Rev. Sara Wilcox

“Idols Among Us”

Nov 27, 2011

Let us pray: May our hearts be freed from the things that keep us from you.  Prepare us God to seek your Word in the message spoken here today.  Amen.

Today’s scripture texts from the book of Joshua and the gospel of Matthew present an image of God that seems well less than convincing in light of the gospel promises of Jesus Christ.   It helps to acknowledge that there are in fact outright contradictions in the Bible.  Identical stories and histories that are not identical at all when shared through the lens of a biblical writer.  The ability to acknowledge this about scripture can be incredibly liberating at the same time that it unearths a degree of uncertainty and requires we open our hearts to the mystery of our God.  When we view the scripture as the box we put around God and not the entire box in which God perceives human history we are opened to the reality that God truly surpasses our greatest understandings. For me it affirms that in all the divine mystery we encounter and have not yet even known,  it is incredibly appropriate that God alone is worthy of our praise and that our task is to commit ourselves to God’s realm among us.

Now the book of Joshua is one of those books that reads like War and Peace, hardly in line with Jesus’ command to love our enemy or to turn the other cheek.  We encounter our scripture reading at the end of the book as Joshua preaches the importance of putting away idols and serving God alone, which seems like a pretty biblical message and a particularly relevant message for our culture today.

But let’s back up to the beginning, in chapter one of the book of Joshua, this great leader tells the Israelites to prepare because they are going to get the land that God has promised to them.  Joshua first affirms that God’s hand has delivered the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and then justifies their course of action, which involves what equates to genocide of native peoples, and the war and violence that seems to be a common thread of all empires.  Read literally, Joshua is the perfect biblical text that can support the human urge to engage in war, to secure power in an effort to take land from another people who one envisions are less valued and less worthy of God’s protection.  It’s a perfect text for consideration when thinking about idols, because a certain danger of all religious traditions is making the sacred scriptures the idol that we worship instead of using the scripture as lens by which we might begin to understand the God of all people who we serve.

In the book of Joshua, when the land is being distributed among the twelve tribes of Israel, the Ruebenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Mannesah build an altar on the side of the Jordan River—the other Israelites are angered by this idolatry, angered to the extent that they propose judgment in the form of violence.  The builders of the altar explain that they had only built it so that their children would bear witness to the truth that they served the God of Israel.  And while all is smoothed over between the Israelite tribes in Joshua, it made me think about the fine line between good intentions and idolatry and how easy we slip from one to another.  That danger is always lurking, just waiting around the corner.  The same human instinct that finds Joshua demanding that the Israelites choose who they will serve is critical for us still today because of the ways in which we so easily fall prey to the idols that surround us.  And while I hardly think any of us are open to forcefully taking land from others and calling it God’s will, it helps to be on the lookout for the ways we serve the idols we create, the ways we serve our ego and justify our behavior—because that is the kind of activity that stands ready to weaken the body of Christ and make God’s realm beyond our reach.

You might have realized that famed charging bull that is found near Wall Street in NYC bears an uncanny resemblance to a golden calf… the idol that was created by Aaron to represent God in the absence of Moses in the book Exodus.  The Occupy Wall Street movement continues to seek a system that better balances our priorities in juxtaposition to a banking system that has profited off so many in our nation and continues to do so even in the midst of such an extraordinary imbalance of wealth.    The idol of wealth and consumption and greed is alive a well in our country.  And it is lurking around every corner…convincing us we need what they have and that we never have enough.  So each day we have to assess the innocent behaviors in our lives done without bad intentions and consider the ways that they serve the idols among us.  We have to think about the places we shop, the products we buy, the causes we are ready to stand up for because the idols are among us, perpetuating policies that further entrench the wealth of many and leave others without food or in the midst of foreclosure or without the necessary health care that could save their life.

Joseph urged the Israelites choose today whom you will serve, urging them to put away the gods of their ancestors.  Still today, we too must decide.

This past week was devastating for the Penn State community.  Following allegations of sexual abuse by a former assistant coach, legendary football coach Joe Paterno and college president Graham Spanier were fired by the college’s Board of Trustees.  While students stood in the streets in protests, the general consensus in the sports world was that the terminations were justified and in fact, a little late in coming.  The story of Coach Sandusky victimizing young boys should tear our hearts to pieces and it should make us demand better.  The failure of college officials to appropriately respond to the early reports of this abuse left countless other young boys victims in a culture that prioritized football and the protection of reputations above the safety of children and accountability for wrong doing.  Good people made horrible decisions—some doing the minimal that was required others doing nothing at all.  And as we stand in judgment we should be cautious of righteous indignation, because we are all susceptible to the idols among us, perhaps not with the same implications but meaningful nonetheless.  The inherent danger of institutions is that we fail to do what we know we should do because it may harm the institution.  The institution becomes the idol we serve and we protect the institution at all cost.  There is much that we do not know about this situation, but one thing is apparent somewhere in the institution that is college sports or Penn State football doing everything possible to protect children who were in danger became a secondary concern.   The lack of courage by those who knew was directly related to a culture that made malfeasance by all kinds of people in the institution acceptable.  It’s hard not to envision the variety of things that could drive such blatant failures by people in the position to make a difference.  But idols lurk everywhere.  The idol of college athletics, the idol of a school’s reputation, the idol of a football coach and his own reputation or that of a friend’s—that’s the danger of the idol.  In service to idols we will give up the very core of who we are as created in God’s image and in service to God’s will.  We will justify what we are doing or not do anything to protect our friends and a powerful program and a university we love.  This isn’t just about Penn State, though—it’s about an entire sport’s culture that says win at all costs—this could have happened in lots of other places than State College, Pennsylvania.

In the planting of a church community we have been conscious of recognizing the dangers of institutions.  This little church community has its roots in the recognition that institutions often fail the people they serve and that the danger of growing a church is that we become the institution we have feared.  There are idols among us here—even though we don’t have a women’s fellowship filled with folks ready to tell us how it’s always been done at Land of the Sky UCC, many of us emerge from past churches, institutions that were created to serve the body of Christ.  Some have done that well and some have folded to the idols of the institution—so how we do we keep watch for the idols among us as we vision for our future?

At our covenant retreat we brainstormed ideas about how we might pick leaders as we move forward.  We brainstormed ideas most of which stemmed from how it had been done in prior communities and as we were coming to some consensus about a possibility one of our members named that it sounded an awful lot like the hierarchy of old church and expressed a concern about the power struggles he feared might take place that have no place in the body of Christ.  A handful of folks encouraged us back to a hybrid model of past, present and future that seems less institutional.  And it reminded me how easily we can be seduced into the institutional models of yesterday and into decisions and visions that are counter to God’s realm among us.

In the past two years, Amanda and I have kept our eye out for real estate for this little community of ours.  Not because we are in any position to purchase any real estate, but because we figure at some point we might need a building.  There is a church in the Five Points neighborhood built in the last decade that has been for sale for almost the entire time Land of the Sky has existed.  Originally it was 1.3 million dollars, and then it reduced to $740,000 and recently it was sold for $555,000 to a yoga group that wanted to turn it into a community center.  The neighborhood surrounding the church successfully mounted a campaign against the center and for a moment it seemed like the building might be back on the market.  At that news my imagination ran away with the possibility of finding a way to make that building ours.  I called Amanda and at every naysaying she gave, I urged her to imagine what was possible.  She reports that she spent the afternoon looking at the website and imagining the space as ours.  We were smitten for about 4 hours.  Seth apparently talked Amanda out of it even before I called and expressed I was having a change of heart.  But the sage wisdom he put forth was that the focus on a building would ultimately change our community—and it would take the focus away from building God’s realm to simply a building.  Buildings are the concrete holders for our institutions and they take on the same needs as all institutions.  In our time as tenants at Westminster Presbyterian Church we have often said—thank God we don’t own a building.  We have spent the last two and a half years building up the body of Christ and not simply focused on a building and that is a gift. While we know find ourselves asking where will we live next that question has a final answer, yet to be unveiled to us.  But today we spend our time welcoming newcomers, caring for moms of newborns and members that are ailing.  We spend our time serving the poor in our community and standing up for the injustices that so many face every day in God’s world.  We don’t spend our time asking how will we maintain and sustain a building?  We don’t find ourselves in a position of needing income for the mortgage or the extensive heating  and considering taking it from our outreach commitment or the children’s education fund or the fellowship money?  Amanda and I had great visions for this building in short time and once we floated back down to earth from our dream world of having our own building—we reflected on how quickly we imagined making risky decisions that would easily endanger the finances of any young community and that would most certainly co-opt the creative energy in our midst that is spent in labor and love to those outside of our doors and in creating community here among us.

As we continue to grow this community and build our future together we will continue to exist in the tension of determining what it means for us to be church.  We will feel compelled to prepare for the future and make decisions about our life together and we will inevitably face the challenge of creating church in new ways without being beholden to the ways we have come from.  We will make these choices in the context of a culture that tempts us with all kinds of decisions that are idolatrous.

Institutions are inevitably dangerous because we as imperfect human beings are the people who make decisions within them.  We see that truth in institutions that are easy to vilify like Wall Street and the churches we have run from and in things we have invested our hearts like in a college football team and the churches we are grateful for having formed out faith.   And while today’s gospel message may have you concerned about not arriving to your destination on time—I think the emphasis is really on the preparation because at every turn we will encounter idols among us.  In our personal lives, in the institutions we work in and those we love, in the church we are building together—there are idols among us.  Let us be prepared—let us keep awake and be ready.

A recent Christian Century article, included a story from a New England pastor who explains his church has a picture perfect quaint sanctuary.  He was approached by a movie production company that wanted to shoot a scene for an Adam Sandler movie in their sanctuary.  He was offered $10,000 and dutifully considered it.  As he envisioned what the church could do with an extra $10,000 he decided that the church wasn’t for sale and turned down the request.  He was then contacted and offered $50,000 to allow the shoot to take place.  Now for $10K—NO!  But $50,000 was a different story so he felt compelled to take it to the leadership team of the church.  At a meeting they discussed the possibility of sharing their sacred space for a less than sacred cause, and most everyone agreed that $50,000 was a lot of money and it could go a long way for an awful  lot of sacred causes.  A couple of folks on the leadership team were opposed to the taking of the money.  They took a vote and people were decidedly in favor of allowing them to do the shoot.  It appeared they were going to be shooting an Adam Sandler movie in their church.  The pastor reports that a member of the leadership team in support of allowing the shoot spoke up and said I think we should reconsider this.  The question is not will we allow a production company to use our space for $50,000 the question is will we injure people we love for $50,000…and their answer was No.  I can’t help but think that the kingdom of God looks like that…   People in institutions thinking beyond themselves and the moment and the institution…  I pray that is so for us as we move forward.  May we always first work for God’s realm among us and when we encounter the idols among us in opposition to God’s realm may we have the courage to say so.   Amen.

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