined to one place and one time, that God is with each and every person in every place at all times. Jesus left the world with a couple of messages after his resurrection, saying, “I will send the comfort of the Holy Spirit to be with you always.” That there is a spirit that flows among you that reveals the comforting, powerful presence of God that’s in every place at every time with every person so you don’t have to feel lost. And Jesus also said, “Lo I am with you always ‘til the close of the age.” In other words…I who came to Earth to show God to you, I will be with you always, each one of you, everywhere you are, forever.
So there is not a need to feel the fear and anxiety of being lost when we believe that God is with us. Oh, we may not sometimes be in the place we want to be, we may be off on the wrong path hiking somewhere or all alone in a big city or a big unusual place or driving somewhere we don’t know, but we are somewhere in God’s creation. And if God is with us, there is no reason to fear, no reason to be anxious, because that’s the difference in feeling spiritually alive or spiritually dead, spiritually lost or spiritually found – to know what Jesus promised, that God is with us, every place we are.