Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23

1 Hallelujah! Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures for ever.
2 Who can declare the mighty acts of the Lord or show forth all his praise?
3 Happy are those who act with justice and always do what is right!
4 Remember me, O Lord, with the favor you have for your people, and visit me with your saving help;
5 That I may see the prosperity of your elect and be glad with the gladness of your people, that I may glory with your inheritance.
6 We have sinned as our forebears did; we have done wrong and dealt wickedly.
19 Israel made a bull-calf at Horeb and worshiped a molten image;
20 And so they exchanged their Glory for the image of an ox that feeds on grass.
21 They forgot God their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt,
22 Wonderful deeds in the land of Ham, and fearful things at the Red Sea.
23 So he would have destroyed them, had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath from consuming them.

This year, Monday Matters is focused on wisdom conveyed in the treasures of the book of Psalms. We'll look at the psalms read in church before Monday Matters comes to your screen.

Golden calves

How silly and quaint of those people to make a sculpture of a cow out of gold and decide to worship it! What were those primitive folks thinking? So glad that we don’t do dumb things like that anymore. Or do we?

What are those things that we worship these days? Are they objects of our own making? Job title? Net worth? Education? Technology? Fitness? Social connection? Crowd approval? In the final analysis, is it any wiser to assign worth to such things than it is to assign worth to a divine bovine? St. Paul talks about exchanging the creature for the creator. There are all kinds of ways that we do that.

Why is it that we worship those things? For starters, it may be because we are forgetful. We do not always remember what God has done in the past. According to the psalm reprinted in this email (one you might have heard yesterday in church), worship of golden calf happened at least in part because the people of Bible times forgot what God had done for them in the past. (I call the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness the “what have you done for me lately” people.) Amazingly delivered from Pharaoh, they complain to God and Moses at the edge of the Red Sea. Delivered at the Red Sea, they soon complain about lack of water. Drinking water from a stone, they soon complain about lack of food. Provided with manna, God caters quail. When they lost track of that history, it left them with a need to replace that force in their lives. They are us.

We still contend with a propensity for forgetfulness. That’s why our eucharistic liturgy calls us to recall the good things God has done in the past. It’s why I believe regular worship matters. As C.S.Lewis said, in the journey of faith we don’t need so much to be instructed as we need to be reminded.

Why do we worship things we might have created? It may be because in our relationship with God, we deal with mysteries beyond our understanding. It’s easier, more convenient, less challenging to worship something we believe we can control. Something we created. When the children of Israel made that golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai, they did so in part because they wondered where God had gone.

It’s not hard to look at the situation of the world in which we live, to think of it as wilderness, and wonder where God has gone, whether God has given up on us. We may struggle with worship of a God we cannot see, whose essence leads authors of the psalms to marvel at the mystery of the Holy One (See Psalm 139). As St. Paul said, in our spiritual journey we walk by faith not by sight.

Why do we worship things we might have created? It may be because we are afraid of being left on our own, left to our own resources, operating on the suspicion that we just can’t make the cut, that we’re not enough. So we give our hearts to that which will not satisfy our hearts, as one of the desert fathers described it.

Which brings us in the Christian tradition to Jesus. I heard about a billboard that said: Jesus is the answer. A vandal had spray painted on the billboard: But what was the question? In this discussion of idolatry, we offer Jesus as the answer to questions raised by today’s psalm. What do we worship? Have we been left alone? Have we been left to our own resources? How can we get better at remembering? Can we really worship a God we cannot see? Enter Jesus.

Jesus comes to us as the word made flesh, dwelling among us. Literally, pitching a tent among us. While the essence of God may exceed our limited mental grasp, the historical existence of Jesus offers us “God with skin on.” More than calling us to worship him, Jesus calls us to follow him on a pathway to deeper connection with God, a pathway to eternal life. I think of his conversation with the spunky Samaritan woman (John 4). Jesus tells her that God is spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and truth.

So Jesus comes to us to help us remember. On the night before he died, he gave us the bread and wine and said: Do this in remembrance of me. He’s saying: Don’t forget. Jesus reminds us that we have not been left alone, so there is no need to look elsewhere for something to worship, to create that golden calf.

Our expressions of devotion may not be focused on golden calves. But think this week about what it is you worship, where you give your heart. Do we give our hearts to that which will not satisfy our hearts? Join the psalmist in saying: Hallelujah! Give thanks to the Lord.

-Jay Sidebotham