Sermon: Striving for Gold (Ki Tissa) (Cantor Cheryl Wunch)

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 21 March 2015

The Torah is an amazing thing.  Yes, that may seem like an obvious statement, but sometimes it just needs to be said.  The Torah is an amazing thing!  It teaches us, it leads us, it guides us.  It is a living document.  It shows us where we come from, and helps us navigate to where we are going.  One of the things that I find most amazing, is how our ancient Torah always seems to match up, in some way, to our modern calendar.  In this week’s Torah portion the Israelites sacrifice every valuable thing that they have in pursuit of a shiny gold object. This week in our lives, the eyes of the world are turned to Sochi, where a select few people have sacrificed so much in their lives in pursuit of a shiny gold object.  In this Torah portion we learn all about idol worship, and just how great of a sin it really is.  As we look to our athletes we can’t help but wonder, is this idol worship as well?

So what happened in our parsha?  The Israelites had been slaves – slaves are told what to do and when to do it.  Then, they were led to freedom by Moses, who often told them what to do and when to do it.  Clearly his reasons for dictating their behaviours were significantly different than the Egyptians’ reasons, but still, the Israelites were a people who did not know personal autonomy.  They did not know how to care for themselves, and so when Moses disappeared on the top of the mountain for 40 days, they were afraid.  They didn’t know how to live without the leadership that they knew.  They idolized Moses – he was, to them, God’s emissary on earth.  They naturally assumed that if something were to happen to Moses, they would lose their connection to God as well – and so they asked Aaron to build another god for them.  It made sense; they were from Egypt after all, where worshipping physical representations of gods was the common practice.  Without Moses, they needed another representation, and they needed the security of knowing that they would be taken care of.  And so they took all of their coins and all of their jewellery, melted them down, and created a beautiful, perfect idol.  Given their history and psychology, I have to say that this seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do, so why then were God and Moses so angry about it?

Well, the easy answer, of course, is that they had been replaced.  The people lost their faith and replaced their leaders with an inanimate object.  I think it’s fair to say that anyone would be angry about being replaced – that’s a huge blow to the ego, but this all happened BEFORE the people had the commandments – they didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to worship idols!  Couldn’t God and Moses have had some compassion for the people?  Didn’t they understand that they were simply acting out of fear and desperation?  It seems that a point needed to be made.  Sure, the point was “don’t worship idols” but I have to believe that it was more than just an ego thing.  The calf was built to replace both God and Moses… but God can’t be seen.  This isn’t just because God is unknowable, but because God is not fixed.  God is infinite.  God is ever changing.  God is everywhere, and most importantly, God is within.  The calf?  It was beautiful for sure, but it was external and finite.  How could the people of Israel learn to trust themselves, trust the spark of the divine within them, if they were focusing on an external object?  God wasn’t just angry at being replaced, God was angry that the people missed the point.  God dwells within, amongst the people, and they weren’t ready to see that.  God, and divinity are ever changing, ever evolving.  The Kotzker rebbe interpreted the commandment prohibiting idol worship by saying that “Do not make for yourself any molten gods” really means do not make for yourself a god that is fixed in form, with unchanging routines.

And what about Moses?  Moses too was replaced.  The people idolized Moses, and needed the calf to comfort them in his absence, and the calf was perfect.  Perfectly constructed, pure melted gold, but Moses was a man – a man with faults.  We see those faults clearly throughout the Torah – the man has a temper!  And yet, he is still considered our greatest teacher, our greatest leader.  He wants the people to know that it’s ok to be flawed, ok to be human, and that divinity lies within even the most troubled among us.  A perfect, flawless, molten calf?  That in no way represents the leadership that the people need, nor does it represent the kind of people they should be striving to be.  Perfection doesn’t exist – it’s not an attainable goal.

Ok – so we shouldn’t worship a golden calf.  I don’t think that many of us here are at risk of doing so – but there are idols all around us.  Yes, we can be slaves to our finances, worship the newest electronic innovation, lust after the fanciest clothes and cars, but idolatry also shows up in more subtle forms.  When we say that we are simply too busy to do this or that, that we simply have no time in our schedules, we are making idols out of our diaries.  We are saying that they are fixed, unmoveable, and finite.  We say that our time is of the utmost importance, and an all-powerful ruling force in our lives.  We also idolize people.  How often do you hear someone describe a singer, an actor, a financially successful business person as “my idol.”  That person?  She’s my idol.  When we say that, what we mean is that they embody some perceived perfection that we know we could never attain, but desperately wish that we could.  When we idolize someone, we do not see them for the full, beautifully flawed people that they are.  We elevate them to be like gods, and then what happens when they do or say something that we don’t like?  We’re crushed.  We can’t believe that our idol is human.  That’s what happens when we expect perfection; we are let down every time.

And what do we do with these idols in our lives?  We show them off!  We want everyone to see our new car, we complain loudly about our packed schedules, we watch our human idols on tv and follow their lives in magazines.  We treat our idols as if they were holy… and that’s the problem with idols.  Idols replace holiness.  People are inherently holy… objects and perceived perfections are not.  Does that mean that we shouldn’t want nice things, and shouldn’t look up to others?  Of course not.  It’s nice to have nice things, and it’s great to look to others for inspiration.  What we need to remember though is that those things are not holy themselves, although they can help to enhance our lives in a way that is holy.

Some might say that when we kiss a Mezuzah, raise a fancy Kiddush cup, or parade the Torah around the Shul, we are participating in idol worship.  Yes.  We very well might be.  When we kiss the mezuzah on the way in the door, and then fail to treat our families with love and kindness, when we raise the Kiddush cup and then proceed to treat Shabbat as if it were just another day, when we parade the Torah around and then fail to learn and live its lessons, we are, indeed, idolaters.  We honour and celebrate the holiness of the object, and completely ignore what the object represents… but the holiness is in the message.  We make these objects beautiful to look at, not to make them holy, but to remind us of the beauty and holiness of what they stand for.  We don’t worship the Torah, we worship the divine message that it brings us.

So what about our Olympic athletes?  They seem to be on both sides of this issue.  They have been made into idols by their fans, and they also seem to have created an idol out of the desired gold medal.  But just like Moses, these athletes are not perfect, and just like the calf, a gold medal is not holy.  What is holy, and what I love about the Olympic Games, is what these athletes and those medals represent.  They represent loyalty, they represent commitment, they represent striving for newer, greater heights.  They represent sportsmanship, teamwork, passion, and the tenacity of the human spirit.  The gold medal is simply a symbol for all those things that athletes strive to accomplish – and when we try to be our best selves in any medium, THAT is honouring the holiness within us.  These athletes aren’t perfect. We see them fall, slip, miss the mark, and we see the honest emotion that they feel.  Moses taught us that even the greatest achievers among us are supposed to be flawed.  The Israelites carried with them the broken tablets as a reminder of the importance of imperfections.  Even the gold medal winners take a bite of their medal – the beautiful perfect poured gold is forever flawed with teeth marks.  In the Olympics, it is nearly impossible to earn a perfect score across the board.  Perfection is just not what it’s about.  There is no fixed ideal, but a fluid, flexible one – a different goal for each person.  That is holiness – knowing that the real competition is with oneself – to strive to beat a personal best.  Knowing that achievements are not static – they are not one-size-fits-all, and the reward earned serves as a lifelong reminder of the hard work and passion that went into this great accomplishment.  Not everyone gets to go home with a medal, that’s true, but every athlete gets to go home with the memory and lessons that those medals represent.  The spirit of the Olympic Games is holy.  May we turn away from worshipping the gold, and turn towards worshipping what the gold represents – God, humanity, fellowship, and holiness.