The Golden Calves: When We Fracture the Worship of God
Today's first Mass reading presents us with one of the strangest and most unsettling passages in Scripture: 1 Kings 12:26–32; 13:33–34. At first glance, it seems almost absurd. Jeroboam, the newly crowned king of the northern kingdom of Israel, does something that appears utterly irrational. But when we look closer, his actions reveal something profound about the human heart and the nature of true worship.
The Fear That Divides
Jeroboam's problem was political, but it quickly became spiritual. After Solomon's death, the united kingdom of Israel had split in two. Jeroboam ruled the north, while Rehoboam held the south, including Jerusalem and its temple. The text tells us plainly what troubled Jeroboam's heart: "If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me."
Here is the terrible irony. Jeroboam was afraid that if his people went to Jerusalem to worship the one true God, they would be united. They would heal. The fracture between north and south would mend, and he would lose his kingdom. His fear was not unfounded. Unity in worship has always had the power to unite God's people across every other division. But rather than trust God with this tension, Jeroboam chose to protect his throne by fracturing their worship.
The Distortion Is Worse Than Abandonment
What Jeroboam does next is fascinating and deeply troubling. He creates two golden calves, placing one in Bethel in the south of his territory and one in Dan in the far north. Then he makes his infamous declaration: "Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt."
Many scholars believe this was not a complete abandonment of the worship of Yahweh. In fact, that would have been simpler to condemn. What Jeroboam created was something far more dangerous: a distortion of true worship. He took the mighty works of God, the exodus from Egypt, and attributed them to golden images. He gave the people an alternative way to worship, one that seemed familiar, one that used the language of faith, but one that ultimately led them away from God.
The prophet Hosea would later condemn the northern kingdom for exactly this corruption. In Hosea 8:5–6, God speaks of the "calf of Samaria," and throughout his prophecy, Hosea describes not outright paganism but a tragic blending of Yahweh worship with idolatry. Whether Jeroboam intended to create something new or merely offer a different form of worship, the result was the same: it drew the people away from the living God.
The text in 1 Kings pulls no punches. It declares that "this thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, so as to cut it off and to destroy it from the face of the earth." Throughout the rest of the books of Kings, nearly every northern king is condemned for walking "in the way of Jeroboam and in his sin which he made Israel to sin." His distorted worship became the defining apostasy of an entire nation.
What If We Were Truly United?
Reading this passage today, I cannot help but wonder: what would happen if God's people were actually united in the true worship of God? What if we laid aside the things that fracture us into competing groups and factions? What if we were truly one, as Jesus prayed we would be in John 17?
Jesus prayed, "That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me." Unity in worship is not merely organizational or institutional. It is spiritual. It flows from worshiping God in spirit and in truth, from gathering around what is genuinely of God rather than what we have constructed for our own comfort or control.
But this raises the urgent question: what is the true worship of God, and what are the forms or ideas that separate us?
The Question That Haunts Us
This is not an easy question to answer, and I suspect it requires humility and discernment that we often lack. True worship of God must begin with God's revelation of himself, not with our preferences or political fears. It must center on Christ, the true temple, the true sacrifice, the true presence of God among us. It must be rooted in Scripture and the apostolic faith handed down through the centuries.
And yet, how often do we, like Jeroboam, create alternative forms of worship that protect our territory, our identity, our sense of control? How often do we emphasize secondary matters, claiming they are essential, while the fractures deepen and the people drift? How often do we choose what is familiar and comfortable over what is faithful?
Jeroboam's golden calves were not obviously pagan. They used the language of Israel's faith. They invoked the exodus. They created places of worship. But they were still a corruption, a distortion that led the people away from God. And they kept the people divided.
Perhaps the lesson for us today is this: we must constantly examine not only what we worship but how we worship. We must ask ourselves whether our practices, our emphases, our traditions draw us closer to the living God or merely serve to protect our own kingdoms. We must be willing to lay down what fractures us and seek the unity that can only come from worshiping the one true God in the way he has revealed.
The golden calves were a tragedy. They were the institutionalization of division and distortion. But they also serve as a warning. May we not repeat Jeroboam's sin. May we seek true worship, and in that worship, may we find the unity that Christ prayed for and that the world so desperately needs to see.
