Would You Like Fries With That

Would You Like Fries With That?
a sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers
Exodus 32:1-14
Philippians 4:1-9

Do you ever wonder where God is? Have you ever thought that God was alive and present and walking the earth performing miracles in the olden days of the Bible, but doesn’t seem to speak to us in the same ways anymore? Are you ever disappointed that God has never talked to you the way he did to Moses or David or Mary or Jesus? Do you think it might have more to do with us than it does with God?

We live in a “have it your way” culture. An environment that encourages us to do what we like, when we like, how we like. We don’t make our own clothes anymore; we go to Kohl’s or Macy’s or some other store and pick out what we want, in the colors we want and the style we want. We don’t grow our own food or what we do grow is supplementary and for our own enjoyment. We go to the grocery store or farm stand and choose what we want. We often don’t even cook at home. We pick up a chicken that’s already been broiled and side dishes to which you only have to add water and salad that is pre-washed and pre-packaged to eat with dressing from the bottle. Or we go to restaurants and have food prepared with our sauce on the side, broiled not fried, dessert without sugar and coffee without caffeine. Everything is what we want, when we want it, how we want it. It makes it very hard to commit to going to church when you’re only offered one option – Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. and we don’t sing only the hymns you like or read the prayers you like or hear the message you’d prefer to hear. Now that requires commitment, something we wrestle with in a throwaway world in which you are the most important object.

On the other hand, perhaps it is all an illusion. In reality, when we go to a McDonalds drive-through thinking we’ll save time and get what we want, we order and are often asked if “we’d like fries with that”. We may not, but are suckered by the price or the impulse of the moment and end up with fat and calories we don’t need or want, but eat them anyway because we paid for them and after all, they do taste good. Or we go to the grocery store to buy certain items and come out with three other things because they were in the “sale” bin. Or we watch television and are inundated with opportunities to purchase things that we don’t need and can’t afford, but we buy because everyone else has them or our children wear us down or it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Our children own iPods that can program 10,000 songs, so that they can listen to what they want when they want, but really how many songs does one truly need to hear in a day, a week, a lifetime? We show up for church when we can because the culture demands our children be in soccer or football or the Christmas ballet or the fifth grade play and after all, what’s more important, God or our kids? We are pushed and pulled, tugged and twisted, trying our best to do the right thing, but often not even knowing what that is. And is God right out in front, giving us large signals, sky-writing the answers for us so that we know what to do and don’t have to worry about ambiguities? Heck, no! We are left with this more than two thousand year old often dichotomous incomprehensible book as a guide that people tell us to read as though we could figure it out by ourselves. It’s very frustrating!

This is exactly how the Israelites in the story we read today. Here they had trusted Moses and Aaron who had told them that they would be freed from the bondage of slavery in Egypt and taken to a land flowing with milk and honey. Instead they are wandering around in the desert for years with no food and no water. A whole bunch of them die off while other new ones are born. It’s not even the same group of people that they started out with, for goodness sakes! All they want is a little land to build a home on. A safe place to raise their families. A chance to lead a life worth living.

But no! They are sitting in the middle of the desert while Moses, their esteemed leader is off on a mountaintop somewhere talking to God. Well, they want to talk with God, too! Is that such a bad thing? They just want a way to commune with God, to know that God is still with them, to worship God in a tangible meaningful way instead of sitting here in the hot, dusty, middle-of-nowhere while their supposed fearless leader leaves them high and dry.

So they do what seems to them a sensible thing. They go to Aaron and say, “Hey! We don’t know where Moses is or what he’s up to, but we want to worship god. Would you please make a god for us, so that we can worship?”

Now we know that we are not supposed to worship idols. It’s right there in the ten commandments, but sometimes we can’t help ourselves. We are human and human beings like to have some image in front of them to help them along.

When the Confirmation class visited the Hindu temple last year, we had a wonderful guide who explained to us that the Hindus believe that God is One and invisible. The sound OM is the most open sound we can make – the “o” – along with the most closed sound we can make – the “mmm” – and represents God’s invisible wholeness, God’s beginning and end, God’s completeness. But it is not enough, she told us, to have a perfect sound to represent God or to imagine God as nothing and everything, the Hindus believe that human beings need images to worship because our minds cannot comprehend God’s magnitude without them. She explained that is the reason why they have so many gods and so many stories attached to them – because it is a way for our puny human minds to comprehend just a teeny part of God at a time.

Meanwhile, our tradition tells us that we are not to worship idols or icons, yet this Hindu principle seems to make sense in light of the fact that the Catholic churches became more and more ornate throughout history with stained glass windows and iconography galore until the Protestant revolution came along to try and backtrack us again to simplicity. But look here, above my head. A huge cross is right front and center as soon as you walk in the doors of our sanctuary. We know that we are not worshipping the cross, but the person of Jesus the Christ who hung upon it and was resurrected for us, but nonetheless there it is – a huge icon for all who enter and worship here to see and connect with in whatever way they may. This is the reason I do not turn and look at the cross during the Doxology. Because for me, God does not lie within the image; it is merely there to help those who need it as a reminder of the person of Jesus Christ. The song is enough to feel God’s presence. In that particular instance at that particular moment.

But the fact is: images help us. We do need something upon which to focus. Something with which to connect. That is what the Hebrews are asking of Aaron. Make us something to worship. I don’t believe they were worshipping the calf. I think they were seeking God – maybe not wisely, maybe not well, but their hearts were in the right place.

So are ours. We want to worship the Lord. We want to be there for and with God. But like the ancient Israelites, sometimes our priorities get skewed. After all, we live in twenty-first century America, a land of abundance and riches never known before. We truly do live in a land flowing with milk and honey and whatever else you could wish for. But it’s easy to get caught up in the culture of the times rather than the connection for which we long. After all, we are the Israelites who have lost our leader, but we’re not even in the desert of privation, but instead have every need and desire met at every turn. Or do we?

We are fed and clothed, it is true. Even the poorest of us sitting in this sanctuary today has better shelter and food and clothing than the farmer in Guatemala, the nomad in Tibet, the native people in Darfur, the family in Afghanistan, most people in the world. This gives us the illusion that we are in control and that everything is at our fingertips.

Tracy Mora passed on a story to me that I loved about a story of a man named Pedro who was running late for a job interview in the City. He drove in and was anxiously looking for a parking spot so that he would make it on time, thus making a good impression and having a good chance at winning the position. He circled the block one time, then two, then three. Then he began frantically praying, “Dear God, please help me find a parking spot. Please help me find a parking spot. Please help me find a parking spot. I’ll go to church every Sunday and I’ll give up tequila if you’ll just please help me find a parking spot!”

All of a sudden there opened up a perfect parking spot right in front of the building where the interview was located.

“Never mind, God!” Pedro shouted, “I found one!”

Isn’t this just like us? We want God to be with us, we beg for connection, we long for relationship, but on our terms. When it comes right down to it, God is important in so far as we can get something out of God, but we don’t want to put anything into it.

We want to define what we worship and how we worship, just as the Israelites do on the next step in their journey. Aaron tells them to give him all the gold in the ears of their wives and sons and daughters and then he takes the gold and forms it into the image of a golden calf, which was a familiar god-image of the time. In Canaanite mythology the two chief gods, Ba’al and El, were both closely associated with the bull as a divine symbol. Now El is the word that the Hebrew Bible uses for God a lot, so we’re not even necessarily talking about an image that was inappropriate. Some scholars even think that this is a crucial story because it ends the bull-image vs. the imageless battle that had been going on within the culture of the time.

Ultimately what matters for us today, however, is do we listen to the culture or to our God? The culture of the Hebrews’ time was god as golden calf vs. god as imageless. The culture of our time is far more insidious and invidious than that. The culture of our time gives us image after image after image of the good life: skinny beautiful rich people who never get too old and who never wrestle with anything too tough to figure out and fix in thirty minutes or less. It is an unattainable ideal and yet one we are told subconsciously to worship and to strive for. Our world is inundated with media that tells us who we are to be, what we are to look like, how we are to behave, how are children are to be, what they are to look like, and how they are to behave, what the people around us are to be and to look like and to behave and if our world doesn’t match up with these ideals, then we simply don’t measure up. And let me tell you something, folks, real life ain’t like that, so there is no way, no how we are ever going to measure up to the standard set by the world of marketing and advertising.

This is the golden calf of today. To be clever and handsome and rich and famous and thin and beautiful and wise and witty and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. So what happens if we do not listen to the culture? What if we do not hold up Hollywood’s image of “This American Life” as our God? Even tougher, how do we escape the hold that the all pervasive societal structure has upon us?

The apostle Paul starts out in the scripture from his letter to the Philippians with a very important basic point. He urges Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind in Christ Jesus, and talks about working with them and with Clement and others for the Lord. What is this basic point? The unity of Christian fellowship. Be here on Sunday, folks. Simply come.

Maybe you can’t stand for the hymns. Maybe you can’t focus on the prayers. Maybe you can’t listen to the whole sermon without fading in and out. I don’t care. God doesn’t care. Just come. Be here. Be faithful. Make the commitment to coming and being in fellowship with God and with one another. And slowly, over time, you’ll do a little more and a little better. Or not. But you’ll be here. In unity with others who are trying to do the same thing.

What does Paul say next? “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.” Feel God’s presence. Be aware that God is here, now, with us. I’ve heard it said that if we who came to church on Sundays actually ever really thought about the power to which we are ascribing glory and its presence here in the room with us right now, we would be awe-struck, terrified in the knowledge of God’s wonder and majesty alongside us. “Rejoice in the Lord always…(t)he Lord is near.” Just a little hit of that realization is enough to make coming here on a Sunday morning – or any other time – worthwhile, don’t you think?

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

I confess to you, folks, this is my favorite verse in the entire Bible. “Do not worry about anything.” Isn’t that great? What are we supposed to worry about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. How many of you spend time in worry? Give me a show of hands, will you? Yet Paul tells us “(d)o not worry about anything”. Wouldn’t the ancient Israelites have done well to have had this verse available to them? Here they are worried about everything – where is Moses, what’s he doing, where is God, what’s he doing, where are we, what are we doing – the list goes on and on and the only thing they know how to do is try to connect in some kind of false way, external way. But here Paul has the internal answer again: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”

What do we talk to God about? Everything. How do we talk to God? Through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Talk to God asking for what you need; giving thanks for what you have. Doesn’t get much more direct and simple than this. And what’s the end result? “(T)he peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Will you get everything you ask for? Maybe; maybe not. Will all the situations you talk to God about come out in your favor? Could be, but not necessarily. Will the people you want to get well, or get better or just get nice, get well or better or manageable? Who knows.

What we do know is that the peace of God which is greater than anything we can ever understand will encompass our hearts when we do this. God is always there, just waiting for us. Standing by for each and every one of us, reaching for us. Hoping and wishing and wanting us to reach back to God. When we do – when we show up here and build relationships with one another and lift our voices in song and prayer and praise and our hearts and minds open up – when we do, we have a chance of saying “no” to the culture every once in a while. There exists the possibility that when it comes down to the question of eating dinner out tonight or taking that money and sharing our food with the hungry by spending the money on non-perishable and canned goods for the basket in the foyer, we might opt for the latter. When it comes to the question of do I put my kid in sports or in Sunday School, we might opt for our children’s spiritual life. When it comes to the question of do I work until 8:00 o’clock or do I leave work early to go to Bible Study on Tuesday nights starting November 1^st for six weeks, we might find a flex-time solution that works for our boss and feeds our own souls. When it comes to the question of “would you like fries with that?” we might think about not only do we want the fries, but do we want the burger, either…

When it comes to asking for God’s help and receiving it, unlike poor Pedro in our story today, we might actually recognize the presence of the living God, the same God that spoke to Moses and to David and to Mary, the same God that lived in Jesus and performed miracles through Him. We might come to know God in a way for which we long. We might no longer think that God doesn’t exist in the same way that He did in Bible times, but instead might see God’s presence in mighty and tangible ways in our own lives. Not only that, but we might become God’s arms and hands, and eyes and ears, and love personified in a world that is crying out for Jesus’ message of good news proclaimed to the poor and freedom to the captive.

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you.” So Paul says and I believe it’s true. Amen.