by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We gather on this beautiful day

To give thanks,

To ask for forgiveness,

To recommit ourselves to the good once again.

Come, let us worship together.

As a young teenager, I had my idols—they were movie stars.  The first was James Dean.  I was so good, and he was so bad.  I was so coherent—even then—and he was so incoherent.  I wanted to be incoherent like that—alienated and handsomely sullen, instead of just sad, as I was.  In Rebel Without a Cause, he rejected his father, the emasculated man of the 1950s standing in the suburban kitchen in an apron, with no moral authority; in Giant, he rejected his father’s dirty money, that he had made from the war.  Of course James Dean died in an automobile accident while still young and beautiful, still incoherent, still angry, and so caught in time as he was, I could look at his picture for years and project all my adolescent angst upon him. 

Then there was Elvis Presley.  When Elvis was 19 and just becoming popular, he came to the Louisiana Hayride, in Shreveport, just 50 miles from where I lived.  My friends and I were thrilled and made plans to go—but I am sorry to say that unlike James Dean, I did not reject my father’s dirty money, for when he offered me $15 not to go, I accepted.  My father, who was the original bad boy, knew what Elvis was up to once he saw him shake his hips on TV.  But I have to say that though I regret little in my life, that is one decision I have long regretted.  Why was Elvis an idol?  Elvis was of the people.  He knew the sensuality of Gospel music and the authenticity of country and he simply got on stage and did what came naturally for someone of the working class—he moved his body.  This was the 1950s, a time of repressed sexuality, a time of Doris Day and June Allyson—so of course we projected those unmet sexual desires upon Elvis, and rock n’ roll was born.

Just why do we create idols, for human beings have always done so.  How could we define this phenomenon of idolatry?  Idolatry occurs when a person makes into a God or takes as his highest value something other than the living God.  It is always a projection of a part of the interior self upon this outside object. A discounted part is given away.  Let me explain.  As a young teen, my feelings of anger and frustration were not allowed expression, so I let James Dean carry them for me.  A safe choice.  My sexual feelings could not be acknowledged, so I projected my sexual desires onto Elvis.  Another safe choice. 

St. Augustine said that idolatry is “worshipping something that should be used and using something that should be worshipped.”  But that doesn’t go deep enough.  Why would one worship something that should be used?  It is because we believe that this thing we worship will satisfy our longing, this need for peace, for rest, which we all have.  So we may worship money, status, a house, a career, sex, even education or science or personal growth.  Theologian Harvey Cox wrote a wonderful article for the Atlantic Monthly a few years back, arguing that in contemporary times, the market is God, with Greenspan as the high priest and The Wall Street Journal the scripture.  Now all these things that I mentioned are good in themselves, to be used, but not to be deified.

We often project qualities of goodness onto others, instead of owning them ourselves.  It is much easier to deify Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama than it is to help the poor or live our own life with integrity.  Some of you, I know, project your goodness onto me.  I don’t want it, though, please.  I want you to own it yourself.  You think I am wise?  No, you are wise.  You think I am good?  Ha!  I am subject to all the same temptations and wiles of the devil that you are—and probably more.  Please take your own goodness upon yourself.

Eric Fromm, in his classic work The Sane Society explains idolatry as self-alienation—in idolatry, he says, a person projects one part of themselves outward and then bows down to that part, and in doing so does not experience their own spiritual center, the true source of their loving acts.  We usually think of idol worship being connected with polytheistic religions, or religions with many gods, but Fromm says that monotheistic religions have themselves become largely idolatrous, in that followers project their own power of love and of reason onto God, instead of feeling these powers as their own, coming from within.  So people pray to God, he says, to give them back some of what they projected onto God.

In some religious faiths, adherents are taught that they should feel empty and impoverished, guilty and unworthy.  In Unitarian Universalism, hopefully we do not discount evil, and we know we can fall into unworthy behavior, but we often speak of the “divine spark” that exists within each one of us—the inherent good that is there, that will guide us if we will but listen.  Jesus is seen as a man, a man who fully realized his divine nature, not as a god who did for us something we cannot do for ourselves.

Idolatry is often grounded in fear.  Take the account that Tom read to you earlier.  The Israelites have left Egypt and are bound for the Promised Land, but they have endured great hardships in their desert trek.  And now their leader Moses has gone up on the mountain top, and they’re wondering if and when he will come back down.  They become fearful.  They revert to their old ways, and insist that Aaron make an idol, a golden calf for them to worship.  When Moses comes down from the mountain, he sees them dancing naked around this calf.  Talk about a crisis of leadership! 

What is our promised land?  Not a land flowing with milk and honey, but a land criss-crossed with highways over which flow various kinds of gas-guzzling vehicles; computers, maybe two, for everyone; labor-saving devices which give us more time for labor.  Eric Fromm comments, “<We> are owned by our own creation, and have lost ownership of ourselves.  We have built a golden calf, and we say, ‘These are our gods who have brought us out of Egypt.’”

One of the most frightening kinds of idolatry occurs when nationalism becomes an idol. Citizens are made to feel powerless and then are offered security by projecting their human qualities of goodness and power onto a leader. It happened with Fascism in Italy, with Marxism in Russia, with Communism in China.  An ideology or even a religion within the state becomes God, and that makes anything, even genocide, possible.  Look at the rise of Nazi Germany.  Military defeat had brought inflation and mass unemployment.  The people were demoralized and ripe to listen to a dictator who told them that if they would give him the power, he would make their country great once again.  Hitler himself, dark-haired and dark-eyed, ironically made an idol of the Arian ideal, blonde and blue-eyed, a clear rejection of self. 

What can happen in any nation is that the people can abrogate their social responsibility and give that to the state, while putting all their time and energy into their private lives.  Too many of our citizens take this route.  War?  Why worry about war, if it doesn’t touch me.  If it’s far away.  If my son isn’t involved.  But this is a dangerous attitude, for then we feel the alienation and loneliness, which are the natural result of this separation of private and public.  We must take back our powers as citizens who care for the whole, and build a community in which our private and our social existence become one and the same.

The terrible events of 9/11 brought out the best and the worst in our country.  We saw people sacrifice their lives to save others.  We saw people give gifts of time and money to those who suffered loss.  But we also have seen this event used to stir a nationalism grounded in fear and used for political purposes.  Understand that fear is the strongest motivator in human life—that is, aside from love.  Let us not as a nation create policies driven by fear. Let us not make of our nation an idol and say “Our nation right or wrong.”  Let us rather love our nation enough to set it right.

It’s Father’s Day.  Let me tell you a story about a wise father.  James Carse, a professor of religion at New York University, takes the reader back to a telling event of his youth.  He was 19 and had just returned from his second year of college.  His parents took him and his younger brother and sister out to a fashionable restaurant to celebrate.  As they strolled away from the restaurant that evening, James and his brother were simultaneously captured by what seemed at first to be a vision, he writes.  It was 1951, and there parked in the radiant moonlight was a red Ford convertible with white sidewalls, white leather seats, and a chrome spare tire case.  He and his brother walked around the car several times, swept into a frenzy of desire.  James had to spend his summer working the night shift in an iron foundry to pay for his next year of college, so there was no way such a car could be his.

Then about two weeks later the two boys drove up to their house only to discover this very Ford convertible parked in their driveway.  Could it be that the owner was actually visiting their father?  But no, when they walked in, their father told the astonished boys that the car was theirs.  That summer was transformed, Carse writes.  People in other cars looked at the boys as they sped past them; girls seemed to have no other commitments.  The boys washed and polished every square inch of the car, even keeping the engine free of grease and dust.

Near the end of summer, Carse was driving his father around on some errands, when his father turned to him and asked, “Do you want to know why I gave you boys this car?” 

The question was disturbing.  Carse says that his father was by no means wealthy—this car must have been a tremendous sacrifice.  “Yes,” he said.  “Why?”

His father hesitated a moment and then spoke slowly. “So you would never want it again.”

A week later the boys were off to college, but since they went to separate schools, they had to work out an elaborate plan for sharing the car.  Carse began to notice that each time he got the car, it seemed to require more attention than he expected.  His brother maybe forgot to change the oil, or perhaps had driven it too hard.  When he complained, his brother pointed out that he usually left the inside of the car a mess.  Finally it just seemed easier to let his brother have the car for the whole spring semester.  When he came home with it, it was scratched here and there and badly needed waxing.  At the end of the summer, Carse’ father sold the convertible, and nobody seemed to care. Maintaining an idol—keeping it all shiny and bright—takes a lot of time.

Idols are seductive—they shine and sparkle and promise us new life.  But once we attain what we so longed for, we find that it is empty.  Why?  Because it is we who imbued it with life—our life: our beauty, our goodness, our sexuality, our power.  Idolatry works like this.  We are fearful, or needy.  We want safety, love—the usual.  We come to believe that another person, or an ideology, or a religion, or a position, or gambling, or money—or something outside ourselves can give us what we so ardently desire.  So then begins the downhill slide.  We focus our attention on this object, to the detriment of all else.  We do not fully experience the living of our days, because we are so caught up with the object of our desire.  We exercise control.  We begin to use people as the means to an end, for the end becomes all.  We are blind to the changes that are taking place within us, we don’t hear what our loved ones are saying, because we are caught up in the desire.

And now here’s the really sad part—this desire is the sister of despair, because when we finally arrive at the place we longed for, the pay-off isn’t there.  We are left with crumbled dreams and sometimes shattered lives and relationships.

The alternative to such endless desiring, to such idolatry?  To accept our own beauty and goodness instead of investing it in something else or someone else.  To know that the Divine is within each of us, and to try to nurture that quiet voice.  The deeper longing that we feel, that all of us feel, is the leaning of the heart toward life.  Pursuing an idol, we attempt to escape, but our restless heart will not be quiet.  It continues to beg and beg of us.  “Give me life!” it says, “give me life,” and keeps pulling us back to our true home.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we confess that we are so easily led astray by the glitter and empty promises of the world.  We ask for forgiveness when we have diverted our lives and given our selves to false gods.  May we be faithful to the Divine voice within that would lead us to new life.  Give us the courage to accept our strength, our goodness, our beauty, these good gifts from you.  Amen.

As you go from this place, know that the Divine dwells within each one of you.  Go in love and go in peace.  Amen.