Today in our Old Testament reading we commemorate the time when Charleton Heston came down from Mount Sinai and gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments. I have to say that the Ten Commandments are funny things. I mean funny not in the ha-ha, shoot milk out of your nose, type of funny but rather in terms of holding an odd place in our society. And by odd I don't mean what is in the actual Ten Commandments, but rather how people react to the name of them. The Ten Commandments are often used as something divisive with one side wanting to post them all around public and private spaces while the other side claims that such a display would be the first step in creating a theocracy, a sort of real life Handmaids Tail. So the thing that I find funny in all of this is that no one ever talks about the actual Ten Commandments, that is what they actually say. They seem to have become more of a brand name like Heinz 57 or A-1 Steak Sauce. And as a brand they are a controversial one. But the thing is there are a number of commandments that I would think wouldn't be controversial at all, unless there is some secret society that is strongly in favor of murder, bearing false witness, taking a day off, stealing and so on. There are really only two or three that I see as having the potential for controversy and those would be the ones about idols, having other gods and taking the Lord's name in vain. Honestly, I'm not sure how many Christians even take those all that seriously these days. But since this is Church you have probably already anticipated that I am going to say that Christians ignoring the Ten Commandments is not a good
thing. So today I really want to focus on one of the commandments that I am not sure anyone cares about anymore and that is number three which states, "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name."
I mean it sounds like God is pretty serious about this one and yet on a daily basis we hear people tossing around God's name in vain with reckless abandon. And so the question is why is God so serious about this and why are we so unserious about it.? To start thinking about this question I want to start with a rather lengthy quote from G.K. Chesterton. I apologize for its length but I think it is all necessary to get the point. Chesterton states, "There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'" So to paraphrase and put in context where I want to go: Chesterton is saying that modern people do not see the use in not taking the Lord's name in vain so they simply ignore that commandment, but what we should do is to try and understand why such a restriction was there in the first place.
Let's first start with just what this commandment is telling us. It tells us not to misuse God's name, which sometimes gets translated as taking the name of the Lord in vain. It is essentially saying that there are appropriate uses of God's name and that there are inappropriate uses and that we are not to use God's name inappropriately. The basic distinction between appropriate and inappropriate is whether we are using God's name as a way to bring ourselves up to him or to bring him down to us. So to illustrate the difference let's look at some examples.
First, in terms of appropriate use let's look at the first verse of the 63rd Psalm which states, "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water." Now notice the Psalmist does not restrain from using the name of God, in fact he uses it twice, but look at how he uses it. He basically is saying three things about God in the Psalm. First who God is: he is his God. Second, he says that he is seeking after God and third, he states that his body and soul needs God for their very existence. So in this Psalm there is an acknowledgement of who God is, the Psalmists declaration of a desire to be with God, and a statement of the Psalmist's total dependence on God. It is both a statement of truth and a statement of desire to draw closer to God. Now let's look at another example of using God's name in a less than proper way and see if we can spot the difference.
For fun I put the term OMG in Google. Quite frankly I wasn't sure if the young kids were still using this abbreviation, but apparently they are. For those of you unfamiliar with this term OMG is short for Oh My God. So after using Google, the first story I saw had the headline, "OMG, I Want this House", which I found particularly funny because it was taking the Lord's name in vain in order to covet a neighbor's house. It was a two for the price of one in terms of breaking of the Ten Commandments. But I want to focus on the second one I saw read which stated, "OMG! You Need To See Kylie Jenner's Push Present." For those of you not familiar with Kylie Jenner, you are indeed blessed, but I will ruin that for you and let you know that she is the half-sister of Kim Kardashian. Also for a little more clarification I learned that a "push present" is something that you get after you have delivered a baby. So it seems that Kylie's boyfriend gave her a one million dollar Ferrari to thank her for delivering the child. And if you are curious the car has only two seats and I am relatively certain that Ferrari does not make a child safety seat. I will leave it for you to judge if this is a statement about the priority of the new child in their lives. But back to using the Lord's name in vain. The question with this headline is what does God have to do with this situation? There is no acknowledgement of who God is or a desire for closer communion with him. It simply seems that his name is mentioned to add some excitement about this gift. It's almost like God is called in to warm up the crowd so that they are in the right mood when we hear the really important news about Kylie Jenner and her new Ferrari. And this is what I mean by bringing God down to us. The Psalmist mentions his total dependence on God whereas this article about Ms. Jenner mentions God for no greater reason than to bring greater glory to this bit of information. In one we glorify God in the other God is there to glorify us.
Now I assume that many would reply that this is not really what it means, that it is simply just a phrase, devoid of larger meaning like how people say awesome to mean that they like something. I would agree that in most cases it is probably meant as a simple interjection to draw attention to what is going to be said next. But let's think about it in terms of Chesterton. Why was there an injunction in the first place? I think it has to do with our relationship to God. If we believe that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe that makes God pretty important and quite superior to us. So part of maintaining a proper relationship is remembering that God is set apart from us. In fact the term holy simply means set apart. Just as we wouldn't have the dog eat its dinner off of our grandmother's china we should not treat God in the same way that we would treat common things. Similarly, we should not treat the name of God in the same way as we treat the word "wow" or "neat." The injunctions against using God's name in vain are the entry level for treating God as set apart and for seeing with wonder and awe just who God is. For the thing is, it is only when we properly understand who God is and who we are in relationship to him that we can properly and fully live our lives.
Our ancestors knew some things and God knows some things as well. And so this rather odd sounding injunction is really about putting us in a proper place in terms of our relationship with God. Often in life it is the small things, done faithfully, that form the character of who we are. Not taking God's name in vain is a daily practice, which can help draw us closer to God so that we may be his both now and forevermore.