Yesterday I started a preaching series on Lessons from the Crisis Center. First focus area was worry and Care. One scripture source was Psalm 121. Here are the first couple verses:
I lift my eyes to the hills–
from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth. – Psalm 121:1-2 NRSV
I can remember a few years ago, I thought this was such a wonderful image: we go through troubled times and then we cast our eyes up to hills where God sits enthroned above the heavens and we find there, God’s help.
Then I was reminded of an important piece of the original cultural context that changed the dynamics of this image.
When the Psalmist wrote, this hills were not necesarily the residence of the God of creation, others resided there. The hills surrounding Jerusalem and ther other town in Judea held the High Places, the temples and worship centers for the various idols and other gods that were continued temptations and the shame of the people which led to their eventual conquering and captivity. While Yahweh created them and led them into freedom and the promised land, the hills and the rituals that resided there remainded active. The gods of fertility and harvest, the beings that resided in the air and the sea and the soil seemed so much more accessible to the people than Yahweh who eschewed those statues and visible representations. And as the cult in Jerusalem grew in influence, I can imagine it was much easier to just go to the corner high place to say a prayer and make a small sacrifice than to travel all the way to the temple or tabernacle site.
Even today we understand the importance of visibility and accessibility in marketing: location, location, location.
But of course, we in our modern/post-modern civilized society doesn’t need to worry about High Places and idol worship, right?
In my mind, I believe we become susceptible to idolatry when we seek in other people or other things the source of life and when we become more enamored of the creation over the Creator. With that idea, there are many places within and without the church that can become for us the High Places.
As I was thinking of “lifting up our eyes to the hills” to seek our help from other things, I can see us naturally looking in 3 basic places for help outside of God. And all three have a strong element of personal control.
The first one would be trying to fix things through our skills and programs (skill sets). Things aren’t working so we initially think we are doing something wrong. If it’s broken, maybe I can fix it. I can learn. I just need to find the right book/expert/trainer/helper/blog that will teach me just what I can do to make it all better. I have benefited (and continue to benefit) from authors of all kinds in learning about being a parent, husband, preacher, pastor, spiritual director, manager, more productive person, and a writer. My extensive personal library is a testimony to some of that assistance, but it is also a symptom of the vulnerability to this High Place in my life. I know the inner dialogue: “this book really helped me with this, but it isn’t quite right, maybe this new book will be just what I need to get it all figured out and under control… ooh, pretty cover.”
It doesn’t have to be limited to personal Skill learning, just consider the plethora (I love that word) of programs available to churches and businesses to get their ministry/marketing/fund-raising/inter-personal communications/etc on a winning track. Every church I have ever been in has a closet somewhere with old stewardship campaign programs that work for a year or two and then no longer “produce” so need new skill sets. I can also name in my own life many schools of thought that are important to who I am, but can so easily become the be-all-and-end-all of idea systems: process, post-modern, liberation, spirtuality, enneagram, labyrinths, missional, family systems, and lately emergent, and I know there are so many more. Good ideas and great learnings, but when they become our High Places and source of life, we each have a problem.
A second High Place would be technology and our tools. Nothing bad about them as far as they go, but it is so easy to become so wrapped up in the latest and greatest that we get out of focus. Just ask my wife, I love technology and I can so easily get wrapped up in computers, internet, blogs, twitter, and I know the next “best” thing will be attractive. I have been blessed with limited spending money otherwise I would be one of those who envy and drool over the latest hardware (look it is so tiny and does so much). Sure, I have tried Covey, and GTD, and other tools to get past productivity blocks, but I haven’t found the right one yet (so, the drive for more power and more help is fueled). How much do we depend on our technologies (hardware and software and processes) to be The Answer that will fix all of our personal and societal ills? The more we do, the more we “lift our eyes to the hills.”
The third High Place I considered is energy. No, not green or electrical or wind or ethanol, but personal energy. How often do we respond to something being wrong by trying to apply more energy to it. We work harder. We work faster. Somehow we think that we face our crisis and problem because we haven’t done enough, or we haven’t done it fast enough (overlap with technology), or well enough. (overlap with skills). We get stuck in that idea of personal control. I can fix my own problem with my own energy and my own work and using my own tools and applying my own skills. One of the hooks of idolatry in my mind is measuring. I don’t have what I want becuase I haven’t done enough to please the god. Or I didn’t practice the ritual correctly, I didn’t say the right words, but this time I will get it right and I will give enough so the god (of technology, of the market, of whatever) will finally deem me worthy of getting what I want.
Terrible traps aren’t they? We are all there and keeping coming back. I find myself a bit more sympathetic to those early Israelites and Judeans who just couldn’t give up their High Places.
But the witness and invitation of the Psalmist still comes to us. The source of our help needs to be based not in ourselves or in our control of things, but in the true source of life and help, the Creator. We are afraid and we worry because we find ourselves with a healthy shadow of doubt that God is there caring for us and helping us. And that is the grace of faith: to reverse the perspective. Put those technologies and skills and our investment of energy back into their places of serving andbeing conduits for the flow of God’s Creating and Living Essence. We have to continue being intentional about seeing God working through those various gifts. As we do that, I think even the hills will breathe a sigh of relief to be able to be just what God created them to be: witnesses to all the ways God is at work in living.
