What God do you believe in? Homily for Thursday, April 3, 2025

This recounting of Aaron helping the people to make a golden calf is really one about what type of God to believe in. Do you need to see God ignorer to believe? Or can you be led in faith? Readings for Today.

What God do you believe in?

This is an interesting conversation that we get between Moses and God. It, in some ways, could be seen, perhaps, as a conversation between equals. God has finally seen how stiff-necked the people are. God wants to destroy the people, but it’s Moses who intervenes to prevent this destruction. So what’s going on?

It certainly cannot be the case that God did not know before this statement that the people were stiff-necked. It certainly cannot be the case that God changed His mind, and at one time thought about bringing the people to the Promised Land, and at the next minute changed His mind and wanted to destroy them all. So what’s happening?

I think God is like a good parent. He’s helping Moses to believe. He’s helping Moses to see clearly who God is, by letting Moses really stand in defense of the people. It’s not that God is going to destroy them. In fact, He’s going to help Moses to be the type of leader that is necessary to carry out God’s plan.

We know that just as God threatened to destroy the people, Moses comes down from the mountain pretty angry. And we can understand why. The people have not listened. They’ve turned away from the way that God wanted them to follow.

I think in a lot of ways, what the people wanted was something tangible. Moses was delayed from coming down the mountain. We know that these encounters that Moses had with God changed him, and it caused the people to be somewhat afraid. And so, when he’s delayed in coming down the mountain, they begin to question, “Well, maybe he’s gone. Maybe he’s not still around.” They’re afraid of God. They won’t even go to the base of the mountain, because they’re afraid.

And we can understand it. I mean, God is God. He’s infinite. He’s all-loving. He’s all-good, all-knowing. They wanted something they could see and touch. But that’s not faith. Faith is about a relationship. Faith is about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is about recognizing that even when we don’t understand, we admit that God is God and we are not.

We live in an age, I think, where too often we want to do things our own way. We want to be in charge. We want to be in control. If we can’t see God, then it must mean that God does not exist. We are going to trust those things where there are tangible proofs that things are the way they should be.

I remember when I was in the seminary, there was a seminary classmate, my ordination classmate, in fact. We had the option of doing a group project. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I hate group projects. I’ve said before that even as a teacher I assigned them, but as a student I hated them. I didn’t like to rely on someone else.

And so when he asked if I would consider doing a group project with him, at first I said no. But he was persistent and I said, “Okay. Here are some ground rules that we need if this is going to be successful and I’m not going to go to jail for homicide.

First, you know that you and I have different ways of meeting deadlines. I always meet deadlines, but they’re closer to the due date. You’d like to meet the deadline by finishing the project yesterday. I do not work under pressure, that kind of pressure, very well. It does not bring out the best in me.”

But I agreed. And our friendship survived. Although there were moments I wasn’t sure it was going to. Now I mention this example because aren’t we sometimes like that with God too? Not wanting to do a group project with God. We want to do what we want to do. We want to know with certitude how things are going to work out. We want to do our own thing in our own way.

But Lent is not about that. It’s about fine-tuning our desire to please God. Fine-tuning our desire to accept God through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We belong to the ultimate group project, the church. And God will never abandon this church. And so let us ask the Lord what the disciples asked the Lord. Lord, increase our faith.

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