So What's Your Excuse?

A sermon preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on October 9, 2011

at the First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

So What’s Your Excuse?

Exodus 32:1-14

I remember on several occasions as a kid when my parents taught me to do one thing, I promised to obey, and then turned around to do something else.  Many times did I incur the wrath of my parents, who would always ask me, “Why did you do that?  We told you not to do it.”  What was my excuse?  “I don’t know.”  I figured out early in life that this answer was the best answer to offer.  I figured if I pleaded stupidity they cut me some slack.  It didn’t work that way.

There was the time I got mad at my younger brother, Andy, and I threw a rock hitting him on the head.  He ran crying to my parents.  My dad came out and asked me, “Why did you do that?”  The reply: “I don’t know.” 

Then there was the classic “I promise to be home before my curfew or I’ll be grounded” promise.  Can you guess how many times I was late getting home and missed my curfew?  The question wasn’t “why” but “where have you been?  Do you realize your late?”  My reply: “I don’t know.  My watch stopped working.”  Excuses, excuses, excuses.

Why are we so prone to excuse ourselves from our promises?

We’ve all made promises in our lives requiring varied degrees of commitment.  They range from promising to be home on time to the promises made in wedding vows; from promising to help a neighbor in need to promising to do a job for the agreed upon wage.  We all strive to keep our promises.  We know it is a sign of integrity and that you are someone who can be trusted and someone who is true to their word.  And yet, we still break our promises routinely making up excuses in some cases: calling in sick to work when we’re not sick or not paying others what we owe them and the list goes on.

Why are we so prone to excuse ourselves from our promises?

Our scripture reading today from Exodus is disturbing.  Moses is up on Mt. Sinai chatting with God about the Torah, the Law.  Having already received the Ten Commandments, Moses has shared them with the people of Israel and they promised to obey and follow these commandments.  They formed a covenant with God.  This story is disturbing to me because of how quickly the nation of Israel has turned away from its promises to God.  This moment of great importance in the drama of Israel’s salvation by God is followed by a shameful denial by the people of the very love and power that has saved them.  Having been compassionately embraced and delivered from the peril, the people, in their anxiety, turn away from God to the gods of gold.[1]  Why all the anxiety?

Moses was late.  He missed his curfew, the one set by the Israelites.  In their eyes, Moses was missing.  Their leader was missing.  Moses has made several trip up Mount Sinai to receive more details and clarity on the Torah.   He would sometimes take Aaron and other leaders of the people with him.  For Moses, to be on these excursions was not unusual.  But this time he went alone.  Even though Moses promised to return, they don’t think he’s coming back this time.  To Israel Moses was a man of God, the channel of God’s guidance and strength for a people who desperately needed it more than anything.  Israel was acting out of their fears and impatience about the apparent absence of divine and human leadership, instead of trusting in the Lord’s promises of his abiding presence and then acting accordingly.[2]

Why are we so prone to excuse ourselves from our promises?

The people plead for new leadership; “to make gods for us, who shall go before us” (Exodus 32:2).  And the golden calf was born!  Let the celebration begin!

We are not immune from the desire to have gods made for us.  We are not immune from idolatry.  We make idols of anybody and anything we can.  Here are some search results from an Internet search for "We have made an idol…"

·         We have made an idol of progress

·         We have made an idol of our families

·         We have made an idol out of our past

·         We have made an idol out of God

·         We have made an idol of our church building

·         We have made an idol of our own opinion

·         We have made an idol of our own wants

·         We have made an idol of youth, to name just a few.

Everyone kneels before the golden calf, even those of us who have received the saving love and grace of God with less than the full devotion and commitment that it demands. How are we to remain faithful and keep our promise to God through obedience of the law’s requirements?

The golden calf was to be the Israelites’ new god, but instead it was an idol, and the second commandment explicitly prohibited the Israelites from making idols (Exodus 20:4-5).  The promises the Israelites made with God are broken.  The covenant is null and void because of their unfaithfulness.  And God is furious!

God is so indignant, so angry, he does not call them his people.  They’re Moses’ people.  God essentially threatens to disown the Israelites.  God declares that his anger is so hot that he will consume all the people and start over with Moses. 

Moses could have said, “You can do that?  Of course you can.  Blast them off the surface of the earth.  Besides, I am sick of their complaining.”  But he didn’t.

            Moses becomes the mediator between the God of the universe and God’s stiff-necked people on earth.   His reasoning is brilliant and effective:  1) Why give the Egyptians a reason to judge God as evil for killing his people in the desert, and 2) Reminding God of the promises originally made to Abraham, Issac and Jacob to multiply their descendants and to live in the Promised Land forever.  And God changes his mind.  He decides not to exterminate his people from the face of the earth.

            God accepts dialogue such as our prayers of thanksgiving, confession and pleas for mercy.  God’s ultimate purposes remain firm, but the means and timing to carry them out is open to change.

            As Moses interceded for the Israelites, so we, too, have one who intercedes on our behalf with God, Jesus Christ; because we cannot keep our promises to God and to others on our own, by ourselves.  We all need help.  We all need a savior to intercede on our behalf, to bless us with grace and mercy.

Grace is unmerited favor. It is the startling act of God working on behalf of the very ones who have violated his covenant and substituted gods of their own making for him. Grace can be understood by contrasting it to mercy, which is another divine attribute. Mercy is God's withholding punishment we deserve; grace is God's giving us blessings we don't deserve.

How important is it when we have failed to live up to our promises to him, that God still lives up to his promises to us?

Yes, there's judgment. Yes, there's accountability. But there's also grace, and any image of God that leaves that out is no more than a calf of gold.

Writer Kathleen Norris tells of being at an airport departure gate one day where she noticed a young couple with an infant. The baby was staring intently at other people, and as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter if it were young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy or worried-looking, he would respond with absolute delight. Norris writes:

“It was beautiful to see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate of heaven. And as I watched that baby play with any adult who would allow it, I ... realized that this is how God looks as us, staring into our faces in order to be delighted, to see the creature he made and called good, along with the rest of creation. And, as Psalm 139 puts it, darkness is as nothing to God, who can look right through whatever evil we've done in our lives to the creature made in the divine image.”

Possibly "only God and well-loved infants can see this way," Norris says, but it means that God can look right through our guilt trips, our failures and our agonies, our phoniness, our invented deities and our sins, and see someone he loves.[3]

“God has promised to keep his people, and he will keep his promise.”[4]  This is the Good News of the Gospel. Believe it and live it.  Amen.

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[1] Texts for Preaching, Year A, Proper 23: Ordinary Time 28 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994) p.516.

[2] Homiletics, vol. 23, number 5, October 2011, p. 50 commentary.

[3] Norris, Kathleen. Amazing Grace. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998, 150-51.

[4] Spurgeon, Charles. 1001 Quotes, Illustrations, & Humorous Stories for Preachers, Teachers and Writers. Edward K. Rowell, editor. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996, p.139.