Sermon: "Don't Thank Me" (the Third Commandment), October 3, 2021

Preacher: The Rev. Ryan Slifka
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-7

The Third Commandment in our Sermon Series on the Ten Commandments, “you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.”

Here we are again this week in the Ten Commandments. This time we're on number three. I've put it up on the screen using the classic translation from the King James version of the Bible. “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.” The more modern translation we heard aloud was “you shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.” That didn't fit so well on the Powerpoint, so we went with the King James.

It's not just a good translation for being concise, though. The word “vain” is rooted in the word “vanity.” To do something for the sake of vanity can mean to do something uselessly or without point. Like “rebuilding that Porsche is just his vanity project.” Or it can mean to do something for your own ego. Or you may have heard the song that goes “You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” To do something in vain is to do it uselessly, without purpose on one hand. Or to do it for our own glorification on the other.

So it is with using God's name.

I mean, some of us grew up in a time where this commandment was more or less how we use our words. Usually words associated with God and holy things. If you are from Quebec, you will know that all the swear words are church words. Whereas most English-speaking Canadians are more likely to invoke the name of Jesus Christ after seeing a car accident, or bashing a thumbnail with a hammer than in earnest prayer. This is the type of vain we would put in the category of useless or unnecessary deployment of God's name.

Speaking as someone who can be somewhat irreverent about faith on occasion, it's a helpful reminder for me to watch what I say. Because when we use these words carelessly, it can make them more ordinary, more commonplace. It empties these words of the holiness that they are ultimately intended to convey. It's not the worst thing we can do with God's name, but it's also not good, either. Misuse can erode their meaningfulness. And their power.

It's not the worst thing we can do with God's name. A worse thing, actually, has to do with the other meaning of that word “vanity.” Not just to use the name of God irreverently. But to use it for the sake of our own ego, or aggrandizement. To recruit God's name for our own purposes, rather than God's.

From a personal vantage point, this can be a particular temptation as a parent. Parenting can be really hard. Children can be really frustrating, and sometimes we don't know what to do about it. So we might bring in God as the big gun for behavioural management, in the hopes that it will, as people used to say “put the fear of God into them.” My disappointment isn't getting through to them, but maybe divine disappointment will. Often, though, this can blow up in our faces down the road. This can push our children further away from us, but also—probably worse—it can push them away from God and faith altogether. This is a vain use of God's name, because it puts into question the very character of the Creator.

Or, from a more social standpoint, there's been a real temptation in most recent years for God to be recruited in support of a particular political party, issue or agenda.  Now, of course, God should have everything to do with how Christians think about politics, and we organize ourselves as a society and our world for the sake of the common good. Jesus is the friend of the poor, of sinners, outcasts and the oppressed. It's quite clear in the Bible that human flourishing is God's business.

But it's one thing to have our faith inform our politics. It's another to believe God is on our side. Last week I quoted the writer Anne Lamott who said that “your God is probably an idol if he hates everyone you do.”  It's not only idolatry, contravening the second commandment, it's also breaking the third. It's vanity, because we are using God as a cudgel, as a way to meet our own political aims and the justification for our own objectives. God's name's just another banner, Jesus just another mascot in our parade.

The problem with this is that we Christians carry God’s name. I can't tell you how many people of all ages who've told me that faith isn't an option for them on account of something a Christian said or did to them or a loved one. I know that I've pushed people away with my own irritation and judgmentalism on more than one occasion. There's this quote by an Indian philosopher from the early part of last century often attributed to Gandhi: “Jesus is ideal and wonderful,” he says, “but you Christians, you are not like him.” The biggest obstacle to Christianity isn't just secularization. It's associating God with our zealotry, our hypocrisy, and our bigotry. What we do reflects on God, for better and for worse. And even our indifference. It's the tarnishing of God's good name by the vanity of God's people.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm tempted to tell people about how I'm not “that kind of Christian.” To say that not all Christians are like that. That there are good Christians out there, too, and how I'm sick and tired of all the ones profaning God's good name.

I wonder, though, if that's really enough. You might remember last week when I said that every negative commandment has a positive obligation. Like it's one thing to simply not cheat on your spouse. It's another thing to love and care for your spouse with everything you've got. There's always a positive inversion of a negative commandment. Well, the positive in the case of this commandment, the opposite of not using God's name in the wrong way is to use God's name in the right way. Martin Luther, that great 16th century Reformer, said that this commandment bids us to not to “use [God’s] name superstitiously, or use it to curse, swear, lie, or deceive” but to instead call on God's name “in prayer, praise and thanksgiving.”[i] The last two are crucial.

The opposite of vanity is humility. To invoke God's name in thanksgiving is to offer gratitude for what God has done. And to invoke God's name is praise is to really give God credit for how good God is for doing it. Jesus said the same when he said let your light shine for all the world to see, that they may give glory to your Father in heaven.” It’s not enough to not say God’s name in vain. If we wanna use God's name rightly, it's to give God glory for the good in our lives.

I recently read a biography of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States during the American Civil War. Some of you may have already known that Lincoln had quite a faith life. Lincoln wasn't a saint by any stretch. But one of his virtues was that he kinda knew it. In the heat of the civil war, one of his advisor's said that he was grateful God was on Lincoln's side, the side of the North against the South. “Sir,” Lincoln replied, “my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.” Lincoln never had an airtight sense of his own rightness, but a sense of deep humility. In spite of the righteousness of the cause of freedom for enslaved people, Lincoln was always skeptical of his own righteousness. To do otherwise would be taking the Lord's name in vain.

But he also exhibited that positive understanding of the commandment, too. When his Union forces captured Richmond, the capitol of the slave-holding confederacy, Lincoln, along with other government dignitaries were taken to the city by steamship. And as they disembarked, newly freed slaves ran up to him, bowing down, joyously greeting him. One freed man shouted that this was Lincoln, the man to whom they owed their freedom. But rather than responding with something like “you're welcome,” or “gosh, it was nothing,” Lincoln demurred. “Don't thank me for your freedom,” Lincoln replied. “Don't thank me... you can thank Almighty God.” This was Lincoln's victory, his greatest triumph. But instead, he turned to invoking the name of the Lord in thanksgiving and praise for the gift of freedom. He pointed to God instead of himself. “Don't thank me,” he said, “thank Almighty God.” [ii]

Now, you and I may not be Abraham Lincoln. Not even by a long shot. But I'm reminded of the words of the great American monk and mystic, Thomas Merton. Merton once said that “saints are not people who are good, but people who have known God's goodness.”[iii] You don't have to be a Lincoln, or even a Thomas Merton to know God’s goodness. Nor to you need to be a saint to keep this commandment. You just have to have known God's goodness in your own life, and be willing to step to one side, point to it and say, “God. Right there.” Or “don't thank me, thank Almighty God.”

May this same good-named God have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.

AMEN.

[i] Martin Luther, The Small Catechism (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1979), 3.

[ii] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, audiobook ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2011).

[iii] Can’t find the citation for this!