They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.
(Exodus 16:1-3)

Our modern, ‘post Christian,’ postmodernist world met the ancient at last year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Not being an athletics fan, this story passed me by until a bit after the event. The opening ceremony for the 2022 games featured a giant mechanical bull. Groups of dancers swirled around in adoration and finally prostrated themselves before it in a large circle.

The ancient Israelites loved a bit of bull worship when they considered what God was asking of them was too much…

When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire.

(Exodus 32:17-20)

Now if you want a ‘raging bull’ against the bull worshipping, then Moses is your man…
unfortunately there aren’t too many Moses’ to lead us. But do we need one when we have Christ himself overturning tables in the forecourt of the Jerusalem temple. You have made my Father’s house a ‘den of thieves.’ Considering some of the sacrileges going on in our churches maybe it’s time for us laity to overturn a few tables rather than waiting for leaders.

Here we have the recent German Synod worshipping the golden calf of transgenderism…

“Every person possesses a gender identity and a sexual orientation. These are part of a complex developmental process and they cannot be arbitrarily shaped or even chosen. Instead, they result from a combination of biological processes and psychosocial factors, which include not least the individual acceptance and shaping by the person himself or herself.”

An inadvertent bowing to the golden calf of confusing and contradictory statements or deliberate obscurantism?

There is a lot of ‘Grumble, Grumble’ going on in the church right now. Mostly hiding behind the call for ‘deep listening’ and ‘inclusivity.’ Yes we Christians do have a need for ‘deep listening,’ a deep listening to God not the grumble, grumble of disaffected worldly catholics who are fed up of waiting for Moses to come down off that mountain. Dancing around the fire and melting down your gold earrings might give some cathartic release but devoid of the living springs of water offered by Christ himself and the two thousand years of clear and unbroken teaching, it will lead nowhere.
We don’t need to wait for Moses to come off that mountain, and when he doesn’t, drift into idol worship. We can start now in our own lives, being faithful to the teaching of the church and ‘holding fast to the traditions.’ (2 Thess. 2:15) Each one of us needs to take responsibility to teach the authentic faith, do battle with our demons, and live a life of service to others. Then we might get a leader to lead us out of this desert…but he might well have a stammer!