8th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13C

8th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13C August 4, 2019 In all three readings for this Sunday, I see a ribbon that weaves through all of them—that is the challenges of idolatry to our relationship with God. Our reading from Colossians is the only reading of the 3 that actually mentions the word “idolatry.” It is found in a laundry list of characteristics of worldly behaviors that followers of Jesus are called to avoid or turn away from in a portion of the letter that is a reminder and a teaching about baptism. In Hosea, we see God, a tender and nurturing parent, mourning Israel’s turning away from God both politically and religiously—seeking aid from other nations and worshipping other gods in idolatry. In the gospel reading for today, Jesus is called upon to settle a family dispute over inheritance. Jesus tells a challenging parable with a stern rebuke as its conclusion: “But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." At its heart, the dispute and the parable are about idolatry—how we give our attention to gaining or making money and acquiring possessions above giving our attention to being open to a deeper relationship with God and people around us. For me, each of these cases of idolatry hits a little closer to home. In the Colossians reading, there’s a list of characteristics that we are called to “put to death:” “fornication, passion, evil desire, greed (which is idolatry). I mean, I don’t know about y’all, but I think I do ok on most of those most of the time, so I’m not too worried about that list. The challenge of Hosea of turning away from God to worship other gods and to seek political alliances with other nations also isn’t something that I, as an individual, feel convicted over. We may all have different opinions on how our nation shakes out on this one, but that’s not really something any of us can control, right? The gospel reading hits a little closer to home for me, not because I’m squabbling with my brothers over any sort of inheritance issues; but if you’ve driven past my new house recently, you can’t help but notice a giant, metal Pod in the driveway that is filled to the brim with our stuff. I can’t really think of a finer illustration of our modern equivalent to the image in Jesus’s parable of building bigger barns to store our stuff in. (So I’m definitely convicted on that one.) But here’s where I’ve really struggled and been convicted with this notion of idolatry this week. I’m reading a book that a friend and colleague recommended; it’s required reading for her son who heads of to college this fall. It is titled Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy by James Williams. Williams left a career at Google to get an advanced degree in philosophy at Oxford University. The premise of his book is that “something deep and potentially irreversible seems to be happening to human attention in the age of information. Responding to it well may be the biggest moral and political challenge of our time.”i Williams argues that much of technology today is designed to realign our goals in ways that we don’t even notice. He likens it to if we had a GPS device that we followed that, instead of taking us where we wanted to go, took us hours out of the way. He writes, “No one would put up with that sort of distraction from a technology that directs us through physical space. Yet we do precisely this, on a daily basis, when it comes to technologies that direct us through informational space.” As I write this sermon, I have not finished the whole book, but I’ve read enough to be convicted and to recognize that idolatry, at its heart, is about who and what we give our attention to and how we give it. Understood in this light, I am sad to say that I am woefully idolatrous, and it is so much more insidious than eschewing characteristics in a list from Colossians or even a giant Pod in my driveway. It is staggering for me to think about the millions of ways in a given day that I give my attention to what Colossians would term “worldly things”—things that are not of God or in keeping with the love of God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. And for us modern followers of Jesus Christ, that is a much greater temptation and tendency than worshiping a golden calf in the wilderness (which may still be some of our definition of idolatry). But what are we to do? What can we possibly do? When I was at Honey Creek a couple of weeks ago serving as a spiritual director for the final summer camp session, I got to baptize one of the counselors there-one who had never been baptized or active in a church community and who found a way of life and love in working at Honey Creek this summer. The counselor whose name was Jude wanted to be baptized by immersion, so we arranged for a horse trough to be brought outside the chapel and filled with water. I baptized Jude at the closing Eucharist on the next to last day of camp with all the campers and counselors, volunteers and staff of Honey Creek gathered around. The next day, at the closing service of camp, we showed a slide show of pictures for the week, and when the picture came up of me baptizing Jude, with my hands upon Jude as she was fully immersed under water, several of the campers gasped and one exclaimed, “It looks like she’s drowning her!” And it did! And it was supposed to look that way, because that is what we really think we are doing in our baptism; we are dying to our old life and being born again in the new life of Jesus Christ. And while we don’t get baptized more than once, we do renew our baptismal vows over and over throughout our lives as a reminder that parts of us need to die so that others can be reborn in the new life of Jesus Christ. Your invitation this week is to pay attention. Pay attention to how you give or spend your attention What parts of how you spend your attention are, in fact, idolatry—impediments to your relationship with God and to your living in the fullness of God’s light and love? For those things that you can change/adjust yourself, begin making plans to change them. And for those things under which you are powerless, invite the Holy Spirit to put those parts of you to death so that you may be reborn and restored to the God who has always loved you. i. Williams, James. Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. P 3.