May 4, 2008 Sermon

Israel Loses
I Samuel 4:1-18

Terrorists strike America with sophistication and coordination. One team assassinates the President, his wife and their daughters as they worship at his favorite Methodist Church in the District of Columbia. A second team takes out Pope Benedict XVI as he boards an airplane for his return to the Vatican at the end of his American visit. A third team bombs its way into the National Archives and steals the original, autographed copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Other teams set off car bombs outside the Mormon Tabernacle, the headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention and, of course, leading synagogues in major cities across the land. Meanwhile, our forces in Iraq are driven back by fanatical, suicidal terrorists numbering in the tens of thousands; men, women and even children who have gathered secretly from every corner of the globe to martyr themselves.

Our nation has lost its political head. The founding documents that we all revere, documents with the power and wisdom of the ages, have gone missing. And every major religious group has suffered terrible loss. Is this the script of a Hollywood summer blockbuster thriller movie? No, it is an imaginary attempt to illustrate the loss suffered by the nation of Israel in I Samuel 4. Israel has lost everything. The Philistines have fought desperately and have utterly defeated their armies. These enemies have captured the Ark of the Covenant that houses the stone tablets on which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments. Eli, the Hebrew priest who functioned as both the political and the religious leader of his nation, has died—as have his evil sons who rashly took the Ark into battle.

We just read about one of the lowest points in the history of Israel. Only a few generations earlier the tribes had rolled into the Promised Land. With the Lord’s help they had defeated most of the peoples living there. They had set up their farms and towns. They had established their places of worship. They defeated attempts to force them back out of the land. But a couple of neighboring peoples, including the Philistines, kept pushing back. The Hebrews began to lose their distinctive identity. They traded with their neighbors, learned their languages, intermarried, and most importantly of all, worshipped their gods.

The Philistines followed a laundry list of spirits. They had a primitive awe of nature and its untamable forces. They performed rituals to satisfy these “gods”. They keenly watched the weather and the seasons so as to make sacrifices at critical moments. Above all, they lusted after fertility. The Philistines lived on the edge. They were never more than one or two droughts away from starvation, never more than a generation or so ahead of extinction. Fertility for them meant life or death. Their homes had mini-shrines to spirits of fertility, most commonly Asherah or Baal. Scholars argue over what, exactly, the Philistines believed these fertility powers could do. Most agree, however, that Asherah and Baal were seen as forces that humans could use if they paid for the privilege. Make an offering and have sons. Make an offering and get rain.

The Lord Almighty, Yahweh, the One God, could never be manipulated like that. God has his own purposes that transcend human understanding. But many Israelites apparently had become confused by their contact with the Philistines. They began to believe that even Yahweh could become a weapon controlled by human hands. Eli’s sons, priests themselves, approved a plan to take the Ark of the Covenant out into battle against the Philistines. They hoped its presence would rout their enemies. You probably recall the ending of the original Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which power bursts from that self-same ark, a power that first appears beautiful beyond words, but a power that proves utterly destructive. In our scene from the Bible the only thing the Ark does is fall into the hands of the Philistines.

The lesson for Israel was clear: God’s power is under the control of God and God alone. When priests and other leaders of Israel quit obeying God’s law, they must pay. When Eli hears of the death of his sons he knows his family line is broken. But this is not the news that causes him to keel over and die. That happens only when Eli learns that the Ark, with the tablets and the Ten Commandments inside, is lost.

As we read this passage we need to learn from it on two levels. First, we need to use it to help us better understand how God works through human history. This story is one of the more important turning points in the whole Old Testament. Now we know more about what it means on that level. But we also should try to learn how its lessons can apply to the lives we lead in the here and now.

One lesson for today seems clear: worship only the one God. We cannot manipulate false gods to get what we think we need. Commandments one through three of the ten inscribed on stone tablets in the Ark of the Covenant cover this ground. Have no other gods before Yahweh. Make no images to worship. Do not abuse the name of the Lord God. Yet we break these commandments constantly. We may not offer sacrifices to Baal in the privacy of our own homes, but we worship other gods. We spend our time and money in ways that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we want to leverage the power of our little gods for our own benefit. How does this differ from the Philistines?

The average age of runway models is now sixteen or seventeen. According to Sarah Murnen, professor of psychology at Kenyon College, these models weigh an average of twenty-two pounds less than the lower numbers on the healthy range for height as determined by the American Medical Association. Nancy Hellmich, author of a 2006 article in USA Today, drove to her local outlet mall and found what she described as “overtly sexy” clothing in children’s sizes. To put it bluntly, many women will do many things to improve their self-image. A few women will do anything to gain power through their appearance. What is that if not idolatry—idolatry of self, idolatry of fertility, and idolatry of power?

But what about the males of the species? What little gods do we worship? Like women, and like the ancient Philistines and Israelites, we worship power. Some men literally try to keep their bodies powerful. Please understand: I do not believe that all body improvement is a form of idolatry. But much of it is. The difference lies in why we do what we do. Do men (and women) work on their bodies in order to achieve a competitive advantage over others? Do we do it to intimidate, to impress, to convince ourselves that we’re acceptable because we look good? Why do we men buy our expensive toys? Not that a boat or a fishing rod or a car or a truck are, in and of themselves, evil. It’s the competitive toys, and the money we spend on them, that can lead us into idolatry. They can become sacrifices—which we make literal sacrifices to own—that we focus our lives upon at the expense of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

The song we just sang, Knowing You, has this line: “All I once held dear, built my life upon, all this world reveres, and wars to own. All I once thought gain, I have counted loss, spent and worthless now, compared to this: Knowing You, Jesus.” When we sing those words do we mean them? Do we sincerely mean to build our lives upon God’s power, or do we try to amass power of our own, power to try to leverage all the little gods into giving us what we think we want and need?

Trying to manipulate God into making us happy does not work. Getting down on our knees before the risen Savior, Jesus Christ, does work. If you long for peace, pray to Jesus for it. If you long for love, love God. If you long for power, ask the Holy Spirit to send its power flowing through you, that you might serve the purposes of God in creating hope and healing in this fallen world.

We worship a God whose power dwarfs our puny imagination. Our God cannot fit into a household shrine; our God inhabits all of creation. Our God cannot be appeased with offerings, no matter how generous or sacrificial; our God asks for our worship—nothing more, but nothing less. Our God cannot be manipulated by our pleadings or our good behavior; our God demands that we behave and saves us even when we fail. Praise God!