Tag: idols

Bulletin: Golden Calf by Pastor Katy Stenta

Golden Calf
Exodus 32:1-14
Luke 23:34 Opt Psalm 97:6-9

Call to Worship

God you are more precious than Gold, more powerful than Kings

Help us to worship you

You remember us, even when we forget you

Let us remember and worship you today. 

Hymn: Amazing Grace  Sweet the Sound

Prayer of Confession: Lord God, we hate to admit how many idols live in our lives. We long so much for dependability that we mistake money or power or stocks as security. We forget that these things belong to Caesar, help us to render unto Caesar and human institutions that which belong to them and to instead focus on Sabbath, nourishment, servanthood and grace as the means to embody your love. And when we slip and fall, encourage us too to look at the stars and be assured by the covenant promise, that you will always be our God and we will always be your people. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen

Assurance of Pardon: God promised us grace over and over: to Abraham and Sarai, to Moses, Tzipporah and Miriam, to the grumbling Hebrews in the desert. It is in this assurance of your promise that we know, through Jesus Christ we are forgiven. Amen.

Exodus 32:1-14

(1 finger) When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make gods for us, 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.’ 

(2 Fingers) Aaron said to them, ‘Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.’ 

(3 Fingers) So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold,* and cast an image of a calf; and they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ 

(4 fingers) When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.’ 

(5 fingers)They rose early the next day, and offered burnt-offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

(6 fingers) The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it, and said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” ’ 

(Pastor Katy) The Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.’

(7 fingers) But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, ‘O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 

(8 fingers) Why should the Egyptians say, “It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 

(9 fingers) Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, “I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.” ’ 

(10 fingers) And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Children’s Sermon

Sermon               “God For Us”             Pastor Katy Stenta

Communion: Invitation

The Lord be with you

And also with you

Lift up your hearts

We lift our hearts to the Lord

Let us give thanks to the Lord

It is right to give our thanks and praise!

Communion Invitation: God is forever inviting us to come, come and taste and see the Lord. And so it is on behalf of not the church or even PCSUSA, but on behalf of Christ that I am able to say, come all those who are hungry for I will give you nourishment. Come all you who are weary, for I will give you rest. Come let us feast with Jesus.

Communion Prayer: Dear Holy Spirit we are asking you to come and be present in the elements that we have here, make your presence known, we pray. For at times, we know that we are lost in the desert, grasping at straws and idols to give us what we need. When often, when we are lost and lonely and worried you invite us to stop, rest and eat. Let us take this moment to sit with the Holy Spirit and with each other, becoming one through communion we pray…and we continue our prayer

(prayer continues…) as your son taught us to pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the Kingdom and Power and the Glory Forever. Amen.

Hymn: the Day of Resurrection

Passing of the Peace

Prayer can be used/adapted with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

More Narrative Lectionary Resources

Rendering Caesar: God & the World

This year my eldest is 8 so when we explained the presidential election, we had a lot of discussion about voting for the person who would be best for everyone, not just me. We explain that greed/selfishness is about valuing oneself over the community, talk about a  heave conversation.

Here in Acts 5:1-11 you have stories of community. After all the lovey-dovey sharing philosophy and the idea that the group will be of “One Accord”<–such a beautiful Idea

But here we are Ananias & Sapphira don’t actually live up to the ideal (ps there’s a reason why we don’t know their names its a depressing story). They sell land and don’t share the profit equally, so they are brought before the community to give account.

I think this is the moment when they could have explained, or apologized, and been int he clear, but they don’t. First Ananias, then Sapphira, lie. Then each of them fall down dead…WHOA!

But here’s the thing, they don’t share their stuff, but more importantly, they don’t share of themselves. They are not honest, they don’t do the work of being mutually accountable. (And note the community doesn’t do the sentencing, they just hold the couple accountable, God does the judging thing)

Put in the context of Jesus, we have Luke 20:20-26 the famous “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar” story. Its a fun one because “spies” try to “trap” Jesus by asking whether taxes should be paid or is that against Jesus’s religion?

Jesus responds by turning the idea on its head. First he subtly mocks the idolatry of money, noting that Caesar’s face is on the money–when Jews make no images of God, nor any idols. Then he says give to Caesar what is Caesar, but give God what is God.

The implications are bigger than world vs. God, thought. The implicit question becomes who do you want to belong to? Do you want to be rendered to Caesar or God? Do you want to be in the power of powers, principalities & politicians–as Nadia Bolz-Weber will say–under the rule of laws and checks or under the grace of God?

One of the words for God in the Old Testament is Accountant or Reckoner, Al-Hasib. It is used in the Old Testament for when God reckons the faith of Abraham (and then in turn asks Abraham to reckon the stars). This is become God keeps the story, the account of your faith, hearing the entire story, understanding the slip ups, keeping track of all of the details. God is the accountant not because God is ready to write us off, but because our God is ready to listen. Just as the church, the ecclesia, the gathering of the community was ready to hear Ananias and Saphira’s account.

Who do you belong to?

I am convinced that we, as humans, need to share our material goods because its good practice for sharing of ourselves. If we are unlikely to share our stuff, then we will never share of our very souls. However, the gathering of the church, the ecclesia, the community, is where we practice sharing our accounts, where we do the reckoning of our faith. We practice faith in community, because the sharing is a basic part of our faith. Church is where we practice sharing our goods and of ourselves. This is where we form the basis of community.

And if that isn’t a political realization about how you live your life, then I don’t know what is. God’s story is the community building story. And how we belong to that community: through rules, powers, principalities and politicians, or by graciousness, mutual accountability and God

Lets go and be that community.