From the Book of Exodus:
Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” And Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn hot; you know the people, that they are bent on evil. They said to me, ‘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.’ So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off ‘; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Exodus 32:21-24 (NRSV) – May 13, 2014)
“I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”
I chuckle every time I read this story and get to this point. In fact, when the story of the golden calf has been read in church and the reader gets to Aaron’s disclamation of responsibility, I’ve been known to laugh out loud.
Once, years ago, in a bible study group reading Exodus, I asked, “How old was Aaron?” No one knew, but we were all pretty certain that Moses and his brother were not young children at the time of this story. Nonetheless, a young child is exactly what Aaron sounds like: “I threw the gold in the fire, and out came this calf!” No mention of his forming the mold, pouring the molten the gold, breaking the mold, polishing the casting, and all the rest that goes into the making of a metal statue. The calf just “came out.”
There was a phantom in our house when my children were very young. We’d find that someone had opened the orange juice and not only taken some, but also spilled a good deal on the kitchen counter and floor. “Who did this?” we would ask. “I don’t know,” would be the answer. The contents of my wife’s purse were spilled there was lipstick smeared on things. “Who did this?” we demanded of the little girl with red all over her face. “I don’t know,” she told us. Someone once tried to make sand castles in the cat box. “Who did this?” we asked the little boy with sand fingers. With a straight face he replied, “I don’t know.”
We never caught I Don’t Know doing any of these things (or many others), but there was plenty of evidence of his (or was it “her”?) existence. I Don’t Know was a very active sprite! Apparently, I Don’t Know was much older than we thought. He or she appears to have been with the Hebrews in the desert. — “Who made this golden calf?” — “I don’t know. I threw the gold in the fire and out came this calf!”
In the modern adult world, I Don’t Know has gotten more adapt at hiding his or her identity. “Who made that decision?” we ask. The answer is often one of I Don’t Know‘s alter egos: a committee, the vestry, the (unnamed) higher-ups, the council, management, the administration. Could it be that I Don’t Know is being scapegoated?
Imaginary friends are a healthy part of maturing. Research shows that children with imaginary companions tend to be less fearful, laugh more, smile more, engage more with peers, and are better able to imagine how someone else might think. An imaginary friend can aid a child to handle fear, explore ideas, or gain a sense of competence, but children with imaginary friends will sometimes blame them for misbehavior in an attempt to dodge the displeasure of adult authority. I Don’t Know is not exactly an imaginary friend, but disclaiming responsibility and deflecting blame is certainly child-like (if not childish) behavior.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child,” wrote St. Paul, “I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (1 Cor 13:11) Jesus once told a story about someone who decided to stop blaming I Don’t Know. The man in the story “put an end to childish ways” and said to himself, “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.'” (Lk 15:18)
We human beings of all ages when challenged still seem invoke I Don’t Know to avoid personal responsibility on a pretty regular basis. Christian maturity, coming (as Paul said) “to the measure of the full stature of Christ,” (Eph 4:13) no longer laying things at the feet of I Don’t Know is something for which we all need to strive. We need to give up being like Aaron; we need to put an end to childish ways.
Is that going to happen on a general basis any time soon?
I could answer, “I don’t know.” But the truth is, I think I do.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
I think I know what Paul is trying to say here, but I don’t like the way he’s saying it. I mean, I really have a theological issue with the assertion that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” I think the statement is just plain wrong. It states a dualism that relegates the material, specifically the human body, to realm of the damned, the unclean, the unworthy. In light of a creation story in which the Creator “saw everything that he had made [including that human flesh and blood], and indeed, it was very good,” I cannot accept the condemnation of our material being.
Two weeks before Easter I came down with the flu. I spent three days in bed with a high fever, a racking cough, and a good deal of body aches and pains. A friend who suffered the same illness (it’s gone around our town and several people have suffered through it) described the muscle pain as feeling as if one had been beaten up, thrown the ground, and kicked several times. It felt to me as if every square centimeter of connective tissue in my body was inflamed at the same time. (This is the first time in a couple of weeks or more that I’ve had enough morning energy to write anything after reading the daily lessons.)
Several days ago, as I was reading again the Easter story and the sections of the Holy Scriptures appointed for this year, I had the radio on and tuned to my favorite oldies station.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, icons of the Resurrection depict Christ rising from the tomb with a whole crowd of people. To one side of him crowned and haloed are King David and King Solomon; on the other, we see Abel the first martyr of creation carrying a shepherd’s crook and Moses the first prophet of the Old Covenant. Also present is John the Baptist, who is both the first prophet and the first martyr of the New Covenant. Beneath Christ’s feet, the gates of hell lie broken, often forming a cross. And from two tombs, Adam and Eve are rising, but not of their own accord; Jesus holds them by the wrists and is pulling them from their graves. 
There are six Greek words translated “love” in English: eros (sexual passion), philia (deep friendship), ludus (playful love), pragma (longstanding or mature love), philautia (self love), and agape (unconditional or selfless love). It is the sixth which Paul uses here and which is used extensively throughout the New Testament and in early Christian texts.
The “body analogy” is so deeply engrained in Christian theology through Paul’s use of it in his epistle to the Corinthians and elsewhere that it may be heresy to suggest that its usefulness in the modern world may have come to an end. It was, perhaps, an apt description of the church in a time when church communities were small and close-knit, but does it work in the modern age of the mega-church, or in an age of decentralization?
The genius of Paul is his holistic approach to understanding the gifts of the Spirit, the talents and skills of human beings. Yes, he says, there are all sorts of talents and skills, but they all come from the same source – God the Spirit – and they are all to be used for the same purpose – building up the community. It is a genius that is lost in the modern world, I’m sorry to say. 
A couple of months ago, a friend mine published a list of the 
This is one of those times (there are, I admit, quite a few) when Paul loses me! I step back from his words and say, “Really? What?” Is Paul seriously equating sex with a prostitute with marriage? I know that Paul didn’t have too high an opinion of marriage. In the next chapter he will say that he thinks staying single is a much better idea: “I wish that all men were even as I myself am. . . . I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I.” (1 Cor. 7:7,8) But does he really hold it in such low regard so as to equate it with prostitution?
This may be the simplest, truest, most profound thing Paul ever wrote. No flowery language, no showing of his erudition and knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures or of Greek philosophy, no convoluted logic, no run-on sentences. Just a simple declaration: if you are in litigation, you’ve already lost.
