Exodus 32 1_24 Ash Wednesday Written in Stone
Grace, mercy, and peace to you this Ash Wednesday from God our heavenly Father and His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
How many here this evening have ever made a promise, and then gone back on your word? I’ll bet many of us are guilty of this; and I’m not speaking of the minor agreements that we make to one another every day. Phrases like “I promise I’ll brush my teeth at Billy’s sleepover.” Or “I promise to take out the garbage on Friday morning.” Or, I’ll get that done right after the game. Rather, I’m referring to the agreements that have significant and far-reaching consequences for our lives. Promises that, if we break them, turn our world upside down. Let me give you an example.
Mike and Kat were a couple very much in love. They dated for more than two years, and then decided to get married. Following months of planning and preparation, Mike and Kat stood in front of me and a hundred family and friends on a Saturday afternoon, and they made promises to each other. A kiss sealed their commitment, the applause of their witnesses affirmed it, and they lived happily ever after. At least they did for about a year.
On their first anniversary, Kat discovered that Mike had been unfaithful. We don’t need to hear the details, except to know that Mike didn’t keep his end of their agreement. Now Kat was standing before her husband, holding in her hands the covenant they had signed on their wedding day. She began to read it out loud: Question: Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her? Answer: Yes. Question: Will you care for her for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health? Answer: Yes. Question: Will you be faithful to her as long as you both shall live? Answer: Yes. With that, Kat tore their wedding covenant into tiny pieces and threw them into the air.
They never spoke again, except through their attorneys. Not ever. You see, when a covenant is broken, it’s not so easily repaired. When a promise is made, it’s like a gleaming crystal vase. But when a promise is broken, the pieces lie shattered on the floor. The story of God’s covenant with you and me goes back more than 4,000 years, when a leader named Moses was called high on a mountain to meet with God face-to-face.
Moses was already a hero, having been used by God to bring the people of Israel out of slavery and into a land of their own. Now God was offering these same people a promise, a relationship that was so special the people of Israel could only be called “chosen.” These are the words that God used: If you will obey my voice, and keep my covenant, then you shall be my special treasure among all peoples… you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
When Moses brought God’s offer to the people of Israel, the people were ecstatic. They immediately agreed to obey God’s commands. “We will do it!” they shouted. “Everything the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” So Moses went back up to the top of the mountain and sealed the deal. It wasn’t a kiss between lovers. It wasn’t the applause of the angels. It was contract time, and God’s expectations would be written in stone.
It’s an interesting phrase isn’t it? “Written in stone.” We use that idiom yet today to describe something that is secure and long lasting, in fact, something that’s intended to be permanent. That’s exactly what God intended the Ten Commandments to be — a covenant that would last forever. With His own hands, God cut the tablets. With His own fingers, God engraved the words. God’s love for His people was written in stone. But the problem was, God kept Moses on the mountain with Him for forty days. The people of Israel, who waited impatiently, began to worry, and they gave up hope. Finally, they got restless. And based on what we’ve read about these people up to this point in the Exodus, they probably began starting trouble.
They figured Moses wasn’t coming back. I’m sure that Aaron, the high priest, was under a lot of pressure to provide answers. I’m sure he was feeling abandoned and confused by the situation and felt like he needed to do something. So Aaron gets this bright idea! “Quickly” he told the people, “take off your jewelry; your rings, your bracelets, and your earrings. Let’s make a golden calf, a god for us to worship that we can see and touch and believe in.” And, of course, they did.
By the time Moses came down the mountain, a party was in progress. People were singing and dancing and drinking and playing “ring around the rosy” at an altar with a golden god upon it. Moses was furious! In anger, he threw down the tablets of God and they shattered into pieces. It wasn’t some symbolic gesture; it was a sign that the covenant was ended. The deal was off! A special relationship no longer existed between God and the people that God loved. Stop and think about that for a moment.
God rescues these people from bondage in Egypt. God provides a miracle by parting the Red Sea and they walk across on dry land. God then destroys the pursuing Egyptian army in the same sea they had just safely crossed. He provides a cloud to hide them by day and fire to guide them by night. Water, food and protection and all these people have to do is obey and be patient. Now they’re standing there looking at an enraged Moses knowing they’ve really done it this time.
In my mind’s eye, I see the people of Israel, picking up pieces of the tablets, with thoughts of what might have been. Holding these broken rocks in their hands some of which still held the handwriting of God — must have filled them with grief and guilt and shame. It wasn’t Moses who shattered the covenant, that much they knew. It was their own sinful, selfish lives and the breaking of the promise which they had made to God.
Four thousand years is a long, long time. It’s long enough to remove the guilt that accompanies a broken promise. And it’s certainly long enough to relieve us from feeling responsible for others disobeying God. What were those foolish Israelites thinking? How could they so blatantly and so intentionally break God’s laws? But then, the honest ones among us realize that we wouldn’t have acted any differently than they did, because we break God’s laws all the time don’t we?
The Ten Commandments weren’t merely intended for the people of Israel, circa 1000 B.C. They’re written in stone. Remember, the Laws of God are timeless, changeless expectations. But you and I so often choose to violate them, or ignore them, or rewrite them to fit our own circumstances, and then we assume that God will look the other way. We’re told by God that He alone wants to be our God.
Author Leith Anderson suggests that everybody has a center of life; it’s that thing which is most important to us, and it controls everything about us. Well, if God is at our center, then that will be obvious by the way we live. But if our god is, say, wealth or power or popularity or our spouse or our children or our hobbies … then we’ve broken that which was written in stone.
We’re told by God to honor our father and mother, and most of the time we do. But there are those times when we fail. “My old man says I have to mow the lawn.” “My mom thinks I’m at the library studying, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” “My parents are the dumbest people I know. Oh, I hate them!” And again, we’ve broken what was written in stone
We’re told by God that we’re not supposed to lie, and we say we agree. But a recent poll revealed that 91 percent of Americans lie regularly, and only 31 percent believe that honesty is the best policy. Whenever we lie, or whenever we fail to tell the truth, we’ve broken that which was written in stone. We’re told by God that we shouldn’t steal, and we say we will obey. Guess what, it’s tax time, and how many, quote, end quote, religious people will fudge on their income tax forms and think nothing of it. And academic cheating has reached epidemic proportions on our campuses, but students don’t see the problem. “No harm — no foul,” they say. You’re only guilty if you get caught. And again, we’ve broken that which was written in stone.
We’re told by God that we shouldn’t commit adultery, and we think that’s a good suggestion. But since 1960, there has been a 400 percent increase in illegitimate births in America. A recent survey found that ninety-five percent of the couples getting married are sexually active before their wedding day. And if you want to get technical, Jesus was quoted as saying, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.” Jesus also said, “Anyone who looks at a person with lust in his heart has already committed adultery.” It’s written in stone, but apparently it just doesn’t matter.
The issue here isn’t that we’ve broken the Commandments, but rather, that we have become a broken people. We’re guilty and ashamed of the things we’ve done and said, we’ve hurt others, hurt ourselves, and hurt God. Ultimately we come to this realization: we need a Savior “‘who will save us from ourselves. The season of Lent is our time to reflect and to ask God to forgive our foolishness.
Tonight, you hold in your hands pieces of stone. Notice that they’re not smooth stones; rather, their edges are sharp and jagged, as if broken. We have a choice tonight and every Sunday afternoon during the season of Lent —as to what to do with those stones. We can hang on to them as a painful reminder of our sin, and it will continue to make us bitter, broken people. Or, we can let them go; we can lay them at the foot of the cross, and ask God to give us another chance.
Before you leave this evening, I invite you to leave your broken stone with Jesus Christ. I encourage you to renew the promise you made in your baptism to renounce all the forces of evil, the devil and all his empty promises. As Psalm 136 reminds us of all God has done for His people, it also reminds us that God’s mercy endures forever. So give your stone to God and give thanks.
Amen.