gods for sale

09-02-07

In two days we will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of one of the most spectacular events in American cultural history. Any guesses of what I’m talking about? After months of media hype, on September 4, 1957, the Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel. The day was known as E-Day. Every generation of American pop culture has seen promising products that have failed to live up to the hype. Ask anyone over the age of 55 and they’ll likely smile at the memory of the wondrous failure that was the Edsel. For those of you a bit younger, I looked this wonder up. I learned that the Edsel was a line of cars developed by the Ford Motor Company in the mid-’50s as the automaker’s entry into the competitive market for upscale-but-not-luxury cars. While Ford made Lincolns as their top-of-the-line cars to compete with General Motors’ Cadillac brand, another car was needed to challenge GM’s Oldsmobile line. As a result Ford began research in 1955 on a vehicle which they initially named the "E-Car", which was short for "Experimental Car." ¹

From the beginning, the car had some major issues, including its name. Ford hired an advertising agency to come up with a suitable brand name, but the agency came up with 6,000 possibilities. Ford execs then turned to a contemporary poet Marianne Moore, a loyal Ford customer, for help. Moore’s suggestions ranged from more conventional names like "Silver Sword" and "Thundercrest" to a little more modern poetry like "Intelligent Whale," "Mongoose Civique" and, believe it or not, "Utopian Turtletop". Eventually, Ford settled on "Edsel" after Edsel Ford, Henry Ford’s son and former president of the company. Even that decision was fateful, however. Several consumer studies would later show that people associated the name "Edsel" with a brand of tractor called "Edson." ²

Having developed the design for the 1958 model year, Ford designated September 4, 1957, as "E-Day" and launched a massive marketing campaign for radio, newspaper, and the three television stations of the times. Posters that read ,"The Edsel Is Coming" were everywhere, but featured only the car’s hood ornament. The ads implied that this vehicle was going to be like no other vehicle the American public had ever seen before. The campaign worked, with lines of people waiting at Ford dealerships around the nation wanting a glimpse of the Edsel on E day. Unfortunately, while advertisers got people talking about the Edsel, the Ford motor company had very little success in getting people to buy them. The bodywork was pretty much same as the other Ford models. There were, of course, some interesting differences in style, like the trademark grill, but that evoked more sarcasm than sales. I understand that a popular joke at the time was that the Edsel looked like "a Mercury sucking on a lemon." Also, in an effort to be innovative and savvy, engineers designed the car’s automatic "Teletouch" pushbutton transmission to be located in the center of the steering wheel, right where the horn is typically located. Drivers would instinctively go to honk the horn and accidentally slam the car into reverse.

Rather than changing the face of the auto industry, the Edsel became the ultimate symbol for the wrong thing at the wrong time. Here’s the thing though, bad timing and failure to know the market aren’t just problems for business. Human history is full of all sorts of "E-times" when people didn’t see that their hopes, ambitions, and actions were completely misplaced, and times when human hype masked the reality of the circumstances.

In this morning’s text, we once again see God making an indictment against the people of Israel. They are not behaving themselves. A few weeks ago, we heard Hosea prophesying the same message. God is wondering how to get God’s people back on track with a life that will serve them and God well. God’s message is a difficult yet often repeated message throughout scripture. I have always had the impression that prophets have a very difficult job. Firstly, nobody likes to be accused of anything. Secondly, why listen to a prophet when your life is working for you?

Biblically speaking, Israel’s chasing after other gods in the time before the Babylonian exile is a classic example of an Edsel-ized view of the world. Wanting something new, exciting and different, the people and their leaders felt the need to compete with their pagan neighbors in the religious and political marketplace and invested their lives and worship accordingly. You could say they followed nonprofit prophets. They worshipped all sorts of local gods, the kind that lure and temporarily satisfy, but do not talk back, or fill, or offer life directions.

The priests and leaders did not stop the people rather, they help participate in it. Sometimes, I think us, as leaders and as communities, can get so engrained in ways that we don’t even realized that we are actively participating in a destructive system. Prophets, like Jeremiah, however, wake the people up, and warn them that their own vision of life in the promised-land was about to get slammed into reverse in a big way, resulting in a serious crash-and-burn crisis.

Now, Jeremiah was a prophet in Judah, but is speaking to the northern and southern kingdoms that make up Israel. Jeremiah is speaking on God’s behalf, wondering out loud, what wrong God has done that the people continue to be distracted from faithfulness, and continue to deny God, for the sake of many gods. God has made a covenant relationship with them. God promised a road to spiritual success and the promised-land, if the people would remain God’s people. Yet, despite God’s skillful, creative, loving leadership and protection Israel still wants to come up with its own design for a nation that would rival those of the Canaanites, a design that included a monarchy and a religious structure where devotion to Israel’s and our one God was supplemented and often cast aside by the worship of regional gods like Baal (a series of fertility and nature gods worshipped by the Caananites). The Ford Motor company’s mess would have a temporary effect on the company’s bottom line, but Israel’s failure to listen to the prophets and turn a spiritual profit would have a devastating effect on generations to come in the form of exile; Israel’s very own "E-Day" (v. 9).

Here is the funny thing, God even points to the competition as an example of how to stay true. "Check out places like Cyprus to the west and the land of Kedar in the desert to the east," said God to Israel, "and you’ll see that none of the pagan nations have switched gods like you have even though their gods ’are no gods at all’" (vv.10-11a). Israel already had the one and only true God on the market, a proven, reliable and quality brand, and yet they were willing to trade in their relationship to God "for something that does not profit" (v. 11b).

Israel’s choices had a little longer term consequences. Disconnecting oneself from a source of "living water" often will have long term consequences. We may feel an emptiness that grows, and we are tempted to fill it with one of the many gods for sale…food, sex, alcohol, bigger computers, video game systems, new R.V’s, figurines, coin collections, and other things. You are 3 lbs away from a dieting goal and you have a big old binge! Or your cruising along on a project and something big falls through. You thought you had recovered from your addiction, when an emotionally stressful event pulls you back into its power. Slamming into reverse is damaging to our vehicles. So, if we had a warning from a prophet telling us that we were going to be slammed into reverse, do you think we might listen? I don’t know. It is hard to hear the prophetic voice these days over all those things that have replaced the fullness of God in our lives.

You see all of these things we enjoy are fine, some are necessary in moderation, but such products have become the focus of many people’s lives. Stuff that fills our time and our bodies has become the false gods of today’s generation. Especially since they are used as a source in an attempt to continually refresh and sustain, while God is delegated to Sunday morning worship.

Secondly, the leaders and people of Israel had "dug out cisterns for themselves" which symbolized a desire to be independent of God’s rule and love (v. 13). How often do we dig our own holes and then ask God to help us out? Been there done that! Slamming into reverse is damaging to our vehicles(bodies), both emotionally and physically. So, is it worth it to try and go it alone? Is it worth sitting down and reflecting on how much time we spend with God as opposed to how much time we spend with the other fillers in life?

For Israel the "cisterns" had cracked, leaving the nation high and dry in a spiritual desert (v. 13). To put it another way, Israel had been led by its leaders into the very kind of "pit" God had guided them away from in the wilderness. When we are trying to run our lives, we get into a lot of trouble when we forget what we’re about and to whom we belong. The 50th anniversary of Ford’s "E-Day" is a great time to consider the consequences of human failure. At the same time, it’s also a day to celebrate hope. While the Edsel certainly didn’t enhance Ford’s reputation and market share at the time, it did bring an unexpected benefit. Ford designers and marketers learned some valuable lessons from the Edsel. When GM launched its Saturn division in the 1990s, a Saturn CEO, made his executives read a book called The Edsel Affair. He claims, that "The Edsel Affair" is what made Saturn a success." ³

The word of God through Jeremiah is another cautionary tale from which we can glean similar lessons. Staying true to God, not manufacturing our own self-serving spiritual lives, not chasing after the next and newest religious fads, or material fads, and nurturing the living water of our relationship with God through prayer and worship, are all ways of avoiding an E-day in our own lives. This is a tough task in today’s age that seems to have it all. Yet again, God has been the constant throughout history that has filled generations of believers with living water. Remember that God is always a good investment. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Blessings,

Melissa