Diet Doom and Gloom: The first commandment with a side of hope.

Scripture: Exodus 19:1-6, 20:1-3

            As the week was winding down, and I still hadn’t gotten to thinking about a sermon on the 1^st commandment, I had this realization: I really don’t need to preach because Martin Luther already explained the 1^st commandment in his small catechism. Maybe some of you even remember this: “You shall have no other Gods. What does this mean? We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Boom, end of sermon. Sure, it’s short but what more is there to add? Better still, this was a moderately cheery message for what can often seem like the doom and gloom of the law that we feel while reading the commandments. But then I figured, “Well, maybe a one line isn’t quite enough." So I went big (literally) and turned to the Large Catechism--that bastion of all things Lutheran that even pastors rarely crack open.

            And I started reading… and reading… and reading… and about four thousand words later I thought, “You know, maybe an hour long sermon isn’t a great idea either.” So, we’re going to have a sermon today that lasts somewhere between five seconds and an hour, which is kind of the trouble with the first commandment. On the one hand, it’s so clear that it hardly needs an explanation; on the other hand, it impacts basically everything we believe because it is the basis for our relationship with God. Have no other Gods before me. That’s pretty central to our faith.

            Martin Luther begins his explanation of this commandment by discussing what a “god” is. He says, 

A god is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. […]It is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.” (Large Catechism)

            So, a god is what you put your trust in—not only eternally but also in any given moment of your life. With that in mind, I suspect if I were to poll a group of Christians and ask which of the Ten Commandments they have trouble following the answers would vary. Some people would feel they have more trouble honoring their father and mother, others would have issues coveting their neighbor’s spouse or their possessions, some might have trouble keeping the Sabbath, or stealing, or lying. But the way Luther talks about the first commandment demonstrates that all of those failings—all the other commandments—come back to this one. Every time we break any commandment we break the first commandment.

When you fail to honor your mother and father it is because your heart is bent on relying on yourself rather than the gifts of family God has given you. So, to break that commandment is to break the first commandment. When you speak falsely—when you lie—you are failing to testify to what is true, and since we know from John’s Gospel that Jesus is truth that means we break the first commandment every time we fail to give the whole truth. When you covet a person you lift that person up on a pedestal, making that person into a god, and when you covet material things you place those things on the pedestal just the same. When you fail to keep the Sabbath you are saying that your responsibilities and your busy-ness are your god, because they matter more than the gift of rest God gives us.

Whenever you have a problem with any of these commandments you have a problem with the first commandment, and, frankly, everybody has trouble with the first commandment. The most terrible person who lies, cheats, and steals—even murders—has trouble with the first commandment, and so does that angel of a person who never seems to do anything wrong. All of us have gods; most of us have a ton of gods; and if you want to discover where your gods are look in your checkbook, or go to an organizational meeting and find what gets on your nerves, or just look at the people you adore—whether celebrities or the person down the street.

Now, admitting we have a problem with gods is one thing, but figuring out what to do with it is something different. You see, when we discover we have other gods it begs the question, “Why should we even bother?” If I’m going to continue to lust after things, then why even try not to? If I’m going to fail at keeping the first commandment in a thousand different ways, then why worry about not cheating, keeping the Sabbath, or not stealing?

There's a simple reason for this, but it is counter-intuitive for those of us who treat the commandments like we treat the laws of our country. The reason we should follow the commandments is because God gives us this immense freedom to live our lives in whatever way we think is best, but within that freedom God also tells us how to live a life that is good both for those around us and for us as well. That’s what the Ten Commandments are—not rules of law like our state or federal laws—but descriptions of how to live a fulfilling life. They help us to have the kind of relationships with God and our friends and family that we need in order to go to bed happy at the end of the day.

The commandments offer us a vision of the kind of life we can live. None of us want somebody else to steal from us, or to murder us. This much is obvious. But the commandments are about more than protecting the victim; they are also about the well-being of the would-be perpetrator, because God understands that both victim and perpetrator are hurt by injustice. The person who steals has placed his or her trust in something that will not last, and even if he or she never gets caught that thing will be a burden they carry with them. The same is true of adultery, or lust, or even failing to take a rest. How often do we put our trust in our abilities to get things done and suggest that Sabbath-taking is a nice idea in principle but it doesn’t apply to me? And, yet, we fail to make the connection between our hurting relationships and our busy-ness. We need Sabbath as much for the people around us--the people who need us to rest--as we do for ourselves.

We tend to make distinctions between our relationships with God and our relationships with people. This is why you hear talk about the two tables of the commandments--one for the relationships we have with God and one for the relationships we have with our neighbors. But if we truly never get past the first commandment, and all the commandments can be summed up by our god-making, then the two are intimately connected, which brings us down the rabbit hole of the question that all the cool Christians ask about the Ten Commandments, namely: “What do the commandments have to do with our salvation?” And to this question God gives two answers: 1. In order to be right in my eyes you must be infinitely good, but 2. Since none of you seem to be even close to being infinitely good, it does not matter how good you are; it only matters how good and faithful I am. There is no ladder of righteousness to climb where those above a certain level of good behavior are lifted up into heaven at the end of their lives while those below are cast down into hell. Nobody gets past the first commandment; nobody is even close; so all of salvation depends on the grace of God.

However, the trap we get into as people who so strongly value grace is that it becomes easy to ignore the commandments altogether. Ten Commandments: something about God, Sabbath, neighbors, coveting—blah, blah, blah… I’m saved by grace through faith apart from works of the law, thank you very much—which is fine, except that by turning our backs on what God tells us to do we lose purpose for our lives today. So we drift—away from faith, away from a life with direction. And we find our meaning in all sorts of things: in our toys, in our weekly TV programs, in our hobbies, in our purchasing power, in our children’s sports: These are our gods.

            This is why we need the Ten Commandments now more than ever. They won’t make us holier, but they will make us fulfilled because they are God’s gift to remind us what the good life actually is. The good life is a life where our burdens feel like joys, because they serve the ultimate good. The good life puts our neighbor before us not only because it is the “Christian” thing to do, but because the “Christian” thing to do just so happens to be the way of living that brings us the most joy. And, most importantly, the good life is having no gods before the true God, and not only because God is a jealous God who wants to be first, but also because the life that will bring us the most joy and fulfillment is one with God at the center of what we do.

            See, the first commandment is so easy to understand but so very hard to practice. One of our greatest failings as a church is that we honestly believe we ever get the first commandment right; we honestly believe that we don’t put other gods before the true God. But we are always doing that—I do it all the time. In fact, sometimes in worship I’m more concerned with making people happy than with worshiping God. Sometimes I’m more concerned about the length of the service, or that I acknowledge so-and-so for such-and-such reason, or that the candles are lit, or that there’s somebody to deacon. You can all make different lists. You're concerned about groceries, or the kids staying quiet, or not standing out, or knowing when to stand, when to sit, and when to look sour like everybody else around you, because smiling is just not the kind of thing we do here. I’m going to guess you also occasionally think about things other than God during worship—you unintentionally worship other gods even in this space. And if that happens for you, as it does for me, in the space of our worship then it certainly happens the rest of the week.

            The point of this—the real purpose of the first commandment—is that it exists not only to condemn us; it exists also as a guide to re-orient our lives. It points to the God who we know in Jesus—the God who we occasionally do put on the pedestal he deserves rather than the pedestal of the cross which he took on for all the other gods we follow. So, relax. We have three more weeks of the Ten Commandments, but it’s OK. If you need to be condemned they will do that. None of you follow all ten—in fact, none of you get past the first. But the commandments also give us hope, because they are a sign that God is interested not only in where we spend eternity but also in how we live our lives on earth. In fact, it is the commandments that teach us how to live a life with joy, and it’s something along the lines of fearing, loving, and trusting God above all things--something that brings us full circle to Luther's brief little explanation. But if you still don't know what that means for you I say only this: Don’t let the “you shall not’s” fool you, this is about more than doom and gloom. Actually, quite the opposite, these commandments are a gift to be treasured and hope for a better world.