Habakkuk 2:18-20: The Rev’d Jenny Wilson

In the name of God, creating, redeeming, sanctifying, … Amen.

What use is an idol
once its maker has shaped it—
a cast image, a teacher of lies?
For its maker trusts in what has been made,
though the product is only an idol that cannot speak!
¹⁹ Alas for you who say to the wood, ‘Wake up!’
to silent stone, ‘Rouse yourself!’
Can it teach?
See, it is plated with gold and silver,
and there is no breath in it at all.

²⁰ But the Lord is in his holy temple;
let all the earth keep silence before him! (Habakkuk 2:18-20)

What use is an idol once its maker has shaped it—a cast image, a teacher of lies?

The prophet Habakkuk has harsh words, indeed, for idols, for those who make them and for those who trust in them. And throughout the writings of the Old Testament, one of the most serious sins, one of the ways in which God’s people most damage their relationship with God, most devastate God, is in the making and worship of idols.

God makes this clear in the first two of the Ten Commandments:

 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³you shall have no other gods before^* me.  (Exodus 20:2-3)

God says. In this first commandment God tells the story of God’s relationship with God’s people – it is an exodus story – a story of God’s bringing the people out – the story of a people enslaved and a people set free.

God goes on:

4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them …(20:4-5)

What is it about idols that God so abhors? God goes on that God is a jealous God, but what is that jealousy about? Could it be that the worship of idols is a different form of slavery, a running away from the freedom that is found in living in the great love of God?

The story of the giving of the Ten Commandments is told in the 20^th Chapter of the Book Exodus, when Moses has led the people away from slavery in Egypt, through the Red Sea and into the wilderness at Sinai. It is there on a mountain that God speaks with Moses.

Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.’

So Moses came, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. The people all answered as one: ‘Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.’ (Exodus 19:3-8)

“I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself,” says God, in language so intimate that we can hear in the words God’s great love for God’s people. And God, knowing human nature well, gives the Ten Commandments so that the people might be guided in living well with God and with one another.

It was only a few chapters later, in the 32^nd chapter of the Book Exodus, that we find the people of God losing patience. And that is one of the key reasons that we turn to idols. We lose patience with the way of God. We find ourselves bored, really, or frustrated. We want God to make himself apparent, or to sort out our problems, or to make things comfortable, quickly, soon. And we wonder if God is about and we wonder if God minds about our circumstances and we wonder if there is something that will make us feel better quickly. And that is one reason why we turn to idols. This aspect of human nature is powerfully told in the story of the Golden Calf a few chapters on after God gave God’s commandments to the people God bore on eagles’ wings and brought to himself.

It is the delay that is the problem. Moses is delayed on the mountain talking with God and receiving God’s instructions about how the people are to live well.

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.’ 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.’ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. ⁴He took the gold from them, formed it in a mould,^* 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!’ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; (Exodus 32:1-5)

After all that God had done, Aaron looks at this golden calf and says, These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ And God is devastated.

There is nothing wrong with a golden calf. As long as we know what it is. And as long as we know what it is not. A golden calf is simply and only a golden calf.

God is simply and only God and the only God. And only God is worthy of our worship.

But the people of Israel got fed up with waiting for Moses and God and so they made their own god. And this story highlights one of the great struggles of the life of faith. Waiting. Sitting in silence. Bringing our life with its struggles and its joys, bringing our communities’ and our world’s life with their great struggles and their profound joys to God and waiting.

It is worth our pondering the idea of idols. What, who are our idols? When the way of God, the way of the one who made us and loves us seems too slow, when the God who bore us on eagles’ wings seems silent. To what, to whom do we turn? It may be some object, some cast image made of silver and gold in which there is no breath … It may be a way of living, or an image of ourselves … It may be a person who it seems easier to worship than the living God. It is worth our pondering what, for us, is a golden calf. For the worship of idols is one of the great temptations.

The prophet Habakkuk knew.

What use is an idol
once its maker has shaped it—
a cast image, a teacher of lies?
He cried out.

Can it teach?
See, it is plated with gold and silver,
and there is no breath in it at all.

²⁰ But the Lord is in his holy temple;
let all the earth keep silence before him!