August 26, 2012
Idolatry
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Once in awhile somewhere in this country things get all heated up about posting a copy of the 10 Commandments on public property. I’m surprised we haven’t heard about it in this campaign. Maybe that’s because right now, we’re so obsessed about money. That’s all we ever hear about.

In places like Texas, where the 10 Commandments are carved in granite on the lawn of the state capitol, I wonder what might happen if legislators actually read and tried to apply them.

Honoring the Sabbath, would they shut down all commerce and activity on Saturdays - including college football games - and encourage a quiet day of fasting and meditation at home? Would they wonder if capital punishment is state-sanctioned murder in the eyes of God? Would they discourage coveting by re-distributing wealth?

The ones that might really be a challenge for everyone across the political spectrum, however, are the first two. You shall have no other gods before me. And You shall not make for yourself any idol.

Now we usually think of “other gods” as the gods of other religions, ones we don’t like. And we think of “idols” as statues of these odious deities. This is probably what the Israelites initially meant. But before too long, they understood the first two commandments in much broader terms. Idolatry became anything that might substitute for God and God’s ways. An idol was whatever had become the ultimate concern, in the service of which they were perfectly willing to sweep aside God’s ways.

As examples, the prophets pointed to nationalism, corruption, power, and hedonism. Every time Israel seemed to lose its way, they went back to the central organizing principle: You shall have no other gods before me. And You shall not make for yourself any idol.

For Christians, the central organizing reality is the person of Christ. Everything else is shaped by him and his teachings. In baptism we say You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. That’s why in our second reading, Paul talked about putting on the whole armor of Christ before heading out into this world of competing pressures and concerns. In the face of other powers, we need to know who we are.

This was the issue in the gospel we heard today, too. Many of Jesus’ disciples had abandoned him, and he wondered aloud to the rest, “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter replied “Lord, to whom can we go?” For Peter, Jesus and his teachings had become his ultimate concern, the one reality that would shape and prioritize everything else. There was nowhere else to go that made any sense.

This is also what we heard Joshua saying to the people as he was about to die. Joshua was the successor to Moses, becoming the leader after Moses died just before entering the Promised Land. Joshua was now very old. As his departing word, he put it to his people:

Look, we’ve come this far, out of slavery in Egypt, through the miserable Sinai desert for 40 long years, battling our way across the Jordan River at Jericho, settling in this land. Don’t blow it now. Don’t put other concerns before God, just because you’re trying to establish a new country and you’re surrounded by enemies. So choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Joshua’s challenge is as fresh today as it was 3,000 years ago. In the face of competing pressures and concerns, people of faith still can slip into idolatry. We all do.

On a national level, as I mentioned, the economy has become the ultimate concern, shaping our approach to every other concern according to the demands of this fearsome and voracious idol. But in the service of maintaining our high standard of living, do we really want to sweep aside God’s ways? - being good stewards of creation, caring for the stranger and the poor, glorifying God through beauty and art, healing the sick, and pursuing reconciliation among the nations? How might we switch things - putting these concerns of God’s first, and then figuring out how to shape a sustainable and healthy economy according to these priorities?

And on a personal level, idolatry is just as much an issue. We can make all sorts of things our ultimate concern, sweeping aside those good things that God intends for us. And the problem with idols is that they deliver the opposite of what they promise.

Drugs and alcohol promise ecstasy, but when put first, they deliver misery. Money promises expansiveness and freedom, but when put first, it delivers a tight little isolated life. Worry promises that it will help us avoid bad things in the future, but it only delivers unhappiness in the present. I wonder what your idol might be, your ultimate concern that will never deliver what it seems to promise, and how it shapes other concerns of yours.

So if the 10 commandments put idolatry at the top of the “Thou shalt not” list, is it simply a matter of making a choice? As Joshua said,  As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
Well, I find that usually, it’s a bit trickier.

First, we must come to terms with how our idol is not, in fact, ever going to deliver what we thought it would. This is a hard thing to admit, especially when we’ve invested so much time and energy into serving it. There’s a grief we must pass through in giving up our idols.

Then we must open ourselves to the unknown, to a lack of guarantees. When we leave behind idols, we don’t substitute them for something that, like them, offers easy promises. We return to the risk of living by faith.

The God of the Israelites was a vast and mysterious God you couldn’t even name, let alone predict. The Christ of our faith ended up on a cross, and resurrected into some incomprehensible form. So when we say that we will put God first in our lives, we are saying that we are willing to not know, but to move in a Godward direction nonetheless.

An alcoholic must trust that the unknown of life without alcohol will provide more comfort and pleasure than life with it, even if she can’t picture what that might be like. A nation consumed with economic worry must trust that shaping our priorities according to God’s ways will result in a healthier and stronger society, even if we don’t know how that will come about.

When the Israelites forsook the gods of Egypt and the relative security of slavery, they entered into a 40-year period of unknowing. They followed a cloud, and only had enough food for one day at a time. There were no guarantees, and all they could do was put one foot in front of another, and keep heading in what seemed to be God’s direction.

That’s all we can do. We can admit that our lesser gods will ultimately disappoint by not delivering what they promise. We can then face into the unknown, without any promises other than that God will continue to be present to us, and to guide us. And we can put one foot in front of another, doing our best to follow God as revealed in Christ.

Choosing to serve God, will discover that we have more than enough for this day, day by day. And over time, we will look back and realize how far we have come into a new and bountiful land.

Sermon: Proverbs 9:1-6, Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:51-58
St. Michael and All Angels
August 19, 2012

In the first reading today, we encounter Wisdom. She comes to us in Proverbs as a woman who builds a house, slaughters the animals, sets the table and invites everyone to come and eat. Chokmah is the noun for wisdom in Hebrew and Sophia in Greek. Both are feminine and invite us to look at wisdom from a feminine perspective, which involves setting a table where all are invited to come and eat together. The reading from Ephesians calls us to wise living in the form of singing and giving thanks in all things, rather than getting drunk on that which numbs us. What is it that numbs you – surfing the internet, watching television even when there is “nothing” on, eating food that doesn’t satisfy, or something else? The Gospel lesson is a continuation of a long discourse about Jesus as the bread of life. Today Jesus invites us to eat this living bread. All of these texts encourage us to live wisely.

What is the wisdom that guides your life? There is wisdom all around us on Facebook, in daily emails, in the books we are reading, and some great one liners from the movies. One of my summer favorites comes from Sonny in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: “Everything will be alright in the end. If it’s not alright, then it’s not the end.”  

Or maybe you prefer the wisdom of a teenager, who said, “I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?”  (A 15 year old)

Or as Robert Fulghum reminded us several years ago in his book All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten: “Wisdom was not at the top
of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday school. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody… When you go out into the world,
watch out for traffic,
hold hands and stick together.”

There is no shortage of wisdom out there. However, I don’t think the scriptures are interested in whom we can quote, but in how we live. For lady wisdom in Proverbs, it happens at a meal where we share our lives. There is something that happens when we sit down together and begin to tell our stories and listen to one another. I’m guessing you can recall a wonderful conversation at a table that took you to unexpected places. I have a friend that I meet with each month over a meal and the conversations leave me full and hungry at the same time. I am blown away at what we discover together and how much I am guided by my own soul in those conversations rather than the parts of me that so often speak first. The table is a place where we begin to mine our own wisdom.

Mark Nepo is a cancer survivor and a gifted poet and author. His newest book is called As Far as the Heart Can See: Stories to Illuminate the Soul. Each chapter is a very short story. After each story there are three parts designed to encourage individual and communal reflection: there are journal questions, table questions to be asked over dinner or coffee with friends and loved ones, and a meditation. We are going to use this form for adult formation this fall. A few years ago, A Season of Listening impacted St. Michael’s in significant ways. We spent a summer pairing up to simply have conversations with one another. Those conversations opened up shared passions and opportunities to deepen relationships. This fall you will be invited to join us on Sunday mornings as we share stories of compassion, hope, fear, blessing, and longing.

How will that impact us as individuals and as a community of faith? I am curious that when thousands of hungry people gathered on a hillside, Jesus had them sit in groups in order to feed them. The early church gathered over meals to pray and worship. I think that we have the opportunity to grow in our understanding of each other as we listen to one another’s stories. The Soul of Money class has touched me, as people have been honest about their relationship to money and in telling our stories, our truth; we discover the power of community in new ways. Relationship seems to be one of the paths to wisdom and at the same time, one of the fruits of it.

In the gospel lesson, Jesus invites us to not just follow him, but to “consume” him. Rather than some abstraction we can’t wrap our head around, Jesus became incarnate to show us that our task is not to think about God, but to live as God’s people. We too, are flesh and blood. We will not impress others with our words, but with our lives as we show compassion and love in all that we do. Wisdom is about embodied faith. It is made known in our actions.

I always love hearing great quotes! They inspire me, but I quickly forget them. Yet there are those moments when my life is so deeply resonant with what I believe it is as if wisdom emerges from within my soul. I am outdoors as the darkness gives way to light each morning and I know that I was born for this… to hear the birds, to see the color fill the sky and to move physically into a new day. I am talking to a man at St. Martin’s and I realize that he is living the faith that I talk about and I am growing even as I hear his story. I am frustrated with someone who has been difficult and then she expresses her vulnerability and compassion erupts from me in unexpected ways. That feels more like wisdom to me than being able to repeat someone else’s beautiful words. Perhaps wisdom is less about what we know and more about who we are. Maybe wisdom will not be found in a book or on the Internet, but in discovering and having the courage to be who we are created to be. We are inspired less by what Jesus said and more by what he did. His ability to be present to people was astounding. He was a healer and a teacher, but he was the kind of teacher who taught through his actions. He didn’t use a chalkboard or social media. He taught in the way he treated people.

I can’t say what wisdom is for each of you, but I am guessing you know it when you experience it. It begins by listening to the depth of who you are. My friend Jim called this week to tell me he has been diagnosed with leukemia. He went on to tell me that it has his attention. He’s listening. Wisdom comes from that kind of attention to our days, to our inner most selves, to one another. Wisdom grows out from our center and shows us our path. Parker Palmer says, “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.” (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation p. 3)

Every day offers us a new opportunity to live into our wisdom, or as Ephesians says, “making the most of the time” (Ephesians 5:15). It is there before us to be discovered not in what we know, but in the choices we make. Come to this table and feast on the bread of heaven. Look around at the others who are gathered here. We are young and old, male and female, many skin colors, from many parts of the country and the world, we bring questions, fears, hopes, and longings every time we step forward to eat this bread and drink this cup. We have been created in God’s wisdom and we are wise when we embrace the goodness of God in us and in each other.

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Sermon August 5, 2012
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15, Ephesians 4:1-16, John 6:24-35
St. Michael and All Angels

One of the dangers of interpreting scripture is the temptation to caricature people and situations as if they were less than they really are. We like to make everyone one-dimensional. I hear the Israelites complaining in Exodus and because I know where this is going, it is easy for me to diminish their complaints. In my head, I hear the voices of Doug and Wendy Whiner from Saturday Night Live many years ago who whined about everything, which alienated everyone around them. The skits are very funny portraits of our ability to whine and complain about almost anything while making little to no effort ourselves. But this text is much more complex than that.

Our tendency to reduce people and situations to one dimension is contributing to the breakdown of our political system. We choose to see candidates as simply pro-this or anti-that and miss the fullness of who they are. We criticize actions without taking the time to educate ourselves about the whole story. Watch out Doug and Wendy Whiner…you have some competition! This kind of thinking and behavior does great damage to our society as we quickly write people off believing they have nothing to offer us. We see it everywhere we turn as if each issue can be reduced to a sound bite or a headline. We have been flooded this week with stories about Chick-Fil-A. We all know that it isn’t about a chicken sandwich, but it is too easy to take a position without doing the deeper work. I felt that as I walked in the gay pride parade this summer past protesters waving signs of judgment. I wished they weren’t there. I didn’t want to engage them in any meaningful way. If we are going to grow as a community, as a society, as a world, we have to take the next steps together and really come to the table in new ways.

All of the readings today invite us to swim in deeper waters, to notice the layers underneath the surface, and to place our trust in a God we simply cannot grasp. Where do we get the idea that we should place people in boxes while elevating our own thinking as superior? The Ephesians text calls us to humility and love so that we can maintain the unity of the Spirit. It goes on to show that diversity is God’s good creation and then circles back to the purpose of the diversity… to build up the body of Christ. Whew! That’s quite a ride! It’s all there and there is nothing one-dimensional about this text. Diversity and unity are part of the same whole.

The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They led a miserable life and cried out to God to deliver them, but deliverance didn’t prove to be so easy either. First there was the harrowing escape, then there was the long journey through the wilderness and then the reading today describes the next big hurdle. They were hungry with no sign of food on the horizon. After all they had experienced, they wondered if being a slave wasn’t so bad and they wished they could go back to the known misery of being a slave instead of the unknown despair of the wilderness.

We pray “give us this day our daily bread” but I’m not sure that we mean it. We like our pantries full and refrigerators stocked. It makes us feel secure, but here we encounter the truth that security is not found in stuff. Security is in God. I keep hearing the psalmist ask, “from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121: 1b-2) Then I wonder what I can do to be more secure in myself.

I love to camp and do things outdoors, but I also really like to feel safe and secure. It’s a tricky balance and I’m wondering about how I can rely on God for daily bread in each day. Just this week, I completed an assignment for the Soulcraft program I am doing this year. We were supposed to do a daywalk… spend a full day out on the land with no food, no people, and no human shelter. My agenda was to be without an agenda. That was hard. It was scary to spend a whole day trusting God and nothing else. I have a terrible sense of direction and getting lost was a very real possibility. I set out at dawn with the rising sun and setting moon as my companions and began to walk. Over and over, I came across a rock that was layered. Each of the layers was thin and fragile, breaking off easily. Together the layers were strong. I saw deer, rabbits, a coyote, all kinds of birds, and I watched a hawk for a long time. Not one of them had an agenda beyond being present to the moment. They clearly understand their place in the larger world. They take only what they need. In that day, I felt the complete freedom to just be where I was, to notice what was in front of me and to experience the goodness of God’s creation.

I have been fascinated this summer by Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. In attempt to deal with profound grief and find a focus for her life that was spiraling into destruction, Cheryl bought a backpack and boots and began to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. She had never backpacked before and discovered her own version of “daily bread” as she took step after step into something wildly unpredictable. It’s not as romantic as you would think. Her shoes didn’t fit right, the backpack was WAY too heavy and she found herself in over her head more than once. The piece that amazed me was that she learned to live each day and nothing more.

As a person of faith, I find that exciting! To live each day completely dependent on the one who created us sounds like complete and utter freedom. Does that mean I have to give up my house, my pantry, and my bank account? Clearly we aren’t going to walk away from all security, but there is this larger question about what it means to trust in God. We talk about it, but what does it really look like?

The crowd that Jesus fed in the gospel lesson last week have tracked him down again. They want more. They have been fed and now they understand that there is something they hunger for that can only come from Jesus and they are determined to get it. They have this strange conversation that feels a bit like “Who’s on first?” Jesus is talking about the bread of God that comes down from heaven and they respond, “Give us this bread always.” Jesus’ reply invites them into something deeper than they have language for...they think they are asking for bread and he reframes it for them. He says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35)

Any idea what that means? I know we like to master things by understanding them. But I think we are in over our head here…and that’s a good thing. When asked to explain the Eucharist, John Calvin, a theologian who profoundly shaped the formation of the Presbyterian Church, said he “would rather experience it than to understand it.”

I am not suggesting that we check our brains at the door or give up thinking about faith. Actually, I would say the opposite: we are called to be part of something much greater than ourselves and it requires the fullness of who we are. I do believe that when we simply jump on a position, we miss an opportunity to engage fully in one another’s lives. We need to show up every time with humility and love as Ephesians describes. It is here that we grow… when we are open. We begin with the one who calls himself the “bread of life” and find really following him will take us into places that are unpredictable and uncomfortable.

Our beginning isn’t in our perfection, but in our willingness to make room for God to lead. All of these texts ask us to shift our gaze and trust in God whose steadfast love and faithful provision are beyond our ability to grasp. But it is here as we come in humility and love, offering what we have, that we discover we are indeed the body of Christ.

We live in a fast food world where the answers are available on the Internet. When we are stumped, we grab our smartphones and ask them to enlighten us. We don’t like to live in ambiguity. We choose quick fixes and easy solutions rather than grappling with the depth of a God who calls us into relationship. I am astonished at these scriptures today. I hope you will go home and live with them this week. Don’t take what I say and leave it at that. Listen for the depth of God’s message for you, for us. We are being called to build up this body in love by bringing all that we are and by trusting that the manna we receive each day is enough.