July 29, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

American Idols

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Exodus 32

Though I’ve lived in Chicago for longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life, which makes this city feel a lot like home to me, I’m not really from here. I grew up in a variety of places, but mostly in the southeastern region of the United States. My father is from Arkansas and my mother is from Alabama, so my family lineage is most definitely Southern.

A side-effect of moving around a lot as a kid is that I don’t really have a regional accent, though many of the phrases I use—most notably my use of the second person plural pronoun y’all—give away my background. You can also tell by some of my food choices: Southern-style barbecue, sweet tea, and grits. After more than a decade as a Presbyterian in Chicago, I still don’t really have a taste for Scotch, but I’ve never met a bourbon that I don’t like.

But perhaps the one thing that makes me stick out like a sore thumb in the Midwest is my love of Southeastern Conference football. While I happen to be a huge fan of the Florida Gators, my allegiance to the SEC as a conference runs just as deep. In the fall, I live for SEC football games on Saturday. And during these years of unquestionable SEC domination, I love rubbing it in the faces of my Big 10 friends.

It’s often been said that in the South football is like a religion. Of course, it may be more accurate to say that in the South football is a religion. In a cool book on this very subject, called God and Football: Faith and Fanaticism in the SEC, Chad Gibbs begins with this apt line: “Welcome to the American South, where God and football scrimmage daily for the people’s hearts and minds.”

He goes on to highlight the relative importance of each in the lives of many Southerners by imagining what an alien—whom for college football fans he names Corso—would witness if he were to visit a typical college town in the Southeast and observe the behavior of average people in the community.

What do you think Corso the alien would conclude about the religious beliefs of those average, everyday people?

Well, on Sunday morning he’d probably see them make their groggy, wrinkled-shirted way to a steepled building where some sort of ceremony had begun ten minutes before they arrived. Inside, he’d watch as they mouthed the words to songs, then struggled to stay awake while a man spoke for less than twenty-five minutes. Then, for the rest of the week, this place would be the furthest thing from their minds, unless by chance something tragic happened.

Corso might be justified in concluding that church, for most, was a court-ordered punishment.

On Saturday, Corso would see something completely different. The people would wake up early, carefully choose an outfit based on the good fortune it had brought them in the past, then drive, sometimes for hours, to a hallowed campus where some sort of ceremony is scheduled for much, much later that day. All afternoon they would eat, drink, and fellowship with friends, family, and strangers. Then, when the time came, they would all enter a colossal shrine and join tens of thousands of similarly dressed and likeminded people. Inside, they would chant and sing until they lost their voices, and afterward they would celebrate like they’re at a wedding reception on Fat Tuesday.

After he sees this, I think it’s safe to say Corso will think he’s found the one true religion—and he’ll probably convert on the spot.

From these tongue-in-cheek but no less accurate descriptions, it’s clear to an objective observer what is most important to this culture.

Yet I know full well that such cultural attitudes are not restricted to my home in the American Southeast. I know full well that such attitudes can be found in abundance right here in the Midwest among Big 10 and professional football fans. If anything, up here there is less residual Christendom religiosity to give football much of a serious challenge on any given weekend in the fall. When I drive past Soldier Field on a Sunday morning and can smell the tailgaters from miles down the road on Lake Shore Drive, there is no doubt who has won the hearts and minds of Chicago.

At their best, allegiances to college or professional football teams provide a lot of fun and great opportunities for family and friends to bond and enjoy shared fellowship. But, tragically, over the past several months we have seen the dark side of this national obsession with football. As the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State has unfolded in painful detail, we have seen what happens to individuals and a community when something ultimately as trivial as football gets elevated above all other goods. People we all assumed were good and decent men of integrity turned a blind eye as a sexual predator irreparably abused young boys, turned a blind eye in the name of protecting the reputation and legacy of a football program, an enterprise that generates as much money as it does passion.

Of the many articles I’ve read about this horrific situation and the historically harsh penalties that were levied against Penn State this week, one in particular caught my attention. After Joe Paterno and his teams had every win over the past fourteen seasons erased (which cost Paterno his title as the Division I college coach with the most victories), a $60 million fine, a four-year prohibition from playing in the postseason, and four years of severe scholarship restrictions, five experts weighed in on the long-term effects this would have on Penn State’s football program. The following quote was like a slap across the face: The severe NCAA penalty “assured that the Nittany Lions won’t be a contender in the Big Ten for half of a decade—if not longer—and that their idol-worshiping fans will no longer cheer for a winner” (Brad Lendon, “Five Experts: What Happens to Penn State Football?”, 23 July 2012, http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/23/five-experts-what-happens-to-penn-state-football/).

Idol-worshiping fans. It’s hard to claim that this is a hyperbole or extreme metaphor. While the reaction to this scandal and punishment among diehard Penn State and Paterno loyalists involves many shades of gray, it’s hard not to conclude that in State College, Pennsylvania—like in many college towns throughout our country—football and individual football programs have become idols that we worship, sometimes to the neglect of the common good.

I came across this particular article and its arresting quote just a day after studying the story of Israel and the golden calf with a group of teenagers at Montreat Conference Center. When we first read and studied this familiar story—a story that fits well in our summer series exploring well-known passages of the Bible—I think the youth had some difficulty identifying with the issues it addresses. But when I drew their attention to the striking parallels with the events unfolding at Penn State, it suddenly hit home in a new and profound way.

So I invite you now to listen to this story with ears primed to hear the striking ways that the idolatries of ancient Israel in the wilderness reflect and perhaps even amplify our own idolatrous tendencies. It takes place as Moses is up on Mt. Sinai, receiving from God the Ten Commandments and the sacred laws by which Israel and God are to enter into a covenant relationship.

And, of course, the first of the Ten Commandments is this: “You must have no other gods before me. Do not make an idol for yourself—no form whatsoever—of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the Lord your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’ sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:3–6, Common English Bible)

Hear, now, the story of Israel and the golden calf, as told in Exodus 32.

¨ ¨ ¨

Literal idols of metal or stone are less dangerous today than the metaphorical idols we lift above all else in our lives: football, all types of entertainment, appearances, power, money, fame, success, technology, pleasure, safety, security, nationalism, racism, our personal or communal beliefs. How easy it is for us to invest any of these with such importance or value that everything else becomes secondary.

Like Aaron and the Israelites—good people, I’m sure—our devotion to these things prevents us from seeing clearly. Our focus on them causes us to do things we would not otherwise do or allow things to happen that we would otherwise find abhorrent.

I’ve recently begun to watch the acclaimed television series Breaking Bad. Having completed the first season of seven episodes, I’m hooked. If you aren’t familiar with it, the series follows a high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Already struggling to make ends meet financially, Mr. White decides to make and sell crystal meth to provide for his family once he is gone. The story is a fascinating exploration of the line between good and bad, what it takes to cross that line, and what doing so does to us. Mr. White’s motives are good: he wants his family to thrive after he dies. But his altruistic goal is overshadowed by the criminal means he chooses to accomplish them. A meek and mild teacher becomes a drug dealer and a killer.

Our own idolatries may not result in extremes like drug dealing, pedophilia, or institutional cover-ups, but it doesn’t take much to distract us from what we know to be good and true. How many of us are so focused on success—even when that success involves providing good for the world—that we neglect our families or our own health and well-being? How many of us are willing to cheat just a little to advance our careers or make a little more money? How many of us rely on empty entertainment to escape the realities of life? How many of us are so confident in what we believe that we are willing to force others to behave in accordance with our beliefs? How many of us overtly oppress others, or allow oppression to happen, so that we can enjoy certain comforts and a sense of security?

Idolatry is all around us, as Reformed Christians have maintained for centuries. And it is so easy to get caught up in the wrong thing—even when it seems so right, even when it seems so innocent, even when it seems like harmless fun.

The story of Israel’s idolatry is troubling because God nearly wipes out the people in a fit of rage. It is only because of Moses’ intercession that God relents. Yet even then thousands of people are killed.

When we hear a horrific story like this, we wonder if God is really like that. Does God really punish us with such ferocity? Can God’s mind be changed—for good or for bad—as it is in this story? Is it fair for the entire community to suffer punishment because of a few, or even one?

This last point is worth more thought than we can devote to it right now. Contemporary Americans are so shaped by our culture of individualism that we immediately consider such communal consequences to be unfair. Why should a group of college athletes and a wide community of football fans suffer because of the actions of a few people? Yet, in general, the Bible is a consistent corrective to our idolatry of individualism. Throughout most of the Bible, people are bound to communities, and those communities prosper or suffer together. It’s a radical idea that might change the way our society operates if it were actually adopted.

The nature of God and God’s wrath is also beyond the scope of this sermon. There is no easy way to account for the portrayal of God in this story, except perhaps to ignore it, which is what we typically do. But the unsettling questions this story raises are good for us to ponder, because often our conceptions of God themselves become idols that obscure our perception of who or what God really is.

Perhaps the most important thing to take away from this story today is a wakeup call. Idolatry is all around us and it is so easy to get caught up in it. God is calling us to engage in serious reflection and introspection. What is it in our lives that prevents us from knowing God fully? What is it that prevents us from loving God and loving our neighbors?

And as we discover these things, let us not despair. Because whatever we make of God’s wrath in this story, it is clear that God is willing to grant a second chance, even to those who offend God the most. We all get a second chance, usually many more than that. The question is, what will we do with it?

Amen.