The Living God vs. Gods of Gold
Updated: Oct 28
In high school, one of my favorite bands was the folk-rock group NEEDTOBREATHE.
One day, a friend told me this story about how they got their name.
The band’s singer was at a party, talking with some other people about what else? Religion!
The singer starts peppering a friend with questions about his Christian faith. How did he believe in God? What’s with all their weird teachings? Why devote yourself to a guy who lived 2000 years ago? Did he need to believe in God?
Suddenly the friend pounced on the singer, dunking his head into the pool until he was sputtering for breath.
When he released him, his friend said, “We need God like we need to breathe.”
The singer was said to have become a Christian that night.
And soon after, the band got its name, and the music quickly gained popularity among Christians for its cool rock sound and Christian themes.
I did not know at the time that this story was, in fact, a retelling of an older story.
Socrates is teaching a group of students by the water when a student asks, How do I know if I’m doing the thing in my life that I’m supposed to be doing?”
Socrates then dunks his head under the water, before answering, ‘When you need that thing in your life as much as you need to breathe, that’s when you know you’re doing the thing you’re supposed to do.’
I have no idea how or why this story was then reenacted or perhaps creatively reimagined, and then incorporated into the singer’s personal testimony…
However, considering this advice is given to just about anyone going into a creative field, it makes sense why a group of scrappy, young musicians would find it fascinating.
They had found the thing they needed to do as much as they needed air to breathe. And by doing it, they could give glory to God.
I thought about this story as I reflected on this week’s reading from Exodus.
The story of the Golden Calf is, at its heart, a story about devotion to God—and what happens when that devotion goes awry.
We need God just as surely as we need air to breathe.
It’s fitting then that the sacred Hebrew name for God, the Tetragrammaton, is made up of four consonants—yod, he, vav, and he—whose open sounds are associated with air and breath.
God first speaks the name to Moses, often translated into English as “I AM WHO I AM.” The name is mysteriously and wonderfully nonspecific. It can also be translated as “is” “will be” “am becoming,” or really, any variation of “being.”
It is beautiful to imagine God’s name being spoken every time we inhale and exhale. It’s like a divine signature being written into all life.
As rabbi Ana Lebvy-Lyons writes, the name captures that “God is not a big man in the sky or a big woman or a big anything…. Not a particular force of nature, like the sun or rain, as were some of the gods in the ancient Near East… This is a God without boundaries. It is the bare face of reality itself.” (No Other Gods, 24-5)
God is as essential to reality as the air filling our lungs.
But what happens when that God feels far away? When God doesn't seem to be doing what we want, or giving us what we think we need?
As the story of the Golden Calf illustrates, humanity has a tendency to fill that perceived absence with something else. We create idols—and place our trust in them instead.
To understand how this happens, we need to remember where the Israelites are in their journey.
Moses has led them out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, and to the foot of Mount Sinai, known as "the mountain of God" (Exodus 24:13).
There, God makes a covenant with the Israelites—a sacred promise that establishes both God's commitment to the people and the people's obligations to God.
At the heart of this covenant are the Ten Commandments. And the very first commandments are clear: You shall have no other gods before me, and you shall not make idols to worship.
The Israelites promise to obey these commandments. Not once, not twice, but three times, they promise.
God then gives Moses detailed instructions for building the Tabernacle, a sacred tent where God's presence will dwell among the people as they continue their journey toward the Promised Land.
So, as readers, we expect the next chapter to be about the Israelites faithfully building this dwelling place for God.
But things do not go as we might expect.
While Moses is still up on the mountain receiving instructions from God, the people grow impatient. They begin to doubt that Moses was ever coming back. Fear begins to creep in.
Rather than waiting for the God who has promised to be with them, they turn to Aaron, Moses's priest brother, and demand that he make them a god of gold. Something they can see and touch.
Today people don’t often worship golden statues…
Okay maybe sometimes we do....
But beyond some of our more obviously ridiculous idols, we are still prone to making other gods today. They may look different from the Israelites' golden calf. They may not even be physical objects. But we can still devote ourselves to them with religious fervor.
This past week, I asked some of my colleagues what they thought were the idols of our time. They included:
Sports teams, especially football.
Social media likes.
Beauty standards, especially being thin.
Prestige and success.
Technological advancement
Artificial intelligence.
Gambling and prediction markets.
Productivity.
Comfort & convenience.
Certainty & control.
Even our economic systems can become objects of worship when we treat capitalism, economic growth, or the GDP as the ultimate good.
Now, none of these things is necessarily bad in itself. But when we give them our ultimate devotion, when we look to them for meaning, security, or salvation, they become idols.
In her book, No Other Gods, Rabbi Ana Levy-Lyons offers a fresh reinterpretation of the Ten Commandments. Rather than treating them as antiquated rules or political weapons wielded by the religious right, she invites us to understand them as practices of liberation.
After all, it is the God of liberation, the God who brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, who commands the people to have no other gods.
Because these false gods are not the source of our freedom. They are creations of our own making, and all too often, they become the very things that keep us unfree.
Levy-Lyons argues that this first commandment calls us to challenge the cultural conventions and political powers that demand our allegiance.
This does not mean Jews, Christians, or Muslims must retreat from the world. Quit the opposite. We must fully engage, body and spirit. But others things shall not exist as gods in our lives, We can participate in society without worshiping its institutions. We can use technology without placing our faith in it. We can earn money without making wealth our purpose. We can’t look to these gods for salvation or depend on them to fill the aching loneliness in our hearts. We won’t work for them, serve them, or give up our power to them.
But what is tricky about gods, false or not, is that they do wield power.
The immigrant does have to open their door when ICE shows up with a judicial warrant.
Many workers must keep up with ever-increasing productivity demands or risk losing their jobs.
Two of the gods we are most devoted to today are the gods of Money & the god of Power.
These are precisely the forces at work in our Gospel reading, when the Pharisees approach Jesus with a question:
"Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"
Now, the Pharisees were both a religious and political movement. They resented Roman occupation and the emperor's claims to divine authority. But they also understood the danger of openly resisting Rome.
So, for many, the strategy was one of survival and accommodation. Keep the faith, follow the law, pay your taxes, and try not to attract too much attention.
And they wanted to know where Jesus stood.
Was he willing to accommodate Rome? Or was he one of those dangerous revolutionaries who might bring the wrath of the empire down upon them?
Because underneath their question about taxes was a much bigger question: To whom do we owe our allegiance?
And Jesus' answer would challenge not only their understanding of political authority, but the very notion that Caesar could claim what ultimately belongs to God.
If Jesus sided with their survival strategy. He’d be a good ally both religiously and politically.
Was he willing to accommodate Rome? Or was he one of those dangerous revolutionaries who might bring the wrath of the empire down upon them?
So they asked him a question designed to trap him: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?"
And Jesus, in one of his finest non-answer answers, responds, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
His critics were “amazed.” They understood his point. His answer was clear enough to them that they then departed.
But it has rarely seemed that clear to us. Over the centuries, Christians have developed at least five main interpretations of this scene,
But theologian Diana Butler Bass suggests that perhaps we've made this more complicated than it needs to be.
When this story was first written down, sometime between 60 and 80, Roman emperors made a claim to divinity.
In fact, the imperial titles for Caesar included “Dominus et Deus” and “Dominus et Salvator.” Not “Your Honor” or “Your Majesty.” But “Lord and God” or “Lord and Savior.”
Jews hated it. It was clearly idolatry.
Christians hated it, too. Christians hated it so much that they stole the titles and gave them to Jesus.
They would not be calling the emperor their Lord and God. Instead, they proclaimed “Jesus is Lord.”
And by time Matthew’s Gospel was being written down, they were being killed for saying it. Jesus is Lord. No King But Christ.
Buttler Bass's point is that the early Church would have known exactly what this story meant. And it was written down because it supported what Christians already believed.
That Jesus is Lord... while Caesar was not.
That they did not belong to Caesar, because they already belonged to God. Through faith. Through baptism. Through their solidarity with neighbors. Through their love and devotion to the God of liberation. Jesus is Lord!
The same can be said of us today.
Jesus is Lord. God is the living and loving and liberating God... and gods of gold are now.
We belong to the living God. The God whose name is as close as our next breath. The God who gives us life, and calls us to live in freedom.
Through our faith. Through our baptism. Through our solidarity with neighbors. Through our love and devotion to the God of liberation.
You belong to God.
And all God’s people say— Amen!
Sermon given by Rev. Delaney Piper on 10/18/26.
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