Out of the Melting Pot

Out of the Melting Pot

Between the Waters: Part 4
October 5, 2025

Exodus 32:1-10

The people saw that Moses was taking a long time to come down from the mountain. They gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come on! Make us gods who can lead us. As for this man Moses who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don’t have a clue what has happened to him.”

Aaron said to them, “All right, take out the gold rings from the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So, all the people took out the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He collected them and tied them up in a cloth. Then he made a metal image of a bull calf, and the people declared, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

 ~ Exodus 32:1-4 (CEB)

_______________

What are we willing to give up for a sense of security?

Moses had been on the mountain for quite some time, amid the fire and smoke, and the people panicked.

If Moses didn’t return, or if this God who led them through the Red Sea changed his mind, they were in trouble.  So, they cried out, “Make us gods who can lead us.”  They couldn’t turn back to the gods of Egypt, and they barely knew this new God who only goes by “I AM.”  They wanted protection and security on their terms.

We like to think we only have one God, but the truth is that we have as many, if not more, gods today than they did in the Ancient Near East.  They don’t have names like Baal, El, or Astarte, but we still make tremendous sacrifices upon their altars.  We bow to the gods of money, technology, sports, entertainment, fame, political power, image & appearance, relationships, national security, guns, comfort, news media, and the list goes on. 

Howard Snyder offers a few questions to help us examen what might be serving as an idol in our own lives:

1. How much time, devotion & unquestioned loyalty do I give this “diversion”?

2. Am I willing to question or evaluate my loyalty?

3. What public symbols or displays show my devotion (social media, clothing, flags etc.)?

4. How does the time, money and energy I spend compare to the intensity of attention to God?

5. How does it affect my values, attitudes and behavior toward others?

The people of Israel poured all their gold into the melting pot, and as Aaron said, “out came this bull calf,” as if by magic (Exodus 32:24).  That’s the thing about idols: they consume everything we have.  They shift our priorities and our core values.  They capture our constant attention.  They keep us fixated on them above all else. 

We are out of control, and we are literally killing ourselves and each other at the whims of our idols.  These idols are merely tools of the rich and powerful, keeping us enslaved. 

They cannot save us. They do not bring freedom; they blind us to what is good and true.

Lord, have mercy. Set us free.

What is one idol in my life that keeps me from God’s freedom?

Who Will Protect Us?

Who Will Protect Us?

October 20, 2024
1 Samuel 16:14-23, 1 Samuel 17:32-58, Psalm 27

Then Saul dressed David in his own gear, putting a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head.  David strapped his sword on over the armor, but he couldn’t walk around well because he’d never tried it before. “I can’t walk in this,” David told Saul, “because I’ve never tried it before.” So he took them off.  He then grabbed his staff and chose five smooth stones from the streambed. He put them in the pocket of his shepherd’s bag and with sling in hand went out to the Philistine.

 1 Samuel 17:38-40

_______________

One of the many idols of our time is the illusion of safety and security.  OK, maybe not always “illusion”.  Relatively speaking, we are probably safer on a day to day basis than many people in the world.  Most of us have good shelter, easily accessible food and water, no immediate physical threats, etc.  Not everyone in the world, or even in our own communities, can say the same. 

I say “illusion,” however, because no matter how hard we try, we cannot be fully protected from every possible harm in this life.  We can build our walls, increase our surveillance, develop better medical treatments, stockpile more money, etc. but there are always risks we cannot account for.

Our economy runs in large part on our desire to keep this illusion intact.  Marketers prey on our desire for safety and security by telling us that we will not really be safe and secure unless we have whatever they are selling, or put our trust in whatever person, organization, or corporation they are promoting.  We buy far more than we would ever need out of an irrational and often unrecognized fear that we may not already have enough.  We vote for leaders who promise to protect us from the most outlandish threats and conspiracies.  We hoard basic necessities during times of crisis or natural disaster leaving hardly anything left on the store shelves or at the gas pumps for those who probably need it more than we do.  There is almost nothing we won’t do when we feel like our safety and security is at risk. 

And then we meet David, a young boy with no military training and no weapons to speak of, preparing to put his life on the line against the greatest enemy his people had.  Even the king and his greatest soldiers were terrified of this Goliath.  So terrified and desperate in fact, that the king himself was willing to put a kid’s life on the line if it meant protecting himself.  But he makes a good show of it.  He offers the kid his royal armor, the best protection and security money could buy.  If David dies out there, it won’t be because the King didn’t do everything possible to guarantee his safety. 

But the armor doesn’t fit.  The weight overwhelms this small shepherd boy and cripples him.  He can’t even walk out onto the field and he can barely lift the sword.  David knew his source of protection was not the security the king or anybody else could offer him.  It was his trust in God alone.

Which begs the question, where is our armor, the things we cling to for safety and security, weighing us down?  When will we stop trusting in the weapons of this world to protect us and truly place our lives in the hands of the God we claim to trust? 

__________

I raise my eyes toward the mountains.
Where will my help come from? 
My help comes from the Lord, 
the maker of heaven and earth

~ Psalm 121:1-2 ~

God's Shield

I arise today...
Through God’s shield to protect me...

The Lorica of Saint Patrick (St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer)

The Lord is my strength and my shield.

My heart trusts him.

I was helped, my heart rejoiced,

and I thank him with my song.

- Psalm 28:7 (CEB)

In Genesis 15:1, God promises Abraham a great reward. The most literal translation of the Hebrew here reads: “I am a shield to you, your very great reward.”

The key here is not that God will provide some external source of protection or reward, but that God is Abraham’s shield and reward. In Ephesians 6:16, Paul describes the “shield of faith, with which we can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” The key here lies in the object of our faith. What or who do we trust for our security?

As humans, we regularly put our faith in any number of things to provide safety and security in our lives. We trust in our own strength. We trust in job security, education, health-care, retirement funds, our military or police, even our guns. Our currency says, “In God We Trust” but as some have said, a more accurate statement may be “In THIS god we trust”, because in many cases, money itself has become our shield and our god.

On Sundays we go to church to proclaim our trust in God, but the rest of the week we spend building bigger and stronger safety nets to protect us from any worst case scenario. We build our nets so wide that it almost wouldn’t matter if God was there for us or not. Like rebellious adolescents, we essentially say, “I can take care of myself.” It’s almost as if underneath it all, we are afraid that God might not come through and we must have a backup plan. If we truly believe God is the perfect shield, why do we need to arm and protect ourselves so well?

We talk a great deal about security, safety and protection, but in truth, we spend most of lives living in fear. Fear is not the absence of faith. Fear is putting our faith in the wrong things, in things that cannot truly save us.

We have insurance, security systems, weapons and defenses of all kinds. We have law enforcement and neighborhood watches to keep the streets safe. We have shelters that are more than capable of weathering almost any storm. Yet in all of this, we are still afraid. In fact, the industries who produce all of the “shields” we use to protect ourselves actually tell us to be afraid. Fear makes for a wonderful marketing strategy. If you want to sell a warranty, you have to make the customer afraid that the product may break within a certain amount of time. If you want to sell a home security system, you have to convince them their neighborhood is not safe. The great irony here is that all of the people who make a fortune trying to “protect us” are the very ones convincing us that we need protection in the first place.

God is different. God doesn’t promise safety and security the same way an insurance company or a gun dealer might. God doesn’t promise that nothing bad will ever happen.

But in almost every encounter with humanity, God’s first words are “Do not be afraid.”

In fact, this is exactly how God begins with Abraham.

“Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your very great reward.”

Genesis 15:1

Our act of faith in itself does not protect us from anything. God does. God is our shield and God alone protects us.

Reflections:

1. What are you most afraid of?

2. What safety nets do you have in place to protect ourselves? How much time, energy and resources do you invest in these compared to what you invest in our relationship with God?

3. Where have you seen God’s protection in your life?

---

Our journey through St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer continues next week:

... I arise today,
Through God’s host to save me…

Pray along with the full text of St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer