Word Two: Only
By Griff
Martin
A Sermon on The Second Command,
Genesis 31:1-19 and Acts 17:16-34
For
the Ninth Sunday Following Pentecost (10 Words Series)
August
18, 2019
For
the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
Incarnate and Resurrected God, we
ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and
breathing new reality we can all together experience. Make us aware of your
presence here in this space and in these words, God. For if we are present to
you, then nothing else will matter, but if we are not present to you, then
nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the
Comforter. Amen.
I
call it “Felt Board Faith” … the stories that we learned as children when well-meaning
adults taught us the stories of our faith – the same stories that we later need
to re-learn, to better translate and let evolve into something more. Which is
how the stories of faith live; it’s how Scripture is alive. They begin at this
level and they deepen and spiral into something much more. I think of the
brilliant (and my favorite) author John Steinbeck describing his novel The
Grapes of Wrath with these words: “There are at least five levels to this
book, a person will only find as many levels as they have in their own soul.”
Scripture is the same, level after level, as we deepen our own souls.
The
problem comes when we carry our “felt board faith” into adulthood without
letting it grow and evolve and change. Our childhood faith might be our first
idol.
I
was reminded of this a few weeks ago at children’s camp when I taught 6th grade
Bible study. The first day, one of the Scripture passages we studied was the 10
Commands, which meant I tried to do parallel work in my soul. On one hand, I
was in the midst of piles and piles of scholarly commentary as I studied the
commands, which were going to be examined and preached over a 10-week period in
great detail; and on the other hand, I was trying to teach this same material
to preteens in approximately 5 minutes one morning (you might wish you were in
the latter group).
So,
I divided them up and gave each group a command. The assignment was simple: come
up with a skit about this command and perform it for the group. As you can
imagine, they all wanted the third, “thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in
vain,” because they all wanted a chance to curse in a church-like environment
(don’t judge – from where I sit I can see your giddy smiles when we sing the
second verse of “What Child Is This?”). The second command, “thou shalt make no
idol” or “thou shalt have no graven image,” was about the 5th command chosen by
one of the groups (lying, killing and stealing all went first… Honor your
parents went last…. Make of that what you will).
When
it came time for the performance of this second command, we started by reading it.
So, I read the Second: “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of
anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for
I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of
the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those
who love me and keep my commandments.”
Then
one student stood in front of the room making their body as massive as possible,
and in as loud a voice possible announced they were Zeus. And suddenly, the
other three bowed in front of this student chanting, “we love Zeus.”
This
is “felt board faith at its finest.” A starting place, but surely not the
ending place for some very important concepts: worship and idol and jealous.
Surely
worship is about more than just saying we love something or bowing down to
something. And surely an idol is more than just a statute of a Greek god.
Because I don’t know about you, but it’s been a long time since I saw a statue
of Zeus and felt tempted to bow down and sing out “I love Zeus,” and I
currently don’t have any statues of Zeus in my house. And yet, I don’t think I
have lived my way into not needing the second command – actually far from
it. In fact, I think our idols might have evolved faster than our faith,
which is a crisis.
There
must be more. Let’s begin with the obvious: Worship is not what you bow
down to, worship is what you live for, what you love. It’s the focus of your
entire life and it happens all the time.
And
idols are far from Zeus statues. Here is how I am going to define idols:
that which we give power to while not realizing what that power actually takes
away from us; that which we place first in our lives; that to which we
unconsciously devote our time and energy; that which we grab first when leaving
the house; that which we worship; that which we turn to in times of fear; or
most simply, that which we place first in our hearts.
According
to our Genesis passage (the story of when Jacob and Rachel must suddenly flee
for their lives), idols are that which we grab first when we have to leave the
house. We have all played the game before, sitting around a dinner table: What
would you grab if your house suddenly caught on fire and you had limited time
to grab things? You can probably learn a little bit about your idols in your
response to that question.
According
to our Acts passage (the story of Paul in Athens around the intellectuals at
the Areopagus), idols are that which we put in place for that which we can’t
grasp – statues built to an unknown god. Which, again, is revealing. Our idols
might tell us something quite important about what we want and need in life; that
which we have not yet found in God and faith.
Two
very telling thoughts on idols: What do you value you so much you grab it first
(and note, Rachel fits these items in a traveling suitcase so they might not
take up much physical space, but a lot of soul space – perhaps our idols still
travel in our purses and wallets and pockets)… and second, what do these idols
tell us about what we have not yet found in God?
Now, there is one more concept that I think needs
some evolving in our understanding of this command: the adjective ‘jealous.’
This command gives God an adjective that I think if we misunderstand, makes God
puny and little. We think of jealous as envying that which other have, as if
God is jealous of other gods in our life. Which is odd because we actually
define that jealousy as a sin. The jealous here goes to another way of defining
things, “protective of.” And it’s not that God is protective of God; God is
protective of us. God knows that all we need can be found in God. Thus, don’t
put anything in God’s place.
It’s like when my kids start yelling about something
they are missing – a favorite Astro’s hat or a book, and I hear them start
ransacking the most obscure room in the house as if the Astro’s hat has
magically made its way into the sock drawer in Dad’s closet. All the while, I
know since I cleaned their room that morning, the Astro’s hat is actually
exactly where it belongs (obviously, the last place they will look). So, I yell,
“Don’t open that drawer; go look on top of your dresser.” It’s not that I don’t
want them in the kitchen drawers; it’s that I know exactly where what they are
looking for can be found. Think of jealous God like that: our God, who knows
exactly where what we are looking for and what we need can be found and
protects us in wanting us to be there and not waste our precious time.
We move beyond a concept of bowing down to Zeus and into
a relationship of love, where our God desires us to find all we need in God and
not to waste time on that which is not God; to love and work toward that which
is the only thing worth loving and working toward.
Routinely, Abby reminds me of her favorite quote:
“If I had more time I would have said less.” Often, she says this while
discussing my preaching – make of that what you will. But maybe God could have
said it like this: “Put me first.”
Not because God has an ego problem, but because God
knows what works and what doesn’t work.
Which might very well be why God and Moses get so
frustrated when, after being up on the mountain, Moses comes down and finds
Israel building a golden calf to worship. It’s just a waste of time. It’s not
worth working toward and loving.
Which might be why, as a newlywed still in seminary
with a 12-hour course load, one of which required 500 hours of face-to-face
counseling and with a full-time job, Abby helped me see another great truth: I
realized I was too busy and living too much at one time. So, I started trying
to figure out what was going on and how I could live better. I started off by
listing all the things: my academic life, my church life, our marriage, my
friendships. And then I listed what was most important in each of them: In
school, I want to maintain a 4.0 graduate GPA, and I want to finish this
internship by Thanksgiving. In church, I want to shift the students to this
curriculum and make this event two times bigger… and on and on. Until finally,
I realized I was dividing my life up into all these categories and prioritizing
all of them, and the truth was nothing was getting my full and best self. I had
to think of life as one pyramid; you can’t divide it up into 10 different ones.
Choose what is worth working toward and loving.
In other words, put God first.
Not family, not friends, not America, not security,
not the Bible, not this church, not money, not success, not what you think you
believe about God, or even worse, what you know you know about God, not
popularity, not your looks, not your possessions, not your calendar, not your
career, not your iPhone, not your political party, not your stock portfolio… not
the idols of this day.
You see, God knows what you don’t: those things
won’t last and won’t fulfill you; they will disappoint you. They are not worth
exclusive love or working towards. Some of them might have a place, but it’s
certainly less important than we have made it.
One of my favorite writers often talks about the
last thing standing in the room is always going to be the truth, so why not
just start there. I think this is what God is sharing here: in the end, God-
love- truth is going to be the only thing standing, so don’t waste your time on
false gods and idols; start here. Start with God.
Life was created to work one way and the Second word
gives us this instruction: Put God first, put love first, then everything else
will matter. Get the order wrong, and nothing will matter.
The Second Word: First. Put God first.
Amen and amen.
*artwork: Untitled, Mixed Media, by Kitty Sabatier, kittysabatier.com
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