And Moses said to Aaron, "What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?" And Aaron said, "Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For 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, 'Let any who have gold take it off.' So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf." Exodus 32:21-24 (ESV)
Most of us hide from our evil. Even if some of us proudly proclaim our evil, there are still things that we do which bring us shame. These we cover. Aaron is no different.
He builds this golden calf at the urging of the people. He gets a good deal of gold by telling people to give their jewelry and their children's jewelry. He works hard on building the calf, using special tools to fashion it just so. But when Moses asks about how this idol got there, Aaron's reply is classic: "So they gave [the gold] to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf," as if he hurled jewelry into the flames and a figure appeared on the other side.
We all downplay our shame. Sometimes it looks ridiculous. Sometimes it is just plain sad. What we need is to be so transformed by the cross that we have nothing except Christ. We need a community of these people, people who are willing to deal with each other with honesty and transparency. This is why Paul says in his letter to the Colossian church:
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Colossians 3:9-11 (ESV)
Oh that we might be a real community of Christ followers!
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