Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Two Steps Forward, One Slide Back"

Text: Exodus 32:1-14

put up with those Israelites, some days.

In this story, they almost went too far.

God is just this close

to killing them all off

and starting over again with just Moses.

And Moses!

How did he ever stand them?

He had made significant sacrifices

in order to return to Egypt and lead them out – remember?

but did he hear even a word of gratitude?

Apparently not.

The people gripe; they moan; they whine.

They alternately fear and tremble at the thought of God,

and act as if there were no God.

They ask Moses to be their emissary,

their spokesperson to and from God.

But when he’s back up on the mountain,

receiving lengthy and detailed instructions from God,

the people decide they’ve been forgotten.

That they’d better hedge their bets

by appeasing some other god, just in case.

So they melt down their gold jewelry,

and Aaron forms a golden calf,

and the next day they start bringing it offerings.

Not exactly what you would expect

of a people chosen by God.

And yet, are there not times when we could say

the same thing about ourselves?

We are the inheritors of God’s promises,

to Abraham, to Moses, and to others.

But how easy it seems to be

to forget our heritage,

and give our loyalty in other places.

To the Israelites, it didn’t seem to matter

that God had redeemed them from slavery,

and rescued them from the Egyptian army,

and fed them plentifully in the wilderness.

Or maybe they were having a bad attack

of collective amnesia.

But whatever the reason,

they forgot or ignored God’s history with them,

and their special relationship to God,

and they decide to try out one of the

local fertility religions instead.

A golden calf is more tangible,

more reassuring, somehow,

than a mysterious God who speaks with Moses

at the top of a mountain.

We can understand that,

although golden calves may not be

our specific temptation!

Each of us knows what God has done for us,

individually or corporately,

and we can talk about it

without too much embarrassment.

Yet God does sometimes seem remote,

mysterious, inaccessible.

We long for something nearer at hand

in which to place our trust.

And though we might not describe it with these words,

we really are tempted to worship

whatever that other thing is.

To praise it, and be loyal to it,

and make it a priority.

Our golden calf could be money, or status,

or a particular kind of career,

or good grades, or an athletic trophy,

or a happy family, or whatever!

Now, all of those are good things …

until they start to become

more important to us than God.

Then, we’re getting into danger.

It can be frustrating, as well,

if we’ve been making a real effort

to be faithful in our journey with God,

and suddenly we catch ourselves

acting as if something else were more important,

and slipping back into our old ways.

The first thing we need to remember about that,

when it happens, is that it’s normal.

And we should not be too hard on ourselves,

or on others,

when these things happen.

At least, not at first.

Sometimes God really does seem far away.

Sometimes it is not clear what God wants us to do.

Sometimes God is mysterious,

and we don’t understand what’s going on.

And when there is that much uncertainty,

the most natural thing in the world

is to return to something old that worked before.

We don’t think of it at the time

as being a retreat from God,

but that’s what it turns out to be.

Folks for a long time have called

this sort of behavior "backsliding."

It’s not a deliberate shift into reverse,

but a slipping backwards.

The early church used to have lengthy debates

about backsliding.

They considered it a real problem,

a deep moral failure.

What would happen to you, they speculated,

if you committed a sin

after you had been baptized?

(Remember that at this time in history,

only adults were baptized.)

Some argued that, if you sinned even once after your baptism,

you were condemned to hell.

Which meant that a lot of people waited

till they were on their deathbed

to request and receive baptism.

For quite some time, a compromise was reached

stating that you could sin once;

you could backslide once, after baptism.

Any more than that, and it was curtains for you.

At any rate, what that tells me is

that sliding backwards is a problem

at least as old as the ancient Hebrews,

and that the coming of Christianity

didn’t cure humankind of the temptation.

Backsliding is easy, and,

sad but true, entirely normal.

But having said that,

doesn’t mean that it’s okay to stay backslid!

If we catch ourselves at it,

we need to turn around and get ourselves

back on the right track.

But often we don’t catch ourselves;

someone else sees us sliding

long before we ever notice it.

Frequently, we need someone like Moses in our lives

who will point out what we’re doing

and call us back to faithfulness.

But we hate that!

We don’t like for someone else to look at our lives

and suggest that, in some ways,

they may not measure up.

Which I guess is why many people have

a kind of love/hate relationship with preachers!

Anyway, needless to say,

sometimes when people confront us

they are flat-out wrong.

But other times, they are painfully on target.

One clue that usually works for me is this:

The more violent my internal reaction

to something that someone tells me about myself …

the stronger that "no way!" inside my head,

the more likely that it is in fact true,

and something I need to begin wrestling with.

Each of us needs a Moses,

and probably at some time or another,

each of us needs to be a Moses

to a fellow traveler.

But perhaps the most important thing to remember

for us backsliding critters,

is that God is gracious.

God did not destroy the Israelites,

although, according to the story,

God gave some serious thought to it!

And God will not destroy us,

no matter how far back we slide.

God might perhaps be angry …

though my guess is that God is

more likely to be sad at our unfaithfulness.

And not even so much for God’s own sake

as for our own.

When we turn away from God,

we don’t hurt God anywhere near as much

as we hurt ourselves.

Yet God is gracious,

and waits eagerly for our relationship

to be restored.

It may even be God who sends us that Moses

to tell us that we’ve slid

and to help us straighten up!

If God is eager to make peace and be reconciled

even with calf-worshipers (!) …

I think we can be certain that God

wants reconciliation with us as well.

No matter how far, or how often, we’ve slid.

No matter what we’ve done,

or how long we’ve ignored the call back.

Backsliding is easy.

Admitting it is painful.

But forgiveness and grace are real.

We are never stuck in the place we’ve slid to.

Instead, we are freed from it

and given encouragement to continue our journey.

Until, some day, we reach the journey’s end

and come into God’s presence.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.