You Are What Yo By Rev. Mark A. Pierson
Old Testament Reading: Exodus 32
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
H I G H E R T H I N G S __ 6
You are what you eat. My parents said this when I was a child, hoping it would get me to choose fruit over French fries, or spinach instead of Skittles. It never worked. It only gave me a mental image of oversized junk food with arms and legs. The threat was disarmed by the silliness of it all—and of course I never saw any of my friends turn into a can of Coke or a bag of Cheetos. But there is a grain of truth baked into this old saying, and in more ways than one. You are in fact what you eat, because when the food you consume is digested it gets incorporated into your body’s cells— what you eat and drink literally become a part of you, and so they affect what you are, and who you are. This is true of our Christian life as well. We live in a world where Happy Meal Worship and Finger Lickin’ Good Theology are far more popular, quick, and easy to get our hands on and to stuff our faces with than a good, steady diet of hearing, reading, singing, and praying the Word of Christ, and receiving His Body and Blood in the Supper. Jesus tells Peter to feed His sheep, but He does not tell Peter to open a trendy chain restaurant where you can build your own religious buffet. Thankfully, like loving parents who give their kids what is good and healthy, our Heavenly Father knows our needs and how best to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness. We do not need catchy slogans; we need salvation. We do not need plate after plate of empty Christian calories; we need the spiritual super food of God’s holy Word. What we eat matters, and so the words we use in our preaching and teaching matter, the
words in the liturgy and in the hymns matter. For we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. But just as the right kind of food can give life, the wrong kind of food can bring death. This is seen most clearly in our Old Testament reading, which has one of the most iconic images in the entire Bible: Moses on Mount Sinai, standing with the stone tablets of the Law, one in each arm, carrying the Commandments down the mountain to God’s covenant people, to reveal to them the good and holy will of their good and holy God. And what happens next is an anticlimactic plot twist of biblical proportions. You likely know the story but imagine if you had never heard it before. These Hebrews, who suffered as slaves for over 400 years—who begged and pleaded with God for Him to finally do something—at long last have their prayers answered. The God Yahweh waged war against all the gods of Egypt and won. This God picked a fight with Pharaoh to set His people free and won for them their freedom. The Hebrews witnessed miracle after miracle: their firstborn sons were saved by the blood of the Passover lamb—which they ate, and they walked across the Red Sea on dry ground while Pharaoh’s army was drowned to death in a watery grave. They came to the mountain where Moses met God in the burning bush, and with their own eyes they saw holy fire descend from heaven with smoke and thunder and lightning. But after Moses is gone a little too long, the Hebrews get frantic. They forget all that God’s done for them and
feel like they’re spiritually starving to death—like their religious waiter hasn’t checked on their table for hours. So they take matters into their own hands and make for themselves an idol, a graven image, a statue of God in the form of a bull. And the thing about this is… that’s what their enemies the Egyptians had. The pagan, heathen, oppressive slave-driving Egyptians made idols for their gods, graven images in the form of animals, and one of them was depicted as a bull. So when the people give their gold to Aaron and ask him to make them gods, and Aaron gives them the golden calf and says,“Here is your God,” they are in fact saying that one god is as good as another, that there is no real difference between the God of Abraham and the bull-god of Egypt. If we think of it in terms of marriage, this is every bit as bad as if a guy had rescued a gal from an abusive relationship, won her heart through selfsacrifice and showered her with love, but then on their wedding night, when he steps out to grab a bottle of champagne, he comes back to find her in bed with the same guy who used to beat her. And what does she say in her defense? “It’s your fault for being gone for so long. Besides, what difference does it make? You two are basically the same anyway.” Certainly that analogy breaks down, but you get the point. The honeymoon between God and Israel has only just begun, and already the bride is committing adultery in the worst way possible. You can see why Moses is so angry! Even before the covenant has been ratified, it’s already broken, violated, smashed into a thousand little pieces, just like the tablets themselves. It does no good to pick up the pieces. All the Hebrew women and all the Hebrew men couldn’t put the Law back together again. What’s done is done, and there is
