Saturday, October 25, 2008

The Current Spiritual Crisis: Part 2

26 October 2008 * 1Thessalonians 2: 1-8/Matthew 22:34-46
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland

Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation
Last Sunday we began an exploration of how the Spiritual Life is not about conjugating the three verbs To Want, To Have, To do, but rather to ground ourselves more thoroughly in the foundational verb, To Be – and that what we are To Be is a people of God in Christ, God’s Beloved, Imitators of Christ and an Example of the Christ-like life for others.

This portion of Paul’s letter to the church in Thessolonika has always spoken to a very deep place within me as to just how we are To Be. So much so that when the Church Deployment Office invites one to write a Personal Ministry Statement of no more than 254 characters (110 more than the 144 previous word limit!), I appealed to this passage as a way of expanding what I wanted to say: Committed to shared servant ministry which seeks to interpret and meet the needs, concerns and hopes of the world in the spirit of I Thess 2:5-8.

It was a way of inviting search committees to do some Bible study and squeezing more into the little box on the CDO Profile all at once. Paul writes, in part, “…we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others…But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”

It is this vision of shared servant ministry Paul so eloquently describes what brought me here to Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills. After nearly fourteen years I still feel the same deep desire to care for everyone here, all those the Spirit brings into our midst, sharing not only the Gospel of God, Jesus Christ, but also my own self – a shared servant ministry.

And no doubt like everyone here, I continue to hear these words from Holy Scripture in all four lessons against the backdrop of a world that seems to grow more and more uncertain as each day of the present financial and monetary crisis deepens and widens.

So loud is the background noise of the crisis, the election, and two wars, not to mention the competing voices of work, family and the mundane details of simply maintaining – maintaining house, home, physical health, mental health, relationships, yardwork, housework, homework, rehearsal schedules, athletic practices, auto maintenance – the list might go on and on and on.

It is such that when we hear Paul or Jesus calling us back to a Spiritual Life we are apt to say, “I cannot do anything more, thank you! I have no time to delve into my interior life. I have no time to develop a more holy, pious and disciplined religious life.”

It is no fault of our own that we sense that whatever one might call The Spiritual Life has something, maybe even everything to do with us, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. As all the great spiritual teachers in every religious tradition try to help us to see, it is not about us. It simply is not about us at all. Yet, most of what passes for Spirituality in the marketplace, on radio and tv, on the bookshelves of our major book retailers all make appeals that sound as if Spirituality is a core constituent part of all the great American self-improvement, self-actualization movements.

So far astray have our notions of the Spiritual Life gone that Bishops Sutton and Rabb spent three days reminding the clergy of the diocese that it is not about us – the Spiritual Life is not about us. It is all about God and others. Late in the conference Bishop Rabb was writing something on newsprint. It was faint and difficult to see. A colleague shouted out, “It’s invisible we cannot see it!” The Bishop replied, “I am just making these notes for myself.” Prompting me to shout out, “It’s not about us!”

It is about God and others. So saith our Lord and Saviour Jesus this morning: Love God and Love Neighbor – look outward and beyond one’s self toward God. And anyone who looks outward toward God will inevitably be drawn into God’s never ending love and care for others – all others, male and female, slave and free, young and old, the just and the unjust, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Zoroastarian, Buddhist and beyond!

It is a rather breathtaking vision of life – real life, the kind of life Jesus promises in abundance!

Evelyn Underhill in her little book, The Spiritual Life, sums up our relationship with God in three words very different from the three verbs To Want, To Have and To do. They are Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation. She writes, “This means, that from first to last the emphasis is to be on God and not ourselves. Admiring delight, not cadging demands. Faithful and childlike dependence – clinging to the Invisible, as the most real of all realities, in all the vicissitudes of life – not mere self-expression and self-fulfillment. Disinterested collaboration in the Whole, in God’s vast plan and purpose; not concentration on our own small affairs. Three kinds of generosity. Three kinds of self-forgetfulness. There we have a formula of the spiritual life: a confident reliance on the immense fact of His Presence, everywhere and at all times, pressing on the soul and the world by all sorts of paths and in all sorts of ways, pouring out on it His undivided love, and demanding our undivided loyalty. … We stand in a world completely penetrated by the Living God, the abiding Source and Sum of Reality. We are citizens of that world now; and our whole life is or should be an acknowledgment of this.” (pp. 59-60)

God’s Undivided Love and our Undivided Loyalty – Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation.

So just how do we enter such a relationship with the Living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus? Perhaps we can recall the Four Holy Habits: Tithing, Daily Prayer and Bible Study, Sabbath Time, and Weekly Corporate Worship. We are in the Season of Tithing and Pledging. We are invited to begin the Spiritual Life with this first Holy Habit, the Tithe. Against the backdrop of all that is going on around us, can we quiet the background noise long enough to consider our Undivided Loyalty to God here and now as we consider making a pledge? A pledge that reflects our Adoration and Adherence to God in Christ? A pledge that makes Cooperation with God’s will and God’s plan a reality?

Remember, an investment in Christ’s Body, the Church, is a sound investment no matter what the markets are doing. God seeks our Cooperation. God offers God’s Undivided Love in return.

Friday, October 24, 2008

The Current Crisis: Part 1

19 October 2008 * 1Thessalonians :1-10/Matthew 22:15-22
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, MD
Turn From Idols

Paul wrote Last Sunday: Do not fear anything! (Philippians 4:1-9)

Now he writes this morning that we are to Be imitators of Christ, an example to others, and that he is proud of “…how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.” For many it looks as if the “wrath” is here!

Do we recognize the current CRISIS as a spiritual as well as financial and monetary crisis?

One of our more important Christian thinkers, Evelyn Underhill, has observed: we spend most of life conjugating three verbs – To Want, To Have, To Do - Craving, clutching, fussing over material, political, social, emotional, intellectual and even religious stuff is what we do best. Yet we know this keeps us in a perpetual state of unrest.

As we get on with this journey called life we begin to suspect that these three verbs have no significance at all unless transcended by and included in the more fundamental verb, To Be – Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life.

If we busy ourselves with grasping, wanting, having and doing there is no time to be with God and to listen with the ears of our hearts to what God is saying. God creates us, God calls us, God seeks to be in relationship with us, God seeks to fill us with God’s Light, God’s Love, God’s Life, God’s Grace.

God Creates us to be Imitators of Christ and Examples for others.

What is so unique about he Spiritual Life is that the primary question is not, “What is best for my Soul?’
Nor is it, “What is best for humanity and the world?”
But rather, “What function must this life fulfill in the great economy of God?”

God’s Economy – can we begin to see that there is such a thing as God’s Economy?

The trap of course is to make distinctions between Spiritual Life and Practical Life. Such distinctions are false. One always affects the other.
We are creatures, writes Underhill of sense and spirit. We must learn to live an amphibious life!

Only when we come to understand that the demands of the Spirit, however inconvenient, come first, are first, do the objectionable background noises of life die down.

We tend to put $ and world here and Religion over there when the truth is they are all of one reality

For instance, we have all heard the sermon that says this story from Matthew about the coin with which to pay the tax justifies the separation of church and state. This is so wrong on so many dimensions! Neither Jesus nor anyone around him, least of all the Romans, could imagine such a thing!

The Empire was the Religion/Church, whether Roman or Israel.
Rome knew Caesar as God – his image on the coin was therefore an idol for the people of Israel and Jesus. They could not use it to make offerings or pay the Temple taxes, so there had to be money changers to provide money that was not idolatrous.

Once His opponents produce the coin those plotting against Jesus were convicted – hoisted upon their own petard as they say! That would be the second commandment Moses was getting when last Sunday the people got impatient and made a Golden Calf to worship, pretending it was the idol not YHWH the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob who got them out of slavery in Egypt to freedom with God! Moses and Jesus and the Pharisees knew: Thou shalt have no idols.

The Bible works on a theology of Money in three parts: Exodus, Exile and Escaping the Empire of Rome, Jerusalem and Sin.

Part I of the Bible’s Story of Money: Exodus/Passover= Life in the Empire

Egypt/Empire represents a metaphor in the Bible for the consolidation or monopoly of money, power, politics, religion, and access. Egypt, Babylon, Rome and Jerusalem are the focal points of such consolidation in the Biblical Story. We can imagine where we might locate such a consolidation today: Washington D.C., Wall Street, The Markets.

At the Easter Vigil each year we remember who we are - we were slaves in Egypt. Slaves work 24/7 – slaves get no day off. No Time To BE.

So YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob arranges a Great Escape: perhaps the most interesting detail is that God specifies, “By the way, take some of the Egyptians’ gold, silver, and valuables!” That is there is to be a redistribution of wealth. This redistribution of wealth was God’s idea – it is also represented in God’s notion of the Jubilee Year.

As they escape and discover that Pharaoh’s troops cannot tread water, Miriam (Moses’ sister) and the rest of the sisters Dance and Sing the way to Freedom and Dependence on God. There is, of course a small problem with later editors putting this song in the mouth of Moses, a problem compounded by our Book of Common Prayer which calls it The Song of Moses. We are beginning to get past the problems this has created, but there is still some distance to go.

So, after the dancing and singing comes Manna Season, bread which is given daily. The very same Daily Bread Jesus teaches us to pray for.
In Manna Season everyone has enough, no one gets too much, and if you hoard it, it sours.

And as we know among the rules of Manna Season are the following: One God, No Idols, Observe Sabbath. By the way we are mistaken if we think Sabbath is a religious observance. Sabbath not religious, but rather an economic practice that is an alternative to life in the Empire.

As we heard last week, while Moses was getting the Rules for Manna Season, which incidentally are the same for the Kingdom of God Jesus announces, the people get restless. Apparently they felt Moses was spending too much time with God! So they made the Golden Calf – an Idol.

Now what is interesting in the Bible is that idols tend to be money that is cast as religion – kind of a prototype for modern day Wall Street and consumer driven, free-market capitalism.

It is my observation that idolatry is just about the only sin the Bible cares very much about. My favorite text, and you can find them all over the place, is Psalm 115:
Our God is in the Heavens, he does as he pleases
You don’t have to like it, you don’t get to vote on it
What a God!
Their idols are silver and gold
The work of human hands
They have mouths but they cannot speak
They have eyes but they do not see
They have ears but they do not hear
Noses but they do not smell
Hand but they do not feel
Feet but they do not walk
They make no sound in their throats.

Now if we understood Hebrew, this is where we are meant to laugh! Because the word for “make no sound in their throats” means they cannot clear their throats – “Mmhh-mmhhh.” And the argument, of course, is that any God that cannot go, “Mmhh-mmhhh” will never get you out of slavery, or exile, or out of the Empire.

It is very interesting to note that the Bible does not say idols are bad – it is just that they simply do not work! So God says in effect, go ahead, pile up all your money and wealth cast as religion and pray to it. Go ahead! But it will never get you out of the Empire, Wilderness, Exile or Slavery to Sin.

Only God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus can get us out of whatever crisis we are facing.

Do we really have to ask ourselves, how much of a financial crisis, how many mortgage backed securities, how many credit default swaps, how much unchecked greed, how much crime, how much drugs, how much poverty, how much homelessness, how much violence, and how much hatred of others does there really need to be before a society declares itself to be in Exile?

Hopefully we can see that Jesus advocates a return to Manna Season, where everyone has enough, no one has too much, and if you store it up it sours. Just read the first few chapters of Acts to see how the early Christian community understood all this.

And of course there is only one God: In this scheme nothing “IS” Caesar’s
Everything is God’s – The text here is Psalm 24 “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein!”

It would be good had we memorized that in Sunday School alongside the 23rd Psalm!

What they are asking Jesus is: do you support Rome or not?

The question for us would be, Who or What do we support that reflects our Being God’s people?

As we head into our Pledge Season we would do well to remember:

An investment in the Body of Christ, His Church, is always a sound investment no matter how the markets are doing!

You might even call it an eternal investment.

It is an investment that always pays dividends by bringing people closer to God, closer to one another and closer to themselves – their real self! The dividends touch more and more lives with the Love and Grace of God.

And one of the Bible’s Holy Habits, Tithing and Pledging is meant to help turn us from idols and allow God in Christ to rescue us from the wrath that is to come!
Amen

Sunday, October 19, 2008

The Current Crisis: Part 1

19 October 2008 * 1Thessalonians :1-10/Matthew 22:15-22
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, MD
Turn From Idols

Paul wrote Last Sunday: Do not fear anything! (Philippians 4:1-9)

Now he writes this morning that we are to Be imitators of Christ, an example to others, and that he is proud of “…how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.” For many it looks as if the “wrath” is here!

Do we recognize the current CRISIS as a spiritual as well as financial and monetary crisis?

One of our more important Christian thinkers, Evelyn Underhill, has observed: we spend most of life conjugating three verbs – To Want, To Have, To Do - Craving, clutching, fussing over material, political, social, emotional, intellectual and even religious stuff is what we do best. Yet we know this keeps us in a perpetual state of unrest.

As we get on with this journey called life we begin to suspect that these three verbs have no significance at all unless transcended by and included in the more fundamental verb, To Be – Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life.

If we busy ourselves with grasping, wanting, having and doing there is no time to be with God and to listen with the ears of our hearts to what God is saying. God creates us, God calls us, God seeks to be in relationship with us, God seeks to fill us with God’s Light, God’s Love, God’s Life, God’s Grace.

God Creates us to be Imitators of Christ and Examples for others.

What is so unique about he Spiritual Life is that the primary question is not, “What is best for my Soul?’
Nor is it, “What is best for humanity and the world?”
But rather, “What function must this life fulfill in the great economy of God?”

God’s Economy – can we begin to see that there is such a thing as God’s Economy?

The trap of course is to make distinctions between Spiritual Life and Practical Life. Such distinctions are false. One always affects the other.
We are creatures, writes Underhill of sense and spirit. We must learn to live an amphibious life!

Only when we come to understand that the demands of the Spirit, however inconvenient, come first, are first, do the objectionable background noises of life die down.

We tend to put $ and world here and Religion over there when the truth is they are all of one reality

For instance, we have all heard the sermon that says this story from Matthew about the coin with which to pay the tax justifies the separation of church and state. This is so wrong on so many dimensions! Neither Jesus nor anyone around him, least of all the Romans, could imagine such a thing!

The Empire was the Religion/Church, whether Roman or Israel.
Rome knew Caesar as God – his image on the coin was therefore an idol for the people of Israel and Jesus. They could not use it to make offerings or pay the Temple taxes, so there had to be money changers to provide money that was not idolatrous.

Once His opponents produce the coin those plotting against Jesus were convicted – hoisted upon their own petard as they say! That would be the second commandment Moses was getting when last Sunday the people got impatient and made a Golden Calf to worship, pretending it was the idol not YHWH the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob who got them out of slavery in Egypt to freedom with God! Moses and Jesus and the Pharisees knew: Thou shalt have no idols.

The Bible works on a theology of Money in three parts: Exodus, Exile and Escaping the Empire of Rome, Jerusalem and Sin.

Part I of the Bible’s Story of Money: Exodus/Passover= Life in the Empire

Egypt/Empire represents a metaphor in the Bible for the consolidation or monopoly of money, power, politics, religion, and access. Egypt, Babylon, Rome and Jerusalem are the focal points of such consolidation in the Biblical Story. We can imagine where we might locate such a consolidation today: Washington D.C., Wall Street, The Markets.

At the Easter Vigil each year we remember who we are - we were slaves in Egypt. Slaves work 24/7 – slaves get no day off. No Time To BE.

So YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob arranges a Great Escape: perhaps the most interesting detail is that God specifies, “By the way, take some of the Egyptians’ gold, silver, and valuables!” That is there is to be a redistribution of wealth. This redistribution of wealth was God’s idea – it is also represented in God’s notion of the Jubilee Year.

As they escape and discover that Pharaoh’s troops cannot tread water, Miriam (Moses’ sister) and the rest of the sisters Dance and Sing the way to Freedom and Dependence on God. There is, of course a small problem with later editors putting this song in the mouth of Moses, a problem compounded by our Book of Common Prayer which calls it The Song of Moses. We are beginning to get past the problems this has created, but there is still some distance to go.

So, after the dancing and singing comes Manna Season, bread which is given daily. The very same Daily Bread Jesus teaches us to pray for.
In Manna Season everyone has enough, no one gets too much, and if you hoard it, it sours.

And as we know among the rules of Manna Season are the following: One God, No Idols, Observe Sabbath. By the way we are mistaken if we think Sabbath is a religious observance. Sabbath not religious, but rather an economic practice that is an alternative to life in the Empire.

As we heard last week, while Moses was getting the Rules for Manna Season, which incidentally are the same for the Kingdom of God Jesus announces, the people get restless. Apparently they felt Moses was spending too much time with God! So they made the Golden Calf – an Idol.

Now what is interesting in the Bible is that idols tend to be money that is cast as religion – kind of a prototype for modern day Wall Street and consumer driven, free-market capitalism.

It is my observation that idolatry is just about the only sin the Bible cares very much about. My favorite text, and you can find them all over the place, is Psalm 115:
Our God is in the Heavens, he does as he pleases
You don’t have to like it, you don’t get to vote on it
What a God!
Their idols are silver and gold
The work of human hands
They have mouths but they cannot speak
They have eyes but they do not see
They have ears but they do not hear
Noses but they do not smell
Hand but they do not feel
Feet but they do not walk
They make no sound in their throats.

Now if we understood Hebrew, this is where we are meant to laugh! Because the word for “make no sound in their throats” means they cannot clear their throats – “Mmhh-mmhhh.” And the argument, of course, is that any God that cannot go, “Mmhh-mmhhh” will never get you out of slavery, or exile, or out of the Empire.

It is very interesting to note that the Bible does not say idols are bad – it is just that they simply do not work! So God says in effect, go ahead, pile up all your money and wealth cast as religion and pray to it. Go ahead! But it will never get you out of the Empire, Wilderness, Exile or Slavery to Sin.

Only God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus can get us out of whatever crisis we are facing.

Do we really have to ask ourselves, how much of a financial crisis, how many mortgage backed securities, how many credit default swaps, how much unchecked greed, how much crime, how much drugs, how much poverty, how much homelessness, how much violence, and how much hatred of others does there really need to be before a society declares itself to be in Exile?

Hopefully we can see that Jesus advocates a return to Manna Season, where everyone has enough, no one has too much, and if you store it up it sours. Just read the first few chapters of Acts to see how the early Christian community understood all this.

And of course there is only one God: In this scheme nothing “IS” Caesar’s
Everything is God’s – The text here is Psalm 24 “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein!”

It would be good had we memorized that in Sunday School alongside the 23rd Psalm!

What they are asking Jesus is: do you support Rome or not?

The question for us would be, Who or What do we support that reflects our Being God’s people?

As we head into our Pledge Season we would do well to remember:

An investment in the Body of Christ, His Church, is always a sound investment no matter how the markets are doing!

You might even call it an eternal investment.

It is an investment that always pays dividends by bringing people closer to God, closer to one another and closer to themselves – their real self! The dividends touch more and more lives with the Love and Grace of God.

And one of the Bible’s Holy Habits, Tithing and Pledging is meant to help turn us from idols and allow God in Christ to rescue us from the wrath that is to come!
Amen

The Current Crisis: Part 1

19 October 2008 * 1Thessalonians :1-10/Matthew 22:15-22
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, MD
Turn From Idols

Paul wrote Last Sunday: Do not fear anything! (Philippians 4:1-9)

Now he writes this morning that we are to Be imitators of Christ, an example to others, and that he is proud of “…how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.” For many it looks as if the “wrath” is here!

Do we recognize the current CRISIS as a spiritual as well as financial and monetary crisis?

One of our more important Christian thinkers, Evelyn Underhill, has observed: we spend most of life conjugating three verbs – To Want, To Have, To Do - Craving, clutching, fussing over material, political, social, emotional, intellectual and even religious stuff is what we do best. Yet we know this keeps us in a perpetual state of unrest.

As we get on with this journey called life we begin to suspect that these three verbs have no significance at all unless transcended by and included in the more fundamental verb, To Be – Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life.

If we busy ourselves with grasping, wanting, having and doing there is no time to be with God and to listen with the ears of our hearts to what God is saying. God creates us, God calls us, God seeks to be in relationship with us, God seeks to fill us with God’s Light, God’s Love, God’s Life, God’s Grace.

God Creates us to be Imitators of Christ and Examples for others.

What is so unique about he Spiritual Life is that the primary question is not, “What is best for my Soul?’
Nor is it, “What is best for humanity and the world?”
But rather, “What function must this life fulfill in the great economy of God?”

God’s Economy – can we begin to see that there is such a thing as God’s Economy?

The trap of course is to make distinctions between Spiritual Life and Practical Life. Such distinctions are false. One always affects the other.
We are creatures, writes Underhill of sense and spirit. We must learn to live an amphibious life!

Only when we come to understand that the demands of the Spirit, however inconvenient, come first, are first, do the objectionable background noises of life die down.

We tend to put $ and world here and Religion over there when the truth is they are all of one reality

For instance, we have all heard the sermon that says this story from Matthew about the coin with which to pay the tax justifies the separation of church and state. This is so wrong on so many dimensions! Neither Jesus nor anyone around him, least of all the Romans, could imagine such a thing!

The Empire was the Religion/Church, whether Roman or Israel.
Rome knew Caesar as God – his image on the coin was therefore an idol for the people of Israel and Jesus. They could not use it to make offerings or pay the Temple taxes, so there had to be money changers to provide money that was not idolatrous.

Once His opponents produce the coin those plotting against Jesus were convicted – hoisted upon their own petard as they say! That would be the second commandment Moses was getting when last Sunday the people got impatient and made a Golden Calf to worship, pretending it was the idol not YHWH the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob who got them out of slavery in Egypt to freedom with God! Moses and Jesus and the Pharisees knew: Thou shalt have no idols.

The Bible works on a theology of Money in three parts: Exodus, Exile and Escaping the Empire of Rome, Jerusalem and Sin.

Part I of the Bible’s Story of Money: Exodus/Passover= Life in the Empire

Egypt/Empire represents a metaphor in the Bible for the consolidation or monopoly of money, power, politics, religion, and access. Egypt, Babylon, Rome and Jerusalem are the focal points of such consolidation in the Biblical Story. We can imagine where we might locate such a consolidation today: Washington D.C., Wall Street, The Markets.

At the Easter Vigil each year we remember who we are - we were slaves in Egypt. Slaves work 24/7 – slaves get no day off. No Time To BE.

So YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob arranges a Great Escape: perhaps the most interesting detail is that God specifies, “By the way, take some of the Egyptians’ gold, silver, and valuables!” That is there is to be a redistribution of wealth. This redistribution of wealth was God’s idea – it is also represented in God’s notion of the Jubilee Year.

As they escape and discover that Pharaoh’s troops cannot tread water, Miriam (Moses’ sister) and the rest of the sisters Dance and Sing the way to Freedom and Dependence on God. There is, of course a small problem with later editors putting this song in the mouth of Moses, a problem compounded by our Book of Common Prayer which calls it The Song of Moses. We are beginning to get past the problems this has created, but there is still some distance to go.

So, after the dancing and singing comes Manna Season, bread which is given daily. The very same Daily Bread Jesus teaches us to pray for.
In Manna Season everyone has enough, no one gets too much, and if you hoard it, it sours.

And as we know among the rules of Manna Season are the following: One God, No Idols, Observe Sabbath. By the way we are mistaken if we think Sabbath is a religious observance. Sabbath not religious, but rather an economic practice that is an alternative to life in the Empire.

As we heard last week, while Moses was getting the Rules for Manna Season, which incidentally are the same for the Kingdom of God Jesus announces, the people get restless. Apparently they felt Moses was spending too much time with God! So they made the Golden Calf – an Idol.

Now what is interesting in the Bible is that idols tend to be money that is cast as religion – kind of a prototype for modern day Wall Street and consumer driven, free-market capitalism.

It is my observation that idolatry is just about the only sin the Bible cares very much about. My favorite text, and you can find them all over the place, is Psalm 115:
Our God is in the Heavens, he does as he pleases
You don’t have to like it, you don’t get to vote on it
What a God!
Their idols are silver and gold
The work of human hands
They have mouths but they cannot speak
They have eyes but they do not see
They have ears but they do not hear
Noses but they do not smell
Hand but they do not feel
Feet but they do not walk
They make no sound in their throats.

Now if we understood Hebrew, this is where we are meant to laugh! Because the word for “make no sound in their throats” means they cannot clear their throats – “Mmhh-mmhhh.” And the argument, of course, is that any God that cannot go, “Mmhh-mmhhh” will never get you out of slavery, or exile, or out of the Empire.

It is very interesting to note that the Bible does not say idols are bad – it is just that they simply do not work! So God says in effect, go ahead, pile up all your money and wealth cast as religion and pray to it. Go ahead! But it will never get you out of the Empire, Wilderness, Exile or Slavery to Sin.

Only God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus can get us out of whatever crisis we are facing.

Do we really have to ask ourselves, how much of a financial crisis, how many mortgage backed securities, how many credit default swaps, how much unchecked greed, how much crime, how much drugs, how much poverty, how much homelessness, how much violence, and how much hatred of others does there really need to be before a society declares itself to be in Exile?

Hopefully we can see that Jesus advocates a return to Manna Season, where everyone has enough, no one has too much, and if you store it up it sours. Just read the first few chapters of Acts to see how the early Christian community understood all this.

And of course there is only one God: In this scheme nothing “IS” Caesar’s
Everything is God’s – The text here is Psalm 24 “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein!”

It would be good had we memorized that in Sunday School alongside the 23rd Psalm!

What they are asking Jesus is: do you support Rome or not?

The question for us would be, Who or What do we support that reflects our Being God’s people?

As we head into our Pledge Season we would do well to remember:

An investment in the Body of Christ, His Church, is always a sound investment no matter how the markets are doing!

You might even call it an eternal investment.

It is an investment that always pays dividends by bringing people closer to God, closer to one another and closer to themselves – their real self! The dividends touch more and more lives with the Love and Grace of God.

And one of the Bible’s Holy Habits, Tithing and Pledging is meant to help turn us from idols and allow God in Christ to rescue us from the wrath that is to come!
Amen