Remember that old saying, "When the cat’s away, the mice will play"? I don’t know if that saying holds true when it comes to cats. I highly suspect it does. But you couldn’t prove it by me since cats and I do not get along. But when it comes to human beings, when the top cat is away, the mice will indeed play. When the boss is out of the office, the rest of the staff tends to relax. They may not play, but they are often tempted to put in less of an effort than usual. Call it human nature. Call it what we will; but it happens all the time. Well, not all the time. Arlena and I were on vacation for a week and the office staff did not miss a beat. But, then, I – we – are blessed.

But it does happen and it happened to Moses, as we heard in today’s first lesson. Moses was away and the Hebrew children played. Even though Moses had not been gone very long, the people got tired waiting for him to return. They were restless, bored, and were ripe for getting into trouble. And they did. For God only knows what reason, in their impatience they decided they needed another god to worship and demanded that Aaron accede to their wishes and make them one. Fool that he was, Aaron did.

They took off their jewelry and gave them to Aaron. He melted them down and formed the gold into a calf and declared this calf to be their new god. Then the next day they all gathered around this calf. Someone yelled out, "Let the worship begin," and it began. The people sang praises to this new god of theirs. They offered sacrifices and ate and drank themselves silly. They called all this "worship." By the time Moses came down from the mountain, he was madder than a hornet. And rightly so! But what did Moses expect? When the cat was away, the mice played.

What happened, it seems, was that the people got tired of the God who led them out of Egypt towards freedom. They wanted an easier god to deal with, a god of their own liking and a god of their own making. And so they made one. It happens all the time. Just as we mice like to play when the cat’s away, so we like to make gods to our own liking especially when the demands of our God seem too difficult or our God seems too distant. We may not make a new god for ourselves so much as we dilute the God we already have, the God we worship. We diminish and lessen our God’s demands on us.

Scripture tells us that there are gods and there is God. The question that faces us, as it faced the Hebrew people in the desert, is "Who is the God we worship?" The golden calf was the sort of god who did not demand much of anything, certainly no more than a little wine, a little music, some good food and a whole lot of fun. That the Hebrew people could give. They became children of a lesser god. The God of Moses, however, the God who led them out of slavery, the God who had protected them and fed them all along their journey, that God was just a little more demanding.

That God is our God. Our God is a God who demands that we worship no one else, certainly no golden calf. In fact, our God seems to have a peculiar idea and notion of praise and worship. Our God believes that worship, true worship, consists more in how we live our lives than how lively our worship or our lives are. Our God demands that we do not lie or steal or kill or have sex with other people’s spouses. He demands that we respect authority, be satisfied with our blessings, not be envious of what others have, and watch our mouths. That is truly how we worship and praise our God – by living out his commands for us.

That is not to say that worship is to be dull and boring. It is to say that the true test of true worship is not whether or not we liked the hymns or found the sermon to be relevant or whether or not we felt good at the end of the service. All that is important and well and good, but it is not what makes worship worship or praise praise. As Moses understood, it is much more than that, much, much more.

I heard the pastor of a large, non-denominational church on the radio telling the listeners that if they worship at his church, he will help them hit home runs in life. They will learn how to have fun and be successful. He intimates that if we come and worship at his church, we will have the time of our lives. Sounds like the golden calf to me. But, then, maybe I am prejudiced; some might even say jealous. But I would disagree.

A friend of mine recounts spending an evening singing some old hymns and new praise songs during an informal worship service on his university campus. One of the students caught up to him as they were leaving the chapel and remarked, "That was great singing all those hymns. But I got to thinking while we were singing about how Jesus loves us and cares for us, comforts and keeps us that we never sang a word about taking up a cross, or losing our lives, or giving money."

When we worship, when we sing during worship, we need to ask ourselves just who this God is whom we praise and worship. The truth is, the God we praise is the God we worship. If we sing praises to a God who demands little or nothing of us, that is the God we will worship and follow as well. That is the god of the golden calf, not the God of the Ten Commandments. If we preach and teach a faith whose worship is characterized by lively music, short sermons, no hassles, no judgment and no demands, what kind of faith is that? Does it in any way resemble the faith of Jesus or even the faith of Moses? I wonder if people followed Jesus because they thought doing so would be fun. But sometimes that is the faith we desire, one that will be fun rather than very demanding.

Again, that does not mean worship is to be dull and boring nor does it mean that lively worship is somehow false worship. Nor does it mean that faith is to be pure hell. It simply means that in true worship not only do we speak to God but God also speaks to us. Our worship forms us, fashions us, into a people. What kind of people depends on the kind of worship in which we engage. That is why we have three readings and a psalm each Sunday, why a sermon is required, why the hymns we sing speak to the words we heard in the scriptures.

The truth is in good worship God speaks more to us than we speak to God. God comes to us more than we come to our God. So we must listen as we worship, listen as we praise our God, listen to what our God is saying to us in scripture and song. Our God comes to us, speaks to us, makes demands of us, and has plans for us. We have to make sure that we not only listen to what God is saying to us, but also learn it and put it into practice as well. Our worship and our faith must be mirror images of each other – and they usually are. The people dancing around the golden calf wanted a god who made no demands and made life fun. And that is precisely what they got.

When Moses came down from that mountain and found the people having a ball dancing around the golden calf, he was fit to be tied. He was angry because he knew all that God had done for them and he knew they knew it as well. And this is the thanks they gave to God? When the going got a little rough, they got going – away from God to something that pretended to be a god, or they pretended to be god.

It does not take much to imagine Aaron’s defense of what he did. "But Moses," Aaron said, "they are having such a wonderful time. The people are feeling so much better about themselves. Even the teenagers are involved. They’re having fun. And the parking lot is full. I take this as a great rebirth of spirituality. And who can argue with that?" Scripture does not record what Moses said. But I suspect it is not something Moses would have wanted recorded in the Bible.