Unholy Attachments

Unholy Attachments

Rob Gieselmann Pent. 23A, October 15, 2017

Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of Hugenot pastor Andre Trocme, and his French village, Le Chambon, located in the French Alps. When France fell to Germany in WWII, the people of Le Chambon integrated hundreds of Jews into their community, openly and notoriously, to keep the Germans from getting them. During the summer of 1942, the Vichy minister in charge of youth affairs, Georges Lamirand, tried to establish a Hitler-like youth camp at Le Chambon. The plan was for him to parade through Le Chambon with his entourage, and for people to gather for a banquet and rally. It all fell to disaster. Nobody came to watch the parade, and at the banquet, not only was the food sparse, but Trocme’s daughter accidentally spilled soup all over Lamirand.

Then at the rally, the youth, the very people Lamirand wanted to recruit – read a letter drafted by Trocme. This letter recounted Parisian scenes of French police rounding up 12,000 Jews for deportation to Auschwitz. The letter concluded: We are afraid that [you will try the same thing here.] We feel obliged to tell you that there are among us a certain number of Jews. But we make no distinction between Jews and non-Jews. It is contrary to the Gospel. We have Jews. You’re not getting them.

*Jesus tells this allegory of a failed wedding celebration: The friends invited to the banquet refused to attend, so the host, obviously representing God, retaliated. Waged War on them, and worse, ejected out one fellow at the celebration just because he wore the wrong clothes. This allegory creates problems for us about regard to God. Does anybody think God would really kill people for failing to RSVP, or kick someone out because of what they are wearing?

Classically interpreted, this story is a polemic against the religious leaders – for rejecting God and killing prophets. But it is also a polemic against Christians - those of us who say we have faith but don’t back it up by our actions. Your clothes are your behavior. As in – what you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you say.

I have this recurring dream, and I just can’t figure it out. Church is about to start – and I can’t find my alb. I’m in the sacristy, everybody else is ready and is in procession. The bells have rung, the hymn has started and the cross is moving down the aisle. Only I’m by myself unsure of what to do. Dreams often disclose anxieties, only I’m pretty-much never anxious when church starts. So I have no idea what this dream means – nor do I understand why God would throw a person out for wearing the wrong clothes.

After all, don’t most – if not all – of us fail to do the right thing regularly? **You might have the impression that the Israelites wandering through the wilderness were religiously unsophisticated, but this was not the case.

And the caricature of people dancing ignorantly around a golden calf misses the point – this wasn’t your garden-variety idolatry – the Hebrews were not worshipping the golden calf – they were trying to worship God. This translation says, gods, but the noun is singular. The one who freed them from Egypt.

In those days, a bull – the calf – was believed to be the seat of divine authority. Until now, Moses had served as a repository of the divine, but Moses was missing. And the people had gone 40 days without worshipping God and wanted to do so. So they fashioned this golden calf.

The problem was not that the people worshipped the golden calf – the problem was that the people didn’t trust in God, but in a physical representation of God’s existence. I met a lot of people who trust more in the accoutrements of religion than they do in God. Maybe they substitute the cross around their necks for God, or gaze at icons or stained glass windows than they rely upon grace.

What do your actions mean to you? Genuflecting, or crossing yourself? Do you cling to one style of worship because it is the only way God is mediated to you? Where do you suppose God is located, anyway? Upon the golden calf of the ritual itself, or in your heart? Is grace deposited in the cross around your neck? Or in your soul? If you cannot worship without accoutrements, is it fair to call it worship?

Pastor Debie Thomas says Jesus tells the banquet story from the extremes – almost like hyperbole – to point out that we interpret God as harsh because we actually believe God to be harsh. We know better, but we keep having this recurring dream of judgment. Everybody else is walking down the aisle of grace but us, and we don’t know what to do about it. Only – using the correct words or rituals doesn’t mean God hears us more or better.

Perhaps the problem is – attachments. Not just worship attachments, but all attachments. Psychiatrist and spiritual writer, Gerald May, says that attachments keep us from God.

Or conversely, that God’s rule of work in our lives – that constant cycle of death, burial and resurrection – is God’s way of freeing us from our attachments.

Well – what are attachments? Obviously – there are 12-step attachments, like alcohol, over-eating or gambling – but other attachments include anything that diverts you from trust. Relationship attachments – parents who hold onto their children so tightly they won’t let them grow-up.

Religion is an obvious attachment, which is I suppose Jesus’ point. When you cross yourself so often and God cannot make it past your hands and into your heart.

Money, work, freedom – anything that separates you from the love of God. Attachments become golden calves – you think they do you good, but they leave you on the outside looking in. They are the wrong clothes.

***Andre Trocme and the people of Le Chambon wore the right clothes. They assumed Christian courage and risked their own safety – which is also an attachment – to do what is right. Their Jews were saved, and by saving others, the people of Le Chambon saved their own souls.

So this morning, there remains only one question – what attachment is Christ inviting you to release this morning?