crazy

The Gods Must Be Crazy a sermon by Jerry Larsen

I. Take your pick

There at least six ways of thinking of God (a brief description of the "Six Ways to Think of God" chart)
Which is your idea of God?

Why is it important, you may ask. It makes a difference for at least these reasons:

Everyone worships at the feet of at least one God, its good to know who or what it is.
Your God is what organizes your integrity. If you want to have integrity, and have some say about what integrates your life, you better know what your God or Gods are. Find a person who demonstrates integrity in relations and decisions, and you have found a person who knows who his or her God is.
Not choosing your God is to turn over your freedom to the forces around you that will.
Not choosing your god means you are a potential victim of the crazy gods: the ones who care nothing for your durable integrity or a redemptive community.

II. Paul and the Gentiles

Paul was a Pharisee Jew. He was a monotheist who knew from personal experience how much work it takes to integrate all one's life around one thing, one god. He knew how focused and meaningful one's life could be lived with that sort of integrity. Paul also was aware that if your understanding of god was wrong, your integrity would not endure the tests any life faces. If it was wrong, your integrity would not contribute to redemptive community - we wouldn't get along.

His personal integrity drove him first to try and exterminate the Jesus followers. But as he rounded up these blasphemous Jews, he ran into a major flaw, a gaping hole, in his integrity: How could he reconcile the intolerance of his conviction about authority with another theme of his training as a Jew, namely: love and the Golden Rule. It all fell in on him on his way to Damascus to round up more Jesus people. He cam to know that he misunderstood the nature of God's being. He changed the focus of his integrity and became a Jesus follower.

Paul could have, like you or I from time to time, simply compartmentalized his life. He could have sung the psalms of love on the Sabbath, disconnect from that tradition the next day and resume the round up of wrong thinkers. His monotheism was so strong that he could not tolerate such a split. It would have driven him crazy.

So with a new center to his life - one revolving around the God of Jesus - he started a different sort of round-up. He began rounding up people were aching for a life of integrity and loving community. This time Paul went about his calling without an army or Temple police, without weapons, without scare tactics. Rather, in keeping with the integrity he wrapped around Jesus' God, Paul went as a servant. Here are his own words about that integrity written to the Christians in Corinth:

As far as we are concerned we do not wish to stand in anyone's way. Nor do we wish to bring discredit on the ministry God has Given us. Indeed, we want to prove ourselves genuine ministers of God whatever we have to go through--patient endurance of troubles or even disasters, being flogged or imprisoned; being mobbed, having to work; like slaves, having to go without food or sleep. All this we want to meet with sincerity, with insight and patience; by sheer kindness and Holy Spirit; with genuine love, speaking the plain truth, and living by the power of God. Our sole defense, our only weapon is a life of integrity, whether we meet honor or dishonor, praise or blame. Called "impostors," we must be true, called "nobodies" we must be in the public eye. Never far from death, yet here we are alive, always "going through it" yet never "going under." We know sorrow, yet our joy is inextinguishable. We have "nothing to bless ourselves with," yet we bless many others with true riches. We are penniless, and yet in reality we have everything worth having. -Paul I cor.6:3-10

So, Paul took his monotheism and sense of integrity anchored in God's universal love to the Gentiles. The Greeks and Romans were, by and large, polytheists. They had a long tradition of the worship of many deities: Zeus, Jupiter, Aphrodite, Venus, Persephone, Mercury, Poseidon, and the rest of the supernatural cast. In addition, they had a monarch who claimed to be a god, they imported religions from Persia and Egypt. A Roman might pay homage to several of these powers in an effort to be safe, prosperous and have a good time.

Paul's status as a Roman citizen and his experience with the multi-cultural nature of Roman society made him a natural. I suppose that at first Paul and the Jesus followers didn't make too much of an impression on the Roman leadership; after all what's one more religion? Where Paul made trouble was in his insistence that there was only one deity. He said that if you focus you life on ONE god, life will work. AND, if it is the right God - the God of Jesus - your integrity will stand up to any threat and you will help to build a redemptive, community.

Say that enough times and to as many people as you can and some demigod will try to run you out of town our simply run you through. That's what happened to Jesus and finally, that is exactly what happened to Paul.

III. We are Gentiles

Paul had trouble with some of the Gentile converts to the "Way" of Jesus in that they did not see the importance of to one's integrity of MONOTHEISM. They continued to pay their divided respects to other deities of the Greco-Roman play-bill. What was the big deal if you pay your respects to Jesus and his father Jehovah and at the same time keep up a relationship with Artemis, Zeus or even Caesar?

"The Big deal," wrote Paul, "is that you loose your integrity. Life works only one basic way: Jesus' way. It is the way of love and meaning. For you philosophers, it is the way of the LOGOS of LOVE. Love was a part of creation at the very beginning. Everything that exists is clued together with this LOGOS of LOVE. There are not many creative and redeeming forces in the cosmos, there in only one. That one thing was poured into the man Jesus. That one thing crops up in all of creation and even gets incarnated into you and me when we accept its integrating influence.

"The big deal, my sisters and brothers at Colossae is that your many gods are crazy, unfaithful and don't really care about you. How can they? They are not real. The big deal is that when you try to pay attention to so many claims on your faith, you will drive yourselves crazy."

Friends, we are polytheists. We are like the Greeks and Romans in that we try to manage the many gods of our time in a way that we don't have to finally decide who the God of our integrity will be. We may not worship Caesar or Poseidon but our demigods are very much alive in our hearts. Here are a few:

Nasdacus The god of wealth: John Boy The god of family: Horatio Alger The god of success: Clearacil The god of beauty: FerSureDude The god of youth Boy am I tired The god of work Tis of Thee The god of country Yumm Yumm The god of pleasure Centerfold The god of sex SEE ME The god of fame Prime Time The god of TV WebNet The god of Access Fist of Fury The god of anger MeMyMine The god of greed Charles Bronson The god of revenge YouOughtaShouldaCoulda The god of self righteousness Whinie The god of self pity Gimme The god of self indulgence der Fuhrer The god of power and control Horsepower The god of cars GoodEnough The god of mediocrity and his roommate NotGoodEnough The god of perfectionism

I don't know about you, but these crazy gods have all sat at my table from time-to-time. Monotheism is the way of thinking that tries to boot these would-be deities off our personal shrines and call them what they are: sins and virtues that need to be put in their proper place under the lordship of the God of Love. No one can do that for you or me. If our lives are to have the integrity that we need for our mental and spiritual health, each of us must clean out our personal temples.

What altars do you kneel at during your week? What ends would you give anything to accomplish? Who would you do anything to meet or get approval from? Let these be your questions this week as you, like the disciples, let the God of love turn your life upside down and inside out in a courageous act of integrity.