Wooden Faith

Exodus 20:4-6; Isaiah 44:9-20; Romans 8:31-39

We will go to great lengths to rid ourselves of fear. Some of us take the direct approach, seeking to defeat fear by facing it head on—so a 63 year old skydives for the first time. Some work with a therapist to overcome our fears. Some practice the great art of avoidance, simply removing ourselves from fearsome situations. Interestingly, a great spur for religious practice is conquering fear—we seek the presence of a higher power who will side with us against all that is fearsome. 

Isaiah tells a remarkable parable that reveals this tendency. His description of the artisan crafting an idol is painstaking. You find yourself in the workshop. You can smell the sawdust, hear the gentle thrum of the lathe, see the sweat bead on the working man’s brow, feel his effort—it is all so real. But Isaiah emphasizes it is all vanity. No matter how much skill the carver applies, no matter how genius his art might be, he cannot breathe life into the hunk of wood, no matter how gorgeous the end result might be. It remains as inanimate as ever—and as useless a savior as we could ever imagine. It will be a wooden faith.

Take his parable to heart.

As we face our own fears—some of us wrestle with them daily—we, too, find ourselves carefully crafting a useless savior for ourselves. We even reveal a peculiar genius as we do so, for human beings construct incredible things to deal with fear, from incredibly complex and elaborate alarm systems to cyber fortresses to whole systems of government that we trust with our lives. We face the world surrounded by our manufactured protectors and protections. Some of them are magnificent in their scope. Some are more subtle. Some are mechanical and some are extremely human. 

And they are all as lifeless and ultimately useless as the artisan’s hunk of wood.

For instance, an editor of Wired magazine appeared on the PBS program, “Nova,” recently, discussing hacking—not butchering a tree with an ax, but cutting through layers of cyber defense to access accounts. He got hacked. The attackers were thorough and terribly effective. In an instant, he was locked out of his phone, computer, and tablet. A whole family history of photos and videos was utterly obliterated. His financial accounts were completely exposed (God bless the hackers for not actually stealing anything). He lost a music library, a literary library, and all privacy. The hackers subverted a carefully, meticulously developed system of nets, webs, and protocols with just a couple of steps. They did so in less than hour. They were 15 years old. The adult geniuses went back to work to close them out, but to what end? We just heard a week or so ago  that corporate giant, Home Depot, just had all of its customer accounts broken into. Oops…

Now, for a bit of irony—truth be told, a large piece in Christian practice is fear alleviation—Christ came to release us from paralyzing fears—fear of death, fear of guilt, fear of each other, and so on. He did so through entirely human events. Jesus of Nazareth was a real, actual human being in every way we can imagine. His teaching was human wisdom writ large. His touch was human touch—an act of deep, personal love for the touched. His workers were all human beings, chosen precisely because they were as human as humans can be. His sacrifice was human—one man losing his life in the face of the powers of the world as the world rejected everything about him and sought to rid themselves of him. 

But there the irony ends. Jesus was no product of human imagination or willfulness. Jesus was not manufactured, employed, or trained in security. He was the Son of God—a mysterious twining of God and humanity that we can never fully understand. God is and was in him and with him. As St. John sang—

He was in the beginning

He was with God, he was God…

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…

Christ is God with us.

That changes everything.

In Christ, God meets us, walks with us, and helps us with all the power that brought the cosmos into being. Everything we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell flows from God. All experience flows from God. God is the Source of everything that is. 

Knowing that led St. Paul to temporarily lose his mind and burst into hyperbolic praise that defied all reason (yet, in another fit of irony, was completely and utterly true) that there was nothing, no, nothing—no thing, and no one—in all of the created order that can separate us from the presence of God; i.e., there are no ultimate threats to our being—not even death.

Whoa.

Remember that the next time some security system fails. Recall that as you vote this election season. Bring that to mind the next time you attempt to open your computer and it simply stares back at you with the Blue Screen of Death. 

But also remember it when you sit with a physician who has less than good news. Recall that when a friendship founders on the rocks of its simple humanity. Note it when you are heading out to be with a family member in abject crisis. 

“In all these things, we are more than conquerors,” declared St. Paul.

God is no idol. God is the center of all that is. Do not be distracted by the beauty and wonder of all that God has done, seeing power in the made things—even us—but, rather, look to the Creator—look to God. God has the power of life, even in the realm of death.

There is nothing to fear.

All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, prayed St. Julian.