Intro
One time and only one time can I remember my parents washing
my mouth out with soap. (Yes, I was a goody-two-shoes, without a doubt. I used
to cry when they even threatened to spank me!)
On this fateful day, I happened to say a word, in their
presence, which I probably learned on the bus but didn’t yet know was not the
kind of word that should be repeated. So as a reminder not to say that word
EVER AGAIN, they washed my mouth out with soap.
(For the record, washing my mouth out with soap was a very effective punishment--I don’t think I’ve ever said that word again. Maybe if you ask me nicely after church, I’ll tell you what the word was--but I’m NOT going to say it in the pulpit for fear that one of YOU will want to wash my mouth out again!)
At any rate, in our Scripture reading today, we find the
inspiration for every parent’s favorite punishment when unsavory language comes
out of a child’s mouth--washing it out with soap. Well, it’s not exactly the
same thing, but it’s awfully close, which you’ll see in a second.
We’re going to look at the incident of the Golden Calf. While
Moses is up on Mt Sinai, hanging out with God and receiving the 10 Commandments,
his co-leader and brother Aaron is left alone trying to manage those pesky Israelites.
Moses is gone so long, the people begin to feel abandoned by him … AND by God.
So in their minds, they do the next logical thing--they ask Aaron to build them
a god to worship since the one they WERE worshiping seems to have disappeared.
