Difference between revisions of "Sermon for August 18th, 2013"

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Mark 12:28-34

28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 29Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 31The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ 32Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; 33and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ 34When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question.

Ten Laws, One Love: The Second Commandment

In our New Testament reading today, the scribe asks Jesus "Which commandment is the first of all?" I have a better question for you today: Which commandment is the second of all...or, what is the second of the ten commandments?" That sounds like an easy question, right? But according to our Lutheran brothers and sisters, as well as our Roman Catholic friends, the second commandment is "Don't take the name of the Lord your God in vain." According to the Talmud, our Jewish friends (and you'd think they would know a thing or two about the ten commandments!) name the second commandment as "you shall have no other gods before me" which they take to include the verse about no idols. And finally, for Presbyterians, the Greek Orthodox church, and Episcopalians, the second commandment is "you shall not make for yourself any idols" but NOT "you shall have no other gods before me" (which we view as the first commandment). So if you've ever been worried or unsure about whether or not you are following the Ten Commandments, don't worry...for the past 500 years and more, we as God's children haven't even been able to agree on how to number them, let alone understand them.

Last week, it was my intention to preach on the first commandment (hence the sermon title), but I never quite got that far, and instead last week's sermon was a general introduction to the Ten Commandments, and hopefully challenged some widely-held assumptions about what exactly the Ten Commandments are, and what God actually intended them to be. So today, I'll be following the example of our Jewish friends and mushing together what we as Presbyterians consider to be the first and second commandments: You shall have no other gods before me, and you shall not make for yourself any idols.

What exactly is an idol? We tend to think of golden calves and carved statues, and these certainly would have qualified as idols in ancient Israel. But Mark Driscoll, a pastor in Seattle, tells a story of the time he was in a small, rural village in East India. He describes being surrounded by idols as far as you could see, every kind of idol, shrines to idols, sacrificial altars to idols covered with chicken blood and chicken feathers. He asked a woman in the village (a Christian who was helping to plant a church there) if she would ever consider coming to visit America. The woman replied and said, "I've been to America once, and I don't think I could ever go back. There's just too much idolatry there. Mark Driscoll remembers looking around himself, staring at the altar where chickens get whacked for the local chicken God, and thinking, Really? So he asked the woman, "where are the shrines and altars to idols worshiped in my country?" The woman said, "your god is your stomach...and you have restaurants everywhere you look. You worship your sports teams, and you build multi-million dollar stadiums for them in every city. Your god is your television, and all of the chairs in your homes are lined up so your family can gather around the altar and worship that god." Mark Driscoll concluded that it's often easier to see the idols in someone else's culture than in our own.

Now, I know that when you leave here today, having heard this powerful message, you'll probably all rush home to throw out your flat screen televisions, burn your UTEP season tickets, and never set foot in Chile's or Applebee's again. But before you do, let me make a small distinction that might be helpful. Food is good. Recreation and entertainment are good things too. I don't think any of those things in and of themselves are idolatrous. But when you take a "good" thing, drop one of the o's and make it a "god" thing, that's when you cross the line into idolatry. When you take a good thing, and give it so much importance in your life that it rivals God, that's idolatry. The first commandmen

1. Relationship...not ethics 2.