A Reflection and Poem for XX Pentecost Church of the Holy Trinity, Hertford , NC October 15, 2023 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant
Come Make Gods For Us
Exodus 32:1-14 Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 Philippians 4:1-9 Matthew 22:1-14
In the Hebrew Testament there is this story of the Hebrew people who had escaped for Pharaoh's clutches are no longer thankful. Moses., the people's conscience, has gone up to the Mountain to talk with God, and as last week's lessons told us God set up ten words about how to lead a life in union with the Holy. The people, however get tired of of waiting for God to make their life easy. So they make a demand that God needed to be impeached and a new God take his place, a God of their own making. If God made humans in God's own image, they make the decision that they need to return the favor and make God in their own image. A God consumed with getting richer, more powerful, and self-centered.
If you were one of these people and you had an ounce of faith in the God they had followed out of Egypt, how could you remain faithful and let others know that you would not be part of the building of this Golden Calf. You would not attend the revels of debauchery. You would remain true to this God of your heart. How would you let your companions know? As a well bred person, would you write a note asking to be excused?
When I write a reflection, I usually try to narrow down my thoughts into a poem as a meaningful guide to what I hope I want to say. My first line was “Mr. Wilson regrets he is unable to attend the revels today,” The problem is that it took me into a totally different path.
Almost 90 years ago, Noel Coward was having lunch at a Restaurant in New York wondering where his next song was going to come from. He usually started off by picking up a piece of conversation he overheard and then fashioning a song incorporating that phrase. At the next table in the restaurant, an elderly dowager was waiting for someone when the waiter came up to her; handing her a piece of paper with a message about the person she was expecting to join her for lunch. The waiter put on his most official voice and summarized the note: “Miss Otis regrets she is unable to lunch today, Madam.” Coward's lunch companions challenged him to write a song with that phrase and he came up with one. It is one of my favorites and Ella Fitzgerald sings a great version of it.
"Miss Otis Regrets (She's Unable To Lunch Today)"
Miss
Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today
Madam, Miss Otis regrets
she's unable to lunch today
She is sorry to be delayed
But last
evening, down in Lovers Lane she strayed
Madam, Miss Otis
regrets
She's unable to lunch to day
When she woke up and
found
That her dream of love was gone, madam
She ran to the
man
Who had led her so far astray
And from under her velvet
gown
She drew a gun
And shot her lover down, madam
Miss
Otis regrets
She's unable to lunch today
When the mob came
and got her
And dragged her from the jail, madam
They strung
her upon the old willow across the way
And the moment before she
died
She lifted up her lovely head and cried, madam
Miss
Otis regrets
She's unable to lunch today
Miss Otis
regrets
She's unable to lunch today
These two stories, “Miss Otis Regrets” and the “Golden Calf” have the same ingredients of having words remain the same but the meaning and the context of the words change Miss Otis remains the same person but the meaning of her life has changed utterly. She changes from a person of freedom to make decisions to a person defined by the actions of others. In the Golden Calf story the word “God” remains the same, but the meaning changes from being the center of our life to being reduced to a big good luck charm. When the words remain the same but speak to a different meaning; everything changes.
The story of the Golden Calf is an ancient story about the desire to turn God into a well paid servant to do our own will. One of the problems with the whole idea of a church is that sometimes we make God in our own image and give the Divine the job of being the messenger of our own prejudices. When the Roman Emperor Constantine approached the Battle of Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312 AD, against his rival Maxentius, he saw a vision of the Cross in the Heavens and, as the story he had told goes, he was told that he would win the battle if he took the cross as his standard and made Christianity the official religion. Constantine won the battle and the Roman Empire took over the Christian Church, and remade it into an image of an army with power coming from the state. The enemies of the state became the enemies of the church. The fashions of the rulers of the state became the fashions of the church. The standards of the Empire became the standards of the church. Ministers of the church also became clerks of the state, the English word clergy comes from the French word for clerk. Heretics in the church became enemies of the state.
As the Church was busy cozying up with the state, they started to forget what the early Christians believers believed, such as the Apostle Paul who wrote in today's lesson:
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
But, those things that were fashionable in the state became fashionable for the church. The church who had renounced violence now supported state violence declared necessary for the church. Faithful care for the poor evolved into care for the poor as long as it does not hurt our bottom line. “Bearing false witness” became excused as political slogans. The church learned how to stop praying for forgiveness of an enemy and pray instead for destruction of an enemy until they sue for peace. Economic systems adopted by the state became the economic systems endorsed by the church. The phrase became a version of “Let us make God in our own image.”
I am reminded of the poem “Second Coming” written by William Butler Yeats, as the world changed during the 1st World War. Yeats had seen the different Christian nations of Europe decide that fellow Christians, but of different nationalities, needed to be sacrificed for political expediency and the nations' blood lust. The nations went off to war with their vision of God on their side with chaplains paid by the state. Yeats saw that 20th Century Golden Calf movement:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The
blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of
innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the
worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Yeats believed we had lost our way with our golden calves we had worshiped and had seen the wholesale destruction of the old Order. As in Matthew's lesson for today where the King destroyed the faithless enemies Yeats, a Irishman, had seen his home country ripped apart in Rebellion against the British Empire. He had seen the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Chinese Empires crumble. Yeats' wife contracted the Spanish Flu in the epidemic after World War I and was close to death. She recovered. Yeats hoped for the world's recovery but as in Mathew's Gospel story for today; there were still others , having what Yeats called the “Spiritus Mundi” the Soul of the World, who would not embrace the light but would embrace a journey into utter darkness. Hope would have to wait as he writes:
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty
centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking
cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at
last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
It has been a little over a century that we have lived with that slouching beast and each week, we come back here in order to get more strength to no longer attend the revels of the Gods of our own creating. Each week we put on our wedding garments of our hope and we hold on to the truth we proclaim: “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again”.
Come Make Gods For Us
Mr Wilson regrets he's unable to attend the revels today,
Knowing he'd be awed by the beauty of the calf of gold,
He's not sure that a God of his own desires can be sold
As a challenge to his soul when coming time to pray.
He needs to be in awe of something greater than himself,
Freed from his wish to have his massive ego pampered,
So that he may see himself as a penitent, unhampered,
By his desire for greed promised by idols off the shelf.
He has one regret about missing the revels touching,
On his longing to have a forgetting of awful loneliness,
And sharing passion without commitment, meaningless,
But to have just one moment of thoughtless clutching.
Mr. Wilson's God invites us to something deeper;
To live life without shame, to be our faith's keeper.
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