Idolatry

American Idols

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “American Idols” Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

For more than twenty years, folks have been tuning in to “American Idol.” We’re glued to ABC on Sunday and Monday nights as gifted vocalists vie for the votes of a select panel of judges and the American public. At stake are a grand prize of $250,000 and a recording contract with Hollywood Records, not to mention plenty of publicity and a national platform to share your talent.

Some “American Idol” winners go on to become superstars, like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. Perhaps the most talented American Idol finalist didn’t win. Jennifer Hudson is the youngest woman ever to receive all four major American entertainment awards. Jennifer won an Emmy for producing the animated short film “Baby Yaga.” She has received multiple Grammies, including best R&B recording for her first album. She earned an Oscar for her film debut in “Dream Girls” and a Tony award for producing the Broadway musical “A Strange Loop.” As if that weren’t impressive enough, Jennifer has a top-rated daytime talk show, and she shed eighty pounds while serving as a spokesperson for Weight Watchers.

Our reading from the Book of Exodus features a warning about the danger of idols. The Israelites had escaped slavery in Egypt and were camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai when Moses returned from the mountain top with some special instructions from God. Engraved on two tablets of stone were ten commands intended to guide the lives of the Hebrew people. These ten commandments are the very heart of the moral law of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The first four are all about our relationship with God, and the following six govern our relationship with neighbors. You might even say that living in right relationship within our community grows out of our foundational relationship with God almighty, whom alone we are to worship and serve.

The instructions to worship God alone and to refrain from making any images of God would have been a shock to the people of Israel. They lived in an Ancient Near East world where people worshipped many gods. In Egypt, where they had labored, there were more than 2,000 gods, from Isis, Osiris, and Horus to the latest Pharaoh. In Canaan, where the Israelites were bound, there were 25 deities in the pantheon of gods and spirits. Best known were the storm god of war Baal and the fertility goddess Asherah.

To worship the gods in Egyptian or Canaanite culture, you needed an image. Every cult had a life-sized statue to represent the deity, with a wooden core overlaid by precious metals and gems. Baal was portrayed with human form, a bull’s head, and a cluster of thunderbolts clenched in an upraised fist. Egyptian idols were kept in niches within temples. Each day, priests opened the shrine, cleansed and perfumed the idol with incense, place a crown upon its head, anointed it with oil, and beautified it with cosmetics. In addition to these life-sized cultic idols, families had household idols, small clay, stone or wooden images that represented the gods. These were believed to bring good luck, increase fertility, and ward off evil. With idols in temples and idols at home, the Israelites were steeped in a culture of idolatry.

To worship only one God and to refrain from making any images, that would have been deeply unsettling to the Israelites. Indeed, much of the Old Testament seems to be devoted to their struggle to worship Yahweh alone. Moses spent a little too much tome on the mountain with God and the Israelites forged a golden calf to worship. Solomon formed alliances by marrying foreign brides and permitted them to build temples to foreign gods outside of Jerusalem. Ahab and Jezebel crowned every hilltop with shrines to Baal and Asherah. It would take thousands of years, repeated foreign invasions, and the warnings of countless prophets to convince the Hebrew people that they were meant to have only one God, Yahweh.

To make sense of those first two commandments, it helps to read what our Reformation ancestor John Calvin had to say about them. Calvin pointed out that the Israelites were tempted to make idols and worship other gods because they didn’t trust that God Almighty was with them. The Egyptians and the Canaanites, when they went out to war, they carried life-sized images of their deities with them into battle. They needed to rest their eyes on their idols as physical symbols of the divine presence. How could the Israelites trust that God was with them if they didn’t have a graven image? Those first two commandments: to have no other gods and to refrain from making idols, are all about trust, about knowing that God alone is God and God is always with us. It gets easier to apply those first two commandments to our own lives when we frame them as Calvin did, when we ask ourselves what we are placing our trust in instead of God. What do we rely upon when we should be relying upon God?

In his book American Idols: The Worshipping of the American Dream, author, editor, pastor, and speaker Bob Hostetler suggests that modern day idolatry centers around six core things that Americans put their trust in, instead of God. We place our trust in how we look, prizing physical beauty, fame, athleticism, and public opinion. We place our trust in what we have, valuing our possessions or our accumulated wealth as the remedy for all of life’s challenge. We make an idol of personal comfort, taking the easy way instead of the hard or righteous way. We prize instant gratification, getting what we want when we want it without thought for consequences or costs. We prize choice—we love our liberty, so don’t tell us “No” or suggest that our options are limited.  We trust in financial success, believing that our big job and our impressive paycheck can safeguard our future. According to Hostetler, these hallmarks of the American Dream are actually American idols. What are the idols that we see at work in our lives and in our culture? What do we place our trust in when we should be trusting in God?

I’m not saying—and I don’t think Bob Hostetler is saying—that how we look, what we have, our comfort, gratification, liberty, or financial success are bad things. The problem comes when we trust in these when we should be trusting in God, when they preoccupy our time and attention, when they impinge upon our relationships with our neighbors. I tell the confirmation students that the most important relationship that they will ever have is their relationship with God. That’s where we come from. That’s where we will one day return. Everything that comes in between the cradle and the grave is God’s gracious gift to us. Life is best lived when it is built around the Holy One who blesses us beyond measure, who is always with us, even when we do not have eyes to see and ears to hear that holy presence.

No one knows the power of God alone to sustain us better than “American Idol” finalist Jennifer Hudson. JHUD, as she is called, began singing with her church choir at the age of seven. When asked, Jennifer says that her faith is the biggest part of her. She sees her creative abilities as a God-given gift, meant to give glory to God and serve others. She is refreshingly open about her beliefs. Her Twitter feed has featured photos of Jennifer praying with her team. She says, “We like to give the credit where the credit is due.” In a powerful interview with Oprah Winfrey, Hudson opened up about the importance of her faith, saying, “I always say the greatest git our mother gave us was introducing us to Christ and bringing us up in church. I feel like that’s the base. That’s the foundation, and that’s what keeps me grounded, and I think of it every day.” I think JHUD schooled Oprah in those first two commandments.

In 2008, when Jennifer Hudson ‘s family suffered a terrible tragedy, it was her faith that brought her through. Her brother-in-law William Balfour, angered by his crumbling marriage to Jennifer’s sister, shot and killed her mother, brother, and seven-year-old nephew. It was a senseless, brutal, triple homicide for which Balfour showed no remorse. Shortly after Balfour was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Jennifer and her sister released a statement, “We want to extend a prayer from the Hudson family to the Balfour family. We have all suffered a terrible loss in this tragedy . . . it is our prayer that the Lord will forgive Mr. Balfour of these heinous acts and bring his heart to repentance.” When asked how she could find forgiveness for the man who murdered her family, JHUD points to Jesus on the cross who forgave even those who mocked and murdered him. It’s a humbling reminder that a life lived in accord with those first two commandments, a life built around God, can sustain us, whether we are Israelites in the wilderness or survivors of personal tragedy.

It all begins with those first two commandments. “You shall have no other gods before Yahweh. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.” May we go forth to trust in God alone. Amen.

Resources:

Nancy deClaisse-Walford. “Commentary on Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 5, 2008. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.

Anathea Portier-Young. “Commentary on Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 8, 2017. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.

Edward, M. Curtis. “Idol, Idolatry” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3 H-J. New York: Doubleday, 1992, 376-381.

John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Bob Hostetler. American Idols: The Worship of the American Dream. New York: B&H Books, 2006.

Sam Hailes. “Jennifer Hudson: ‘My Christian Faith Couldn’t Be Any Stronger’ in Premier Christianity, August 24, 2021. Accessed online at premierchristianity.com.

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

20Then God spoke all these words: 2I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3you shall have no other gods before me. 4You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 7You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. 8Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

12Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 13You shall not murder. 14You shall not commit adultery. 15You shall not steal. 16You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

18When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, 19and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” 20Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.”

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“You Gotta Serve Somebody”

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Sabbath Day Thoughts – Joshua 24:1-2a:14-18

“You may be an ambassador to England or France

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

You may be the heavyweight champion of the world

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody”

Those are the words of Nobel Poet Laureate Bob Dylan, written in 1979.  Just the year before, the thirty-eight-year-old Dylan had played 114 concerts on a ten-month world tour.  As the tour neared its end, Dylan was exhausted and struggling.  Remembering that time, Dylan says, “Towards the end of the show someone out in the crowd… knew I wasn’t feeling too well.  I think they could see that.  And they threw a silver cross on the stage.  Now usually I don’t pick things up in front of the stage … But I looked down at that cross.  I said, ‘I gotta pick that up.’  So I picked up the cross and I put it in my pocket… And I brought it backstage and I brought it with me to the next town, which was out in Arizona… I was feeling even worse than I’d felt when I was in San Diego.  I said, ‘Well, I need something tonight. I didn’t know what it was.  I was used to all kinds of things.  I said, ‘I need something tonight that I didn’t have before.’  And I looked in my pocket and I had this cross.”

That silver cross would change Dylan’s life.  He began to study the Bible and have spiritual conversations with his bandmates.  Later that year, Dylan underwent what he saw as a turning point in his life.  His girlfriend at the time Mary Alice Artres, a born-again Christian, said Dylan experienced a “visit from Jesus himself.”  Dylan would admit, “Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up.”

That “physical thing” had a profound effect on Dylan’s poetry and songwriting.  The album he released the following year, “Slow Train Coming,” reflects themes of personal faith and Christian discipleship.  In fact, the seventy-nine-city tour to promote the album was called Dylan’s Gospel Tour.  Dylan’s single “You Gotta Serve Somebody,” the words of which are woven through this message, was his first hit record in years, earning him a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.

“You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk

You may be the head of some big TV network

You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame

You may be living in another country under another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody”

Dylan sounds a lot like Joshua in today’s reading from the Hebrew Bible.  God had long ago claimed Joshua with the promise, “As I was with Moses, so shall I be with you.  I will not fail or forsake you.  Be strong and courageous.”  Joshua’s first task as Israel’s leader had been to shepherd the Israelites through the waters of the Jordan and into the Promised Land.  Once there, Joshua found that, although the land was flowing with milk and honey, it was also filled with people who were reluctant to surrender their bounty to Hebrew invaders.

Through long years of conflict, Joshua had led the Israelites against one enemy after another.  One by one the Canaanite cities had fallen, not because the Israelites were more powerful or because Joshua was a better military strategist.  Rather, victory had come because God had fought side-by-side with Israel.  At Jericho, in keeping with God’s instruction, the Israelites had circled the city for seven days, shouting and blowing their horns, and the walls had come tumbling down.  At Gibeon, Joshua had cried out and God had held the sun and moon still while the Israelites routed their foes.  At Azekah, God had rained huge hailstones from the heavens, killing the armies of their Canaanite enemies.  As Joshua neared the end of his long life of service, the Israelites were finally at peace.  Thirty-one Canaanite kings had been defeated.

With all that God had done for Israel, we might anticipate that they had a born-again faith in God, every bit as ardent as Bob Dylan’s love for Jesus.  But when we read between the lines of Joshua’s testimony, we hear that Israel was worshiping other gods.  Some bowed down to the gods that their ancestor had worshiped beyond the Euphrates.  Some worshiped the gods of Egypt, where the Israelites had been enslaved by Pharaoh.  Others were captivated by the Canaanite god Baal.  They had to serve somebody, but as Joshua pondered his people, he saw that they were making some bad choices.

“You may be a construction worker working on a home

You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome

You might own guns and you might even own tanks

You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody”

With thousands of years of hindsight, it’s easy for us to recognize the Israelites lack of judgment.  Why turn your back on God Almighty when God had delivered thirty-one Canaanite kings and every fortified city in the land into your hands?  But if Joshua or Bob Dylan were here today, they might call us to consider the false gods that we worship.  Stephen Johnson, Professor of Preaching at Abilene Christian University, points out that the Israelites aren’t the only ones with competing allegiances.  We can place our ultimate allegiance in partisan politics, refusing to mask or maintain social distance or be vaccinated, refusing to protect vulnerable neighbors and spurring a lethal fourth wave of COVID-19.  We may serve only our personal interests, ignoring our neighbors in needs, disconnecting from relationships that feel like work, or consuming irreplaceable natural resources at a rate that destroys the planet.  We can even be enslaved by good things when we devote to them all our time, energy, and attention to the detriment of our physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being—or the well-being of others.  Work, family, or community can become idols.  When we fail to build our lives around the holy center of God Almighty, we worship false gods, just as surely as the Israelites did.

“You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride

You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side

You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair

You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody”

In a last faithful act of leadership, Joshua gathered all twelve tribes of Israel to Shechem, to affirm the covenant that their ancestors Abraham and Sarah had made with God.  The people came, young and old, men and women, aging warriors and young farmers, mothers with children and babies.  They listened as Joshua reminded them of all that the Lord had done for them: delivery from slavery, bread from heaven, water from the rock, walls tumbling down, foes vanquished, and the blessing of that abundant land.  Then, Joshua asked the people, “Choose this day whom you will serve.”  Confronted by the simple truth of an old man’s eloquence, the people chose God, saying, “We will serve the Lord.”

After Bob Dylan made his choice for the Lord in 1979, he came to believe that God had given him a unique platform and voice.  He could use both to serve the Lord.  In a December 1979 interview with KMEX Tucson radio, Dylan said, “I follow God, so if my followers are following me, indirectly they’re gonna be following God, too, because I don’t sing any song which hasn’t been given to me by the Lord to sing.”  Dylan’s choice for Jesus alienated some of his traditional fans, but it earned him new fans and a different following.  “Slow Train Coming” is universally considered one of the greatest Christian records of all time.  The single “You Gotta Serve Somebody” has been recorded by Pop Staples, Etta James, Willie Nelson, Chris Stapleton, LeeAnne Womack, and more.  I’ve been quoting it for you as poetry this morning.

“Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk

Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk

You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread

You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody”

If we are waffling on that choice of whom to serve, I could follow the example of Joshua and remind us of all the Lord has done for us.  God has freed us from the burden of sin and promised us the life eternal; blessed us with folks who love us; given us a church home; gathered us for camp outs and picnics and evening Vespers; surrounded us with the beauty of the Adirondacks; walked with us through every trouble.  I could go on.  We’re gonna have to serve somebody. 

Let us choose this day to serve the Lord.

Resources:

–. “Bob Dylan Gets Religion in the Gospel Years” in Goldmine: the music collector’s magazine. Feb. 23, 2009.  Accessed online at https://www.goldminemag.com/articles/bob-dylan-gets-religion-in-the-gospel-years-part-2

Dylan, Bob. “You’re Gonna Serve Somebody” in Slow Train Coming, Columbia Records, 1979.

Johnson, Stephen. “Homiletical Perspective on Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Koenig, Sarah. “Commentary on Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18” in Preaching This Week, Aug. 23, 2009.  Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21-2/commentary-on-joshua-241-2-14-18-2

O’Brien, Julia M. “Exegetical Perspective on Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Wenner, Jann S. “Slow Train Coming,” a record review in Rolling Stone Magazine, September 20, 1979. Accessed online at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/slow-train-coming-251127/