What God Do You Serve?

Readings: DN 3:14-20, 91-92, 95; JN 8:31-42

Today’s first reading is one that most of us probably have some familiarity with.  It’s the famous story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who refuse to worship the golden statue of King Nebuchadnezzar.   They get thrown into the furnace where they are joined by a mysterious stranger and miraculously survive!  Nebuchadnezzar has a conversion moment (I mean, who wouldn’t!) and praises the God of Israel.

Then Jesus tells his disciples – in the somewhat obscure language that John’s gospel uses – that “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

What I find so powerful about the first reading – and then about the life and testimony of Jesus – is that they all said, “No!” to the worship of false gods.  They put their trust in the one true, living God.  But it cost them something.

So it begs the questions for me, “Who is the God you serve? And what does it “cost” you to follow that God?”

I always think about Fr. Jim’s words when he says, “Show me your calendar and your checkbook and I’ll tell you what is important to you.”  These two things might also help us to work backwards and think about how we spend our money and use our time as reflections of what our priorities are – priorities that are guided by our “higher power” (whatever that is to us).

If you are like me and grew up here in the United States and had some form of privilege, then you inherited a version of the gospel that looked a lot like the wider culture.  Our churches basically became microcosms of the wider values that shape(d) our society.  And so baked in to most of our church experiences were things like consumerism, materialism and white supremacy.

Sadly the top priorities of our culture seem to be related to things like achievement and success, material comfort, consumption, individualism, busy-ness, efficiency, progress and growth.  While these are all important values, they may not actually be so good for the spirit and for our collective welfare.

So it begs the question once again, “Who is the God you serve and what does it “cost” you to follow that God?”

William Stringfellow, a lawyer and political theologian, offered sharp criticism of Christianity in the United States.  He was deeply convinced that our churches had long ago abandoned serving the God of Israel and the God of Jesus. He said this because church was largely indistinguishable from culture.  Whereas in the early church, church and culture were VERY different.

He said that our task as disciples was simple (though hardly easy). The biblical tradition calls us “…to the vocation of being human, nothing more and nothing less … To be a Christian means to be called to be an exemplary human being. “  He goes on to  say what this requires of us.  “In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, define the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.”

You might be saying, “You lost me there, Mike.  What the heck does that mean?”

What I think Stringfellow suggests is that we have to get clear on what brings life and what brings death.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were clear. Jesus was clear. And they could see that getting distracted by “false gods” brought on a spiritual death that made life not worth living.

Believe me, I love and appreciate this country. Yet many of the mainstream values that “America” seems to cling to (and especially the way that they are being lived out), seem more closely related o the culture of death than the culture of life. This is not unique to the United States though. These are the values of empire, and in the biblical tradition, empire was the culture of death.

Stringfellow says it well when he says, “The biblical lifestyle is always a witness of resistance to the status quo in politics, economics, and all society. It is a witness of resurrection from death. Paradoxically, those who embark on the biblical witness constantly risk death – through execution, exile, imprisonment, persecution, defamation, or harassment – at the behest of the rulers of this age. Yet those who do not resist the rulers of the present darkness are consigned to a moral death, the death of their humanness. That, of all the ways of dying, is the most [disgraceful].”

For me, these are not easy words to take in. Yet Stringfellow seems to be offering us a chance to reclaim a humanity that is under assault. And in the paraphrased words of Jesus, “What profit does it bring someone if they gain the world but lose their soul in the process.”

For today, think of the “risks” that you have taken for your faith (and they may already be many).  Perhaps you work to give money away or redistribute wealth.  Perhaps you try to offer forgiveness and hospitality.  Perhaps you offer resistance to systems of domination in various ways.  Perhaps you try to believe that the forces of death and destruction are not the last word.  Whatever you are doing these days or whatever furnace you might find yourself in, rest in your humanity, and know that this is a part of the journey.