This week, in our second reading, Paul simply writes: “I should like you to be free of anxieties.” (1 Cor 7:32). Seriously, can I get an “Amen” to that? Wouldn’t that be awesome, to have a life without anxieties? In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us not to have anxiety about food, clothing, money and such things. God takes care of the birds in the sky and we are much more loved by our heavenly Father, so don’t worry. And yet we do. In 1 Peter 5, we are told to give all of our anxieties and worries over to God. And yet we hang onto them. Jesus tells Martha that she is anxious about many things and points out to her the better part that her sister Mary has chosen (Luke 10:41-42). And yet…
And yet we remain anxious about many things. In the Mass during the Communion Rite the priest prays for all gathered that, in God’s grace, we are free from sin and from distress, worry and anxiety. Maybe it is the human condition that only be taken care of when fully and finally rest in God. It certainly was the human condition in the story of Exodus when the people find themselves in the wilderness at the foot of Mt. Sinai. People just escaped from slavery but also away from everything they’ve ever known. In Egypt they knew where they could get food, shelter, clothing, and the rest. Here in the wilderness, not so much – in fact, not at all. These were people with anxieties – primal anxieties: “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear?” Sounds a lot like Jesus’ admonitions in Matthew 6.
In the midst of all this Moses goes up to meet God on Mt. Sinai, he’s there for 40 days and the people’s anxieties rise. I mean, Moses is the “guy”, the one in charge, the one to whom God speaks, the one who knows where they’re heading. And now he’s missing. It is at this point, that to grasp at something visible, something sure, the people ask Aaron to make the golden calf, an idol they hope will relieve anxiety and uncertainty. It is the first self-help program, a sort of do-it-yourself religion, custom made to fill the gaps if God does not seem present in our lives.
In the ancient Near East the symbol of the calf represented fertility and abundance, energy and strength. Coat the calf in gold and now you have the great modern idols: success, power and money.
And surely these modern idols will relieve our anxieties. And yet they don’t.
It is the story of the human condition in the Bible, we take the apple off the tree so we can be like God, defining good and evil on our own terms. But we were already created in the image of God. We build a tower to reach the heavens. But God was already among us. All we need to do is reach out in prayer. All we’ve ever needed to do is confide in God, to give him our anxieties, to allow him to give true depth to the desires of our hearts. Maybe there’s the rub: the desires of our heart. Do we desire success, power, and money? Or do we desire God? Or put another way, why would we trade away love for the modern idols? Would you give up a child for the ultimate promotion? Trade your spouse for a lifestyle of the rich and famous? Would you give up God for an idol that is incapable of love and will never love you?
In that moment in the wilderness, the people of God traded for a golden calf. Anxiety can make us do crazy things. They chose the self-help, self-medicating route to relieve their anxieties, never realizing when all was said and done, they were still in the wilderness. But now their idols “have mouths, but they cannot speak” (Ps 115:5). The idols can never tell them the way out of the wilderness. They can never love. The idol becomes as charming and seductive as the serpent in the garden. The story will not end well.
Pope Francis had a great insight about all this – that God’s great work was not freeing the people from slavery in Egypt. It was then and remains today, the great work of removing Egypt from the hearts of people: to remove “that Egypt” which we carry within us, which is the attraction of idolatry fueled by our anxiety; our self-help programs of success, power and money.
And so God sent his only Son to become one of us, to know our anxieties, to accept weakness and uncertainty, but to show us that true security is found only in the love of the Father who desired that all be saved. God sent his only Son to join us here in the wilderness, just as we were promised in that first reading. Moses said there would come a great prophet from among the people – and the promise is fulfilled in Jesus. The One who teaches with a new authority, the One who has power over the demons who tempts us to idolatry through our anxiety. The One who is the sure guide out of the wilderness to the loving embrace of the Father.
“I should like you to be free of anxieties.” Me too. But even with my eyes on Jesus, it seems my peripheral vision still sees the wilderness and I am not fully free of anxiety. It reflects the remnants of Egypt in my heart. But I trust that keeping my eyes on Jesus I can make it to the promised land, anxieties and all – and then my heart will be free of Egypt. The wilderness no more. I will finally and eternally rest with God, the journey over.
Then, at the gates of heaven, I will look back at my life in the wilderness and wonder what all the worry was about.
Amen.
Image credit: Jesus in the Synagogue, unknown artist, Vatican News Service | Public Domain