Sermons

Oct 16 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

One year ago, Susanna and I had the great joy of traveling to Guatemala, a country ravaged now by flooding, with deaths on a scale very similar to the number killed in Hurricane Katrina. One of the affected villages was one of our favorites – Santiago de Atitlan, on the shores of the majestic Lake Atitlan.

This village is most famous for their worship of a strange little god named Maximon. The mythology surrounding him is an interesting combination of Mayan and Christian traditions. Maximon is actually a small statue dressed in not one but two Stetson hats, colorful silk scarves and boots. He smokes cigars, drinks rum, and promotes fertility in the fields, the return of the monsoon season, and much sexual behavior in the village. He dies and resurrects every Holy Week. One visits him in a small house appointed to host him for the year, a shaman chants prayers and offers copal incense, and you leave him money. It sounds silly and odd, but Maximon was actually quite a powerful figure to be around, and I think he taught me something I needed to learn at the time.

Now most of us understand that all statues and pictures - whether of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, St. Michael, Maximon, or Hopi kachinas – are only symbols of a spiritual reality. People don’t generally worship the object itself; they worship the invisible spiritual reality that the object represents. For this reason perhaps we tend to dismiss the whole biblical prohibition against idols. We just don’t see it as such a big deal to have a little statue of the Virgin Mary or Maximon in the house, as I do.

Ah, but there are idols among us that we should be wary of. I’m not speaking about statues, incense and candles. I’m thinking of things that are much more prevalent in our society, much more powerful and dangerous. I define these idols as anything that promises something it can’t deliver.

Addiction is a good example. Perhaps addiction is actually just a modern word for idolatry. For what is addiction, if not the placing of all our energy and trust in something that won’t deliver what it promises? Addicts give up relationships, money, health, self-worth, everything in the vain hope that what they are addicted to will give them happiness, bliss, or comfort. And in the end, it delivers the opposite: unhappiness, isolation, and the ruination of health. That’s what idols do: they betray our trust in them.

There are other idols that are actively promoted culturally: the idol of youth and beauty, which promises endless attraction and vitality, but delivers insecurity; the idol of nationalistic superiority and power, which promises peace and prosperity, but seems to be delivering isolation, violence, and debt; the idol of success and consumerism, promising personal satisfaction but resulting in stress and inner emptiness. When we place our trust in any of these idols - when we give them our devotion, our money, our time, our fervent belief that they will save us - we are inevitably disappointed.

With all this in mind, perhaps we can hear our readings appointed for today with fresh ears. From Isaiah: I am the Lord; and there is no other; besides me there is no god. The Psalm: As for all the gods of the nations, they are but idols; but it is the Lord who made the heavens. And Paul, who praises the church in Thessalonica: You turned from idols, to serve a living and true God.

And then there is the gospel. Some Pharisees and others wanted to trap Jesus in the act of idolatry, or, failing that, as a traitor to Rome. They asked him Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? What is behind this question is a Jewish mind-set that says that the very presence of Rome as a dominating power in Israel is idolatrous, and that so are such things as emperor worship, or in this case, even the carrying around of Roman coins that bear the likeness of Caesar, who was known as the Son of God. So they wanted to know if Jesus, supposedly a very holy Jewish rabbi, would cave in to idolatry and admit that he and his followers paid tribute to the emperor. Or perhaps even better, maybe he’d take a stand against all this, and they’d have him arrested. It was a trap either way.

Jesus turned the tables. He asked them to produce the idolatrous coin. When one of the Pharisees reached in his pocket and pulled one out, you can almost hear his laughter. Whose head is on this coin you yourself carry around? The emperor’s! Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? But then, after revealing that they were idolatrous, at least according to their own superficial standards, he raised the conversation to a whole new level, silencing everyone. He simply said Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God what is God’s.

Give to God what is God’s. And what is God’s? Everything. Our whole being. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and all your strength.

Jesus said, in effect: Pay the stupid tax to Caesar if you don’t want to get in trouble. You’re concerned about a little idolatry in the form of paying a tax. But let’s look at real idolatry, shall we? I’m concerned about how you live your life. What or whom do you really serve in your life? Give to God what is God’s. And that is everything: your whole being.

You see, Jesus understood that true idolatry is the giving of our trust, the devotion of our life to anything that is not of God. You can’t serve two masters, Jesus said. You’ll be devoted to one and not the other. You can’t serve God and the demands and seductions of the world. So serve God with all your heart.

I’ve had to ask myself hard questions over the years about what I really serve, and it’s not always been God. What I’ve learned is that devoting my life to God is not some big moment where I definitively, finally, hand it all over. It’s not that dramatic, sudden, or easy. It is rather a slow process of surrender, and it is quite ordinary.

Serving God has to do with how we spend our free time – does it lift our spirits and turn us towards vitality and love? It has to do with how we go through our working hours – do we cultivate God’s presence in the demanding environment of work and let him guide us there and give us peace and confidence? It has to do with how we treat our bodies, whether we care lovingly for this Temple of the Spirit. It has to do with our relationships – do we seek to serve the greater good with everyone we encounter through the day? It has to do with the kinds of thoughts and consciousness that we carry around all day. It is in the little things that we serve various idols or we serve the living God. It is in the little things that we can see what really dominates our life.

This is the time of year that we have the opportunity to examine another area of potential idolatry or service to God. It is the season that we ask for financial pledges to support our common life here. I used to think, and perhaps you do, that spending a couple of months raising this issue of money was a lot for such a relatively unimportant and seemingly unspiritual subject. But I’ve since come to understand that this is appropriate, especially in our culture; we’re dominated by the chase after money, the fears we have about it, the hopes and dreams we place upon it, the central position it holds in our daily life. This is why Jesus talked a lot about money. It is a matter of potential everyday idolatry; it is also a very ordinary and yet powerful way in which we can give our life more fully to God.

What place does money hold in your life? For most of us, there is at least a little idolatry. We expend a lot of effort, anxiety, control, and hope towards the dream that money will make us happy, fulfilled, peaceful, and free. And yet this effort often results in the opposite: fear, emptiness, worry, enslavement.

An old joke has a Baptist, whose members are famous for tithing, drawing a circle around himself, throwing money straight up into the air, and saying whatever lands inside the circle is God’s, and the rest is mine. An Episcopalian sees this, and throws his money up into the air saying whatever stays up in the air is God’s, and whatever falls to the ground is mine.

But the fact is, all our money belongs to God. Money, that ordinary, unglamorous measure of work and time that passes so unthinkingly through our fingers so many times every day, is God’s. Just as our breathing is God’s, our bodies, our time, our work, our relationships, our use of this planet’s resources, all the ordinary things in life. Nothing glamorous, nothing dramatic, but with all these little things added together that make up our life, we either serve God or we serve idols that won’t deliver what they promise.

When we live as if everything is God’s, it changes how we think about and how we use our money. If it is all God’s, then we know it is temporarily in our care as a resource to be used for God’s purposes: not for our own needs and desires alone, but for the greater good of this world. With this light and generous attitude, we discover that God delivers what he promises: trust and confidence. We know that God will provide for us, and that we can therefore always afford to be generous and unafraid.

Money is but one powerful example of how we are given the opportunity every day to turn from our failed idols and place our trust in the One who will deliver. Whom will you serve this day? And where will you place your trust?