"My Precious..."

"Up, make us gods who shall go before us.  As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."  Exodus 32:1b

"My Precious..."
By Rev. William Dohle

What do you call precious in your life?  What has more value to you than anything else?  What would you kill to protect?

There is a character in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga that is so enamored with a ring in his possession that he lifts it above everything else.  He kills for the ring.  He hides away for the ring.  The ring twists him and consumes him, turning him from a gentile river folkman to a gollum like creature who lives in the shadows of the world.

All because of a ring he calls "precious."

We might dismiss such stories as works of fantasy and science fiction, but the fact of the matter is these stories describe reality.  We too are tempted to twist and mold the good things that God has given us into an idol that we can bow down and worship.

That's what the people of Israel did after all before Moses came down the mountain.  The Bible tells us: "When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, "Make us gods who shall go before us!" (Exodus 32:1)

When the people couldn't stand to wait on God anymore, they decided to take matters into their own hands.  Sounds familiar, huh?  Isn't that what we do?  Take matters into our own hands.  We figure, since God is so very slow, we'll just take care of things here on our own.  We've got this under control.

But what do the people use to make their gods?  What goes into the fire?

"So Aaron said to them, "Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your duaghters, and bring them to me."...And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf.  And they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!"(Exodus 32:2-4)

What made that golden calf was none other than the gold that had been a gift from God.  The precious things in their lives was fashioned into an idol named "Our Precious" and worshiped there on that mountain.

That, they said, saved them.  That, they claimed, was their god.  That idol was all they ever needed.

Oh how familiar that sounds!

We may not throw our gold and jewels and fashion them into a literal golden calf, but we do twist the good gifts that God has given us into something profane.  We fashion our own "Rings of Doom" and call them "Precious", just like the characters in the Lord of the Rings do all the time.

Think of all the good gifts that God has given us.  Each one can be twisted into something profane and wrong.

Our families... can be mutually caring and compassionate entities or harbors of conflict and abuse.
Our Churches... can be places of outreach into the neighborhood and community...or can turn into a fancy country club that shuns outsiders and those different than itself.
Our sports... can unite us in friendly competition or consume us with the lull of victory
Our nation...can be an ambassador of peace in the world, or can become a social idol where nationalism reigns supreme.
Our food...can feed us or be horded by us.
Our world...can be protected or exploited.

In fact, there is no good gift that God has given that hasn't been melted down and fashioned into a golden calf at sometime or another.  There is nothing that we have held back from those fires.

And so we pray for forgiveness and a forgiving God.  We pray for mercy and the sight to see.  We pray that God wouldn't so much remove those gifts as be present for us, taking us from the temptation to twist what he has given.

The people did this when they saw that Moses was delayed.  When they couldn't stand in faith any longer, then they turned to idols for answers.  May we be confident in God's presence among us in Jesus Christ so that we never have to turn to anything but him, even when our faith is short.

God, forgive me for taking your good gifts and melting them down into something else and calling it my god.  Redeem me from myself and help me worship only you.  Amen.