Someone I know used to have a mug that said "Sacred cows make the best hamburgers." This pithy statement captures part of what is at stake when we declare certain things to be off limits, taboo or untouchable.

I used to think that Aaron was a pretty smart person. After all, they don't make you the High Priest of the whole Jewish people unless you are a pretty capable person. But now I believe he was an amateur -- at least at the art of making excuses. You can't compare him to Lance Armstrong.

G-d tells Moses that the Jews have built a golden calf. But Moses waits to see it for himself before he breaks the Tablets. Why? Tune in for a novel explanation.

What can we learn from the fact that Moses put the broken tablets into the Ark along with the new tablets? We move on from our mistakes, but we also take the lessons along with us.

Later, after the dust settles, God speaks to Moses: "Uplift the people. Let each give one half Shekel as soul atonement. Twenty years and older. Rich and poor. All give the same."

What are we doing when we build and cherish churches, synagogues, and mosques of whatever size and grandeur today?

The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God. Humanity was not created to serve markets. Markets were created to serve humankind.

I don't expect every church to parade a golden calf into the park, nor every clergy member to attend a march. But ultimately, the mainline church should be integral to supporting this change.

We brought the calf to Wall Street to confess our allegiance to false Gods and to announce that something was dying for us. That death is our own belief in the sacred calf of the Wall Street picture of the universe.