Costume Jewelry Idols (and other things that anger God)

Exodus 32: 1, 7-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17

 A children’s book by Mercer Mayer was turned into a short film back in the 80s: There’s a Nightmare in My Closet. The story is of a little boy who is at home one evening with a babysitter. She sends him up to his room to get ready for bed, but he believes there is something scary hiding in his bedroom closet. The babysitter assures him there is nothing in his closet as she runs a hand through the hanging clothes. But every time she leaves the room, the door to the closet cre-e-e-eaks open just a little bit. In the dark closet, a pair of big eyeballs look back at him. A big monster-y hand is seen pushing the closet door open further.
He is not imagining things.
There really is a Nightmare in his closet!

Now, according to a discussion on Reddit[1], a bunch of Millennials confess they were so scared by this point they didn’t make it to the end of the 15 minute short film. “Horrifying!” one said. “Stephen King level frightening,” said another. “Nightmares for years after seeing this,” said another. They screamed and cried until someone stopped the VHS player. They never made it far enough into the story to see that  [spoiler alert] the little boy and the not-so-scary Nightmare become buddies (like Sully and Boo in Monsters Inc.) They share cookies and milk and the little boy invites the big, goofy Nightmare to crawl under the covers with him instead of being stuck in the closet. (Wouldn’t this boy make a great Weatherly member! Everybody’s welcome. No one should stay in the closet.)

What are the things that make you want to hide under the covers?
If only one could “make friends” with the nightmares that  shake you awake at 2:00am or the ones that come across your newsfeed and quicken your heart rate.

This week has been a revival of nightmares: another violent political assassination and another shooting at a small town high school in Colorado. Hatred is so often born of fear.  In a country drunk on violence and that idolizes weapons, we wonder, when will it stop? Do our thoughts and prayers have any hope of making a difference?

This week, we take a lesson from Exodus, when the prophet Moses and the people of Israel encounter the anger of God. Will God be persuaded to remember the covenant he made with his people, or will God abandon them to their idol worship, the desert heat, and start all over with a brand new group of people?

Our reading started in the 32nd chapter after God has mightily delivered the nation of Israel from the clutches of Pharaoh and the powerful Egyptian army. God gathered them at the foot of Mt. Sinai, which is desert land. And God has brought Moses up on the mountain where he has just handed him two stone tablets upon which are written in God’s own handwriting the commandments, the covenant that God is making with his people Israel.  This seems to have taken a while – this “executive session”[2] Moses was having with God. And while Moses has been away, the people have gotten restless. Not only restless, but afraid. They are in a desert after all with limited supplies. Dying of thirst in the desert is their worst nightmare. We shouldn’t minimize the response of the Israelites when they ask: What has happened to their leader? What is keeping their liberator?  Where is that guy who brought them up out of Egypt? Where is Moses??  In their impatience and fear, they turn to Aaron and beg him to make them a representative of their god. In Egypt, they had become accustomed to idol worship and wanted something they could see.  This sparks trouble in more than one way. Not only are they asking Aaron to fathom the unfathomable, but they attribute their liberation to Moses (oops)… and not God. The Israelites had confused Moses’ presence with God’s power. When their human leader disappeared, they lost sight of God, and they lost faith in the direction God was leading them.

Aaron is in a tough spot. He doesn’t know when to expect Moses and meanwhile, he is being pressured to reassure the people with something tangible, something they can touch and trust, something they can see.  Aaron asks them to hand over their costume jewelry. It seems the men and women of Israel might have had as many piercings as a high school theater department (or as much bling as Derrick Henry’s O-line). Aaron collects their bangles, their earrings and nose rings, melts them down, and turns them into a golden calf. Then, Aaron presented the calf to the people and said, “This is your god, O Israel,  who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And then he quickly follows up, “Tomorrow will be a festival to the Lord!” Now, by that he really meant to celebrate YHWH, the one true God who brought them up out of Egypt. So, how did Aaron mess this up? He was half-right which meant he was mostly wrong. He didn’t make an image to a false god. He made a false image of the true God. And God had forbidden this back in Exodus 20.  The same chapter that included the first commandment of their new covenant: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 20:1).[3] The children of Israel have lost sight of YHWH and have made for themselves a god they can see and dance around.

Martin Luther said,  Whatever we fear, love, and trust the most – that is our God.

What angers God is when his people lose sight of who God is and who God wants to be to them. We let this happen when we elevate certain preachers, and prophets and politicians on par with God. When we fall prey to the temptation to follow human leaders more closely than we follow God, then we can lose our way, or worse become “radicalized” by extreme viewpoints. This feels like a “sociological trap” in which  individuals feel they have “no other place to go to satisfy their material and spiritual needs.” [4] It looks like someone trying to fill a God-sized hole in their life. And when that void gets filled with anything but God, it’s idolatry.  

Like the people of Israel, the idols we turn to are those things that fill the void when our faith gets shaky, or when we give in to our fears and uncertainties. Let’s name what those idols are: money, power, prestige, fame, beauty, intellect, success, career… guns, gangs, personal freedoms become like idols! Anything someone will elevate above their trust in God or grasp with gritted teeth to hold onto is no better than a golden calf which at its core is costume jewelry.

Safwat Marzouk is an Egyptian Christian scholar. He writes, “Idolatry is a human attempt to have control over an unfathomable God.”[5] When humans act out of fear, they fashion idols for themselves that lead them away from their covenantal relationship with God.

There are too many Christians who have made for themselves golden calves in “the attempt to control an unfathomable God.”  They look like church buildings, Ten Commandments posters, the Bible itself,  charismatic leaders… and Christian nationalists have wrapped it all in the American flag. Let us be very careful that our allegiances don’t steal priority over the One who would lead us out of bondage to the pharaohs of this world. This world needs Christians and churches who worship God alone, and who are willing to sacrifice our idols for the sake of a true covenant with God.

God reacts like a disappointed father, when he says to Moses: Get down there! Your people who “you led out of Egypt” are ruining everything. God sounds like he is ready to be done with these jokers. Is God serious, or blowing off steam with Moses? God suggests that he could just leave this bunch and start all over with Moses – build a nation out of him!

Moses reminds God:
“These aren’t my people! These are your people whom you lead out of Egypt. What would the Egyptian leaders say if you turned your back on them now? That you saved them only to let them die in the desert?“

Moses reminds God of God’s own words. Moses reminds God of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to build a nation to rival the stars in the universe. And YHWH listens to Moses, hears Moses' plea, hears Moses' prayer. Verse 14 says, So, God changes his mind.[6] God regrets, relents, repents out of love for these darn humans, these aggravating, fickle, impatient, blessed and chosen children.

Alan Padgett, systematic theologian (Luther Seminary), would say that God is not changed in God‘s “perfections.”[7] That is God‘s mercy, God‘s justice, God‘s grace and love do not change. That is what is at God’s core. And that is what is demonstrated in this Exodus 32 passage. Ultimately, YHWH upholds his covenant with his people because of God’s unchanging mercy and compassion. That being said, in Hebrew scripture, more than once, God’s planned response is changed by the prayers of his people. God sets aside his anger and chooses to be in relationship with these hard-headed people over and over again. God chooses to respond with empathy. Empathy is the character of God and it’s embodied 100% in the person of Jesus Christ.

Doesn’t it make you wonder if the Dylan Roofs and the Desmond Hollys and the guy at Parkland and the guy at Uvalde… What if the church at its best (the  compassionate, Christ-following, benevolent church) that allows for doubts and questions and different viewpoints had found them first?  I can hope, right? That making friends with the Nightmare in the closet isn’t just a children’s book, but perhaps the work of Christians.

If God’s anger can change to mercy, can our pre-programmed, short-sighted responses also be changed when we choose empathy, when we– as the prayer of St. Francis says– choose “not to be understood, but to understand.” Will anything EVER CHANGE if we don’t TRY?

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/gd4csq/theres_a_nightmare_in_my_closet_was_a_horrifying/

[2] Jacobsen, Rolf, Working Preacher commentary Exodus 32:7-14, 2010

[3] ibid

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicalization

[5] Marzouk, Safwat Working Preacher commentary Exodus 32:7-14, 2025

[6] Common English Bible

[7] Working Preacher Sermon Brainwave podcast September 14, 2025