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We are in the middle of holy days for our Jewish siblings. Rosh Hashanah began on Thursday, concluding with Yom Kippur on this coming Saturday. It is the day of atonement, it is the end of the 10 days of awe, of repentance and reflection, and setting right. It is associated with the story we’ve heard today, of the giving of the law to the people in word and page, though not yet on stone, and they’re failing to live up to it, immediately . While we Christians have taken the first story of people doing wrong as our primary understanding evil in the world, this becomes a fundamental story of Jewish you could have done better. It is important but it doesn’t carry the cosmic weight we’ve put upon the story with the Fruit.
A good way to read Bible stories, but I don’t think were typically taught, is read to put yourself in the story, as we tend to do, to place yourself as the villain or the one who does wrong or the one who fails. Often when we read the stories, we like to think of ourselves as the victors, as the ones who get it right, as the ones who do no wrong. You want to learn from the people who did it correctly, which makes a lot of sense. But I don’t know that that’s typically us. I mean maybe it’s you, getting all things right, never caving to a crowd, succeeding at the first attempt! But it’s not me…
In a story like this one, maybe we want to align ourselves with Moses. We want to be in conversation with God and we want to understand what it would take to shape our prayers to change God’s mind because that is what God does in this story
But if we placed ourselves as Aaron, the high priest, the second in command to Moses, looking the faces of a million people who seemed ready to riot, maybe he thought if asked for the gold they had stolen from Egypt that they would stop and reconsider but they didn’t. And maybe he thought the best he could do then was to follow their lead and point it in the direction of God–a festival to the LORD. I don’t know if the lesson would be don’t accommodate the crowd, of be willing to put your life on the line and die or do the best you can in a terrible situation. But if those are the hard lesson… ugh.
So maybe we see ourselves in the massive crowd of people. The people had told Moses that the God they were experiencing was too big. Too vast too uncontrollable too scary that they didn’t want to have direct connection with that God. They told Moses to be the go-between between them and that God Moses became their touch point to God and then Moses and this God went up a mountain and went down a mountain and went up the mountain and came down the mountain and somewhere and all of that they were given the law and it was written down on a piece of paper and then they went up both of them and maybe for a while it was okay and maybe the cloud. That is the weight of God that it settled on. The top of the mountain was visible. Maybe for a while it was moving and thundering and lightning and maybe now it was just quiet. And it had been 40 days or a full cycle of the moon or a very long time and Moses hadn’t been back. They were just sitting there waiting at the bottom of a mountain knowing this wasn’t going to be their final destination and eventually they would have to move on but not knowing where they were going!
They needed something tangible to hold on to something they could see and feel and touch and make sense of because none of this made any sense. And that is something that makes sense to me
Murphy became a famous… bird. He became the fascination of many on the internet. Murphy is a bald eagle living at the World Bird Sanctuary in Missouri. He came to World Bird Sanctuary as a fledgling. Due to injuries when he was young, Murphy can no longer fly.[1]
But this is not why people were so fascinated by Murphy. They were fascinated with Murphy because he was nesting a rock.[2]
Murphy had found a rock about the size of an Eagle’s egg and spent the next 35 days sitting on it, waiting for it to hatch.
He did all the things good Eagle dads do. He built a nest for the rock, kept the rock warm, and turned the rock with its beak several times a day.
Murphy was also very protective. There are cute videos of Murphy squawking at other eagles that that approach to close to his egg. I mean rock.
While this story is a novelty to the internet, bird experts say that it is more common than we think. There are documented cases of birds sitting on pebbles, golf balls, bones, seashells, and even sticks. The experts call these ‘pseudo eggs.’ Sometimes they mix in harmlessly with real eggs. Other times, birds will roll perfectly good eggs out of their nests in favor of these pseudo eggs.
There are many theories about why this may happen but most have settled on the simplest: Confusion. Birds have an overriding drive to nest and so in the absence of real eggs they will choose the pseudo eggs.[3]
In Murphy’s case, the story has a happy ending. At the end of the allotted 35 days, the staff at the Bird Sanctuary, swapped the rock out for a rescued eaglet, which Murphy raised as his own, and who was able to be released. Murphy did such a great job, he fostered a second orphaned baby eaglet this summer.[4]
It’s a sweet story, heartwarming really, a miracle facilitated by the workers at the bird sanctuary. But in the world… Untold numbers of God’s creatures, without ever knowing it, lavish their devotion on false things! Out of misguided instinct, they waste their hours tenderly nurturing and fiercely defending these object they have gathered that will never love them back, they give their lives in service to that which cannot give them life!
So did the Israelites in the desert at the base of the mountain, and so do we.
We have been brought up and trained to think about idols as those large symbolic other gods like the golden calf. A literal replacement of one God with another God.
In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, the ancient gods of ancient religions are dwindling or have found a way to survive. They’re embodied in our world, and they take on the New gods, the gods of today: technology media Mr. World, Mr. Town, Mr. Wood, Mr. Stone, Mr. Iron. As one technology fades, a new would one rise in its place. Perhaps that would have been what it felt like for the Israelites, that the old God who brought them out was no longer there and something new and tangible needed rise in its place.
Many people have argued about what the right modern or new gods would be or if there should be any at all. But I can’t tell you but the first thing I do in the morning is to turn off my alarm which is on my phone. And then since my phone is in my hand, I scroll through and look at different things happening in the world and sometimes it’s news and important things and sometimes it’s just stuff. And I can spend an hour in bed still which kind of defeats the purpose of the alarm.
I can spend hours in front of this device offering up my time. My energy sometimes my money. I protect it. I purchase things to keep it protected and safe from harm because I will inevitably drop it. But I also want it to look pretty, so maybe I adorn it. I created a space for it to sit up to be helpful and useful, to draw my attention throughout my day so that I don’t miss anything that’s happening. When it makes a noise, I jump to give it attention. When I don’t know what to do or where to go I turn to my phone where I can receive information and directions.
This could be a tool through which it supports my relationships, my work, my home life or I could be everything. It could consume everything. They could interrupt dinners and events and time together.
We make idols out of things and ideas because we think it’s going to be the answer. It’s going to be the solution to why we are unhappy or lonely or feel purposelessness or we gather up things, we collect items. We hoard money. We purchase the latest things. We hold up beauty or fitness as an ideal that if we can get to, it’ll be perfect. It becomes the idol we try to grasp on to, hold on to because it helps us make sense of the world that we’re often unable to make sense of.
It makes sense. This isn’t me judging anyone. I’m sure I do it too. But there is no zoologist or caretaker replacing the things that we have held onto, that we have grasped onto with everything we have, there is no one replacing a rock with a bird, idols with life.
What brings life? What brings freedom? What brings joy? What brings purpose? What brings community? And what brings all of these even when the world is confusing, unsettling, sad, lonely, and hard?
The words of God come again and again: I AM the God who brought you out of Egypt. I AM the God who sets you free. I AM the way, the truth, and the life. I AM the bread of life. I AM life.
There is life, and life abundant in God. Life enough to share. Life enough to give us purpose, and hope, and direction, and love. Love enough to give it away.
So where does your time, your energy, your resources, your money go. What are the idols in your life, particularly the ones that go unnoticed? Track it for a while, for a week. Are they bringing you life or are they just a rock?
[1] https://www.worldbirdsanctuary.org/product/bald-eagle-murphy/
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/eagle-incubating-rock-egg/
[3] https://www.audubon.org/magazine/why-do-birds-incubate-rocks
[4] https://www.ninepbs.org/blogs/living-st-louis/
Murphy-the-eagle-fosters-another-stranded-eaglet/