January 11, 2009 Sermon

The Idolatry Magnet
I Corinthians 8

When a few angry people wanted to get rid of him, they helpfully started planting “For Sale” signs in his yard in the dead of night. His name was Frank Barnes, and his “sin” was not coaching the Shelbyville, Indiana high school basketball team to enough wins. The year was 1946. In towns like Shelbyville—15,000 souls living in modest homes 30 miles southeast of Indianapolis—the Golden Bears were about the only thing that happened between November and March. And in 1946-7, they were good.

In their first game of the new year, the Bears faced Terre Haute Garfield and its star, Clyde Lovellette, now in the basketball Hall of Fame. Terre Haute won by forfeit. Shelbyville led by one point with five minutes to play when a referee called a fifth foul on Bill Garrett, Shelbyville's star. The foul disqaulified Garrett for the rest of the game. As Garrett calmly walked off the floor, Lovellette saw, “men my father's age rolling up their sleeves and wrapping their handkerchiefs around their fists.” The state policeman detailed to the game (every high school game in Indiana has a state policeman on duty) hustled the ref to his squad car. They squealed out of town.

That anybody even attended the game was a miracle. That morning it had rained hard. By afternoon, an ice storm blew in on the north wind and the temperature dropped to five above at tipoff. The state police were begging people throughout the state to stay off the roads. But 5,500 fans filled every seat in the gym. Thousands more packed the National Guard armory. A man on the pay phone a few feet out of bounds at the gym provided running commentary. Every few seconds a man on the phone at the armory would shout what his partner at the gym was saying.

A couple of months later the state high school basketball tournament began. Shelbyville won its own sectional, then had to travel away from home to play on a neutral court. This mattered because Shelbyville, for the first time in Indiana high school basketball history, started three African-American players, including Bill Garrett. Garrett and the other two faced racial slurs from opponents and fans. They were kicked in the shins, bitten, had their “wooly” hair pulled, took cheap shots to the groin. This treatement grew even worse during the tournament. One team was so vicious its coach visited the Shelbyville lockeroom afterwards to apologize. He said he had no control over his team when it came to the black-white issue. Community feelings were so intense. And after all, he had to live there. Bill Garrett, eighteeen years old at the time, replied, “Why would you want to live in a place where they act like that?”

The Shelbyville Bears went on to the state finals at Hinkle Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler College in Indianapolis, the shrine of Indiana basketball. Because they could find no hotels that would house the whole team, they stayed instead in the fraternity house at Butler where one of the assistant coaches had belonged. The fraternity had only one stipulation: the coloreds would have to provide their own bedding and they would have to take it all with them when they left. For the finals over 15,000 fans packed the stands. An estimated 2.5 million people listened on the radio. (The population of Indiana at the time was around 3.75 million.)

The final game featured a rematch with Terre Haute Garfield. Late in the game Lovellette, the white Garfield star, and Garrett, the black Shelbyville star, collided under the basket. Both had four fouls. Referee George Bender stood less than ten feet away. He had to make a call, which is another way of saying he had to make one of the players sit down for the rest of the game. Bender hesitated and then pointed to Lovellette. (Lovellette later said it was the correct call.) Shelbyville went on to win the state title by ten points. It was a thrilling and historic night.

But the question we ought to ask ourselves is, “Why should we care?” Why should grown men want to beat up a referee? Why should thousands risk their lives not even to see, but to hear a game over the telephone when they could listen to a better description of it on their home radios? Why should racist hicks try to injure “the coloreds” reproductive organs? Come to that, why should certain Michigan high schools send scouts to Pop Warner football games and then help families of promising 10 year-olds move into their districts? A friend deeply involved in high school football for a long time declares that this goes on at one of the high schools here in Traverse City. He is an honest man with no stake in the situation. I believe him. I played high school basketball with a guy who was brought into our school from Guam. He became a state all-star. You can't make up stuff like this.

Why? Why do we care who wins a basketball or football game? The Bill Garrett story is inspiring. He went on the become the first African-American player at an NCAA university (Indiana). He played for the Harlem Globetrotters. He coached a state championship team. But what matters most about Bill Garrett is that he integrated a sport with honor and class. He entered IU in the fall of 1947. That summer Jackie Robinson had become the first African-American to play major league baseball. He conducted himself with the same dignitiy as Garrett. What we should care about in this story is that both men not only went to church and believed in Jesus as their Lord and Savior, they understood utterly what it meant to turn the other cheek.

We worship victory. We worship celebrity. We worship power. We worship wealth. It's in our human nature to do so, but these objects of our worship are idols. They draw us toward them. They divert the paths we take through life. These idols act like tremendous magnets, pulling us off course. Resist them. Do not worship the idols of victory, celebrity, power or wealth. Worship Jesus Christ.

In I Corinthians 8, the Apostle Paul writes to a congregation of Christians from mixed religious backgrounds. Many of them came from Jewish families. Many did not. Those who grew up as Jews had observed the strict dietary laws still found in the Old Testament. These laws gave strict and detailed instructions on what, when and how Jews could eat. The law covered even how to clean the food, the dishes and oneself in preparation for eating. It also prohibited eating any food given to a false, foreign god as a sacrificial offering.

The non-Jewish Christians came from diverse backgrounds. No doubt some in Corinth had grown up offering sacrificial food offerings to their gods. Corinth contained a mish-mash of temples and shrines. The Christians there were surrounded by hundreds of methods of worshiping gods with a small “g”. Conflict arose in the church. The Jewish Christians stoutly maintained that no Christian could break God's laws—including the dietary laws—and remain a true follower of Jesus. The non-Jews probably could not have cared less about the issue. But Paul has heard about the argument. Ironically he, a Jewish Pharisee (or religious lawyer) in his earlier life, takes the position in I Corinthians 8 that food types and whether food has ever been offered to a pagan idol do not matter. Only worshiping Jesus matters.

Paul makes a careful argument. He starts by cautioning all the Corinthian Christians to stay humble. Nobody should pretend to know it all. Then he comments that we who believe in Jesus as the One God therefore understand that there is no such thing as any other god. Idols do not, technically, exist. Followers of Jesus may therefore eat food that has been offered to false gods or idols. BUT, Paul admits, not all people have enough spiritual maturity to accept this argument. He therefore cautions the Corinthians not to eat this food if it will confuse people trying to grow into followers of Jesus Christ. Idols have no real power. Yet some people worship them. Do nothing to help them keep making that mistake.

We have a responsibility.  We Christians have the job of worshiping Jesus in a way that does not cause others to fall away from worshiping Jesus. Paul concludes with the strong statement that if we harm others' walk with Christ we sin against Christ. Idols in and of themselves mean nothing. Victory is temporary. Celebrity is empty. Power corrupts. Wealth cannot buy love. Yet our culture—and we with it—worship these idols. We must fight this. We must fight it for our own sakes and for the sake of those who watch our walk with Christ. We must worship only Jesus for the sake of our children, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters in the church, and, well, everybody.

Examine yourself. Ask God in prayer, “What am I really living for?” For most of us the answer will be complicated. Jesus is probably a part of our focus. He is not likely to be all of it. Watch out for the idolatry magnet. Watch out for those things that pull us away from worshiping Jesus. Seek to live for him, not for the idols of victory, celebrity, power, wealth, or whatever else you may be worshiping with your decisions about how you spend your time and money. Food does not matter. Victory does not matter. Idols are mirages, fantasies, false gods. Yet far too often we live for them. Live for God in Christ. Let everything else—even the most noble things—take its rightful place in your life: behind Him. Worship Jesus only.