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Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
Moses is delayed and the people are discouraged. They take matters into their own hands, which ends badly. Do we sometimes do the same?
Keep God Close
I have an interesting take on this story that we heard in the first reading, the story of the golden calf. And my take is that initially we can look at this and say the people completely rejected God, but I don’t think that that’s accurate.
Moses had been delayed for a long time in coming down the mountain. Their faith was weak and since they did not see Moses, could not interact with Moses, and weren’t sure what had become of him, they became afraid. And they wanted a concrete sign, hence the golden calf.
And it’s a warning to us, I think, today because if we lose sight of prayer and the importance of prayer, then we can start to arrive at solutions to things that do not come from God, but come from us, apart from God. That’s what Jesus is warning at in the gospel. He comes proclaiming the good news. It’s demanding. It’s not easy. It comes on the heels of John, who was harsh, who challenged people in very difficult ways. He did not mince words and people were drawn to him in great numbers.
Jesus comes proclaiming that he himself is the fulfillment of all of the promises of the Old Testament, and he’s not believed. He’s not believed, as we learned yesterday and the day before, because on two days ago, he was not believed because he was doing work on the Sabbath. Yesterday, he’s not believed because he is proclaiming himself to be the divine son of God.
We find ourselves, though, I think today, at least I know I do, tempted by the trap of the book of Exodus that we know best. We know better than God. We’re smart. We’re bright. We’re talented. We don’t need to pay attention to God, nor the church that God has created through his son, Jesus Christ. Today, Jesus longs for a relationship. He loves us more than we can possibly know or understand. What he asks of us is a simple, simple assent, that we believe that Jesus is the divine son of God and that Jesus does know better than we about all aspects of how we can experience eternal life and what we should do.
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