1 Corinthians 10:1-13

I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did, as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” We must not engage in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it

1 Kings 18:1-6

In the third year of King Hoshea son of Elah of Israel, Hezekiah son of King Ahaz of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, just as his ancestor David had done. He removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan. He relied on the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him or among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following him but kept the commandments that the Lord had commanded Moses.

Sermon Text

Growing up, in my home church, I was caught between two extremes. On one end was the hyper-contemporary services my family attended. They would always go to either the service that met in our church’s multi-purpose building or a local community gym. All around were normal fixtures of business – standard seating and bare walls, basketball hoops and industrial fans. In these places of baren utility, however, God’s spirit still found a way to people, and without the frills of anything “churchy.”

However, that was not where my heart rested. When I was old enough, I would go to a different service than my family. Even though the service was the latest in the morning, I didn’t go so I could sleep in. Instead, it was the content of the service that enticed me. Hymns, organ music, doxologies and unison prayers were shared week after week. I found that I was drawn to the more historic expressions of the faith. When I came to them, I found a deep well that I could pull from. It was no more legitimate than the services my family attended, but for me I couldn’t turn back once I found my niche. I was home, and throughout college and seminary, I found myself settle more and more into the trappings of traditional expressions of worship.

One of the most treasured aspects of the Church, throughout history, has been the art and iconography we use to express our faith. When we picture “Christ,” we usually have pictures in our head drawn from stained glass in churches we’ve sat in for years. When we picture “the Last Supper”, it is Da Vinci’s impractical table setting that jumps into our heads. More recently, “The Chosen,” and its depictions of Christ shape how people see Jesus and his works. The way that Christ and the various figures cast throughout scripture are depicted in popular culture, in art, and in our own spaces of worship and homes shapes our perspective a great deal.

However, there is a danger in representing God – mainly that by representing God we are suddenly opening ourselves to “mis-represent,” God. Removed from the context and intent of the author or artist, depictions of Christ with an intended message or symbolic purpose, simply become our de facto image of our savior. Films replace scripture in our recollection of Christ’s life, and bit by bit we are given a lesser version of the riches that are freely revealed through the real source of knowing Christ – the fellowship of believers, the sacraments, the study of Scripture, and the visitation of the Holy Spirit. These and other “means of Grace,” are where we truly meet Christ.

Let me take you back to my home church for a minute, where I first fell in love with God. Behind the altar, up at the back of the chancel, was a massive picture of Jesus. Christ appeared life sized, seemingly stepping out of the painting and into the sanctuary. It was a powerful image, and for many it defined the presence of Christ in the building. However, that painting was the thorn in the side of every minister I ever knew to stand in that pulpit. The picture, beautiful as it was, had become a focus of the people’s worship, and the second it became the focus of their adoration it became the most insidious thing an image can become. It had become an idol for the people of that church, a sacred thing that must never be touched.

Our scripture today, the Epistle reading firstly, tells us the cost of idolatry. I used to always find it strange that scripture lumped “idolatry,” in with a variety of other sins. In particular, Paul is focused upon sexual consequences for idolatry, interpreting the “play,” of the Israelites in carnal terms. I don’t know if I agree with Paul’s reading in this instance, but over time I have begun to understand his and scripture’s broader prohibition against idolatry – and more particularly of images in general. Idolatry leads to sin, not because the pieces of wood or canvas or metal that is being worshipped impacts the people, but because the lack of God’s real presence does.

For the Israelites wandering in the desert, they had just witnessed God’s amazing saving power. They had seen plagues afflict their oppressors, they had seen the Red Sea part, water came from dry stones and quail fed their appetites even beyond God’s provision of Mana. They were given every good gift, but they were still not sold on God. When Moses went up to the mountain to receive the Law, they began to worry that the Moses would never return. They feared they could not hear from the true God again, and so in desperation they cast an idol of that same God, an image of a bull cast in gold.

We know from archaeology that bull imagery was commonly associated with the God of Israel, indeed scripture confirms the same.[1] Yet, when Aaron held the calf aloft for the people to adore, he did not say, “Behold, this is a representation of the God who brought you out of Egypt.” He said, “These are the Gods that brought you out of Egypt.” The people immediately replaced the true God with a lesser facsimile. The true God thundered above them, ready to give them Teachings that would give them new Life, but instead they decided to embrace a lesser image of divinity – to doom themselves to a half-life lived in imitation of an imitation.

“But,” a concerned listener may say, “The images we use in Church and in our homes are different. We do not intend for them to be Gods in their own right, just reminders of Christ’s presence in our lives.” I hear your concern, and you are right to name it. I am not so iconoclastic as to oppose any image of God. John of Damascus argued that as Christ was the Icon of God’s invisible substance, so iconography provided us a window into Heavenly things. In my own house I have a pantocrator, a picture of Christ in triumph, to remind me that God prevails over all troubles. I have an icon of Mary and Jesus in my nursery, to remind me that Christ who once lived as a child, watches over my own child. Yet, I would destroy either image the second they became all consuming to me, the moment I saw God’s presence in them, the second I made them into idols.

Well intentioned images often are the first things to become idols. In the wilderness, God commanded Moses to break the law against graven images and create a bronze serpent. That serpent was lifted into the air, and whenever people were bitten by the “Nachashim Seraphim,”
“the flaming serpents” they would look on it and be cured. This serpent eventually found its way into the Temple, where it served as a reminder of God’s salvation… Until it became something else. People began to worship the serpent, offering it incense, transforming the emblem of salvation into a source of destruction.

The Church in my hometown, the one with that picture behind the altar, were forced each Sunday to imagine Christ within the confines of that image. They looked up at his blue eyes, his pale white face, his long brown hair, and they never could see from it anything but a savior that reflected back their own visions of respectability. The Christ that hung above the altar would not live on the streets as the real Christ did, his robe was too clean. The Christ that hung above the altar would not reach his hands to heal the sick, they were too properly manicured for that. The Christ that hung above the altar was not just a flawed representation of the Christ that hung on the Cross – they had nothing to do with one another.

The images we form of Christ are not just in paintings or in statues though, no they are in the stories we tell and in the testimonies we give. When we present Christ to the world, are we truly presenting the Christ of scripture? Or are we presenting a therapeutic presence, a God that makes us feel good and that makes death a little less scary? Do we see in Christ a figure that is great than ourselves, that calls us to be better tomorrow than we are today, or do we see a divine yes man that is constantly patting us on the back for all our good work? Are we willing to meet the real Christ, and not the sanitized image that we have enshrined in our hearts?

So what do we do now? Go home and burn all our paintings and crucifixes? Of course not! What good would that do? It would not change our hearts. No, instead today I call us all to search our hearts and see what idols we have put up. What half-baked images of Christ are we accepting rather than the one, true Christ who reigns now and forever? If that half-baked image has a physical form, by all means get rid of it, cast it far away from you. I would wager though that it probably isn’t on your wall, it is more likely in your heart, in your mind, in the capitulation to “the world as it is,” we are all prone to. We all have idols to smash, people of God, and we had best find them before they ruin us. – Amen.

---

[1] C.f. 1 Kings 12:28 with the Kuntilat Arjud Pithos depicting “’HWH and his Asherah.” Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ajrud.jpg