RCL Proper 28A
15 October 2023
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
In 1966 I turned thirteen and joined my peers in the journey of adolescence. For my immediate circle of friends and me that journey was shaped by the original TV series ‘Star Trek’. Gene Roddenberry’s imagination gave us a vision of a future humanity unity with other species committed to creating a universe of wonder, of peace and of glorious diversity. For three years we were treated to everything from battles in space to the first inter-racial kiss ever shown on American network television.
While my friends chose to identify with Captain Kirk or Mr Sulu, I was the only one I remember who found Mr Spock, the half-human, half-Vulcan first officer, to be my mentor. Perhaps I found Spock’s commitment to a life guided by logic and a control of passion attractive because I was becoming more conscious of two dimensions of my character that still plague me – a temper that flares from time to time that sometimes leads to an impetuousness which I always regret.
Spock became my model, I might even say my idol. I am sure that my teachers were not persuaded by my attempts to declare something illogical and therefore not obligatory. I am more grateful that my wise parish priest was patient of my youthful idolatry of a fictional character and gently led me back to a closer relationship with Jesus. I learned that when you meet Jesus, you meet God, the Holy One of Israel, the One in whom all things have their being. And so, even as I continued to admire Spock, I put my idolatry aside and embraced my faith.
It is easy for human beings to fall prey to idolatry. All idols begin as models or images or ideas or experiences that enable us to understand our lives and to claim some control over the uncontrollable realities of human life. Idols start out as signs that point us towards truths that are beyond us and that are greater than the signs themselves. But the problem comes when we confuse the sign with the truth, when we describe the world only in terms of the model or the image or the idea or the experience itself.
When we look around at the world today, we can quickly see the idolatry that is afflicting our species. Some of those idols have names:
· racial or cultural or ethnic identity
· orthodoxy versus liberalism
· partisanship at the expense of the common good
· success as the measure of all human good
· progress as an inevitable trait of human history
· capitalism as morally neutral.
For example, the current horrific conflict between Israel and Hamas has come about from making idols of religion, of ethnic identity and of narratives of past wrongs that are never healed but re-opened again and again and again. An exclusive and discriminatory view of the ‘other’ has overshadowed any consideration of how differences can be strengths in creating an inclusive society.
The forces that gave rise to contemporary capitalism were intended to liberate the common people from feudalism and other oppressive social systems. But the idea that the flow of capital is morally neutral, that corporations have the same rights as human persons and that ‘a rising tide raises all ships’ has become an idol that threatens our environment and creates greater and greater disparity between the ‘rich’ and the ‘not-rich’. A Canadian philosopher and economist described our current economic model as ‘possessive individualism’.
The God whom we worship is a God who resists idolatry. No model or image or idea or experience can fully contain the mystery of the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God of Jesus. When Moses asks for God’s name, God responds with an open-ended verb that defies limitations. In the law God gives to Moses on Mount Sinai, the making of any images of the Holy One is prohibited, a prohibition intended for our benefit given our predilection to confuse images with the reality they signify.
In the prophet Daniel a similar story is told of the creation of a golden statue by King Nebuchadnezzar and his order that all people must worship it. Any who refuse to worship will be thrown into a fiery furnace and be burnt to death. Three young men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Jewish exiles who have to date fared well in Babylon refuse to worship the idol. The angry king condemns them to death and taunts them by questioning whether their God will save them. I treasure the response to the taunt.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter. If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.” (Daniel 3.16-18 NRSVue)
The three young men see through the idol and know that worshipping it will not lead to that abundant life God promises to all who seek to live as creatures made in the image of God and called to the life-long process of moulding their lives into living icons of God’s love and care for the world. The three young men know that refusing to bow down to the idols of the age comes at a price.
But what God offers makes any such price a bargain. What God offers us is the opportunity to become more fully human just as Jesus is fully human. What God offers us is the opportunity to share in the divine life made known to us in Jesus.
Throughout our lives we have moments when we may grasp at idols rather than endure demands of the truth of God made known to us in Jesus of Nazareth. We may find excuses to absent ourselves from the wedding feast of Christian discipleship. But there are always people such as Moses or my parish priest almost sixty years ago who pray us back into faithfulness. We are never left bereft of voices that call out to the Spirit to restore us to our rightful minds. God will never let us go and in that steadfast love we trust and see through the idols and discover the glory of God.
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