| When is the last time you heard or used the word “idolatry”? Every so often, it slips into discussions or lectures but, by in large, it has disappeared from the familiarity of general usage – unless you have read the Book of Exodus. In Exodus 32, we encounter the story of the Israelites fashioning a calf of gold. Moses was delayed from coming down the mountain where he had encountered God and received the Ten Commandments. The gathered throng, concerned that Moses had somehow disappeared, went to Aaron with a startling demand: “Make us gods…” They quickly abandoned Moses and the God of Israel with Whom Abraham had established a convenant. Aaron collected all the gold jewelry and other gold items, melted it down and created a golden calf – around which the unfaithful Israelites danced in joy and song. (Exodus 32) “Make us gods…” The human person found a substitute for God — himself.
We are mistaken if we think that idolatry is an anachronism, a relic of the past. Sunday’s passage from the Holy Gospel of St. Matthew (6:22-33) makes one thing clear: you and I, in ways large and small, still shout out that aggressive demand — “Make us gods…” The Gospel passage sets up three “idols” that can become stumbling blocks in our spiritual life, things that try to “take the place of God” and His Christ, things that ultimately lead us not to happiness and fulfillment, but to a deceptive contentment and inevitable emptiness. We dance around them and in the pit of our stomach, we wonder why. They are our “golden calf” and they are sure and certain ways to leave the path that leads us to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Matthew’s passage briefly mentions three of these “idols” (things with which we replace God in our lives as the Israelites replaced the Living God with shiny metal!): – undisciplined senses, ego-related things and attitudes, and lastly, lack of genuine trust. These three can stifle spiritual growth and slowly but surely blur our image of the God Who loves us. Firstly, undisciplined senses. St. Gregory Palamas said in a homily: “If you abstain from food, while your eyes lure you into adultery, inquisitiveness, and malice in the hidden place of your soul; if your hearing is open to insulting words, lewd songs and evil slanders; if all your senses are open to whatever harms you, then what is the point of fasting?” (Homily 9) St. Gregory is clear: our senses are doors and windows through which spiritual harm may come to us, negative images or impressions, self-destructive desires and behaviors. Though, as Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos teaches, “All sin begins in the mind….”, however, it is provoked, prompted, and enflamed by what passes through our senses. Why? Because what enters our senses proceeds to the heart. What corrupts the heart, weakens the soul. This is why the ascetic Fathers urged “the guarding of the heart” – standing vigil over our senses (nepsis) to protect the Holy within us. When our senses take over, when they dominate us, when we replace the spiritual with the physical – we have created an idol — a substitute for God, a Golden Calf that speedily responds to our demand: “Make us gods….” As with Adam and Eve in Genesis, there is an enduring impulse in each of us to be in control, to call the shots in our lives, creatures who crave to replace the Creator as the center of the universe. Remember, the Genesis metaphor tells us that it was the sense of taste (eating the proverbial apple) that began our downward spiral! Secondly, ego-related attitudes and things. St. Matthew’s passage today quotes Jesus: “No man can serve two masters. He will either love one and hate the other; he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Ch. 32:24) This idol comes in the form of the things we own, the sense of “much wants more”, what we have accumulated, the need for the newest, best, and most popular. The term “mammon” originally meant monetary wealth but in the middle ages came to mean covetousness – the burning desire for things. It means, as the Hollywood movie with Michael Douglas told us: “Greed is good.” This idol substitutes objects for God. It subsumes the spiritual to the physical. It replaces the unseen with the seen – thinking that because we can own it, hold it, esteem it, buy it — that it will bring us genuine joy, not “happiness”, but joy. Delusion. As Brian Rosner, Professor of New Testament at Cambridge University, writes in his book Greed is Idolatry: “The judgment that greed is idolatry comes from the Epistle to the Colossians (3:5) and the teaching that “the greedy person is an idolater” (Ephesians 5:5) is startling because idolatry is so central to Biblical religion, that it is the unspeakable sin that arouses God to jealousy.” This idol of covetousness, this burning desire to acquire, this obsession with the superficial, the surface, these can easily replace our thirst for God, for spiritual growth, for greater intimacy with the “Tremendous Lover” as Thomas a’ Kempis named Him. This idol is not primarily about wealth. It is about who (or what!) is your ultimate concern in life. Who do you thirst for? What is your craving? As the Lord said in today’s Gospel – “No man can serve two masters…” We are faced with a choice. Lastly, lack of genuine trust. St. Matthew’s Gospel today records Jesus’ words: “Who among you, by worrying, can add a single day to your life?” (6:27) Anxiety, which bolsters the pharmaceutical industry’s coffers by millions and millions of dollars each year, is the force to which Jesus refers. He as much asks “Why do you worry so much? Don’t you trust that I will give you what you need? Don’t you take me at my word? St. Paul echoes the Lord when he writes: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:6) While worrying is a natural human response, many times even an automatic, non-reflective response to a situation, it can lock us in to anxiety, creating a clinical level of concern, requiring professional assistance. This is not the kind of anxiety to which Jesus refers. The Lord speaks of trust in God. What is our God-trust level? St. John of Karpathos in the 7th century, specifically links the elimination of anxiety with trust in God: “We should on no account wear ourselves out with anxiety over our bodily and physical needs. With our whole soul let us trust in God: as one of the Fathers said, ‘Entrust yourself to the Lord, and all will be entrusted to you.’ Trusting in God is a true challenge. Not trusting in God, relying on ourselves only, living our lives, as Henry David Thoreau wrote “in a state of quiet desperation”, idolizes us, puts us where God ought to be — in control of our lives, taking care of us as a loving Father, being true to His word. The extent to which we believe this, indicates our God-trust level. The greater we trust Him, we pull down that Golden Calf within us. The less we trust God, the more we worry and become tired of soul. This is a third idol that can impede us as we live the goal of our Orthodox spirituality—deification (theosis)—to become by grace what our Loving God is by nature. Ever the skilled Rabbinic teacher, Jesus draws the lesson to a close in St. Matthew. In one sentence he sums up the whole of salvation history and our place in it: “Therefore, seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all things will be given to you besides.” (Chap. 6:33) The first thing is seeking the Kingdom, focusing our outer and inner eyes on the Kingdom. The first thing for our lives is to live Kingdom-lives – mindful of God, surrendering ourselves into the hands of His wisdom, knowing full-well that He will answer every prayer, heal every heart, and still the anxiety that oft’ captures our souls. If there is anything in your life that you count on – count on God, trust God, allow God to lift you up in faith and in hope……and never let Him go! May the God of love tear down any shadow of that Golden Calf in your hearts and may you know the peace of God which surpasses all understanding! Faithfully in the Lord, Fr. Dimitrios |
