Idolatry

Gospel reading: Luke 21.5-19
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I had never associated Snidely Whiplash with idolatry until now. If you never watched the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, you might not know Mr. Whiplash. He was the show's villian. Clad in a black top hat, sporting a sinister handlebar mustache he always seemed to be lashing the heroine, Nell Fenwick, to the train tracks. Not to worry, though. Soon enough her bumbling paramour, Dudley Do-Right would make it onto the scene, and Nell would narrowly escape the charging train.

Snidely, Nell, and Dudley, of course were parodies of the classic melodramatic characters of the silent film era. And what made this genre delightful was its total lack of ambiguity about whom we should be rooting for. The characters were caricatures. Thoroughly good or thoroughly evil. We expected them to be one dimensional.

Kathleen Norris's reflections on idolatry suggested that our definition of an idol is probably too one dimensional if we limit it to golden calves or the carvings of what we might call 'primitive' religions. What's idolatrous about calves and carvings is their reduction of the mystery of God. What Kathleen Norris shows us is that we do the same thing to one another.

She makes the interesting comment that etymologically 'idol' and 'idea' are related. And this is where something clicked for me. Because sometimes it's a whole lot easier to deal with the idea of someone than the person in the flesh.

You know how this works. I have all kinds of 'principles'. I form my opinions in the abstract and my reasoning is always absolutely watertight. And then it happens to a friend. Whatever the principle, when we're considering a whole person my tidy little system starts to unravel. When someone I know falls into a category - be it cultural or political or moral or religious - that I have rejected or dismissed, then all the motives and biases that I had assumed on behalf of my caricatures are exposed. Somehow I realize that a (fill in the villianous political party or religious perspective of your choice) isn't a Snidely Whiplash. We can know quite well that a friend is a sinner, but we know that their sin isn't the whole story, too.

Today it's the implications for our relationship with God that I'd like to consider as well. It seems that the notion of Incarnation which Christians profess would have been a step toward idolatry in the older sense of a god in a tangible, concrete form. When Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth he was just as visible as a fertility goddess, just as tangible as a golden calf.

But, in fact, the Incarnation was the ultimate counter to our idolatrous instincts. For as long as we simply ponder the 'idea' of God, we're safe. We can construct the god we think we need, or the god who serves our purposes. And we all do this from time to time, I'm afraid.

Incarnation, however, suggests an encounter not just with an idea, but with a person. And it is that personal encounter that opens up the complexity or the mystery of God powerfully for us. My idea of God often ends up being something like a cosmic Dudley Do-Right with a much higher I.Q. Graven images have some obvious limitations, but so do imagined images. We do great damage when we reduce anyone, divine or human, to a single dimension.

It makes some sense, then, that the risen body of Christ is a community, not an individual. God still comes to us in the midst of all the rich and infuriating complexity of human relationships. Which means that to put aside our idols isn't really just about changing our ideas about who God is. It's about loving the people right in front of us as if they were Christ himself. We don't give up our idols alone.

Loving is harder work. It's messier work. And it might not be worth it if you're looking for an encounter with Dudley Do-Right. But for those of us who long for an encounter with God's redeeming love, we're stuck with the wonderful, healing work of loving one another. If anyone's told you there's another way, they were probably trying to sell you an idol.