Homily for 2 Jul 2015

2 Jul 2015

We all know the phrase, “You are what you eat.”  And we would also say that “You are what you worship.”  The Psalm makes that pretty clear today.  We hear: “Their idols are . . . the handiwork of men.  [Their idols] have mouths but speak not; they have eyes but see not; . . . Their makers shall be like them, everyone who trusts in them.”  We become what we worship.

And we have two great examples of this in Scripture today: Abraham and the scribes.  God is ready to do anything and everything for the benefit of the human race.  And Abraham knows that and trusts in God.  It’s no surprise, then, to see that Abraham would do anything and everything for his God—even going to the point of almost sacrificing his son.  Abraham became what he worshiped: he became a living and powerful image of God’s absolute fidelity.

And then there were the scribes who worshiped something less than God, something of their own making.  In a way, they worshiped their own understandings of things.  They may have been knowledgeable about law and religious practice, but they came to worship this edifice—this limited edifice—of knowledge and not the God behind that knowledge.  They became what they’d worshiped and trusted: a rather mechanical, unthinking, unfeeling presence in the world.  They were faithful to what they knew; not to God himself.  And so, in a way, they had become their own idols.

Of course, we have examples of both these characters in the world today.  We see Abrahams every now and then—maybe they’re persecuted Christians who die for their faith.  Maybe they’re parents who love their kids unconditionally, even though their kids might be doing some questionable things.  And then we also see scribes every now and then today—maybe they’re people so convinced of their own rightness that they fail to love their neighbor; maybe they fail to have any real trust in God; maybe they fail to really know God.

We are what we eat.  We are what we worship.  And, just like eating, what we worship is largely up to us.  And who we are and who we become is, therefore, also largely up to us.  As the Psalm says, “Their makers shall be like them.”  Whatever we build up and worship is what we’ll be like.  And so, let’s build up our faith.  Let’s build up our love of God.  Then we can worship him in truth and, someday, be just like him.