The sermon I don't want to preach

Exodus 20:1-3

I had an awfully hard time with this sermon this week—not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I only had one thing I felt like needed to be said and I didn’t want to say it. Preaching is hard, you know? If I were writing a blog on the subject, I just wouldn’t write it, but I’m sort of being paid to do this and it would be pretty awkward if I just stood up here for ten minutes of silence, though sometimes I think that’s probably about the best I can do. So, here I am preaching on something I don’t want to—come, Holy Spirit! It’s especially hard when the scripture of the week is the fullest expression of the law.

We begin a four week series on the Ten Commandments today with the commandment that matters above all others: “I am the Lord your God, You shall have no other gods before me.” This is the commandment of all commandments. And I know what needs to be said about it: You are sinners, and, more than that, you are completely dead in sin. No heart beat—dead, dead. You put all sorts of things before God.

I don’t want to say that. I want to say, “It really isn’t that bad. You’re all wonderful. You all have a spark of goodness in you; you can overcome this inclination toward sin.” I want to say that, but I can’t.

But the thing I really don’t want to talk about—the thing that I wrote an entire sermon around before changing it last night because of how much I really didn’t want to talk about this—is all the things that we place before God that are mostly good. I don’t want to tell you about how our children can become an idol, but I have to. I don’t want to tell you about how our country can become an idol, but I have to. And I really, really don’t want to talk about how the Bible can become an idol, because it will confuse the heck out of you, but I have to. Because we don’t worship our children, or our nation, or even the Bible; we worship the God we know in Jesus Christ. In fact, because those things are so very, very good, and because they represent so many things that are deeply meaningful to all of us, they are all the much easier to turn into idols. But I really don’t want to talk about how our children, our nation, and even the Bible lead us to breaking the first commandment.

I don’t want to talk about all this stuff because it’s a razor-thin distinction, and it would be so much easier to talk about how awesome it is to love those things that are next-most important to God. It is always much easier to preach healing than resurrection, because healing allows us to pretend that we aren’t dead people; that there’s something about us worthy of being healed; that we just need a little help. I don’t want to tell you that you are dead in sin, because I know you, like me, would rather not hear it.

Preaching resurrection is hard, because you have to kill people first. At the very least, you have to tell people that they are already dead, and I know you don’t want to hear that because I don’t want to hear that, but that’s where the first commandment leaves us. It is where all of the law leaves us.

            The next-best of all things—the very things that give us meaning; you name it, what I said before was only a partial list: add to that sports, or school, or relationships, or drugs, or video games; whatever the next most important thing in your life is, that is where you are most vulnerable. We recognize that some of those things are bad for various reasons, but some of them are also so good that we can’t imagine they could be bad.

            I think of Satan when he tempts Jesus. The devil doesn’t offer Jesus things that he isn’t due. In fact, everything that Jesus if offered is something he could rightfully claim anyway. Jesus can create bread from stones, Jesus clearly demonstrates that God is a saving God, and Jesus can rule over kingdoms. The razor-thin distinction between Jesus assenting to the Devil’s temptation is the difference between a good thing for the right reason and the wrong one.

            Jesus is the only one of us capable of walking that knife’s edge; it takes being the son of God. The rest of us will trust too much in the things that are not ultimate. This is why I hate preaching on this. Ultimately, I have to tell you how busted we are; how the very things that show us at our best are evidence of our brokenness. We will fall in love with the very things that are next-most important. We will put them before God. And because of my duty I have to tell you that that isn’t OK.

            Because it isn’t.

            Except… and here’s the only reason I keep doing this: There is another word. A promise bigger than the law. A promise that is ours because of Jesus. Because of Jesus the ultimate thing conquers all the secondary allegiances. Because of Jesus I can say all the stuff I just said—because I care about you enough for you to know why it is that Jesus had to come. Because if we don’t start by acknowledging we are dead then we will always have only a fool’s hope and not the real thing. Because without Jesus none of those other things matter. Because the best of all things is so good that it makes all the other stuff that takes us only to the precipice look meager indeed. Because even though we are dead in sin Jesus has saved us.

            So, I guess what I hate is that I have to be honest with you all. And I also love that. Because how often do any of us get to tell one another the whole truth? You aren’t perfect; you aren’t that special; and neither are the things that you hold dear. And yet, the love of God perfects the sinner not through healing but by raising you from the dead. You are saved by grace and that’s a pretty amazing thing to be. You were dead, but Jesus can work with dead people. In fact, they are the best of all people, because dead people are ready for resurrection, and that is exactly the promise that awaits us. I guess this preaching isn’t so bad, after all.