The First Four

 Exodus 20:3-11

Matthew 22:34-40

Today we hear the first four commandments.  As I mentioned last week, the first four of these relate to our relationship with God. 

To name them again: 

1.  Put God first (ie don’t have other god’s before God).

2. Do not make an idol for yourself. Or “no graven images”.

3.  Do not misuse God’s name.

4.  Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.

The truth is that we could spend a week or more, easily, on each one of these.  When we had our series on spiritual disciplines we spent one week, for example, on the discipline of Sabbath, or the importance of rest, as well as the importance of intentional time with God. None the less, today we will be looking at these first four commandments together.

All of these have to do with our relationship with God.  And they all call us to move in our attention, concern and obsessions with earthly things into a full and complete attention to God.  The first two of these commandments in many ways are the same thing, said differently.  First, we need to put God above all else, and second, we need to avoid making idols of things other than God.  What does it mean to you that you should avoid making idols, or graven images, for yourself?

When we think of idols, we often think of other gods.  When we think of “graven images” we often think of icons, which, as you may notice, are absent in the Presbyterian church.  This was one of the changes that Calvin and Zwingly brought in the Protestant reformation for Presbyterians: they had a strong belief that any image, or icon, would be distracting from the reality of the divinity because they would set before humans an image, an incomplete and distorted image, of what God really is.  I think they probably took this too far, but I do understand that we often mix up a concept with a limited or specific thing.  We often do this, right?  On this Juneteenth Sunday, we can see this..  people might have one encounter with a person who is different from themselves and then they categorize every person who is similar in one way as the same in every way.  Very dangerous thinking which Calvin and Zwingly were trying to avoid.  If you have an image of Jesus and he is white, you assume Jesus is white, which, by the way, he was NOT.  So to avoid this, they banned and prohibited any image of Jesus, in particular, from being present in the church.  

   But what I want to say to you today is that the reality is that we have many, many idols in this country, AND many graven images: things that we put before God all the time, images that we uphold an believe to be truth, much more than God.  Wealth, power, fame are some of the idols.  Appearance is another.  Nationalism.  And there are so very many graven images that go with along with those things.  But there are other things, things we don’t want to see as idols, but none the less these are things that we often, if not always, put before God: our comfort, our safety, our families, our families’ safety and comfort.  I want you to think about this for a minute.  When we are willing to defend our own lives at the cost of others’ lives, that is putting the idol of safety above the call of God to not kill.  We have failed to live up to Jesus’ call in those moments to love even our enemies as ourselves.  We have failed to remember that even that other, even that person we would like to label as a “bad guy” is also a child of God.  When we forget this, when we put our own safety above the rules of God, when we make idols of our very LIVES, we are being idolatrous, we are breaking these first two commandments.  We are called to love God more; more than all these, more even than our families, more even than ourselves.  We are called to love God so much that we are willing, like Jesus, to risk our very lives to love God, serve God, and care for ALL of God’s people.  We are called to honor God by not putting our desires, our fears, our hopes, our sorrows even, above God.  

I think of the movie “A Few Good Men” in which the marines were told to repeat their loyalty mantra.  They did so and it was:  “Unit, Core, God, Country”.  In this case they’ve put two things above God: their unit and their core.  But also, again, they did so in the name of bigger idols: safety, nationalism, the idolatry of certain political systems.  All of these are ways of breaking the first two commandments.  We are called to put God first.  Above it all.  

So, is it hard then to follow these two commandments?  Yes.  Very.  This commandment calls from us all that we are, all that we have, in the service of love towards those we fear, those we hate, those we call “enemies.”  A very, very difficult commandment.

Then we come to the third commandment.  And on the surface, it sounds so easy.  It tells us that when we call on God’s name, it should be in reverence and with intentionality.  We should NEVER use God’s name to hurt or curse others.  But while that begins by not swearing or “taking God’s name in vain” in the traditional sense of damning another, it extends far beyond that.  Not taking God’s name in vain ultimately means not using the name of God to further the actions that satisfy, build up and support only ourselves and those who look like us, believe like us, are “haves” like we are.  It means not using the name of God to justify violence, oppression, injustice, or greed.  It means not using the name of God to take from others for our own gain.  It means not using the name of God to justify anything that harms even one of God’s children. Not “taking the name of God in vain” sounds like such a simple thing, but in fact it is not.  It, too, is actually extremely difficult.  

And then we come to the Sabbath law.  I actually think the call to Sabbath is probably the easiest of the ten commandments.  All it asks of us is that we take a day, each week, to rest, to remember God, to honor God.  And yet, even this, we usually find impossible to do.  And perhaps it is because we don’t take it very seriously.  I mean, why should we take a sabbath when others are working so hard all the time?  Here, where we really deeply value the “protestant work ethic”, the idea of REST is daunting.  I know it is for me.  I feel like I’m failing my world, my family, if I take time to rest.  I feel like I’m lazy if I rest.  There is so rarely a day that someone does not ask me to do something for them.  If no-one in the church is asking for work from me, then my parents, or my kids are.  And how can I say “no” on those days?  How can I say to them, “this is my day of rest.  I am not doing that work for you today.  I am resting.”  I also feel like I’m WASTING my time if I am not actively contributing to the world.  One whole day a week?  Sounds ludicrous to me.  And yet, it is a commandment, and probably the easiest one of all of these to follow.  

So then the greater question perhaps is, what does that have to do with our relationships with God?  It is to be a day of rest, yes.  But it is also a day to remember then the God who gave us rest, to worship.  And the call for Sabbath is a call to make sure that all people also have these days of rest to honor, remember, celebrate and give thanks for the gifts of life that God has given us. Remember that the Sabbath was not just for heads of households but also the poor, slaves and even animals were to take the day as rest.  It is an act of justice as well as an act of praise to honor the Sabbath.  Again, as Rolf Jacobson said it, “The reason we keep the Sabbath, according to Deuteronomy, is that our people used to know what life was like when we had a lord named Pharaoh who did not allow days off. Put yourselves in the feet of the Exodus generation. For years they served Pharaoh, a burdensome master who gave no days off and when complaints arose, who said, “Now make bricks without straw.” God graciously intruded into that reality and said to the people, “You will no longer serve Pharaoh, you will serve me. And to serve me means that once every seven days, you, your kids, your workers, even your animals get the day off.” Why? Because God’s gracious intrusion into human existence was not a one-time event, but a regular, ritualized reality.”  

This law actually extends far beyond the one day a week as well.  In Old Testament law, once every seven years the land is to be given a rest.  Once every seven years all debts are to be forgiven.  Think about that for a moment.  Whether you are someone who is owed money or someone who owes, that is huge.  That is huge.  All debts erased.  All people beginning again.  That house mortgage?  Gone in seven years!  That car loan?  Your student loans?  All erased in seven years!  Also every seven years all who “sold themselves to you as slaves” were to go free.  Leviticus 25:40 says about slaves, “They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you”.  And every seven times seven years, all land was to return to its original family.  As Leviticus 25 said it, “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.  Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.”  All of these laws were to make sure that the rich did not grow richer at the expense of the poor, that all truly had equal opportunities, and that everyone had the chance to begin again.  Every seven years, everything was to be reset.  The true equalizer.  And Sabbath, then, was not just about a day a week.  It was about a way of life: a way of being in relationship to God and to one another.  I believe, truly, that Sabbath, at least the one day a week part of Sabbath is the easiest of the commandments.  It is a call for taking time off, it is a call for rest.  And yet, as I’ve just pointed out, we don’t even follow this commandment.  We don’t EVEN follow this, the easiest of the commandments we are given.

I want to point out the obvious here.  Although we separate the commandments into “those that talk about our relationship to God” and “Those that address our relationships with others” and perhaps the Sabbath commandment might be seen as “the one that addresses our relationships with ourselves: calling us to act in a way that is caring and healthy for our very selves, that these separations: God, ourselves, others: these are, in so many ways, false divisions.  What serves God the most, what expresses the most love to God is caring for God’s people (including ourselves), and I would add, is caring for God’s creation.  And, if we really, truly and deeply love God and are in a true and deep relationship WITH God, we will also find ourselves automatically acting with greater and greater kindness, openness and care for ourselves and for one another.  The deeper into our faith we go, the deeper we connect with God, the more we will find ourselves acting with grace, compassion and love towards all creation.  It will be automatic.  Out of love for God, I will see God in you, I will see God in me, and I will do everything I can to serve God through my care for you and for myself.

So where is the good news in this?  The Good News is the same as what I mentioned last week.  These commandments, and I have to say, I really hate that word, are not meant to be burdens.  They are not a YOKE around your neck.  They are an invitation to respond out of gratitude to the God who loved you into being, and loves you into each and every day.  We are not asked to do all of this as a punishment, or as a weight of slavery around our necks.  We are called to respond out of joy and gratitude to the God who loves us by caring for God’s creation, God’s people in the most loving ways we can.  The good news then is that even when we mess up, we are still loved into our relationships with God and one another.  Even when we don’t follow these commandments, we are still loved into each day.  The Good News is that it all STARTS with God, it starts with God calling us into relationship, it starts with God creating and connecting with us.  And God does not tire of offering us opportunities to connect in return through our love for God and for one another.  I want to say that again.  God does not tire of offering us opportunities to connect in return through our love for God and love for one another.  

The invitation then is to return to these guidelines and these calls for us to love God, self and one another.  And to trust in God’s deep love for us, no matter what we do or fail to do, how we err or how we succeed in love.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.