Sermon: "Images, Graven and Graced," (the Second Commandment) September 26, 2021
Preacher: The Rev. Ryan Slifka
Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:1-10
The Second Commandment in our Sermon Series on the Ten Commandments, “You shall make no idol.”
Today we continue our sermon series on the Ten Commandments. Last week, we hosted the first commandment: “you shall have no other gods before me.” While we aren't in much danger of worshipping literal gods these days—like Thor, Zeus, or Amon-Ra—we all have our gods. Our gods are whatever our hearts cling to for purpose, meaning, security, peace. Could be beauty, could be career, could be amazing athletic abilities. No matter what it is, they never truly satisfy us no matter how hard we work and give our lives to them, they always leaving us exhausted and empty. Contrast this with the Biblical God, who loves us without effort or earning on our part, who gives all good things without price. If we cling to this God, turn to this God for our purpose, meaning, security, peace, we will not be disappointed.
This week, we turn to the Second Commandment. The second commandment is closely related to the first. The second commandment being “you shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down and worship them.” The classic King James translation of the Bible says “graven images” rather than idols, but the meaning is the same. Whereas, the first commandment warns against worshipping false gods, putting our hearts toward and trust in false gods. The second warns against worshipping objects or images, putting our trust in created things. Created things.
Now, the obvious Biblical example of this is from the very same book where the commandments are given. About twelve chapters later, the book of Exodus chapter 32.
Moses is up on Mount Sinai. Here he’s communing with the Lord, and God's fingertip's carving these very Ten Commandments on stone tablets.
Meanwhile, all the rest of the Israelites, the former slaves of Egypt, are at the foot of the mountain waiting for Moses to return with a divine communication. It's taking a really long time, like forty days. So the people start getting restless. They start worrying that he's not coming back. So the crowd turns to Moses' brother Aaron and says “make us some gods to worship!” In response, Aaron gathers together their gold jewelry, the booty they seized on their way out of Egypt, and they melt it down, smelting and smithing it into a golden calf statue.
Revelry and debauchery ensue, with Moses tearing into them and smashing the tablets when he finally arrives. I mean, one of the great comic moments of the Bible is where Aaron guiltily Moses “I just put the gold in the fire and out came this calf.”
Now, this is very clearly an idol. A graven image, an obvious breaking of the second commandment. But what's interesting here is that scholars tend to be divided between two different interpretations of what the actual problem is.
The first interpretation goes like this: the Israelites became impatient with Yahweh after they were brought out of slavery. They were on the edge of the desert, with a perilous, deadly journey ahead of them. So they turned back to the safety and security of what they already knew: worshipping images of the various gods in Egypt. It makes sense. If you're genuflecting to a statue of the God Isis, it's pretty safe to say that it's a short hop, skip and a jump to worshipping the real Isis.
That's the first interpretation. It's a further warning against turning to false gods. Completely valid, true.
The second interpretation of this story, though, adds another dimension to the commandment. And it goes like this: the calf statue is a problem, not only because it is a false god, but because it intended as a statue of the true god. Aaron at one point says “here's the God who brought you out of Egypt!” This calf's intended as a very handsome portrait of Yahweh. The one with the commandments, the one you're suppose to put first.
Why would that be a problem? Well, first of all God isn't like any object there is. God is not a creature, or an object that can be found in the heavens above, earth below, or the sea beneath. The Westminster Confession of Faith, from the 1700's says simply that “God is Spirit.”[i] God comes to the Israelites in a burning flame accompanied by a voice. They want god to be instantly accessible, something you can see, touch, hold on to. Seeing is believing. The problem with the calf is that the Israelites can project whatever they want on God. Any attempt to depict God is an attempt to control god. To recruit god for our own purposes and biases. The great enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, once quipped that “God made man in his image, and man was quick to return the favour.” Our images of God tend to reflect us, our concerns, and our biases. We can end up worshipping an idol without actually knowing it.
How's this a problem? Seeing as how Thursday has been set as a day for national Truth and Reconciliation, we have no further to look than the church's involvement in Residential Schools. As you may or not know, The United Church of Canada, our denomination among several others, ran many of them on behalf of the Canadian government.
The United Church issued an apology in to First Nations people in 1986, and put it like this: “In our zeal to tell you of the good news of Jesus Christ,” it says, “In our zeal to tell you the good news, we were closed to the value of your spirituality. We confused Western ways and culture with the depth and breadth and length and height of the gospel of Christ.” We may have not assumed that God was a literal European. But we thought that God sure thought like one. That God's priorities were the same as the church's priorities, which were ultimately, the same priorities of the Canadian government. That being Christian was the same as being Canadian. We made a little statue with our favourite precious metals, and this blinded us to the God-given preciousness of other people. One scholar says that making images of God is like playing with fire... if you play with fire somebody's going to get burned. This was our idol, our graven image of God. I mean, its telling that the scripture says that punishment for breaking this commandment takes multiple generations to work out. Because people got burned. And are still getting burned by it.
Of course it's easy to look back on previous generations and offer our judgments. But this, too, can be an idol. I mean, if our god perfectly aligns with our modern, enlightened, progressive politics, if our god is a shiny, precious, pure and spotless version of ourselves, that god's probably an idol, too. The writer Anne Lamott says that it's safe to say “your God is an idol if he hates all the same people you do.”[ii] Whether the object of our hatred is conservatives, or progressives, or drug-users, brain-washed vaccine-believing sheeple or anti-vaxxers. If its Muslims, or atheists, or evangelical Christians... it's safe to say that it's not the true god we're dealing with, but an idol. God's ways are still not our ways, and God's thoughts are still not our thoughts. And the same dangers apply to us as they did the ancient Israelites, and our grandparents in faith.
The Second Commandment is essential because it guards against getting God deeply wrong. Images of God are a life and death matter. Get your image of God wrong and there are deadly consequences. You mess with the golden calf and everybody gets the horns.
Okay. So we all know what not to do. Don't mistake our images of God for the true God. Ok ok. Check. What then?
The thing about the commandments is that they always have a kind of double meaning, there are a couple dimensions. The great 16th century Reformed theologian John Calvin once said that “every negative commandment involves a positive obligation.” “Every negative commandment involves a positive obligation.”[iii] For example, the positive of “do not commit adultery,” is to “love and be committed to your spouse.” The opposite of “do not steal” is to give of ones' self generously. I'm not sure that there's a such thing as a positive idol, however. “Don't worship those idols, worship these ones instead!”
But there is, in fact, according to scripture, an image to be worshipped. And that image is Ryan Slifka. I kid.
That image is Jesus Christ.
Colossians, chapter one: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him, and for him... for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”[iv]
Jesus is the image of the invisible God. That in his life, teachings, death, and resurrection, the God who appeared in fire and Word to Moses, this god has been properly rendered in human flesh, not by human hands, hearts, or heads, but by the hand of the Lord himself. And continues to be present to us in the Word of scripture and by the fire of the Holy Spirit.
And the thing is that Jesus is unlike any god we could ever dream up ourselves. On one hand:
When we want power, he shows his by giving it away.
When we're scheming and plotting, he's out loving the people we hate.
When we're out for blood, he sheds his own instead.
And on the other hand:
When we’re wracked with guilt, he pronounces forgiveness, even for the worst of our sins. Full stop.
When we assume our worthlessness, he proclaims our worthiness by dying for our sake.
And when we’re consumed by failure, presuming that all hope is lost, he raises us from the dead.
Jesus is a challenge to every idol we can conjure and every false image we can construct. Jesus is what God is like. And this is an image that not only guards against getting God wrong. But helps us, by grace, to get God right.
And the thing is, if we get God right, we’ll get us right, too. Because we’re made in the image of God. Every single one of us. From the junkie on the street to Queen Elizabeth the Second. No exceptions. Of course, we’re not images to be worshipped. Rather, we are made to reflect the nature of the One who made us.[v] Our job isn’t to make gods, but to become more like God. Yielding our lives to the Creator, to reflect God’s goodness, wisdom and love. To become more like Jesus by letting God make and remake us in her image. That’s the positive inversion of the second commandment.
Friends, brothers and sisters in Christ. The bad news is that we are highly likely to break the second commandment, because we are highly likely to make God in our own image. The Good News, though, is that we are given a true image of God in Jesus Christ, one we can’t fashion according to our own likeness.
In a world of false images, we have been given a true image of God, one we are made to reflect in our own lives. So often we get God wrong, but by grace, we can get God right. And if we get God right, we’ll get us right, too.
May this same God of grace have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
[i] I mistakenly said this was from the Westminster Confession of faith, but it is from The Westminster Shorter Catechism, 1674. https://www.ccel.org/creeds/westminster-shorter-cat.html
[ii] Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (New York: Anchor), 22.
[iii] Quoted in John H. Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 213.
[iv] Revised Standard Version.
[v] “There is a divine likeness, but not made by human hands. It is God’s own doing, an image that is not to be worshiped but is God’s agent in the rule and care of all the rest of creation and God’s loving and loved reflection… And if we search for something that is in some way images God in an accessible way, we find that we have to deal with one another. To put it in reverse, all our encounters with other persons are engagements with one who is made in God’s image.” Patrick D. Miller, Interpretation : The Ten Commandments (Lousville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 58-59.