Idolatry: Worshpping the Creator or the Creature?

Romans 1:20–25 NRSV

Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Idolatry

El Salvador

This Spring, I had the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit El Salvador and make pilgrimage to remember the life of Archbishop Oscar Romero. We visited San Salvador during the week of the 40 year anniversary of his assasination. Romero spoke up against government repression and the disappearance of many farmworkers and advocates for the poor. Romero believed in the inherent dignity of all people, from the poor to the rich, and spoke out for the needs of the most vulnerable in Salvadoran society.

I’m thinking about my time in El Salvador as I approach this text from Romans because of my experience visiting the country in the present day. As many of us know, El Salvador has been in the international news because it houses one of the largest prisons in Central America, a prison notorious for it’s conditions (spoiler: they’re not good).

During my week in San Salvador, we stayed in a neighborhood close to the city center, while during the days we would venture out to the campos and surrounding poorer towns, where we got to see ministry and life first hand. But the neighborhood we stayed in could have been an American suburb. Down the street was the biggest Kentucky Fried Chicken that I’ve ever seen. Just beyond that, a huge Denny’s. The backdrop of the skyline shown with the Google logo. It was jarring, to be honest. We were spending time with some of the poorest and kindest people I’ve met. And we were staying smack-dab in a little United States idol — Western capitalism shining bright.

I highlight this because it’s a pretty clear example of modern day idolatry.

Behind this veneer, El Salvador has a political leader who really wants to modernize and bring in wealth to the country. Through marshal law, President Bukele has made the streets of San Salvador safe and clean. Unhoused individuals are swept up quickly and sent away, either far from the city or directly to prison. Clean streets and shiny buildings come at a cost.

Idolatry comes at a cost.

Why do I call this idolatry? Well, it’s an example of a country and politician using their power to set up a cultural idol of wealth, cleanliness, and success. It’s an example of a country looking out at the international community and feigning higher levels of production and security than really exist in order to present a strong face. Idols are mockups of what we envision power to be like.

Of course, the teaching in Romans and the historical perspective of the Hebrew people in the wilderness give us a sense for the power of idols.

Idols promise to reveal the divine to us. Idols promise to be the vision of what God is like and, therefore, distract us. They are shiny objects that look great and feel powerful — because they are a projection of our insecurities, our flaws, our struggles, upon something we create in hopes…somehow…that that thing will ease our existential concerns and make us secure.

We create idols out of our anxiety and desire for relief from this anxiousness.

Last summer, my family spent a week in Rome. We saw the great statues and buildings. We learned the history of the city, of it’s great wealth and power in the world. We learned about the gladiators and the coloseum, a spectacle of violence and power. Incredible in its scale, horrific in the disregard for human life. We saw the temples, the statues, the idols of the empire.

You may know this, but when the Roman army would move through the countryside, they would be led by a standard bearer who held a large pole with a golden eagle fixed atop. This was the signifier of imperial power. It inspired the troops as they entered battle and was meant to hold power and fear over any who were visited by these legions.

This, among so many other things, is an idol of the Roman empire.

That is the world Paul is speaking to as we hear this opening passage from Romans. This Summer, we’ve picked the book of Romans to study through in our pulpit swap.

My section focuses on the depravity and idolatry which humanity is often drawn to. And we hear Paul describing this kind of exchange, where the people turned themselves over to debauchery and idolatry. They have exchanged the providence of God for the false security of the created idols. And these idols are obviously things cast in gold or statues of the gods. But these idols are also more subtle and insidious — the people have traded the created order and God’s goodness for synthetic alternatives and conjured remedies. Not all idols are physical. Many are emotional, relational, spiritual.

What is an idol?

Plainly, we can think of an idol as a secondary object that represents and often replaces something intangible or ethereal. Idols are images of our desires. Think of the statues of the gods of fertility and war. These are idols which represent these more base desires — sex and violence.

And because these are secondary objects, they don’t actually meet us in the ways we hope they will. A fertility statue, as we know, doesn’t make us more virile or make babies. But because it’s an idol, it distracts us from that reality and keeps our focus.

The Hebrew people made an idol in the wilderness. They made a secondary object to represent the divine. They likely modeled it after other cultures’ idols they’d seen. They made it a golden calf…a picture of strength, power, goods, whatever. It probably looked like another cultural god they’d encountered along the way. Or perhaps it struck them as similar to the grand figures they saw back in Egypt. The Egyptians, of course, are well known for their idols and statues, beautiful artistic representations of their gods and pharaohs.

Alcohol & Drugs

I think we have many contemporary examples of idols. The Salvadoran skyline — an idol of western capitalism and wealth.

I think another common example of an idol is drugs and alcohol. It can be very easy for us to use drugs or alcohol as a secondary object that we believe will help us meet the deeper desire for transcendence or euphoria. The created, secondary object, numbs us and turns our attention away from our pain or suffering. And the problem, as we know, is that this desire does not get met, but continues to grow. So the high has to be bigger, the plunge deeper. Idols don’t pay back what they take from us.

Cheating Death

Another example. As many of you probably know, my wife Stacy, was recently diagnosed with a stage 4 recurrence of breast cancer. It has migrated and metastasized to her bones. It’s not great.

And in the midst of us figuring out a course of treatment and making plans for what comes next, I’ve found myself reflecting on the health care system and how we talk about decline and death. Before I go on, I want to make it clear that we’re doing everything we know how to do to prolong Stacy’s life. She may have many more good years ahead and we ask that you continue to prayer for that reality.

But as we look at this very difficult diagnosis, I’m becoming more away of how our culture idolizes immortality. Think of the common myths — the fountain of youth, the miracle drug, El Dorado. We idolize the idea of living forever. We even have billionaires, right now, who are trying to cheat death through bio-hacking and stem cell transplants or some other weird science-y thing.

We idolize the prolonging of life. And I’ve found myself asking — what is the cost of such an idol? Especially at the end of life, we have this idol of making life continue on well after it is meant to. During my time as a chaplain intern at the hospital, I became acquainted with the terms of palliative care vs. life-saving measures.

Obviously, we want to make sure our loved ones stay with us. Obviously, I’m gonna do everything in my power to support my wife for as long as possible.

But death, or the cheating of death, is yet another idol. It is our attempt to create a secondary solution or object that will somehow replace the natural order of God’s movement in the world.

Idols turn us away from the natural working of God’s created order. Our creation supplants the Creator’s handiwork.

Alright, we’re all idolators and we should feel bad about ourselves, right?

No.

I want to talk for a moment about the difference between an idol and an ikon.

I got this stole in San Salvador and I love.

I wear this stole and this cross today because they are a visage of many images of God’s handiwork and creation. I’ve even got an armadillo on here. God’s creation is good.

And each of these representations, they are not the thing they represent. They do not pretend to be the thing to worship.

Rather, these images are ikons. An ikon is something that represents the thing, but never acts like it is the thing. And idol demands you look at it and worship it. It pretends to hold all the power. But an ikon is different. An ikon, you see through. You see the image of the ikon and it directs your heart and devotion to the divine behind it.

God instructs the people of Israel to never make a graven image of the divine. Meaning — don’t make an idol, a fake version of the real thing. Don’t worship stuff or power or wealth.

But Christians have for centuries made beautiful icons of the Divine. Of the disciples. Of Mary. Of Jesus.

An ikon is used as a devotional object that one sees through to see the divine. Icons are windows. Idols are objects.

What have we set up as an idol in our lives?

What is the secondary object of your devotion?

Who are you worshipping when you turn your attention to the idol?

Back to El Salvador to close.

Contrasting the shiny wealth of the big city, we met some amazing community organizers out in the surrounding towns who are cultivating life together. Instead of the idol of wealth, these people have found the ikon of community. By building each other up and fostering relationships that lift up the poor and the needy, these organizers have made an ikon — a way to see through to how God knits us together. They have come to know God’s providence in the form of community networks that support people’s real needs, not just displaying wealth and power.

We can be this, too. We can be the ikon of God’s goodness, where the world sees God’s love through us. We don’t have to be stuck in these depraved idols, wasting away. In Christ, we have the true vision of God’s love. When we make Christ our center, our icon, we set aside all these other distractions, these idols, for the true Ikon, the true vision, the Christ, who shows us the face of God.

May we people of of devotion to the true icon of God, Jesus the Christ. Amen, amen, amen.