When memory fails, memorials can lose meaning
Daily Scripture
Genesis 28:11-19, 1 Kings 12:26-29, Luke 11:47-48
Genesis 28
11 He reached a certain place and spent the night there. When the sun had set, he took one of the stones at that place and put it near his head. Then he lay down there. 12 He dreamed and saw a raised staircase, its foundation on earth and its top touching the sky, and God’s messengers were ascending and descending on it. 13 Suddenly the Lord was standing on it and saying, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will become like the dust of the earth; you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south. Every family of earth will be blessed because of you and your descendants. 15 I am with you now, I will protect you everywhere you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done everything that I have promised you.”
16 When Jacob woke from his sleep, he thought to himself, The Lord is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it. 17 He was terrified and thought, This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven. 18 After Jacob got up early in the morning, he took the stone that he had put near his head, set it up as a sacred pillar, and poured oil on the top of it. 19 He named that sacred place Bethel [or God’s house], though Luz was the city’s original name.
1 Kings 12
26 Jeroboam thought to himself, The kingdom is in danger of reverting to the house of David. 27 If these people continue to sacrifice at the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem, they will again become loyal to their master Rehoboam, Judah’s king, and they will kill me so they can return to Judah’s King Rehoboam. 28 So the king asked for advice and then made two gold calves. He said to the people, “It’s too far for you to go all the way up to Jerusalem. Look, Israel! Here are your gods who brought you out from the land of Egypt.” 29 He put one calf in Bethel, and the other he placed in Dan.
Luke 11
47 “How terrible for you! You built memorials to the prophets, whom your ancestors killed. 48 In this way, you testify that you approve of your ancestors’ deeds. They killed the prophets, and you build memorials!
Daily Reflection & Prayer
Fleeing his angry twin Esau (cf. Genesis 27:41), Jacob slept alone in the wild, with a stone pillow. He had a dream in which God gave him great promises. He made the place a sacred memorial—Bethel. Centuries later, the king of the 10 northern tribes who had left the Israelite nation used that memorial site to worship alternate “gods” (a golden calf, no less—cf. Exodus 32:2-8). Jesus called out leaders who claimed to venerate the ancient prophets yet rejected his own prophetic message.
- King Jeroboam clearly wanted Bethel’s ancient link to the patriarch Jacob to cloak his political agenda (“I don’t want MY kingdom’s people worshiping God in Jerusalem”) in a religious guise. It didn’t work. His nation wandered ever further from their covenant with Israel’s God until Assyria conquered them in 722 B.C. How does their tragic fate remind us of the need to serve the God our religious memorials remember, not just their human founders or locations?
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The “scribes” Jesus rebuked were not just religious nitpickers. “It was a matter of an agenda which focused on the law as the charter of Israel’s national life, on the one hand, and [Jesus’] agenda which demanded repentance, turning away from Israel’s headlong flight into national rebellion, politically against Rome and theologically against God.” * Memorials to prophets meant nothing if used to uphold an agenda alien to the prophets. What can we learn from Jesus’ strong words?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, keep my heart open to your kingdom agenda. Guard me from trying to use your name and memorials to uphold my wishes if they do not match yours. Amen.
GPS Insights
Brandon Gregory
Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at Leawood's modern worship services, as well as at the West and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.
Today’s passages go over what feels like ancient history: sacred pillars made of stone and false idols in the form of golden calves. I like to think we’re a little smarter than that now. Any politician that set out a golden calf and asked us to pray to it would get boycotted forever. But while symbols change, human nature rarely does. Worshipping golden calves and building memorials for old prophets whom we secretly don’t care about might be relics of an ancient culture, but we have modern equivalents. So let me talk about something we use today much like the religious leaders in Jesus’ time used the memorials: Christian T-shirts and bumper stickers.
There are a lot of good reasons people use those things. They can redirect our kindness and good behavior to God and normalize a faith that many people have been ostracized from. They can create an opening for a conversation for someone who may have wanted to check out the faith but hasn’t felt comfortable coming to church. I think most people who have Christian T-shirts or bumper stickers have those intentions.
But we sometimes have other intentions too when we display those things. A late 90s Christian band, All Star United, had a lyric about this:
My Jesus decal does quite a trick
Right above my dashboard, I stick it
A good luck charm, it keeps me from harm
And saves me from speeding tickets.
Despite our best intentions, there are times when we advertise our faith not because we are holy, but because we want everyone to know we’re holy. There are times when we know we’re going to get preferential treatment from other Christians if we advertise that. As the song lyric above states, it might even get us out of a speeding ticket. (Note: As pastor Adam has stated, please don’t drive aggressively while you have a Resurrection bumper sticker on your car. The Resurrection bumper sticker will not save you from speeding tickets.)
This is not an easy distinction to make. It might be hard to identify selfish ambitions in our behavior, or we may even have noble and selfish intentions at the same time. This is very similar to the memorials Jesus chastised the religious leaders for building and promoting. This is not to say that we shouldn’t display those things—as I said, there are good reasons to have them. Instead, any time we go out with a Christian T-shirt or drive with a bumper sticker on our car, let that remind us to check our intentions. When we use our Christian T-shirts and Jesus bumper stickers for our own gain and reputation, people notice.
© 2024 Resurrection: A United Methodist Church. All Rights Reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (New Testament for Everyone Book 4) (pp. 145-146). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. Kindle Edition.
