God At the Center

God at the Center:
The Good News: God gave us the 10 commandments so that we could be free to discover and pursue the life that God created us to live, to be that beautiful image of God that we are created to be.
The Bad News: Idolatry is not simply a religious issue. The problem is not other religions or faiths, but the pattern of our lives, the worship of things through what rivets my attention, centers my activity, preoccupies my mind, and motivates my action. If we take stock of those things, even if we pray to God through Christ, but orient our lives to pleasure, the pursuit of material goods, or trust in violence, we are still worshipping idols and breaking this commandment.
The Celebration: Christ came that we might be free
Intro:
Thomas Long in a Christian Century essay on the 10 Commandments reminds us of the controversy a few years ago, raised by Judge Roy Moore, a chief judge in the Alabama Supreme Court, who waged a war to keep the 10 Commandments in his courthouse, even though it violated separation of church and state. Now, what Long noted, that I found interesting, was that as a part of this fight, Judge Moore carried around a monument of the 10 Commandments on a flat-bed truck, the monument weighing 5,280 pounds, or, as Long noted, approximately 500 lbs per commandments. He needed a five-ton crane to remove the monument from the truck!
The point that Long makes and that I wish to begin with this morning is the metaphor… as silly as this sounds… a 5,280 lb monument of the 10 Commandments, isn’t this how we, Christians, often are taught to think about the 10 Commandments, as a great weight that we are called to carry; ‘heavy yokes to be publicly placed on the necks of a rebellious society’… Long notes.
(Thomas G. Long teaches at Candler School of Theology. This article appeared in The Christian Century, (March 7, 2006. p. 17.) Copyright by The Christian Century Foundation)


But lets look at how the story of God’s giving of the Commandments begins:
Ex 20:2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Did you hear it? Freedom.
The 10 Commandments aren’t meant to add weight, but take it away
Not meant to constrain, but release us.
Its all, of course, in how you define, Freedom,
and freedom in the Bible is different than freedom in popular society…

Merriam Webster dictionary defines freedom
1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous

But freedom in the bible is different.
The story of Exodus really shows what freedom in the bible is…
Because God wants Israel to be free from Egypt,
so that they can worship and follow God.
Freedom in the Bible isn’t simply a lack of external constraint or control
Freedom isn’t simply, in the negative the absence of oppression
freedom in the Bible is the presence of God at the center of our being
Freedom is for something as Barth once said
with some end, some purpose…

And that freedom, which is toward God, for God, isn’t unfettered, it has a guide, support, some purpose toward which the freedom is progressing.

Like this guitar string… if I take it out of the package, but it just hangs from my hand… its free, nothing constrains it… but it can’t do what it was meant to do… make a sound, and in concert with other strings, make music. But I place it on the guitar, where a peg and a tuner hold that string tight, and the string is free to do what it was intended to do.





Or as I read… a river with no banks is a flood,
A river with strong banks creates power.



God did not want Israel to be oppressed by Egypt, so God gave them freedom…
But unlike the popular view of freedom,
which often has no purpose aside from being unconstrained,
God’s freedom has a purpose,
the goal is to be free so as to commune with God and so to realize the potential image of God in which we are all created.

So, this is the story of the 10 Commandments, an ongoing story of freedom… the freedom that God provided for Israel, in leading them out of Egypt, continues in our experience through the 10 commandments… through them, we are freed…

II. Have no other gods, have no idols.

I stumbled across the story of Dunbar H. Ogden Jr. Mr. Ogden, or more properly, Rev. Ogden was the pastor of Central Presbyterian Church in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957. This was the year that nine African-American students walked to Central High in Little Rock to enroll in school. They were turned away not by the angry mob that surrounded them, but by the National Guard troops the Governor had placed in the front of the school. This happened on September 4th.

On the evening of September 3rd the President of the NAACP called Rev. Ogden on the phone and asked him, as the president of the local ministerial association, to escort the children to school the next morning.

On the one hand Rev. Ogden could see this as an opportunity to be Moses, to part the Sea that stands between African-american children and freedom, freedom brought about by an education….
Or, on the other hand, Rev. Ogden could see, did see the very distinct possibility that if he did act like Moses, he would tear apart his church and ruin his standing in the community and authority as a pastor. He called all the other clergy in the area and only found one other pastor who would agree to go with him.

(from a review of ‘My Father Said Yes: A White Pastor in Little Rock School Integration published in the Christian Century. The theological slant is my own and not that of the author or the reviewer)

Rev. Ogden had a decision to make and I would propose that one way to think about the dilemma that Rev Ogden faced is to ask… Who will his God be? Will Rev. Ogden make a decision based on the biases and expectation of white society in Arkansas? Will that be his god? Will he make a decision based on what he knows to be the expectations of at least half of his congregation? Will that be his idol? Will he make a decision based on the lack of support of his fellow clergy-members? What will be the central motivating factor in his action? That is a theological question… what motivates us, because what motivates us can become our god, our idol…

Luke Timothy Johnson says… ‘my god is that which rivets my attention, centers my activity, preoccupies my mind and motivates my action. That in virtue of which I act is god; that for which I will give up anything else is my god.’
(Sharing Possessions: Mandate and Symbol of Faith)

What is at issue in the first two commandments, to have no other god and make no idols is…
what will be at the center of our lives motivating us, framing our thoughts,
for which we are willing to make sacrifice, for which we will devote time and energy.
It isn’t for North American’s so much a matter of alternate religions…
But about how we will spend time, devote energy, manage money, make sacrifice. But it isn’t just modern North America that this applies too. Listen to the words of Moses from Dt 6, words that come just after God has given the 10 commandments in Deuteronomy’s version of the story…. in Dt 6:10-12, God warns Israel that it will not simply be the official gods of the nations surrounding them, that will tempt them, but their wealth and their possessions;
When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you — a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant — then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Do you hear what the false gods and idols are? Material goods, wealth, things that we can possess, control…




A Simple Example I think illustrates this….
The average TV set is on for eight hours and 14 minutes a day in U.S. homes, according to Nielsen Media Research. Meanwhile, per person Americans watch an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes of television every day.

If this seems a tad excessive, consider that the Nielsen survey also found that the typical American home has more TV sets than people – an average of 2.73 TVs for 2.55 people.

people will spend 65 days in front of the TV, 41 days listening to radio and a little
over a week on the Internet in 2007. Adults will spend about a week reading a daily newspaper and teens and adults will spend another week listening to recorded music. Consumer spending for media is forecasted to be $936.75 per person.

I did some math, which isn’t my strong suit. If we attend church every Sunday in the year, without any cancellations for weather, and the service is 1.5 hrs… we spend 3.25 days in church a year… compared to 65 days in front of a television, and 7 days on the internet and 7 days listening to music.

If Johnson is correct, that my god is that which rivets my attention… well, tv, internet and ipods are gods…

The Bad news is the we cannot think ourselves free of the temptation and practice of idolatry simply because of God-talk. It isn’t simply prayer to God or Sunday worship attendance that assures us that we are keeping the first two commandments. In Mt 7:21-22, we read this warning from Christ…
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord ,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

We become like what we worship
we are shaped by it…
This is a constant theme throughout the Bible…

Thursday night Bible Basics just finished talking about the story of Esther…
This is a strange and little known story from the First Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures…




King Ahaseuras, notice, is doing what God warned Israel against…
His time and energy and focus is on his wealth, his material goods…
His time and energy and focus goes into the pleasure of the party…
And look at how he has treated his first queen and the subsequent prospective queens… they are like objects to him… what he worships has shaped who he is and how he treats others…

Rev. Ogden went and met with the NAACP organizers and the children the next morning… still not having decided what to do. But in that moment, challenged by the courage of the children and their parents, we decided to walk them to school… He decided to keep God at the center…

The end of the story, well, I guess its up to your point of view whether it ended happily or not. Attendance at Rev. Ogdens church fell from 200 to 80, and the powerful members of the church withheld both their presence at worship and their tithe.

Which reminds me, as we close, that one of the traditional readings for the beginning of Lent is the story of Jesus temptation in the desert.

Mt 4:1-11
4:1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:

"'He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"

7 Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

10 Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'"

11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Jesus kept God at the center,
His life on earth lived by serving God alone through serving the
The poor, oppressed and despised in his society…
And his life ended in crucifixion…

Which is the temptation of idols and gods I suppose…
They demand little of us, do not challenge us…
And promise us an easy life, a happy life…

Rev. Ogden put God at the center, as did Jesus,
And suffered for it…
But their act of worship
Throughout their lives
Their sacrifice and service
Opened up new possibilities for others that idols cannot offer
Rev. Odgen’s actions were a part of a great shift in the history of our country
He played a part in a modern day exodus from slavery to freedom
Perhaps not for himself, but for thousand, millions of others who would
Come after, Given the chance at an education, the chance to dream
And imagine a brighter future for themselves and their children
And their children’s children…

In that way, Rev. Ogden practiced resurrection…
He walked with Jesus the path of temptation
And the way of the cross…
But it was a way that lead to life
New life, full life, for so many others…

The fact of the matter is that Lent is a frightening time…
It is never pleasant to take the good honest look at ourselves
That lent demands…
And as the story of Rev. Ogden illustrates
The demands of keeping God centered
will challenge us
But I am convinced that Lent also allows us to see
In ourselves, potential,
Allows us to imagine for ourselves
A purpose that idols cannot give
Recentering our lives on God in this season of Lent
Allows us to see the image of God that we were created to be
And to see new possibilities for ourselves and for others
that our idols just cannot provide…