Making an Image
Service Link: https://youtu.be/5zr8nYNk_FU
Readings: Exodus 20:1-6, Psalm 135:15-18, Matthew 6:19-24
Lent, which began on Wednesday, is a season where we prepare to enter into the unimaginable. Just like the disciples, we have all of these expectations for ourselves, for our lives and the world, but as we approach the cross, we realize how terribly false these are as they all fall short. Then as we run to and enter into that empty tomb, our hearts and minds barely have the reasoning to understand what this means - as an unimagined hope and life has been realized. Our expectations as good as they may have been, are flipped on their head and instead of just a better world and life, God is now offering us a whole new one, perfect fulfilling and whole. The biggest difference is that where once our hopes/lives rested on the transitory things of the world, now our hopes and lives are founded on the eternal creator God.
In the ten commandments, God starts with what is most important. The most important thing we can do to reach for these new lives, is to keep him as our one and only God. God doesn’t go into depth describing every reason why this is so important because he shows us why throughout Scripture and our lives, but he does ground it in what he has done, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery”. At this moment, it is as if God is saying to us: “don’t you see why you need me, because it is I who sets you free, it is I who delivers you and lead you into a land and purpose of your own; and I have already been doing this for you”. He presents one simple and straightforward reason, he has already set us free and is leading us into a better land, that should be reason enough.
The second commandment dwells on the things that we normally make to replace him: idols. Most of us would immediately think of statues, maybe the golden calf, or something else, but idols are more than these physical objects. Ash Wednesday Evening we looked at the problem with idols, not that they exist, but that we set these idols up in our hearts. The problem is that when we make these idols in our hearts, is that they are not actually the created things. It is not wealth, an animal, or a person that we worship. Instead, we create something to worship in the form of these things. We make a person or wealth, or success or a relationship out to be more than it is. It is this newly formed idea that we worship, but the problem is that this new form is only loosely linked to the thing itself and so the idols don’t correlate with the actual reality. These idols might end up serving us in little ways that we have created, just enough to keep us pursuing them, but if we were really to think about it, we know money can’t bring us safety or happiness, we know a person will not be perfect, cannot predict our every need, or be exactly who we need them to be, but when we make an image in the form of something else, we can pretend and make up anything we want about them and so not only will that fail us again and again, but we will end up pursuing something that can’t really fill our needs. Idols are turning anything into that which it is not, almost always filling a space that only God can fill.
This faultiness of our created idols is expressed in two ways in our readings today. First, in the second commandment, God talks about not making an idol of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Does this sound familiar? It should be because God is using the language of creation. He is doing this purposely to remind us that all of these things, people or ideas are created by God and so ultimately they can never fill the role of their creator. Second, our psalm today reminds us that it is we who imagine these idols, but they are not really created, they don’t become a new thing. Just as a physical idol can’t walk or talk, but will only fall over, so the idols in our hearts can’t move or guide us, they only remain our imagination. The things that God created will only work within their limited capacity or when he empowers them.
Now we come to our gospel. Here Jesus is teaching us about our treasure, blindness and our master. These are strongly related to one another and to our need for God and the problem of idols. Our treasure is where our heart is. What we treasure is what we look to, what fills our vision and follow. Finally, our treasure, what fills our heart and vision masters us. We treasure, we look to it, and then it becomes our master.
If we treasure something of this world, as great as it may be, it will not last. It can and will be taken away from us. It cannot be everything we want it to be. Our heart will rest on something that will die, or will be stolen, or destroyed, or lost, so our hope, our love will die, be lost, stolen, or destroyed. We have experienced that and so we should know it. God is the one who created all things from nothing, it is he who formed us, it is he who changed death into resurrection and so only he can provide the things that last. Only in him can our hope and love be founded on something that will only grow into eternity.
Yet if we still refuse to see these things for what they are, the things that aren’t God will blind us. Things are good, they just aren’t good enough to fill even a sliver of God’s place. Think about it this way, if God is our light, what would happen if we put anything in the way of that light? Well, it would make our lives a little darker. The closer we bring that thing to us, the more we make it the center of our vision, the more and more it will begin to blind us. It would not just darken your lives, but it would make you less able to see the other things around you. In fact, it would make you less able to see the thing itself. Whereas if you make God’s light your centre and focus, what you will find is that it fills your whole lives with light, but even more God's light is so gracious that it will reflect off of the things around you, so that you can see God’s light, his colour and glory in the things around you. Keeping God first actually makes things around you better.
Finally, we come to our masters. In today’s western world we like to think about ourselves as our own masters. We decide our own fate, we decide what is right and what should be done. Again, this is creating an idol, now of ourselves. We know we can’t decide our own fate, as much as we might be able to make decisions to help our lives along in a certain direction. We know we are often wrong about what is right or what is the right thing to do, and we know that we often don’t even know what is the right thing to be done. Yet, it is so easy to make an idol of ourselves and by doing so we will never become more than our weaknesses and faults.
When we make an idol out of anything it can quickly become the master in at least an aspect of our lives if not all of it. These idols of self, or money, or relationship can become the things that determine how we act and move in the world and once again we are making ourselves slaves to something. We are putting ourselves back into Egypt with a yoke, a weight on our shoulders. This is destructive enough, but even more when we realize what this does to our relationship with God. There are plenty of people that have outright vilified God, but in our own lives, there are plenty of ways that we have refused him, resisted, and even hated aspects of God and his commandments, teachings, challenges et because we wanted or held onto something else we consider more important.
I have done it and probably still do it in ways that I need to realize. When I was in theatre, I remember a time when I believed it was God’s fault that I didn’t fit in, or wasn’t successful. Theatre culture was not always but could be crude, oversexualized, vulgar, phony, and more. So, because of my faith, I didn’t always fit in, especially at first.
The point is that I was resisting, pushing against God, while serving something else and this other master led me on a path that filled me with much struggle, resentment, loss and worse. This created master could not lead me to where I needed to go, but only got in the way of God. When I finally did put God first and began to pursue him, I remember one of my first conversations, and how it felt like coming home, how I suddenly seemed to fit and all that I didn't even realize I longed for, for more than five years was realized in its source: God.
Idols are false images of the things God has created, and so they cannot be or do what we have imagined them to be or do. They will only get in the way, they will only blind us, they will only make us be less as a weak master leads us to weak things. Instead, with God as our treasure, our vision, and our master, only then might we find the things that last, the things that fulfill us, the things that lead us to where we need to go. AMEN
Bible Study
Exodus 20:1-6,
Why is this the first commandment? Why is it so important?
Why does God shape this commandment with what he has already done for them?
What does it mean to make something else in the form of something else? Is that thing that you have made the original? Can it do the same things?
How does ancient idol creation/worship relate to our idolization today?
Why does God not want us to create these things/worship them? How does this relate to the first commandment?
How does God’s list of things not to duplicate relate to creation in Genesis 1? What does this tell us about these things?
Psalm 135:15-18,
What were these ancient idols physically? How does this relate to our spiritual and personal relationship with them?
Why is anything other than God a fickle thing to depend on?
Matthew 6:19-24
What does it mean to treasure something?
What are some of the things you have treasured other than God? Why are they important to you?
Have you ever put these treasures before God? What and why?
What happens when you lose the things you treasure? What would be different if God was the primary thing/person you treasure? What would that do for your heart?
How do light and blindness in this passage relate to our treasure?
What in your life, has ever blinded you? What have you let become so important to you that you missed other things around you?
Why can it be such a problem to make things or even people the things you look to most?
If God is our light, the one who brings light into everything, what difference would it make if let him fill our vision?
Have you ever felt like you weren’t in control, like something in your life has mastered you? Was this hard or difficult? If so, how?
Have you ever been sure of a solution and got it wrong? Have you ever felt trapped in your weaknesses or limitations? Maybe skills, time, energy or something else.
What do your previous responses tell you about becoming your own master?
Has your belief, or desire or vision of other things/self ever made you resist God, or his commands? What walls have you put up that get in the way of a greater relationship and obedience to God?
How could making God our master be more freeing and life-giving then anything or anyone else?
