Grumbling to Gratitude
a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
October 12, 2008

Text: Exodus 32:1-14

As some of you know, I have a cousin who is currently in the ministry, my dad and one of his cousins were in the ministry, my grandfather and his five brothers were in the ministry as was my great-grandfather.  As a result of this lineage, I have often thought that my name should be John Levi, not John Wimberly.  For my family is clearly walking in the priestly footsteps of the Levites of ancient Israel.

Being a pastor is a profession with great joys.  Many of the joys come from simply being an observer/participant as people in our congregations grow, mature and age.  Amy DeLouise, who you know as an elder here at Western, was in my confirmation class in Bethesda about thirty years ago.  I have watched the children of Jan Reed, the Arbuthnots, Mary Wencil and others develop at Western from babies to children to young adults.  Seeing all of these folks evolve and mature is a treat of almost indescribable joy. 

Some of the joys of being a pastor come from staying in the same place for a long time and helping ministries planted years ago develop and grow.  None of us involved in the founding of Miriam’s Kitchen could have imagined what it has become today.  One day we will be saying the same thing about the Clinic in Ethiopia.

Some of the joys come from developing a large network of people we trust and who trust us.  Working with this network of folks more than three decades, I have learned that mountains large and small can be moved.  The network makes everything easier: from helping someone find a job to preserving the separation of religion and state.

Some of the joys come from eating Howard’s meat loaf or Franklin’s Chinese dishes; watching banners be created for the sanctuary; or hearing our music reflect the sounds and rhythms of the world. 

Along with the joys of ministry come sorrows.  Most are the sorrows that flow from the joy of being a family.  We bury people who are dear, dear friends.  We grieve with people over losses that are heartbreaking.  We cry with people who are stuck in one of life’s ruts.  From time to time, we fail spectacularly in some ministry project we attempt together. 

It is within this context of pastoral joys and sorrows that I understand Aaron’s behavior in this morning’s lesson from Exodus.  It is easy to judge Aaron harshly as we read of him following rather than leading his congregation.  He helped the migrating Hebrews create and worship an idol in the form of a Golden Calf. 

But when I look at Aaron, I see a pastor.  While his brother Moses was living comfortably in the Pharaoh’s court and then in Midian as a shepherd, Aaron lived with his people as a slave.  As such, he experienced firsthand the joys and sorrows of his people in a way Moses never did. 

Aaron’s deep knowledge of his people and his intense personal relationships with them was his strength and weakness.  It was a strength because he knew how to comfort them.  It was a weakness because, occasionally, he followed rather than led them; cut them slack when he should have challenged them.

In our lesson, while Moses was on top of the mountain talking with God, the people decided to create an idol.  They convinced Aaron, their religious leader, to help them.  It is easy to hear them conjoling their lifelong friend, “Come on Aaron, lighten up.  We’re not abandoning Yahweh.  We’re just hedging our bets by worshiping another God.  Everyone does it. Make a Golden Calf for us.”

It is impossible not to draw an analogy between God’s people then and God’s people today.  Like our spiritual ancestors in the Sinai Desert, we too are fully capable of worshiping idols—the idols of money and influence, military power and materialism.  Like Aaron’s people, with our own hands, we have fashioned that which we worship.  Our shiny, seductive idols are worthy of any humans have made over history.

But as we are learning in very, very painful ways in recent weeks, idols they are.  They have no power other than that which we ascribe to them.  As a result, when push comes to shove, they cannot provide us with the security we seek; the solace for which we yearn; the peace that stills a troubled heart. 

There is only one God who can give us what we need.  Yahweh.  The God with whom Moses spoke on that mountaintop while the people bowed to their Golden Calf down below.

Like Israel’s religious leader, Aaron, the church’s leadership in this country has been complicit in the creation of our society’s idols.  We have blessed America the Military Giant, America the Home of Unrestrained Capitalism; America the Consumer.  We have replaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the Gospel of Prosperity.

Just as I empathize with Aaron, I am not without sympathy for how and why the church slid down this slippery slope.  As pastors, we come to share the values of our parishioners.  We share their fears and embrace their dreams.  We become one of them, one of the people. 

However, while I understand how we as pastors are compromised, the failure of the church’s leadership to call the worship of false gods idolatry is totally inexcusable.  Indeed, it is damnable.  Aaron had a responsibility to name the people’s desire to another God what it was—idolatry.  The church has a responsibility to name the idols of our time for what they are—sources of delusion and illusion.  But like Aaron, the church has failed at crucial moments to confront the idolatry to which we, as a people, are drawn.

However, before we get too depressed about our failures, let us remember the way this chapter of the story of the Hebrew people ends.  The people do get to the Promised Land.  Just as Peter redeemed himself after betraying Jesus and became the leader of the early church, Aaron redeems himself time and again in a difficult and challenging journey across the Sinai Desert. 

We too will move from our present time of crisis closer to the Promised Land.  And the church will play a redemptive role in getting us there.  But it is a time for humble confession. Confession of sins is something we, as Calvinists, place at the core of our spiritual journey.  As a nation and as individuals, we need to confess that we are worshiping false gods.

Perhaps I am in a confessing mood because, with my wife, in the past ten days, I went through the Jewish High Holy Days drama once again at Temple Sinai.  It is one of the most profound religious liturgies I have ever experienced.  It has become an important part of my personal spiritual life. 

The High Holy days begin on Rosh Hashanah with the rabbi praying publicly to God that she or he is unworthy of the task of leading the people.  Standing before the congregation and facing the Torah, the rabbi prays, “Let them not be put to shame because of me, nor I because of them.  Sinners though we are, let our prayers come before you...as though from hearts more worthy than ours.” “As though from hearts more worthy than ours.”* It is one of the great confessions in any religious liturgy.

A week later, at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, for 24 hours, prayer after prayer is read by the people, confessing the shortcoming and sins of the people.  It is a liturgy any Calvinist has to love!  One of my favorite prayers is as follows, “Our God, God of our mothers and fathers, grant that our prayers may reach You.  Do not be deaf to our pleas, for we are not so arrogant and stiff-necked as to say before you, our God and God of all ages, we are perfect and have not sinned; rather do we confess: we have gone astray, we have sinned, we have transgressed.”*

John the Baptist, a faithful Jew himself, prepared the Way for Jesus with a simple core message: repent.  For Judaism, Islam and Christianity, New Life begins with repentance.  We confess that we have gone astray.  Until we do so, everything else will continue us down the path of self-destruction. 

I have absolutely no doubt that this nation will be fine in the future—if, IF we repent.  We need to confess that we have been more concerned about tax loopholes than creating healthcare for the uninsured; more concerned about developing additional oil sources than developing sustainable energy sources; more concerned with building multimillion dollar homes than repairing bridges and schools.  As a nation, we have been and are on a totally unsustainable path. 

However, rather than seeing our current time of reckoning as a total disaster, I propose that we see it as an opportunity.  As God always does, in our current crisis, God is giving us a chance to make right what we have made wrong. 

One of the great disasters of my life was a divorce.  I saw it as a total failure.  I questioned my ability ever again to love or be loved.  It was an awful time.  I felt like I was lost in the middle of the Sinai Desert, done in by my own poor choices.

However, with the help of a talented, caring therapist, I was able to think through how I contributed to the relationship failing; how I could avoid making the same mistakes; what I need in the way of love; what I have to offer in the way of love.  It was a time of reckoning and confession.  It created the ground upon which my marriage with Phyllis is built, a relationship more than two decades old and still as fresh as the first day.

Those who tell us not to look backward and study the mistakes made in Iraq, on Wall Street, and on Main Street are fools.  Those who do not learn from history will be brutally punished in the future.  We need to identify the idols we have been worshiping and throw them into the dumpster. 

However, studying the past is not a clear roadmap into the future.  For the future always brings surprises; surprises rooted in sinful human behavior; the sometimes capricious actions of Nature; random chance and the grace of Almighty God.

Life is a journey.  Along the way, we grumble, turn our back on God, betray one another and worship false Gods.  However, God isn’t so concerned with our mistakes; they are inevitable.  God is watching how we respond to our mistakes.  If we confess the error of our ways and then change our ways, we will always be led back to God’s Way of gratitude; a road where we feel blessed even in the worst of times, accompanied even when it seems as though we are alone.

Let me close with some precious words of wisdom with which the Yom Kippur liturgy of Reform Judaism ends:
Birth is a beginning
and death a destination.
And life is a journey:
From childhood to maturity
and youth to age;
From innocence to awareness
and ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion
and then, perhaps, to wisdom;
From weakness to strength
Or Strength to weakness—
And, often, back again;
From health to sickness
and back, we pray, to health again;
From offense to forgiveness,
From loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude,
From pain to compassion,
And grief to understanding—
From fear to faith;
From defeat to defeat to defeat—
until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies
Not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage,
A sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination.
And life is a journey,
A sacred pilgrimage—
to life everlasting.*

Let us pray: Gracious God, even in desperate and hard times, may we not be reduced to a people who grumble about our lot.  Rather, may we be a people who sing your praises, in glad gratitude, as we journey to the Promised Land together—with you, with one another.  Amen. 

*Gates of Repentance The New Union Prayerbook of Reform Judaism