The First Commandment

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35

So, as Jesus says, a house divided cannot stand. You can’t build a house on a foundation made of two uneven materials. Things get tippy, and first gaps appear in the foundation, and then the walls start to come apart at the corners, and develop cracks and start leaning over, and then the roof starts crumbling and the whole thing falls down. In order for the house to stay standing, the foundations have to be uniform and consistent. It has to be one whole. In the Lutheran church, as our confirmation students have been diligently learning this past year, our foundation includes the Bible and the Book of Concord (or, more particularly, the Small Catechism). And so this year, they’ve been building on this Lutheran foundation. They’ve been studying and thinking about and memorizing the contents of the Small Catechism: the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.

Now we could probably all say the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer by heart, if our powerpoint projector suddenly failed. We might be a bit hesitant or say it quietly under our breath, but we’d get there. But how many of us could recite the Ten Commandments by heart? In order? They don’t come as quickly to mind. But Luther himself said, and I quote: “those who know the Ten Commandments perfectly know the entire Scriptures and in all affairs and circumstances are able to counsel, help, comfort, judge, and make decisions in both spiritual and temporal matters. They are qualified to be a judge over all doctrines, walks of life, spirit, legal matters, and everything else in the world.” [Large Catechism, Preface] 

These are your confirmation students. They know the Ten Commandments, and so they are able and qualified to counsel you, to comfort you, and to judge you. Their voices are worth listening to, both their criticisms and their compliments. Their voices are, in fact, necessary.

Of course, it’s hardly fair to put the burden of the church’s decision-making and community-formation on these few alone. It is up to all of us to constantly revisit our Lutheran foundations, to make sure they’re in good shape with no cracks. It is up to each of us to contribute to the work of being one house, by reading our Bible, studying our Catechism, and remembering the Ten Commandments. 

Which is why, this summer, my sermons are going to be on the Ten Commandments, as we find them in Luther’s Catechism, as this year’s confirmation students have learned them. Luther believed that the Commandments are a gift from God, something to rejoice in because they show us the path to a better life here and now. The Commandments help us to recenter this world around justice, and equality, and life for everyone. Luther also saw them as a blessing not only for us, but for generations to come. Our Bible passage from Exodus says, “a blessing of steadfast love to the thousandth generation.” When we live by the Ten Commandments, they become a blessing to our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, all the way to those descendants thirty thousand years into the future who may not even know about Christianity.

So, The First Commandment - You shall have no other gods. And in the Small Catechism, Luther always asks: What does this mean? And then he responds: We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.

Sounds simple enough, right? We would probably all say that we fear, love, and trust God above all things. Except that we don’t. There are many things that we fear and trust above God. We fear economic insecurity - either now or when we retire, and so we trust in a job, or a pipeline, or our retirement funds to keep us safe. We fear being sick, and so we trust in exercise, and proper eating, and good sleep to keep us healthy and give us long life. We fear people looking down on us, and so we trust in our behaviour and the behaviour of our family to keep us in good standing in our community. We fear being excluded, and so we trust in keeping our opinions to ourselves and going along with the majority and being nice to give us belonging. We fear dying, as individuals and as a church, and so we trust in new discoveries, new programs, new people to keep us alive.

In the Large Catechism, Luther said that a god is “that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in all need.” There are so many things in this world that we look to for all good, and so many things that we turn to when we’re feeling overwhelmed and in need-money, health, reputation, community. It is actually very difficult to fear, love, and trust God above all things. The reality is that none of us are capable of doing it on our own.

And so what are we to do? We’ve barely even begun to look at the Ten Commandments, and we’re already failing the first, and most important one. Things are looking pretty unsteady for the church if we can’t even do this one thing.

But here’s the thing. The church’s foundation is not built on our adherence to the Ten Commandments. The church does not stand or fall because we succeed or fail to fear, love, and trust God above all things. It sounds like a paradox, but neither the church’s success nor the church’s failure can be attributed to us. Our worship services, our committees, our programs, our membership numbers do not strengthen the foundation of the church. I’m sorry to say it, but you can’t ensure that a church continues to stand by finding the right staff, or the right outreach programs, or the right liturgy. As much as I encourage us to know the Bible and the Catechism, our knowledge is not the foundation. The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord.

Jesus Christ our Lord, the incarnation of God on earth, who sends us the Holy Spirit to empower us to fear, love, and trust God above all things. He is the foundation of our house, of our lives as Christians, of our church. And I want to be really clear here: our foundation is not that we fear, love, and trust God above all things. Our foundation is Jesus Christ, who sends the Holy Spirit to empower us to fear, love, and trust God above all things. We do not build the foundation. We do not strengthen the foundation. God, come to us in Jesus Christ, working in us through the Holy Spirit, is the foundation. We do not strengthen God, God strengthens us. We do not build up God, God builds us up.

And this is what today is about - this day that we have traditionally called Confirmation, but which we are learning to call Affirmation of Baptism. Today is not about three individuals coming forward to commit their lives to God and to renew the promises their parents made in baptism. That would be them attempting to follow the First Commandment through their own efforts. That would be them attempting to be their own foundation. Today is about recognizing that these three individuals were brought to baptism by the Holy Spirit, are brought to church by the Holy Spirit, are brought to the Lord’s Table and brought even to confirmation and to this very day by the Holy Spirit. Today is about them, and us, saying that God has brought us here, and God is our foundation that will never crumble, and yes, God will give us the strength and wisdom to live as God wants us to. Thank God!

“The First Commandment: You shall have no other gods. What does this mean? You are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Of all the commandments, this is the most important to follow, because, as we will learn over the summer, it is the foundation for all the rest. And of all the commandments, this is the hardest to follow, because it demands the most from us. It demands that we tear down everything in our lives until we get to the foundations and God can build us up again.

It is also the Commandment that God enables us to fulfill, through the power of the Holy Spirit, a power working in each of you since baptism. In this way, it becomes a blessing to us, a gift from a gracious God, something we are honoured to be told to follow. That you are all here this morning, putting this worship of God above all the other demands in your life at the moment, fulfilling this Commandment, resting on the foundation of Christ, is evidence of the work the Holy Spirit is doing in you, so that you may be a blessing to the generations to come. As Luther would say, “This is most certainly true.” Thanks be to God. Amen.