My Blog

Tag: Idolatry

  • Something to Think About on Thanksgiving Day

    As Americans prepare to celebrate our National Day of Thanksgiving, we are hearing reports from Mali, Beirut, and France about terrorist attacks. For many of us, these reports recall painful memories of our own experience with terrorism on September 11, 2001 and the days, months, and years that followed. 

    It is difficult to give thanks for the blessings of liberty when attacks on the liberties of others make us aware of how vulnerable all humanity is in the hands of terrorists. Right now, we are especially conscious that our lives are connected in the human community and that we are not really as self-sufficient as we might think.

    Theologian Walter Brueggemann points out that the observance of Thanksgiving reminds us that life is a gift.

    Thanksgiving is a contradiction of the values of a market economy that imagines we are self-made and can be self-sufficient. When we give thanks, we commit an act of defiance against the seductions of our society. . . We may sing all kinds of patriotic songs and feast to satiation on Thanksgiving Day. Beyond all of that is our acknowledgement that life is a gift that evokes response. We are never self-starters. The drive for self-sufficiency is an unnecessary and futile idolatry.

    Enjoy family, friends, and a bountiful feast on Thanksgiving Day. Then, sometime during the day, find a place where you can be alone and quiet for half an hour or so. Take a pen, some paper, and this quotation with you. Read it over a few times and then make a list of things that make your life what it is because God and others have blessed you – evidence that you are not self-sufficient. Say a prayer of thanksgiving over that list and think of ways to express your gratitude to whomever else is on the list. Do it right away before the pressures of everyday life make you forget.

    Here is a video meditation for your Thanksgiving on a text by Brian Wren with piano accompaniment arranged and performed by Tom Howard.

    And here is the Collect for Thanksgiving Day from The Book of Common Prayer.

    Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

    May your heart be filled with gladness and gratitude as you celebrate Thanksgiving with those whom you love. And please continue to pray that God will comfort the victims of terror and turn the hearts of those who commit such violent acts so that they might become agents of peace.

    I'll see you in Church!

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  • To (and From) This Temple Where You Call Us…

    This portion of Solomon’s Prayer at the Dedication of the Temple (I Kings 8:27-30, 41-43) has always impressed me:

    “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! Regard your servant's prayer and his plea, O LORD my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, `My name shall be there,' that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.

     “Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name — for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm– when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.”

    Like so many before and after him, Solomon erected a physical monument to mark a place where the Divine Presence had been manifested.  Thereafter, that place and that monument became revered as what some might call a “thin place” where the presence, mystery, and power of the Eternal could be experienced.  The Unseen Deity dwelt in a physical structure and those who came there to worship the Deity would have their prayers answered and the hungers of their hearts satisfied.

    What is especially fascinating to me is that Solomon, King of a specific and chosen race of people, makes it abundantly clear that the God whose glory dwelt in this physical Temple was not their private God.  This God of Israel also answers the prayers of foreigners who are not of God’s people Israel.  How often people who think of themselves as God’s own people have forgotten this kind of radically inclusive monotheism!

    Years ago, when Gay and I were visiting Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, I was impressed that they opened the great central doors in the west end of the Cathedral during the reading of the Gospel and at the time of the dismissal.  As the procession passed through the worshipping congregation during the singing of the last hymn, everyone turned around and faced that open door.  Then, at the end of the hymn, the Deacon gave the dismissal, “Let us go forth in the Name of Christ.”  And we all responded, “Thanks be to God.”

    I have borrowed that ceremonial custom in congregations where I have served, although people on the back pew have convinced me that there are some Sunday mornings when the weather is just too cold to open the doors.  It seems to me to be a powerful way to remind ourselves that the Gospel with which we have been entrusted is not meant to be confined to our beautiful sacred building, but is for the world beyond those doors.  When we are dismissed into that world, it reinforces the belief that the nourishment we have received in Word and Sacrament inside the house of worship is to fortify us for the work God has prepared for us to do outside in the mission field at our doorstep. What happens inside the edifice with the gathered congregation is in the service of the purpose we are to pursue as we scatter after worship.  It is not just to make us feel holy.  It is to make it possible for us to be witnesses to God's holiness in the living of our lives.

    As my mother used to say, "You may be the only bible some people ever read."

    Whenever the structures of Christianity, whether our buildings or our governance, become more important than God’s mission, we have drifted into idolatry.  The God we worship cannot be contained in our structures any more than in the highest heaven.  The God we worship is not our private God.  The God we worship took on human flesh in Jesus Christ, went to and from the Temple, and became the Temple so that all people could be drawn to him when we lift him up.  That is our mission, both inside and outside the structures we have created. 

    When these structures cease to serve that mission, we don’t need to tear them down.  But we do need to revise them so that they may be restored to their rightful purpose in service to the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of all Creation.

    Ron Short Sig Blue

     

     

     

    P.S. – This great English hymn comes to mind, especially the second stanza.