“All religions are basically the same.”  Or at least that’s what Oprah Winfrey would have you to believe.  According to her, what you and I might call “God” or “Jesus”, other people might call “the Inner Light” or “Buddha” or “the Great Spirit.”

We live in a culture that honors all religious tastes and preferences; you’re perfectly free to worship whatever god you want, just don’t go around telling other people that they need to worship your god.  Because we’re all on the same path anyway.

There’s an ancient Roman proverb: “To the masses, all religions are equally true; to the philosophers, they are equally false; and to the politicians, they are all equally useful.”  And if you don’t believe that, just listen to Bill Clinton’s speech at the Southern Baptist Convention, or to Baruk Obama’s “sermon” at the United Church of Christ conference a few months back.  These men, for different reasons, are essentially using their religious affiliations to promote their own politics, and neither one of them believes in any kind of absolute truth.  Except, maybe, for their own perspective.

That was the religious climate that St. Paul found himself in when he arrived in the great city of Athens, a city dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom.  And there, on the city’s acropolis, you could see the mighty temple of the Virgin Goddess overlooking the city, surrounded by temples to various other gods and goddesses.  And in the shadow of that mighty Temple of Wisdom, stood the Areopagus, or Ares Hill, dedicated to the god of war, whom we might know by the name, Mars.  And it was on this hill that the great philosophers of the ages used to gather and discuss their varying worldviews and ideologies – all in the name of Wisdom.  The great names like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, Epicurus – great minds of history – all used to gather in that place, questioning the status quo, and expounding on great truths of life.

And it was here, among these many voices of reason and logic, that St. Paul spoke the Word of God – the Word given to him not by human reasoning or deduction, but by the Holy Spirit.  The Word that would become foolishness and a stumbling block to the great minds gathered in that place.  That Word was the Word of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Now, among all these philosophers that were there during that time, this message of St. Paul’s was just one more among many.  And though they considered him crazy, they decided that, in the spirit of the pluralism of the day, they would give him a fair hearing.  And St. Paul took that opportunity and addressed this gathering of philosophers.  And what was his message?  In a nutshell, “You need to turn away from these idols and embrace the true and living God, the one who was crucified and rose again from the dead.”

I wholeheartedly agree that, when we are given an opportunity to engage the world in discussion of our faith, we absolutely need to take it.  But when we do, we need to follow St. Paul’s example, and not simply validate the religious ideals of the others, but rather, as he did, call for repentance, exhort them to turn from their false gods, and follow instead the one true God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified and raised from the dead.  And our message must be clear: there is no hope apart from this Lord Jesus Christ.

I sometimes wonder if we Christians are too lax in our understanding of just how exclusive our Lord calls us to be.  We are not at liberty to allow the message of the cross to be watered down, or distorted, or transmitted in any way that does not clearly point to our Lord Jesus Christ, His suffering and death, and His resurrection.

I don’t think there are any of us here today that would validate any obvious idolatry.  I don’t think any of us here would seriously consider bowing down to some statue of a pagan god, or tell someone that it’s okay to pray to some other god.  But what about when it comes to the idols of the modern church?  Are there any idols that we modern Christians sometimes exalt in place of our crucified Savior?  Are there any false gods that we sometimes worship and exalt?  And are we entirely free to validate these false ideals, and not call to repentance those who bow to them?

You’ve heard me say it before, and I will say it again now:  Theology matters, people.  St. Paul warned us that there will come a time when there will be those who do not endure sound teaching, but will instead gather to themselves teachers who tell them what their itching ears long to hear.  So when you hear someone tell you, “Oh, doctrine doesn’t matter!  These doctrinal issues that divide the church are not important!”, don’t you believe them.  Doctrine was important enough in St. Paul’s day that he actually says, “Have nothing to do with them!”

Which brings me to the first idol I want to speak about, and that’s the idol of good works.  Oh, yeah.  The Reformation was nearly 500 years ago, but guess what!  The Roman heresy – the belief that God only cares about good works – is still around.  And not just with the Pope and his cronies.  These days, the Pelagian heresy is still lurking around, only these days it goes by the name of “Purpose Driven.”  Yes, I am saying that the Purpose Driven Church is an idol.  I have to confess, at one time I was very positive toward this movement – I thought there were a lot of good ideas in it.  But I have since come to realize that all it does is make the business of church depend on us, our deeds.  And that is not the way Christ grows His church.  He grows His church the same way He told His disciples to do it in Matthew 28:  Go and make disciples by baptizing them into My name, and by teaching them to observe all my commands.  Word and Sacrament ministry.  And I thank God that Jim Roberts convinced me instead to study our Confessions, because now I have come to realize just how dangerous it is for us to shift our focus away from the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to dilute the teachings of His gospel with this man-made purpose-driven stuff.  I don’t need to be preaching purpose – I need to be preaching Christ, and Christ alone!  Christ crucified and risen from the dead!

So that’s Idol Number One: Purpose.  Idol Number Two is Marketing.  I’ve been reading a lot lately about Missions, and some of the latest fads and techniques that some pastors are using to “reach the lost” as they call it.  And quite frankly, some of it is downright silly.  One church in St. Louis spent $30,000 dollars for billboards that all say, “Jefferson Hills Church Sucks! – signed Satan.”  Another church in Florida was stirring things up by having a 30-day sex challenge.  There are other ones I’ve heard about, but they all seem to have this one thing in common: the idea of promoting their church in bizarre, attention-seeking ways.  But I have to ask one question of all these market-driven churches: what do you have to say about Jesus?  Why aren’t you trying to promote Him instead of all this other crazy stuff?  What people need isn’t a better sex life; what they need is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Idol Number Three is syncretism.  That’s the belief that you can safely blend elements of different religious beliefs together without distorting the Christian message.  I spoke before about Oprah Winfrey’s pluralistic beliefs?  Well, knowing what you know about Oprah’s belief that all gods are equally valid, would you feel comfortable attending one of her church’s worship services?  Would you allow her to pray for you, knowing that her “god” is nothing more than her “inner light”?  I would certainly hope not!  But then, why is it that we are so willing to engage in similar activities with Christians whose beliefs are contrary to our own?  Why is it that some of us want to open up our Synod’s Communion tables to all comers, knowing full well that many of them openly deny our belief in the Sacrament?  Why are we so willing to validate our fellow Christians in their unbelief, when they are often so quick to deny the faith that we hold?  Now, I’m not saying that other Christians aren’t truly Christian, but I am saying that before we just start doing what they do, we need to make sure we’re clear on what we believe, why we believe it, and whether or not what they’re doing fits in with what we believe?  If not, then it is not appropriate for us to do.

I’ll give you an example: a couple of years ago, I was sent on a retreat called the Emmaus Walk.  At the time I accepted the invitation, I thought it would be a great thing.  But when I got there, I found myself confronted with a few problems: for one thing, Communion was an important part of this retreat, but unfortunately, they do not confess the same things we do about the Sacrament, and so I had to refrain from taking it.  It did cause me no little grief, but I could not in good conscience partake of their Sacrament knowing the false doctrine they were teaching of it.  And the same is true of all of you as well: first of all, I wouldn’t encourage any of you to partake in a non-Lutheran group anyway, but if you do, at the very least, make sure they openly confess the True Presence before you do.  Otherwise, you will be going against the teachings of our own church.

Unity in the church is a good thing, but not at the expense of sound doctrine.  Given the choice, I certainly hope that you all would prefer to have sound doctrine over the false unity sometimes professed by our well-meaning but somewhat mislead brothers in Christ.

And so, there you are: three idols that confront our modern church – (1) this whole Purpose-Driven thing, (2) modern “anything goes” marketing, and (3) false unity.  And why are these idols so dangerous to us?  Because they distract us from following Christ.  The purpose-driven approach makes us focus on ourselves instead of on the Savior who died for us and rose again from the dead.  All this emphasis on wild marketing schemes makes us think that we’re the ones who grow God’s kingdom, rather than trusting Christ to do what He has promised for His Church through the ministry of Word and Sacrament.  And this heavy emphasis on Christian unity severely downplays the importance of sound Christian doctrine in the life of the believer and of the Church.

But we are charged with addressing the culture around us.  And we are charged with bringing God’s Word – the Word of the Cross – to bear in this culture, to challenge sin and to bring repentance and forgiveness through the Word of Christ.  We are not at liberty to water down the message of the Gospel, but neither are we at liberty to remain silent in proclaiming it.

We all have embraced idols in our lives; we all have practiced idolatry of one form or another, whether it be in church, or in our daily lives, or even in the privacy of our own homes.  But the Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified and raised from the dead, has now called us away from all these idols.  It is He who rescues us from darkness and brings us into light, who comes to us in our ignorance and becomes for us divine wisdom.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us a task – of making disciples of all the nations.  But it is not for us to decide when or how we get to make those disciples.  We aren’t the ones who have to figure out how to do it.  He has already told us: it is by the ministry of Word and Sacrament that disciples are made.  It is not deeds that make us disciples, nor is it fancy marketing schemes, nor is it accommodating every religious belief under the sun.  No, it is God’s Word and His Sacraments that make us His disciples, and it is these means that He has given us that we are to make disciples of the rest of the world.