“Everyday gods”Rev. Kerri Parker, McFarland UCC ­­­ 17th Sunday after Pentecost (October 9, 2011)Exodus 20 and 32 Imagine a woman, recently retired, at home full-time, when she had been used to being at theoffice more than full-time. Or, if you prefer, a man, unemployed, who has applied for every jobhe might be remotely qualified for within a 100 mile radius, and even some he isn’t qualifiedfor. Or, perhaps, a teen, too young for a paying job, home alone for a chunk of the day duringsummer vacation. Imagine them, sitting at the computer, having discovered some mildly entertaining socialgame called “FarmCityGardens”, or maybe “MafiaRestaurantVille” online. At first, it’s a nicediversion from the hours and hours that need to be filled. A click, and a virtual field has beenplanted. Click. Harvested. Click. In the storehouses. Click. A dish is on the stove. Click. It’splated. Click. A cute little virtual figure heads across the screen to serve it to the customers.And so on, and so forth. It takes a certain number of seconds, or minutes, or hours, until the task is completed. Formany of them, if you don’t return on time, the crop withers or the food burns. After somepretend currency has been expended for seeds, and a few hundred mouse clicks to plant andwater and fertilize a field, you don’t want to lose your investment. There’s a little pressureinvolved – the game makers want you to come back, on a regular basis, and they’re prettyskilled at finding ways to make that happen. So our hypothetical friend starts writing down the times the dishes are ready or the crops aresupposed to mature. They structure their day around it: “I planted pumpkins at 2 pm, so ifwe go out for dinner with friends, we have to be back by 8 pm, or they’ll rot on the vine.” Andsoon, this calendar of virtual obligations to imaginary entities rules their life. Now, this is not intended to be a rant against Facebook or other social media, or the evils oftechnology. Really, this is just a simple story that is played out millions of times every day oncomputer screens across the country. How very easily we fall into the trap of creating, andorganizing our lives around, our own gods! *** “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” That’s “gods,” small g. The people got what the people asked for. They had been so frightened, earlier, when God (bigG) spoke. They were so unsettled by God’s presence, that they said to Moses, “You speak tous…do not let God speak to us.” They would rather count on Moses to be the God-person, thanrisk encountering God themselves. So back up the mountain Moses went, and disappeared for 40 days. For forty days, the peoplewere out there in the desert, with no God, no Moses. Hmmm… Maybe this “no God” thingwasn’t such a great idea after all. You need something to follow. Something to organizeyour life around. Since God (big G) was too intimidating, they opted for something moremanageable, more accessible. “Let’s make some gods!” might sound like the height of hubris, a contrived conflict in thestoryline of the Israelites. It was foreshadowed, way back in chapter 20. “You shall have noother gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol….” Hello!? If you’ve beenfollowing the story, you know. Of course they’re going to do it. They needed a god. So they made a god (small g). Oh, it’s easy to pick on the Israelites for thisone. But we all need something to organize our life around, a center to our universe. Whenthe world is big, and chaotic, we need some way to make sense of it. It seems to much even tograsp, sometimes. And so we flail around, gleaning from what we he have already at hand, toput something together. A central organizing principle, one friend of mine calls it. Somethingto focus on when God (big G) seems impossibly far away. We are addicted to finding these small gods, to substituting them for the God who cannot bereduced to manageable proportions. We worship many gods, and they each have their ownsphere. It’s like we’re juggling gods, all day long. There’s the god of the meeting agenda, thegod of the Packers schedule, the god of athletic or music practice. There’s the report card god.The god of the grocery bill, the god of our morning step on the scale. We dance around gods of the calendar, the clock, our smartphones and tech gadgets, the daysour major bills come due, our credit rating, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, whether ourfavored political party is in power. When we are in front of them, they have our loyalty and ourattention. We organize our lives around them. We let them become all-powerful in our lives,believe that they shape our destiny. As if these gods had the power to save us. When in theend, we are children of a much mightier God. It’s a golden calf! It’s made from melted-down jewelry, for heaven’s sake! How can a god youmake, possibly compare to the all-mighty, all-powerful God who just delivered a resoundingdefeat to the most powerful empire in the known world? Who sets the boundaries of the sea,who placed the stars in the sky, who kept an impossible promise through all the generations. This is the God we worship. God, big G. God who said, quite clearly, “I am your God, whobrought you out of Egypt, who brought you out of slavery.” This is the God who sets beforeus the ways of life and death, who gives instruction for relating to both God and neighbor. TheGod who sings over, and over again, the songs of freedom. And it is this God who invites us to deny those other, puny “gods” any air time. Those godscannot bring anyone out of slavery. Those gods have no power other than the power we grantthem. We are children of God the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, who conquers thepowers of chaos, death and destruction. This is our God, sisters and brothers, who brings usthrough the wilderness and opens possibilities we can, even now, barely imagine. Thanks be to God. Amen. http://www.archive.org/download/McfarlandUccSermonOct9th2011_196/MUCC_Sermon_20111009.mp3