The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for February 16, 2007

Texts: 34:29-35/Luke 9:28-36

Title: “Let it Shine”

              There is God, and then there are the idols we have made into god.  The human impulse to be in relationship with that which is greater than ourselves originated with our first human ancestor. History has shown that the quest to be in relationship with that which is greater than ourselves has taken us all over the map.

              There is God, and then there are the idols we have made into god. The “greater than ourselves” may be any unsatisfied aspiration or longing that occupies our imaginations and claims much of our time and our resources.  The “greater than  ourselves” might be the personal appearance we present to the world.  We in the West spend billions of dollars in personal care products, spas, and health clubs all that our bodies might be displayed to the best effect. 

              We would be in relationship with that which is greater than ourselves.  The “greater than ourselves” might be the reputation we are building in business of some other professional endeavor.  Men and women have sacrificed, family, health, and reputation in their quest to fulfill the ego needs, the greater than themselves, that keeps beckoning them on.    

              We would be in relationship with that which is greater than ourselves. The “greater than ourselves” might be the muse that keeps the artist, the poet, or the composer awake at night.  The artist willing to sacrifice everything for her art is not a fiction.  What the world lauds as genius, may in reality be compulsion to connect with the greater.

              We would be in relationship with that which is greater than ourselves.  The “greater than ourselves” may be the future of our offspring.  Parents in every age have made extraordinary sacrifices to insure the success of that their children, that those children might enjoy advantages the parents were not privileged to have.

              We would be in relationship with that which is greater than ourselves.  Our quest to establish and maintain those relationships has taken us all over the map.

              The Bible, as you might expect, directs great attention to human beings in relationship to that which is greater than ourselves, God consistently using his prophets to chasten us for misidentifying the greater than ourselves. One example appearing in the book of Isaiah: “The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine.  He cuts down cedars or chooses a Holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest.  He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it.  Then it can be used as fuel.  Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread.  Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it.”

              Of the same wood that he uses to express himself artistically, warm himself, and cook for himself, he makes a god before whose images he bows down and worships. How smug we can be in mocking the folly of the carpenter, yet how blind we can be the idol worship in which we ourselves are engaged.   

              Ancient Athens housed its share of the smug.  Gathering place of the great philosophers of antiquity, by the time of Jesus Athens had already established itself as the intellectual capital of the civilized world. The book of Acts tells us that the Apostle Paul visited there. And what did he see when he got there? Idols, everywhere idols. 

              Paul, a Jew, and later a zealous convert to Jesus, was offended by the display, and he was bold enough to tell the philosophers and anyone who would listen that he was offended. You see, when you offended the God Paul worshiped, the father of Jesus Christ, you offended Paul.  Simple as that.  Of course, Paul was more than offended, he would not rest until he put the misguided straight.

              His offensive took this form:  “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’”  Paul doesn’t tell us just what the objects of their worship were, however, we do know that the assembly of gods they worshiped didn’t provide an adequate buffer against the fates, thus the altar to “an unknown god.”   

                  We would be in relationship with that which is greater than ourselves.  Moreover, how fortunate we are when we set the terms for that relationship. It is difficult to offend a god of our own creating when we make all decisions pertaining to worship.  How difficult to offend our god when the creeds and the protocols that govern our worship are of our own devising, and we are free to define the level of our accountability, if any, we maintain to our god. That, my friends, is freedom.

              Freedom of the sort I am describing, freedom to create our own gods, freedom without accountability, has been an allure to humans from the dawn of time. The idols we create have no voice except the voice we choose to give them.  They have no power or authority unless we willingly confer it. 

              There is God, and the idols we have made into god, and sometimes we confuse the two. Convinced that they are serving God, rather than gods, people have done unimaginable, unspeakable things. History is filled with the bloodiest and merciless atrocities the human mind can conceive, all perpetrated by the deluded zealot who believed he was acting in the name of God.  To what kind of god is such a zealot accountable?  Not God, but the god of his own creating.

              I am not well read in the world’s major religions, but I do not know of a major religious tradition whose God advocates the kinds of atrocities that have been committed in the name of God.  Yet, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, innocent people will die, killed by people who have been taught that their terrorist act will win them special standing in God’s kingdom.

              No, the zealot murderer maintains no accountability to God, how can he while he murders the brother or sister created by the God he says he worships? The zealot murderer does not worship God, he worships an idol.

              There is God, and the idols we have made into god.  Self-fabricated, made in our own image gods, these gods abound everywhere. We too have been taken in by the huckster marketing his wares.  We have given god status to material aspirations, lifestyle choices, and many, many other things to which we slavishly devote our time and energy. Our checkbooks and calendars are good indicators of where are passions are directed.

              God gives us freedom to misdirect our passions. As long we have that freedom God has a challenge on his hands.  Given the choice, we may well choose idols over God. 

              The first lesson read this morning, the lesson from Exodus, is set against the backdrop of some bad choices.  Recall with me that Moses made not just one, but two trips up Mt. Sinai.  Over a forty day period spent on the mountain in the company of God on the first trip, Moses was given the tablets of the law. Tired of waiting for him to return, the Israelites implored Moses’ brother Aaron to make a god for them.  This he was willing to do.  Things went down hill from there in a bad way.  The people would ultimately suffer greatly for their sin.

              God called Moses to come to him on the mountain a second time.  After a time Moses was given a second set of tablets of the law, Moses having thrown down the first set in a rage when he came down the mountain and discovered the people worshiping the golden calf.  Moses was given the tablets, but also was given a promise to carry back down with him to the people, God declaring, “I hereby make a covenant.  Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the Lord; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.”

              Note the language, “I hereby make a covenant.” The gods we create have no covenants to make, and no compassion to extend. They have no task and one only.  We create our gods to gratify our ego needs. No, friends, the gods we create can’t covenant, for gods enjoy no independence from the people who create them. It is as if the maker of the god could covenant with himself, and that is an impossibility.

              I will covenant, God declared.  Friends, covenant is a two party transaction, the parties to the covenant enjoying rights but also accountability to responsibilities under the terms of the covenant.  God chooses to be accountable to us.

              God established a covenant with the very people who just days earlier had turned their backs on him. But how would he demonstrate the authority upon which the covenant rested? God, of course, has many options available to him. The one he chose involved Moses.

Recall that Moses came away from his meeting with God a changed man, not at all surprising considering he had had a face to face encounter with God. His appearance was altered in such a way, his skin shining, that his own brother, Aaron, and the Israelites, were afraid even to approach him. The glory of God had rubbed off on Moses, and that glory was frightening to behold. 

              Israel knew a great deal about God already, but the lessons hadn’t firmly taken.  The people continued to stray, behavior that would continue into the future, and will continue, so long as people enjoy free will. God does not enforce compliance, but honoring our free will, gives us the freedom to enter covenant with him, or not.

              This Sunday before the first Sunday in Lent each year is identified as Transfiguration Sunday, a time when God reveals his glory to his people inaugurating in the first instance with Moses a new covenant with his people, and in the second, disclosing, in effect, another covenant through Jesus.  “This is my chosen, listen to him.”

              Two events, God doing an “in your face” both times.  Decisive acts each one, God chose to assert himself unequivocally to prove that authority belonged to him alone and no other. God needs to assert himself from time to time to let the likes of us know who really is in charge.

              God has not so unequivocally announced his presence with grand displays in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of anyone else we have read about from the time of Jesus.  But God continues to assert his authority, continues to require our obedience. No, God may not act through history altering interventions of the sort we read about in the Bible.  But he very well may wish to act through you or me, people who are willing to accept his authority, and be accountable to the truth he through Christ, and the prophets, has imparted.

              There is God and the idols we have made into God.  You and I know God, privileged to know him through Christ who is God in the flesh.  In our baptisms we were grafted into Christ.  We are part of him. That can’t be altered.  However, we can choose to live our lives in such a way that for all appearances that bond with Christ does not exist.  We have free will.

              We have free will, but true freedom is only obtainable by making the right choices.  Through the right choices we make collectively this world is being changed into the world God created it to be.  That is not happening in any grand or flashy way.  God’s glory may not register in our faces as it did in the face of Moses, but there is light in our souls that God is constantly urging forth.  Our challenge, yours and mine, is to rid our lives of all the other gods that are displacing God, and let his light fill our lives, and our light shine for the world.  AMEN

PRAYER

              Glorious God, father of our Savior Christ Jesus, in the transfigured presence of Moses the people of Israel beheld your glory.  On another mountain, at another time, your glory was again manifest, your words echoing forth, “this is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.” We have come to behold your glory, and yes, we have come to listen.  Help us, O God, to free ourselves from all that distracts and diverts our attention. Teach us patience when answers do not come, when prayer seems futile and meaningless.

              O Christ, head of the church, you reign over a contentious body, over people who stubbornly insist upon having their views and positions on matters of faith upheld.  You call us to a common ministry, but we continually form ourselves into clusters of the like minded. Though we are heirs of the same tradition and read the same Bible, unity escapes us.  Forgive our foolish ways, the poverty of our commitment to the things that matter most.           

              Lord, even as the merriment surrounding Mardi Gras builds to Mardi Gras day, we in the church prepare once again for the journey that will take us to Easter. We anticipate the joy of that occasion, but we know that a long journey stretches before. May the weeks of Lent offer each one of us, O God, an opportunity to reassess and reexamine who we and what we are called to do as your children. Lord, unfamiliar as it may be, may prayer and contemplation open new windows to the reality you are.       

              Warring madness continues to hold the world in its grip, precious resources wasted in weaponry to kill each other, even as so many in the world go ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clothed.  Hate continues to stain the human heart, O God, populating the world with its offspring.  In your mercy intercede, bracing women and men of courage and faith to stand against the tide and insist upon change. Not our wills, but your holy will, be done.

              Console the forlorn today, those who have suffered great loss. We pray for all those deprived of friends and loved ones by death.  May your light shine in the darkness that has enveloped the widow deprived of a loved one killed in Iraq.  Be with the mother who grieves a son dead as a result of an encounter on one of our city’s streets.  Abide with the family whose lives have been overturned as a result on an accident on the highway.  So much grief to be borne, O God, how shall we ever bear it?  To you we turn for strength.

              These are contentious times in the Congress of the United States.  We pray for our elected representatives today, for U.S. representatives and senators upon whose wisdom and leadership we must rely.  Grant them clarity of thought as they take up the nation’s business.  May the decisions they make be consistent with your holy will, O God.

              As we have so many times before, O God, we pray for the restoration of our church and community.  Challenged to move forward even as so much in our surroundings tethers us in the moment, we pray that the decisions we and our civic leaders make in rebuilding may issue in a church and community even more vital and welcoming than they were in the past.

              As our prayers ascend, may your blessings descend on each person who is worshiping here today.  Acquainted with all our needs and hopes, prosper, O God, all that is true and just in us, and discourage all that is false and destructive. We lift these prayers in the name of your Son, our Savior, Christ Jesus who taught us when praying to say…