2. NO IDOLS

The Ten Commandments as Grace and Law

Exodus 20:4-6: 32:1-6; Matthew 22:34-40

Will you try it again this week? Hold your hands out in front of you with palms facing toward you so that you can see all the fingers and thumbs. Start on the right with your thumb: No other gods. Then take the right index finger: No idols. Take the middle finger: No misuse of God's name. Take the right ring finger: Observe Sabbath. Take the right little finger: Honor parents. Take the left little finger: No murder. Take the left ring finger: No adultery. Take the left middle finger: No stealing. Take the left index finger: No lying. Take the left thumb: No coveting.

I began this series of sermons last week by saying that it was likely that in their original form -- as they might have been on the tablets Moses brought down from the mountain -- each commandment was only one or two words in Hebrew, simple enough to be memorized by anyone and the convenient number corresponding to the number of fingers on the two hands.

I also said that the Ten Commandments are as much about "grace" as "law." The introduction to them makes that clear: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…" These are not the commands of a God who wants to burden us with laws, but are the conditions of meaningful life given by the God who has loved us before we could do anything on our own. For Christians that's why the Ten Commandments have not been set aside or superseded by Jesus. They remain the fundamentals for any who would enter into covenant with this God.

We looked at the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me." If we choose this God over all the other gods competing for our loyalty, then why is there any need for the second commandment? "You shall not make for yourself an idol." The temptation addressed by this commandment is not to follow a rival god, but rather the temptation to domesticate God into a visible, controlled object. The difference between the first and second commandments is like the selection of a life partner. The first has to do with selecting and being loyal to one particular partner. The second addresses the temptation that comes after the selection: it is the temptation to remake that person into what you would like the partner to be.

In premarital counseling I try to get the couple to look at how they see each other and how they view such critical issues as money, family, sex and faith. What they are tempted to do when they see serious conflicts in how they view these matters is to think to themselves, "Oh, with time I will change him or her." Such assumptions are, of course, recipes for disaster in any serious relationship. Many marriages and friendships flounder on the attempt to remake the other into what we want them to be. The second commandment is a warning against the temptation to try to remake God into what we want God to be.

The story of Aaron and the making of the "golden calf" while Moses was up on the mountain receiving the commandments was not an attempt to forsake the God of Moses for another god. (Exodus 32) It was an effort to remake the mysterious God of the Exodus into something more tangible and visible. When they reduced God to a golden calf, however, disaster was the result. If they could remake God into their own image, then they could also remake the rules of their relationship with each other. What they intended to be a celebration of God turned into a drunken orgy.

The second commandment is a reminder that God is greater than any of our preconceived notions and that we dare not try to reduce God to something that is more manageable and makes fewer demands on us.

We have been talking about the negative because the second commandment is so stated. I believe it is so stated because it is a boundary: whatever else you do, do not try to remake God in your own image. But there is a positive way to talk about loyalty to God and not attempting to remake God. If the people of the Jewish faith had a creed, there is little doubt that it would be these words from Deuteronomy, called the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all our soul, and with all your might.” (5:4-5) Loyalty to God is to be expressed with our whole-hearted love, just as is loyalty to our spouse. When Jesus was asked what commandment was the greatest, he did not cite one of the “Big Ten,” but rather the Shema from Deuteronomy. And to that he added the words from Leviticus: “And a second is like unto it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

How do we love God with all our hearts, souls and minds and our neighbors as ourselves? At the most fundamental level, don’t we love God by not having other gods, by not making idols, by not making wrongful use of God’s name, by observing Sabbath, and by honoring our parents? Also at the most fundamental level, don’t we love our neighbors by not killing them, by not committing adultery with their spouses, by not stealing from them, by not lying to them, and not being preoccupied with wanting what they have?

Have you seen that bumper sticker that says, “The Ten Commandments are not multiple choice”? Together, the commandments provide the framework for what it means to love God and love our neighbor. They are not optional and they call for commitment.

Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, has rightly observed that we are all "children of Feuerbach." Ludwig Feuerback (1804-1872) was a nineteenth century philosopher who articulated the assumption made popular during the Enlightenment, "that God is in the end a projection of our best humanness."[1] This temptation to make God like us can be seen in two extremes. On the one hand, there is the temptation to make God "warm and fuzzy," so domesticated that this God would never challenge anything we do. If we are not careful, when we use expressions like "God has no hands but ours," we may be putting God into a mold that is alien to the awesome God we see liberating a people from slavery and calling them into an accountable relationship. The other extreme of our attempts to make God like us is to reduce God to a set of fixed propositions that give certitude and stability, and forget that the God we say we worship is a God who is always doing "new things" in history.

The tragedy of remaking God into our image is not so much that it is an insult to God. I assume that God has more to do than to get irritated and enraged by our misconceptions. The tragedy is that the reduced God, the god made in our own image, prevents a meaningful relationship to the real God.

There is a danger in comparing our relationship to God with our most intimate human relations. We are not equal partners with God, as we are with our significant others, for example. But the most intimate human relationships can give us clues about our relationship with God. When we try to remake our significant other into our image, we no longer know the real person. Divorce is often the result, but sometimes it means lifetimes of being lonely because two people don't really know each other.

We do not set out to remake somebody else in our image. Sometimes we do it out of fear. When my stepmother Isabel was dying of cancer, my father could not admit to himself or to her that she was dying. In a way, he remade his image of Isabel into someone she was not because he could not confront the reality that she was dying. In the months before her death, the relationship between my dad and Isabel became more superficial. They could not share the deep things they needed to confront. Isabel could not talk about her fears of dying. Dad could not talk about his fears of living after her death.

What happened to my dad is what happens when, for whatever reason, we try to reshape our significant other into something they are not; the relationship between the real persons dies. That's the tragedy of trying to remake God into our image. We end up losing the relationship with God.

How do we avoid remaking God into our image and losing that most important of all relationships? An important part of the answer is a lifetime of learning with others in a prayerful openness to God. On this day that we begin a new church school year you have an opportunity to consider a myriad of different learning possibilities. While much of our learning and openness to God is done alone, we are seriously lacking if we do not have others to help us test what we think we know about God. We need to risk putting ourselves in situations where, as the writer of 1 Peter says, we have to give account of the hope that is within us, and listen to their accounts. Some adults, even some who recognize the importance of life-long learning in their career paths, may be content with the equivalent of a third grade education in their spiritual lives. Some of those folks say with pride that they went to Sunday School when they were children; and they think that’s all they need. A third grade education is great for a nine year old, but woefully inadequate for adult. We know that acquiring knowledge and building relationships require effort. Where did we ever get the notion that such effort is not needed for our knowledge of, and relationship with, God? The good news is that we have classes for all ages, and for adults, we’ve got classes on Sunday and on different days and hours of the week. The bad news is that you may not be registered for one or more of them. One of the most important things you can do to avoid making God in your own image is to put yourself in a discipline of study and prayer with others in the congregation. Don’t miss the opportunity you have today.

Let us leave this place today determined not make idols, determined to resist the temptation to try to remake our life partners or our God into our own images. Let us be open to the wonder, newness, and mystery of authentic relationships; and cherish the intimacy that openness makes possible.

[1] "Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections on the Book of Exodus," The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994) p. 843.