Picture Imperfect

       Of all the commandments, the second commandment seems the least meaningful to us today.  We can understand warnings against stealing, adultery, killing, and giving false witness.  Those are moral issues.  And as Christians we can readily buy in to the need worship God, to avoid blasphemy, and create rhythm in our lives.   

       But what is the need today for a commandment against "idolatry?" We are rational people and there is nothing more irrational than an idol.  We easily understand the scorn Isaiah 44 and 46 pour on the guy who goes out to the garage and makes an idol.  "He takes a piece of wood.  With part of it he makes a fire to warm himself.  With another part he makes a fire to cook his dinner.  With the third part he makes a god. 

       The idol is incapable of movement.  When the town is invaded the people flee carrying their gods on their own shoulders.  If there is a fire in the temple, the priests can flee, but the gods are burned to a crisp.  The gods who are idols have to be dusted like furniture.        

       Who in their right mind would worship something you have to dust?

       But, as you think about it, it is very easy to understand the process by which a thing comes to be regarded as divine.  It’s like old story about the boy who comes to the dinner table to find his favorite food --chicken strips and French fries -- on his plate.   He grabs a fry and starts to eat.  "Hold it" his mom says, "we haven't prayed." the boy grumbles but puts down the French fry.  When the mother says "amen", the boy grabs a chicken strip.  "Hold it," his dad said, "you haven't washed your hands."  The boy has had it.  As he storms away from the table he yells, "Germs and Jesus!  Germs and Jesus!  That's all we talk about around here and you can't see either one of them!"

       So the idol making person comes along and says to this boy, “You can't see the invisible God?  Well, then, let's try to make it easier and more accessible.  Let's make an image which will remind you of God.  Let’s design it to symbolically portray some of God's attributes -- wings to represent his spiritual nature and an oversize head to represent his wisdom.  Let's put thunderbolts in his hand to represent his power.  Then, by looking at this image, you can better focus your thoughts on the God for which the image stands.

       Yes, it seems insane for any person to worship as a god a thing which his own hands have manufactured.  But we need to understand that there was never an original intention that he should.  The intention was to remind him to worship an unseen god.  But bit by bit, superstition turns the symbol into the reality. 

      So in the first commandment the true God says to us, "Give me your heart." "You shall have no other gods before me."  Now, in this second commandment, the true God says to us, "Give me your eyes."  “Don‘t try to make images of the divine.”

       What is at issue in this second commandment is who decides the nature of God -- people or  God.  The problem addressed by this commandment is humanity's desire to define and shape God rather than to accept God's revelation of Himself.  When God spoke to Moses at the burning bush He said, “I am what I am.  I am not what you think I am but what I am.”  Now the Lord says to us in this commandment, "I have shown myself to you.  Don't go and change that revelation for your own imagination.  Don’t try to substitute a god of your own making for the God who made you."  

      And of course we wouldn’t do this.  We aren’t like the people – and they are serious – who worship Elvis Presley as a god.  You can find Elvis churches in New York , Colorado , Indiana and Oregon .  If someone reports seeing Presley, the high priests of the Church of the Risen Elvis in Denver hold services in front of their enshrined look-alike doll of Elvis in an altar surrounded by candles and flowers.

       But we wouldn’t worship an idol – even on Super Bowl Sunday.  We know that running back Duane Thomas of the Dallas Cowboys spoke truth back in 1971 in the lead-up week to the Super Bowl. (As a 49er fan I have to observe here that that’s [probably the last time a Cowboy spoke truth.)  When a reporter asked, “Duane, how do you feel about playing in the ultimate game?” Thomas replied, “If it’s the ultimate game, why are they playing it again next year?”

       We are as rational as Duane Thomas.  We don’t make idols out of events or people – even the Next American Idol isn’t really an idol to most of us.

       But that doesn’t mean that we don’t try to substitute a god our own design for the God who has shown Himself to us in Scripture.  We do. In fact there are even parts of this commandment we gloss over because it doesn't fit the image of the God we prefer to worship.

       God says in this commandment, “I am a jealous God.”

       Jealousy sounds negative to us.  It is the green eyed monster that consumes us when one we love loves another or a job we want goes to another. 

       But what kind of God would God be if he didn't care whether people took Him seriously or not.  And for God to condone a false of image of who He is would be for God to deny Himself and agree to a lie.  And how could we believe in a God who gives assent to a lie?  The true God tends to be strict about the truth.  As Garrison Keillor points out, “You don't find God saying in the Bible, ‘I know there could be some other opinions on this.’

       God has entered into a covenant love relationship with His people. This means that he cannot stand to see us turn our affections toward something else any more than a husband who truly loves his wife could endure to share her with another man.  You can be sure that when you get to heaven that you will not see a poster on God's wall that starts, "if you love something, let it go."   As we see in the Lord’s Supper, the poster on Gods wall reads, "If you love something, die for it."

       But if accepting the fact that God is jealous and exclusive is hard, the next part can be even harder -- that God is a judge.  It’s in the commandment.  "I the Lord your God am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the 3rd and 4th generation..."    

       This is the point at which many people turn away from God's self-revelation to an image that is, to their mind, much nicer than a God who not only punishes sin but carries the punishment even to children and grandchildren.

       But God says it.  And this means that people who say that God is not a God of judgment are creating an idol -- a god of their own devising.  For God reveals Himself to be both jealous and a judge.

       What is your image of God?  Is it an image of your own making or is it the word revealed by God?  If you have any other image of God than the one revealed to you in scripture, then you have made an idol for yourself – even if you never have to dust it off.

       You don’t have to make idols.  God shows Himself to us and what He shows us is really good.  For the good news flip side to the second commandment, "don't make idols" is simply, "you don't have to."  We don't need to make an image of God because God gave an image of Himself in Jesus Christ --called in Colossians 'the image of the invisible God.'"  God says, “Here is who I am. Jesus is the model that’s your size that you can hold.”   And we don't need to make an idol in order to make God more accessible.  Because, in the Holy Spirit who indwells us, God makes Himself totally accessible to us.  That's the good news.

        So as we come now to this place of meeting at the Lord's Table, let us come desiring to receive who God is -- not who we would like God to be but who God is.  We don't have to run away from the reality.  For if you want to see the one true God, look at Jesus -- especially look at Jesus on the cross.  He is a judge, but one who has taken our judgment on Himself that we might be free to love Him.  The purpose of His judgment is always to lead to repentance.  Then we become truly free in His grace -- the loving-kindness that this commandment says will continue for thousands of generations after us.