Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III | "Breaking Free From Our Idolatry" 6PM 10/04/26

1:05:48 Amen. Amen. Breaking free from our idolatry. Breaking free from our idolatry. I want to share this. Begin this way. There is a practice I have. Actually, it is a habit.

1:06:14 Whenever I'm in an airport, I love, actually I have to, I love to find the chapel of the airport so that I can pray before I get on the plane. Anytime I go to an airport, I got to find the chapel. And the Midway Airport here in Chicago has a very nice chapel. And after completing my prayers and reciting, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. I left the chapel this particular time and proceeded to my gate. Instead of reading a book or listening to music or checking my email, I decided to play one of my favorite games that Monica and I created years ago.

1:07:14 It's called People Watching. where we imagine the stories of the individuals walking by. We'll see two people walking by, and then we'll say, I think it's a couple. They're about to go on their honeymoon. Or then maybe we'll see some elders, and we'll say, oh, these elders are excited to board a plane to see their grandchild for the first time. Or maybe we'll see a team, like a volleyball team, traveling, getting on a plane to Michigan, and then I'll say something to the fact that I say, well, you know that all of them are excited, but there's one who's really excited, who shouldn't have made the team, but is on the team anyhow, and is excited they are traveling to Michigan. Then there's always, always when you see parents with at least three children under the age of five.

1:08:15 Uh-huh. Yeah, you got to pray for them. Pray for them. And so our prayers go out to them at that moment with all the stuff that they are carrying. And Monica's really good at thinking through what the mama is thinking at that moment. Or maybe we'll see a crew of sisters, 10 women going on a girl's trip to celebrate a friend who just obtained her Ph.D. at 55. I love I love this game. It's fun to imagine and create characters, backstory of people who are just walking through the airport. But this time, this time I was struck as I was playing this game. I was struck that the majority of people in the airport at this moment were in a position of prayer. Heads all around me were bowed.

1:09:13 They were bowed, but instead of two hands open, ready to receive blessings from God, or hands clasped together out of submission and humility. Everyone around me simply had one hand open and their head bowed. And everyone was holding in their hand an idol, a small rectangular box with their heads bowed, scrolling through a secular sacred text fashioned by a ubiquitous, almost omnipresent algorithm. It hit me at that moment, the ubiquitous nature of our technology. And I must admit, I was not raised as a digital native, Reverend Titus, for I'm a digital immigrant. That just means I'm old.

1:10:12 I'm a digital immigrant. I'm old school. The credentials of my immigration status are based upon the memories that are embedded in my very spirit. Because I'm a digital immigrant. Because I still have memories of something known as an LP. I remember crates being brought into a party. As the DJ was going to take two turntables and a microphone to get the party started. I'm a digital immigrant. I remember my father's 8-tracks and 33s. I used to buy mixtapes out of the trunk of a car for a few dollars. I remember something known as videotapes, Betamax, something called Blockbuster, LaserDiscs, CDs and DVDs.

1:11:08 Some of you all are looking very confused because you're of a different generation. I even have memories of something known as we were moving into the digital age, something known as Napster, Netscape, Mosaic, and MySpace. I remember the sound of AOL when you got online. I'm a digital immigrant, but we are now in an age where our phones are small golden calves, where we dance around calling on the names of new secular gods called Claude, Siri, and ChatGPT who answer our questions. It is theologian Paul Tillich who defines faith as one's relationship to God as a person's ultimate concern. We are shaped and defined by what we pursue as our ultimate concern, the existential or spiritual center of our being. This, according to one theologian, is the heart that shapes our faith and our understanding of God, for God is our ultimate concern. And under this definition, even if you are not a person of faith, we all have an ultimate concern implicitly or explicitly where one, whether one is secular or flows out of sacred definitions. The scripture says, it offers us a warning and an understanding of modern life.

1:12:44 You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make yourself an idol. You shall not bow down to them, you shall not serve them. Scholars speak of this scripture as one of the defining covenantal demands of what we call the Torah or the Old Testament. There is to be no competition or a free market where we split our time between multiple little gods. There is inherent in scripture a monogamy, asking the people of Israel to make a commitment Commitment to the God who brought you out of enslavement and cared for them through the wilderness. An idol would be the shifting of one's heart and spirit along with one's physical resources to one who has not been committed, to one who ain't done nothing in your life. It is Eric Fromm, that psychoanalyst who talks about an idol, an image, or an alternative to our ultimate concern fashioned by our hands that needs to feed our ego but does not feed our soul.

1:14:05 He defines idols or idolatry this way. He says idolatry is not the worship of this or that particular idol. It is the deification of things or partial aspects of the world and our submission to those things. And I make a declaration today not to create any fear or to frame myself as some prophet. But I offer an observation that America is living in her last days as a world power. There is a shift happening. Humanity is facing a crisis. There are some who will lift up climate change, others who will lift up rumors of wars and wars, but the central shift that is causing discontent and collective pain in humanity is humanity's addiction to multiple forms of idolatry.

1:15:05 And the idolatry that we find today is rooted in capitalism run amok. undermining the human soul. The digital tools I spoke about in the airport and present with us were not birthed by a concern for humanity but by a principle of profit over people. Our world is possessed by a new form of idolatry. And let me tell you, because I had to do some research on idolatry. And there is something that idolatry, an idol requires. An idol requires your attention. The golden calf was created and had to be maintained and it had to have attention around it. The golden calf split the attention between the Israelite people and Yahweh.

1:16:01 They didn't say we give up on Yahweh. We just want to have something that we can touch and something we can feel. something that makes us feel good right now, that feeds our ego while Moses is up on the mountain. This attention economy is designed by tech oligarchs to seek our seduction, to seek to seduce us by seduction better known as ease. that this world will seduce you in such a way that will remove your attention. Just like ordering food. You know, when you order food online and you instead of going somewhere, it can be delivered to your house. Or better yet, since that didn't hit you, buying clothes. You've been scrolling and said, that looks good.

1:16:57 And after you order one thing, all of a sudden they start sending more stuff on your feed that you then think, that's good also. And then they offer a deal to you, 20% off, if you buy it in the next 24 hours. It distracts you from real relationships. That we don't even have real relationships anymore. we would rather swipe than talk. Give up your privacy and autonomy and our data is now for sale and we are being redlined and don't even know we're being redlined by tech companies. Just like our ancestors were. If I may break it down, they recently did a study where they had a group of people in the same building going to the same place ordered an uber carb. There's about 10 people and each person got a different price though they were going to the same space because they have the data that says that I can charge you more. Come to find out that people who have more in their pocket actually pay less but those who have less in their pocket pay more.

1:18:18 even people who were in the same building ordering food for their house from the grocery store, yes, Instacart, that they found out that one group paid more for eggs than another group, even though everything was coming from the same store and going to the same place. And let me really mess you up that when you go to your favorite coffee shop order your coffee and then after you give them their card then something pops up and says do you want to give a tip not realizing that the store has no control over that tipping that the company that actually provided that that kiosk takes from that tip for themselves before they distribute anything else to anybody else. And now we are dealing with data centers.

1:19:18 And people are saying, I need a job. But when the data centers are built for AI, it is designed to put you out of your job in the first place. And so we will support a data center being built that will literally take away the jobs of our children and our children's children. Raise your electricity bills, pollute your water, and bring down the value of your home. But we want a job immediately, not realizing that it's designed to destroy our community. All of this is a form of idolatry. And when you are raised on a screen, we have a generation that has the highest numbers of mental health challenges and anxiety in American history.

1:20:18 Depression because they have been raised on a screen. There's some things you can't learn on a screen. You got to learn how to work through some issues that are not on a screen. You got to learn how to speak and say hello and learn how to play and go outside. You got to learn how to work through some things without a screen. That it's literally shifting the brain chemistry of our children. And even, they've done research now, that even our spines are changing. Because we have been staring at a screen so long. This is a form of idolatry.

1:21:15 I'm doing the best I can. The question is, how do we break free from idolatry? I'm almost done. You see, to break free from idolatry is simply this, is that we've got to learn the power of confession, the power of being human, that I have the ability to confess my foolishness. When you confess, you also then confront. But if you cannot confront and name what's holding you, it will continue to hold you. But the moment you name it, you can cast that spirit out of your life. I'm talking to somebody here. The day you were able to name it, it had no power over you. The day you were able to say it, it no longer locked you up.

1:22:12 confession, confess, confess with your mouth. But if you cannot name it, if you cannot confess, if you cannot admit it, it shall always hold power over you. And I have to confess, I have to confess that these things, this little tiny thing known as scrolling and a phone, it can steal time for you. It can steal time. I was reading a book. I was having a good time. I was reading that book. I was enjoying the book. And then something popped in my head. I said, I'm just going to check the social media feed just for a second.

1:22:47 20 minutes later. The time was stolen. All I was looking at was squirrels attacking somebody and dogs acting silly. And I just kept scrolling and kept scrolling. And the time was taken from me. In order to break an addiction, you got to confess in order to cast out that spirit. to break idolatry that one must confess. But the other thing is that you also have to be centered. What does that mean? It means that you've got to find what gives you meaning, what gives us meaning. We are made with a purpose, called to bring beauty and blessings. We cannot simply exist and try to live the lives we see on a screen. Can I tell you something?

1:23:43 what you want to see on a screen, them folks lying. It ain't true. It's a setup. They just want your attention. They just want you to watch. Elijah was telling me, talking about, he said, Pop, that any time you see what is happening on a screen, that is designed by the director, the producer, and the writer so that you see what has been curated by them. What you don't see outside the frame is the chaos going on. And so we get so focused on what has been curated that we really don't know the hell going on outside of the frame and the chaos that is going on. We become addicted to the frame and we think the frame is reality. What brings you meaning is the question. What brings you joy?

1:24:39 What brings you love? what makes your heart sing. You can have a million followers and that will give you influence, but it doesn't mean you have integrity. And integrity with no integrity means that you will never find meaning in your life. And scripture is telling us in order to break idolatry, we must return to worship. We must relearn worship. Some are saying, Otis, Otis, how do you come to this conclusion? For the scripture is clear. Have no other gods before me. Do not create an idol before me. In other words, you have to learn how to worship without other things you have created that feed your ego. Our God is not an ego feeding God.

1:25:34 We've got to relearn worship. Let me help somebody out. Many of us know church, but we don't know worship. You know liturgy, but you don't know worship. Liturgy and church tells you when to stand and when to sit and what to say and what to wear. And that's why I love this space of Trinity United Church of Christ. because this is a space designed to break idolatry. The beauty of Trinity is this is a church that is clear about breaking the idolatry of the colonized mind. How can you worship God and you can't stand yourself?

1:26:25 How can you worship and cannot stand the one who God made? That is why we are unashamedly black. That is why we are unapologetically Christian. It simply means that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. It does not diss anybody else. It just says God hooked us up and blessed us the way we are. And you ought to be excited that God made you the way that God made you. you don't need anything else you've got everything that you need that worship that we must enter into worship some of us have not yet learned the power of worship because when you worship worship will humble you when you're in the presence of our God.

1:27:29 There is a humility that will come upon your spirit because you will be humbled that a God who sits high and a God who looks low, a God who hung the morning stars in heaven, a God who is able to care for the grass and the trees and the ants, but a God who cares for us. You are humbled and awed at the same time, that God can balance all these things and God still cares for me. When I examine who I am and the mess that I have done, this God still cares for me. And sometimes I don't have words to express how God has moved in my life. So all I can do sometimes is simply cry because it makes no sense why God would do what God has done in my life.

1:28:35 Worship will humble you. Worship will humble you and grace will fix your attitude. Grace is unmerited, unwarranted acts of love. In other words, God didn't have to do it, but God did it anyhow. And if you are a beneficiary of God's grace, if you know and have experienced grace, it leads to gratitude. Let me help somebody today. If God has ever set you free, if God has ever redeemed you, if God has blessed you, if God has healed you, if God has covered you, if God put a roof over your head and clothes on your back and snatched you from the edge, then someone in here ought to give thanks unto the God who made it possible.

1:29:45 Old people would say it this way If you got a lick of sense The Lord's been good to you You ought to open your mouth If you have only today Because tomorrow's not promised I'm going to say Lord I thank you For what you've done in my life I thank you for how you blessed me. I thank you.

1:30:21 I tell you, worship will humble you. But can I give you something else? That this thing truly makes me shout. That when you worship, it will also, yes, humble you and all you. And grace will fix your attitude. And you will have gratitude. But here's the other thing, that something happens when you worship. You begin to get a sense and understand what is known as sacred serendipity.

1:31:01 See, for those who do not know, serendipity simply means that things that shouldn't have come together come together and end up blessing you, but you don't know how they came together. And you just say, that's serendipitous. But when it's sacred serendipity, you know how it came together. Because you know that when you examine your life and you look at the mess you've been in, but you see that before you even knew who God was, God was working some stuff out. That when you get to this moment right now, you realize what God was doing years ago. And I'm not sure there's anyone in here that you can give God thanks for the sacred serendipity that God was doing years ago. God was at work before you knew God was working.

1:32:07 That's why, that's why the elders, the old saints would holler and just holler. They didn't need an organ or choir. They just might say, hey! Because when they think, you miss your shout. When they think, you miss it. When they think, when they think.