Idols

Midweek Worship, Eleventh Week After Pentecost

Semicontinous Reading: Jeremiah 2:4-13

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What is the issue with idolatry? If the Hebrew Bible can be said to have a theme, I think it must be that: the avoidance, indeed, the outright smashing, of idols. It comes up over and again. The Scriptures simply cannot seem to get over idolatry.

It’s the primal sin, isn’t it? It’s the golden calf. Now, some would say the primal sin is pride, whence all other sins flow. And they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. Pride, in the biblical context, is the worship of oneself, while idolatry is the worship of false gods more generally, which would include the self. So really pride is a form of idolatry, likely the worst form of all.

Perhaps it would be helpful if we’d define our terms. Idolatry doesn’t just mean having the wrong god, as though some pick Thor and some Zeus and some Ra. Yahweh is not simply the best answer on a multiple-choice exam. Rather, it’s a question of true worship versus false worship, and this cuts far deeper than culture.

Worship more archaically means “worthship,” which is to say, worthiness. And many things are worthy, are they not? Ideals are worthy. Sunsets are worthy. Accomplishments are worthy. The world is full of worth, full of value. But there is a distinction in religious understanding between the worth of any good thing in Creation, against the worth of the Creator of us all.

Good things are due worship, in the sense that we recognize the goodness of them, the truth and the beauty of them, and we are grateful for it. That’s why we have museums, right? That’s why we vow to love, honor, and cherish our families. We see the goodness of Creation, the goodness of things around us, and we are grateful for them, thankful for them. Worship is in many ways just gratitude. And gratitude is good and right and proper. When we acknowledge the worthiness of things created good, we call this veneration.

But there is a different and a higher form of worship, and this comes when we recognize that all good things share one Source; that every instance of goodness, truth, and beauty we encounter here below is but the reflection, the echo, of limitless, transcendent Goodness, Truth, and Beauty eternal in the heavens. All good things come from God because God Himself is good. Indeed, God alone is good, for He is Goodness itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself.

God is the worth that makes things worthy, the goodness that makes things good. Ergo, God alone is worthy of highest praise, highest gratitude, highest worship: and this worship which we properly reserve for God is known as adoration. We venerate all good things. We adore God alone, who is Goodness itself, and the Source of all that is good. Many things are worthy; God alone is the Source of all worth.

That’s what idolatry is really all about. We have within us a longing for the transcendent, an infinite hunger for all that is beautiful, good and true. And this can never be sated in this world. We will never have enough of goodness and beauty and truth. We will never stop exploring, never stop studying, never stop making art, because we can’t. We are always reaching for infinity, and only the Infinite will do.

To paraphrase Augustine, we are born with a God-sized hole within us, and our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in You. When we know this—when we set our hearts on God—the rest falls into place. Adoration leads naturally to veneration. We love God by loving our neighbor, and all the world around us. But when we get it backward, when we turn things on their heads, then the center cannot hold.

Idolatry is when we adore that which we should merely venerate; which is to say, we take the love reserved for God and lay it on another. We worship things no longer as good gifts from our God, but as though they were gods in themselves. And this is inherently harmful, because good things made into gods become devils. All idols are necessarily false, will necessarily fail, because they ultimately cannot support the infinite weight of human need. They buckle. They break.

Ideals, for example, are good things. But when we make them into gods, they become ideologies. Romance is a good thing. But when we make romance into a god, it becomes obsession. Strength is a good thing. But when we make strength into a god we breed fascism. Patriotism similarly becomes nationalism. Likewise culture, equality, justice, prosperity, food, drink, control, entertainment, money, sex, alcohol—all good things in and of themselves; all things which make for excellent servants yet terrible masters.

Do not base your happiness on things that you could lose, because you will. Instead, place your faith in things above: in Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and Love. These are infinite and eternal, inexhaustible, transcendent—for these indeed are God. And you will know that you adore Him, that you are worshipping the Creator rather than the creature, when you find that your concern is turned to others: to joy and gratitude and exultation; to selfless, self-giving, compassionate love.

For if idolatry is the theme of the Hebrew Bible, then justice is the flipside of the same: not a heartless, cruel justice, mind you, but an expansive justice, rich with love, culminating in mercy. That’s what God wants for you. That’s what worship is.

Everything in this world will pass away someday, most sooner rather than later. But the love that we share, that we pass on from God—that is truly eternal. It will still be burning when the stars have all gone out. Love is the life that outlives death, the very life of God.

Accept no substitutes.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.