SCRIPTURE: Exodus 32:1-14
TEXT: 14And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. THEME: We can trust God to move into the something new God has for us. INTRODUCTION Trying to live into a new way is hard. It is a paradigm shift. A change in how we understand things and seeing and understand things in a new way. The renewal of our minds, gives us new perspectives and new behaviors. This is what happening to the Israelites in the wilderness. The God that they have heard about, that helped their ancestors, has suddenly appeared like an erupting volcano. Shaken out of the hands of Egypt’s slavery they are now free to wander the wilderness. In the challenges of this barren landscape God has shown up in ways that they have ben oblivious as slaves in Egypt. God has revealed a passionate love for them with shelter, warmth, food, water and deliverance from predators. Moses has led them and been the bridge for them to God. But at this juncture, time is their adversary. Moses has been away from them for 40 days and doubt, worry, fears of abandonment, and anxiety are challenging them to question their survival without God. SCRIPTURE When is Moses coming back? What is taking so long? What if he is dead? What if he got lost? What if he ran away to leave us here in the wilderness to die? What if, what if, what if…. When we are living in a new way, in relationship with God, God’s love, protection, care and answers to prayers is transformational. We are freed to enter into relationship with God. Living into this has been amazing but with Moses being gone, is God gone? When there is push back to our new life, it is easy for us to snap back to our old ways. So, the people gather around Aaron (the vice president) and present a ‘snap back’ solution: “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us.” Aaron, not having to rely on the ways of God on his own before, says, “Let’s be how we used be, and get help beyond ourselves by drawing from our old ways and create an image of the gods that delivered us out of Egypt.” A golden bull calf representing their wish for military strength and fertility. Holy Cow. Sacrifice, worship, dancing and feasting follow the next day. Meanwhile, Moses is on the mountain spending time with God but God is not limited to only being with Moses and has also been with the people down on the hill anxiously waiting for Moses’ return. God tells Moses to go down to Your people, who are acting perversely. They have turned aside from the ways that are consistent with God’s passionate love for them. They have made gods in the form of a calf and worshipped and sacrificed to it. Giving the idol created by their hands credit for their deliverance out of Egypt. God sees them as stiff necked: “incapable of learning, traditionalist, stubborn, and set in their ways. God’s wrath burns hot against them, ready to destroy them, be left alone and start all over with Moses. But Moses is the non-anxious presence in this story and argues with God for the people, God has rescued from Egypt. “That was some power and might back there. You showed those Egyptians, but we wouldn’t want them to think this was an evil trick on the Israelites leading them out of Egypt only to kill them on the mountain. Is that the impression you want to leave with the Egyptians?” “Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel? How they served you and the promise you swore to them to multiply their descendants and give them land.” Moses’ argument changes the Lord’s mind about the disaster plan for the people of God. We want both, a God whose mind can be changed and a will that is unmovable. I have three observations about this. One is that we can be in dialogue with God. Arguing, complaining, reasoning, realizing, changing, transforming and coming out with resolutions different from where we started out that reflect the will of God. Second, is that the plans of God are ingrained in Moses as he argues with God. God is not the only one who understands the plan, Moses gets it too. This is in essence what needs to happen with the people of God. They need to have the plan of God, the will of God, the passion God has for them as their passion, so when Moses is not there, they can have faith, trust, to squelch their worry, anxiety, and fears. And the Third, is that with God, it is okay to make mistakes as long as we are willing to admit our fault and get back on track because God loves us, even when God needs to be reminded of it. APPLICATION God is forming the Israelites into becoming the People of God. It is based on relationship with God, behavior, practice, attitude, love, faith and trust. They are becoming new by what they are learning about God. How are we to be the people of God, the church in this changing Age? A hundred and fifty-four years ago people who came to work on the sugar plantation on Maui signed the charter to incorporate Wailuku Union Church as an outpost of Christian faith in the middle of the Pacific. In the wilderness of a tropical paradise, they needed each other to keep their faith, nurture each other and worship God. They came from different Christian traditions but found encouragement in being together worshiping God with the English language. We are the same today. Although we are part of the United Church of Christ, we come from different Christian traditions, emerging theologies and religious styles, and find encouragement, support, faith, worship and meaning together as a community of faith. We find in each other something to appreciate about God, something new to discover, something to understand in the way we live our faith. We are passionately in love with God, following God’s way over our own. The church has become a community on a faith adventure, transforming who we are and the church as we journey into the future. At the Aha Pae’aina, our statewide church meeting via, Zoom and other internet postings. One of the morning devotions was conducted by Young Adults. They want more members for our churches. They want a church that is more concern about living their belief in the community than encasing it in the edifice of a well-maintained museum. They want church that are open to all kinds of people rather than judgmental. They want churches that will listen to their voice in ways shaping the direction and future of the church. Churches that follow a God who passionately loves them are transformational. Just as Moses is transformed and argues God’s points with God, to change God’s mind. The people of God must be transformed from slaves, into living in the freedom of relationship with God. And to live into the freedom of living in relationships with each other that transforms communities. The State has contacted us about receiving the GIA grant that they awarded us. Josh Hayashi our “owner’s representative” on this project told me, that our Mission Ground project is transformational, it is transforming our members about what it means to have faith and to do something for others. It is transformational for a church to have its focus on the community and serving God. It is the kind of church that young adults described in their devotion. Its transformational, in the vision of what the church in the future might be. It may be less about members and more about how we engage together in mission. Being free to make a difference for others, in the community, for God. This is transformational. CONCLUSION Passionately loved by God, we can be transformed to live in new ways rather than settling for how we used to live. Even if we revert backwards, we can admit our fault and get back on track with God. The COVID -19 virus has changed the Aha Pae’aina this year. Caroline Belsom did an excellent job Moderating us through this event on Zoom. Our churches have been thrusted into a new reality as the church. We are being transformed, trust in God and move where God wants us to be, into the future and resist the temptation to worship Holy Cows.
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