"God and the Leftovers"
Words of wisdom from Isaiah and Brad Pitt
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Text: Isaiah 44:9-20
Image and reality: They do not often correspond. Image is something that is put forward, often manufactured. Sometimes it is artificial. Reality of course, has its very own worthiness and is the antithesis to the creation of something false. I think particularly during these election times, that we all are trying to discern what is image and what is reality. What is put forward as a projection of what someone wants us to know, as opposed to the reality behind the words or image.
Very often what happens is that after elections are over and governments are in power, we realize that the images fade away and the reality comes before us. It is inevitable. It is part of life to become so encapsulated with the image that we forget the reality. This happens in many different spheres. It happens in our own lives when we create an image of ourselves that we want others to see in order to obfuscate the reality of our own existence. We can put something forward that we think is a proper image even if it has no correspondence to the reality of who we are.
I watched with great interest the services in memory of Ronald Reagan. I saw glimpses of him riding his horse, and I thought of who he patented his swagger and style on, and how different that person was from his reality. The image, of course, was John Wayne.
John Wayne, particularly during the Vietnam War, excoriated those who wouldn't go into battle for being soft when he himself during World War II, made sure that he didn't go in to battle so he could further his own career. Here was a man who created the name of ultimate toughness: John Wayne, when his real name was Marion Morrison. Here was a man who always rode horses into the sunset but privately, personally hated horses and was frightened of them.
Now, I'm not here to criticize John Wayne; he did what all of us do. We hide behind an image that often becomes the dominant icon that people remember us by. And all kinds of myths, untruths and unrealities emerge from the images that we create of ourselves. That's bad. It is false thinking and false living. But when it comes to creating an image of God, it becomes even more serious.
This morning's passage from the Book of Isaiah deals with it with a sense of disdain. It is a satirical ridiculing of image and idolatry. Isaiah is making fun of idols and particularly pities those who worship images, precisely because they are not grasping reality. But why did he need to do this? Why did Isaiah set this satire in such powerful terms?
Because, the nation to which he was a prophet had been conquered, they believed that the God they worshipped (Yahweh) was no longer as efficacious or as powerful as the gods of their conquerors, the Assyrians. They had a crisis of faith, that the living God had not come to their aid in battle and that because they had been subjugated, somehow the living God was no longer worthy of their worship and praise. And so they turned on God. They had a crisis of faith and looked to alternate sources for worship.
Isaiah saw the people turning their backs on the living God. He was concerned that they were worshipping images, and he made fun of them. He talked, for example, about a man who grew a cedar tree, chopped it down, made a fire, baked some bread and cooked some meat. And after he cooked his meat there is this wonderful line, (particularly in the King James version): “And of the residue he made a god.”
In other words, whatever wood had not burnt up in the ashes, he turned into a god. And then, in a delightful turn of phrase, Isaiah says the idolater looked at this piece of wood and said, “Ah, I can feel the heat. I can feel the fire. I am warm. Save me, O God, I'm placing my trust in you,” he says to these embers and ashes. Then Isaiah says, “How foolish these people are. They have made an image of wood.” Oh, they have enjoyed their pleasures. They've enjoyed cooking their bread and meat and having the warmth. Their pleasure was fulfilled but then they took the residue and turned it into a god - the god of the leftovers. The god of whatever is left after all the pleasures of the world have been fulfilled.
In his mockery Isaiah made a powerful statement about images and about what happens when human beings create their own religion - their own gods. I think it is fair to say that you and I have not, I would hope, made a wooden statue, placed it on our lawn and worshipped it on a Monday morning or a Sunday afternoon. I would like to think that although we had a barbeque here at the church with some of the church leaders last night, they did not after they had tucked into the wonderful steaks, go home and make a god of the charred remains and worship it!
The gods that we make are existential gods. They're gods of our own spirituality. They are gods of our own making. They might not be physical and tangible but when we've had our pleasure, we ask our gods to bless it and when we have a residue, a leftover we might just give it to God. But it's always the leftovers, it's always born out of the fact that something else is more important than the living God.
I want to look at the lessons from Isaiah this morning, for I think that modern people struggle with what I call first of all, the “Spirituality of the Gaps.” Karl Jung once said, “There is nothing more repulsive than a furtive, prurient spirituality. It's as dangerous in many ways as an excessive sensuality.”
In other words, people get caught up in their own spirituality - in being “spiritual beings.” Once they have made this god of their own spirituality, they talk about it all the time and say, “We are spiritual beings. We've got our own sense of what God is like.” “It can be repulsive,” says Karl Jung. And it can, because very often the spirituality of the gaps is what we create for ourselves and worship.
Now, let me be very clear. We're living in a time when a lot of people say they are spiritual, but don't actually have any concrete faith in God. They will say that they are spiritual beings, but when you try to analyze it, it's hard to know precisely what they mean. Rather, what happens is that having created a sense of their own spirituality, they then go out, in their minds anyway, and create their own gods. Their own gods bless the life that they are already leading, and sanctify their own moral judgements, bless their materialism, their excesses and their immorality. A god of their own making will say, “Yes, this is fine. You're a spiritual being and because of that you are okay and everything is fine” - a god of the gaps.
Sometimes this manifests itself even within the Christian life. We have a god that is somehow compliant with our own wishes and aspirations, a god to whom we give the leftovers.
It's like a farmer who was ecstatic one day because he found that his cow Daisy had given birth to twin calves. He ran home to his wife and said, “Martha, Martha, I'm so ecstatic. We've got two beautiful calves and as I look at them they are perfect and identical. They decided that because they had two and not the one they expected, they would give one of them to God - They hadn't decided on which one, Three months later these beautifully formed, perfect little calves were romping in the fields. A thunderstorm came up and suddenly a bolt of lightning killed one of the calves. The farmer ran home and said, “Martha, Martha, I've got terrible news: lightning has struck and killed God's calf.” Not his you notice, but God's calf - the god of the leftovers.
In other words, when we've had our pleasure, when we've had everything that we want, somehow God gets the leftovers and if the leftovers dissipate, then so be it. Part of this is because when we make God the God of the gaps, the God of the leftovers, we're turning our backs on God and saying for all intents and purposes, “We've created our own religion and God is dead.”
But it is also a fact, and this Isaiah makes abundantly clear, that sometimes we make and create a “Spirituality of the Dying.”
Eric Fromm made a presentation many years ago in San Francisco before theologians and philosophers and psychologists. He said:
Theologians and philosophers have been saying for a century that God is dead but what we confront now is the possibility that man is dead, transformed into a thing, a producer, a consumer, an idolater of other things.
He gives an example:
A man sits in front of a bad television program and does not know that he is bored. He reads of the Vietcong casualties in the newspapers and does not recall the teachings of religion. He learns the dangers of nuclear holocaust and does not feel fear. He joins the rat race of commerce where personal wealth is measured in terms of market values and is not aware of his own anxiety.
In other words, there is a sense that when we have created our own god and decided to worship it we have this void, this emptiness, as if somehow we are not alive spiritually. We have bought into the god that we have made, and that god is grinding us down and killing us.
Far be it from me to turn to Hollywood to substantiate any great theological point, especially as I'm going to quote Brad Pitt of all people. But in Rolling Stone magazine, Brad Pitt reflected on his role as a person talking about the American dream:
Pitt: Man, I know all these things are supposed to seem important to us - the car, the condo, our version of success - but if that's the case, why is the general feeling out there reflecting more impotence and isolation and desperation and loneliness? If you ask me, I say toss all this - we gotta find something else. Because all I know is that at this point in time, we are heading for a dead end, a numbing of the soul, a complete atrophy of the spiritual being. And I don't want that.
The interviewer went on and asked:
So if we're heading toward this kind of existential dead end in society, what do you think should happen?
Pitt: Hey, man, I don't have those answers yet. The emphasis now is on success and personal gain. I'm sitting in it, and I'm telling you, that's not it. I'm the guy who's got everything. I know. But I'm telling you, once you've got everything, then you're just left with yourself. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it doesn't help you sleep any better, and you don't wake up any better because of it.
Brad Pitt understands the dangers of creating idols. Idols are things that we set up and worship in the belief that they will give us fulfilment, that they will renew us spiritually, that they will satisfy the soul, that they will deal with the emptiness that's in your heart and the anxiety that is in your mind. But the reality is - they don't. They are, as Jeremiah said, “a vapour.” They are empty embers that cease to glow and become dust.
That's what happens, my friends, when we worship things rather than the living God. Oh, it might seem right at the beginning. It might seem like a good image, like an ad in a paper in Burlington, Vermont that I saw a few months ago: “Free puppies, half Cocker Spaniel, half the neighbour's sneaky dog.” Looks good on the surface until you read further. Image: free puppies, here it is. Reality, maybe not quite what you expected. So it is with idolatry. Sells you one thing, seems good, titillates, blesses your excess, but in reality lets you down, doesn't exist, leaves you empty.
There is a wonderful line in Isaiah that talks about the spirituality that is given by God. Not the spirituality that is made, not the god of the gaps, not the leftovers, not the dead bits, the living part. Isaiah writes: "Remember these things, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I have made you, you are my servant; O Israel, I will not forget you.” The real source of life, the real power in your life is in the living God, not in some substitute.
On July 15, I believe it was, in 1997 they were taping the children's program Barney and Friends. (Not commonly viewed in my household, I might add). But as they were filming Barney and Friends there was a short in the electrical fan inside the hot suit that the actor who plays Barney wears. All of a sudden smoke started to pour out of different parts of Barney's purple body.
They had to quickly whip Barney's head off and of course, everyone could see that there was a person inside the dinosaur. There were phone calls, letters, there was outrage and horror. Children were upset and crying all over the world. They had heard that Barney wasn't really a dinosaur after all. The newspapers covering the story had forgotten that children might actually read the papers, too, and they had created a crisis of faith. Barney went up in smoke and lost his head. That's what the children thought. It all looked good, the image was fine, but the reality had left them doubting and empty.
Isaiah realized that the people of Israel would be left more empty by creating a god of their own making who would go up in flames than they currently felt in their moment of defeat and sadness. He knew that even though they might be a conquered people with difficulties and trials and problems in their lives, it was nothing compared to the pain they would feel when they realized that the gods that they had made were actually false - they were vapours. For him, that was the biggest crisis of faith.
So I ask you, my friends, when you face a difficulty in your life, a particular temptation to do something wrong, do you really want to rely on an image or do you want to rely on the living God? When you are in need of forgiveness and you're in that dark place of a torment of conscience, do you really want an image or do you want the living God? When you are suffering from physical illness and a crisis in your own personal life, do you want an image or do you want the living God? When you have decided that you have accomplished and attained all the things that Brad Pitt talked about and found them wanting, do you want the image or do you want the living God?
I know who I want. I know who Isaiah believed he could trust. Not a spirituality that we make up, but a spirituality that is born in the living God who formed us. This day, set aside any idol that you may have, whatever form it might take and say in your heart: “There is only one God, the living God, and when I say, ”˜save me,' that God will.” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.