Meditation: God Is a Verb
Texts: Exodus 32:1-14 | Matthew 22:1-14
Find a comfortable place to sit.
Take a slow breath in — and release it.
Let the noise and demands of the day settle for just a moment.
We begin with an honest question.
Not a theological question. A personal one.
Is there a place in your life where you relate to God more like a possession than a relationship? Where you've tried to make God predictable — safe, visible, manageable? Where you've wanted God to stay where you put God?
If there is, bring that place gently to mind. Hold it. Don't judge it. Just notice it.
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The Israelites at Sinai were not wicked people. They were anxious people. Moses was gone too long, and in his absence the uncertainty became unbearable. So they did what anxious people do: they made something they could see and hold and point to. Something they could carry in front of them and call God.
The golden calf was not a rejection of God. It was an attempt to domesticate God — to turn the verb into a noun.
We do this too. Not with gold. With certainty. With doctrine used as a weapon. With the comfortable assumption that we already know exactly what God is and what God requires.
Gently ask yourself: Where am I trying to possess God rather than participate in God? Where is my golden calf?
Sit with that. Not with shame. With honesty.
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In the wedding banquet parable, the most unsettling figure is not the guest who refused to come. It is the guest who came — but arrived without allowing the invitation to change how he showed up. He wanted to be at the table without risking what the table requires. He was present, but closed. An observer, not a participant.
It is possible to attend worship, to say the words, to do all the right things — and remain fundamentally unchanged. To show up to the feast in our old clothes, on our own terms, keeping the relationship at a careful distance.
Gently ask yourself: Where am I showing up to the feast — to worship, to prayer, to community — without allowing any of it to actually change me? Where am I an observer when I am being invited to be a participant?
Sit with that. Not with judgment. With curiosity.
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Moses shows us what the alternative looks like. He holds the relationship open from both sides — refusing to let God retreat and refusing to let the people be abandoned. He argues, he intercedes, he appeals to God's own character. He is not watching the covenant from a safe distance. He is in it.
And God — who is a verb — changed God's mind.
This is the God we are invited into relationship with: responsive, relational, genuinely moved. Not a noun to be possessed. A verb to be participated in.
Gently ask yourself: What would it mean, today, to be a player rather than a bystander — to hold the relationship open, to show up fully, to risk being changed?
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Close with this prayer.
Gracious God, I confess that I have tried to make you manageable. I have wanted the certainty of a noun more than the vulnerability of a verb. I have shown up to the feast on my own terms, unwilling to risk what the table requires.
Forgive me for the golden calves I have made — the ways I have tried to possess you rather than participate in you.
Help me to be a player, not a bystander. Help me to hold the relationship open — to show up fully, to risk being changed, to let your invitation do more than change me. Let it transform me.
You keep showing up. You keep inviting. Teach me to do the same.
Amen.