He Remembers We Are But Dust

Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves;

they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them.  Exodus 34:7-8

Last week, the University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics.  Thaler will go down in history as the man who slew homo economicus. 

If it’s been awhile since Econ.101, you might not remember that homo economicus was that mysterious creature that sprung fully formed from the brain of classical economists: the person who made all his decisions based on careful calculation and enlightened self-interest.  Homo economicus would plan carefully for retirement by setting aside savings early to benefit from compound interest.  If the price of gasoline dropped, he would use the discount in other areas of life instead of buying more expensive gasoline. He will value his own possessions accurately and sell them if there is an opportunity for gains. 

Richard Thaler suspected that many people were not quite so logical.  So he started asking them, conducting studies.  What he found is that people are predictably irrational about their economic decisions.  They make different choices when they are afraid, or when they have developed attachments.  They maintain habits even when they are destructive. They spring for the quick pleasure and ignore the long term need.

Human beings are not as strong, wise or noble as economists had expected they were.  

Those responsible for large scale finance in government or commerce would be wise to pay take note and make proper tweaks to connect with human nature as it actually is.[1]  When asked how he planned to spend his million dollars in prize money, he answered, “I will try to spend it as irrationally as possible.”

I must confess that I’ve never read any of Dr. Thaler’s books, so I don’t know if he makes use of historical case studies to prove his point.  But today’s Old Testament lesson, the incident of the golden calf in the wilderness, would be among the best examples of human weakness and folly I know.

The Israelites, after all, had seen the power of God at work in absolutely spectacular ways.  A few months before, they had been bitterly oppressed slaves.  At the command of their leader, God had visited their taskmasters with a series of ten astounding plagues.  The Egyptians had loaded them down with gold to hurry them on their way. The Red Sea had been parted before them, and then it swallowed up their enemies, the vanguard of the mightiest army on earth.   God had led them through the desert with cloud and fire.  He fed them with miraculous food morning and night. 

For some weeks they had traveled through the desert, and they arrived at Sinai, a commanding mountain.  Moses, their leader, went up to meet with God, to receive instructions about what would be next.  In an awesome display of His glory, God began to reveal the law to him, writing it with His finger on tables of stone.  Enlightened self-interest would say, “cool your heels, children of Israel.  God has been watching over you so far.  Let’s see what he wants to do next.” 

Ironically, just as God had begun to outline the procedure for sin offerings, a din reached the peak of the mountain.  The people had taken the gold of the Egyptians, melted it down, and fashioned into a golden calf.  A “young bull” is better- Apis, the Egyptian symbol for strength.[2]  Ignoring the God who had saved them, the Israelites were calling out for help from the idol of their former taskmasters.  Aaron, whom Moses had left in charge, tried to whitewash a situation he clearly couldn’t control.  The statue, he claimed, was really meant to represent the Lord.  Idolatry on the one hand, sacrilege—the worship of the true God by improper means-on the other.[3]  A sorry lot all round.

Why did they do it? They were afraid, of course.  The Sinai is a desolate place, spooky and harsh.  I visited once years ago, when a regular bus was a very uncertain proposition, and I was glad to get on to Cairo after a few days.  Some might have thought that Moses had abandoned them.  They missed the security of life back in Egypt—freedom can be painful sometimes.  Maybe they longed for a bit of a thrill. 

In His dialogue with Moses, God says they are stiff-necked, which means that they sinned deliberately.  It’s clear that Aaron knew better, and his explanation of things when Moses eventually came storming down the mountain is among the most pathetic excuses in world literature—“ I threw [the gold] into the fire,” he told Moses, ”and there came out this calf."  Surely, they all knew that to confuse the gods of Egypt with their Redeemer was deeply perverse, a shocking ingratitude. 

God says they must all perish, that His wrath, His righteous anger, will burn hot against them.  He had punished the Egyptians for their cruelty and arrogance, and now He should justly do the same.  They are your people, God says to Moses, the ones you have brought out of Egypt.  Why don’t we start again, God suggests—make a new Abraham out of you, the father of a new nation.  Maybe if they were all your own children, Moses, they would get it right once and for all.

God was laying out nothing less than what pure justice demanded.  But was He not also testing this leader, Moses, to understand what kind of man he was, and what kind of God he believed himself to be serving.[4] 

It’s a moment of great dramatic tension, as we wait to hear how Moses will answer.  Moses reminds God that people had only come from Egypt at God’s bidding and by His power.  He reminds God of the promises He made to them long before.  “Turn from thy fierce wrath,” he begs, “and repent of this evil against thy people.” 

Moses never denies that total destruction would be just.  When he goes down to them, he himself is full of anger.  But he doesn’t see much use in starting over again.  What Moses doesn’t say directly but clearly implies is that this is just how it is for the sons and daughters of Adam.   They are people after all, prone to sin, foolish, weak and broken.  Destroy them all, start over again, and in a generation they’d make all the same mistakes.  God must be merciful, for His people cannot bear much righteousness.

My favorite Psalm says it this way:

Yea, like as a father pitieth his own children *

            even so is the Lord merciful unto them that fear him.

 For he knoweth whereof we are made *

 he remembereth that we are but dust.[5]

God chooses to be merciful to His people, despite their foolishness and sin, remembering that we are but dust.  It is a choice he would make time and time again.  But choosing to be merciful there, at Sinai, just as He was giving the law reveals a great irony.  God is giving a law which He knows this people will be unable to keep.  He is commanding sacrifices that will not really change their hearts or reconcile them to Him.  The law God gives to Israel is marked as provisional from the very beginning, a beta version that will need more work before it can be released confidently to the whole world.[6]

God chose that day in Sinai to be merciful, because he had a fuller purpose in mind.  Even then He knew that He would one day establish among us a Presence closer at hand.  He would send One of us who would obey as we could not, One who by His faithfulness would take on the punishment rightly earned by us.  God’s mercy at Sinai points ahead to a reckoning, an awful cost yet to be paid by the strength of God’s love. 

Catherine of Siena traced God’s purposes for this stiff-necked race: “Rebels that we were,” she wrote, “we declared war on your mercy, and became your enemies.  But stirred by the same fire that made you create us, you decided to give this warring human race a way of reconciliation, bringing great peace out of our war.  So you gave your only begotten Son…He became our justice, taking on himself the punishment for our injustices.  He offered the obedience you required of him, in clothing him with our human nature…O depth of love, what heart could keep from breaking at the sight of your greatness descending to the lowliness of our humanity.[7]”

Rebels that we were—Israel, yes, but each of us as well.   Each of us has bowed to our own version of the golden calf in our moment of weakness, folly and impatience.  Each of us has failed to the trust God who has been so good to us.

 Irrational human nature can’t get along on its own.  That’s what good doctor Thaler prescribed for homo economicus.  There must, he said, be “nudges,” good habits plotted carefully into the structure of things, defaults to help us make easily the decisions we would hesitate to make on our own. 

We have such nudges also.  Here you are for one of the most important of them: the weekly hour in God’s House, to hear His word, to receive grace anew in absolution and sacrament.  We have prayer, the buoy of the sinking soul.  We call on God to be with us in our folly, to reshape our desires, to turn our hearts.  And He pours out His good Spirit anew, even on sinners like us.  He has drawn near to us and bound us to Himself.  He bid us be wise with His knowledge and strong with His power.  He knows what we are and yet loves us through it all. 

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[1] Appelbaum, Binyamin.  “Nobel in Economics is Awarded to Richard Thaler.”  The New York Times, 9 Oct. 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/business/nobel-economics-richard-thaler.html

[2] White, Thomas Joseph.  Exodus.  The Brazos Theological Commentary on Scripture.  Grand Rapids: Brazos, 265.

[3] White, ibid. 266.

[4] Stuart, Douglas K.  Exodus, New American Bible Commentary.  Nashville: B & H, 2006, 672.

[5] Ps. 103:13-14.

[6] White, ibid. 268.

[7] Dialogue, 13.