God wants you to be rich!

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 6, 2014

The Third Commandment forbids taking God’s name in vain. So many people say “God bless you!” to the poor but do not help to change the situation. So many politicians say “God bless America” at the end of their speeches, but what do they mean by that? Might using God’s name for ulterior motives be taking that name in vain?

Sermon:

Hypocrisy and the Third Commandment

In the summers we used to go up to Roaring River, my Uncle David’s farm near Daniel’s Pass, NC. I remember riding in the back seat of his old Jeep and being reprimanded sternly. This was unusual for him – he wasn’t a stern person. He was the second youngest of thirteen children, and he had been always in trouble. What had I done? I had said “Gah ….. ” about something. I have no idea how to spell that. It’s a Southern child’s word. “Golly,” I knew, was forbidden, as it was a way to not say “God,” which was really really forbidden, since it was taking the Lord’s name in vain. Which brings us to the Third Commandment, the next in this year’s series:

“You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

The original Hebrew says, “La Tisah Ess Shaim Adoshem L’shav.” The key word is “Tisah” which does not mean “to take” or “to say” God’s name. Tisah is Hebrew for “to carry,” which means the commandment is telling us, “Do not CARRY God’s name in vain.” This word implies lifting up, carrying like a banner or a flag. “In vain” means uselessly, or in an empty way. It’s the only one of the Commandments that is tagged with this “The Lord will not hold anyone guiltless (literally will not cleanse) someone who does that. Is it possible that the scriptures mean to condemn little kids who say “Golly” or even “My God, that’s an ugly dog” more than murderers? No, it is not possible.

Ancient Jews avoided saying the name of God altogether. They used four letters YOD-HE-VAV-HE without vowels. These four letters are called the Tetragrammaton Instead of making the sounds ‘Yuh” “huh” Wuh” “huh” they say “Adonai,” which is translated “the Lord,” or just “ha-shem,” which means “the name.” This way they will avoid taking God’s name in vain. In English you sometimes see the word “God” written “G-d.”

Later on, Christian scholars added the vowels from the word “Adonai” to the Tetragrammaton, and pronounced it “Jehovah.”

When Moses was talking to God in the burning bush, he asks God’s name. “I am who I am,” is what the translation says. It would better say “I will be who I will be.” I remember one preacher saying that was God saying that he would be the same yesterday, today, and forever. It doesn’t sound like that to me. If a person said to you “I will be who I will be, “would you think that meant they were unchanging? I think that preacher was seeing what he already believed. That happens all the time in life. We see what supports the things we already think. To me, “I will be who I will be” implies that God is changing. I could be reading into the text what I already believe as well, though there is a little more evidence in the rest of the Exodus story. When God leads the people in the wilderness, he forms a pillar of smoke by day and fire by night. Smoke, fire. Those are constantly changing forms. I just think that is interesting. He wasn’t a hawk or a dragonfly. Those are also changeable, but in smoke and in fire you can see shapes, different people see different shapes. You can’t grab hold of either one, no matter how close you get.

Also, when Moses asks to see God, he is allowed to, but he only sees the back of God as God passes by. Some scholars say this means we never see God, we just see where God has been. I like that thought.

The Divine Force is always changing, and we only see where it has been. Even that is open to question and interpretation.

So “God” isn’t really the name of God, it’s just a human word in English to describe the concept of the Divine One. In other languages the concept is called “Deus, Dio, Dios, Zeus, Allah, then there are lots of particular names for particular gods or aspects of the one god: Krishna, Shiva, Yemaya, Oshun, Morrigan, Nana. Thousands of names.

Lao-Tse, the father of Taoism, writes in the Tao te Ching, “The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.” The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth.

While naming is the origin of the myriad things.” In naming you begin to separate, you begin particularity; you begin to limit the One.

That’s a lot about the name of God. From those who won’t name the Divine at all, to those who hint at a name but refuse to pronounce it. These are folks who want to be very careful not to misuse the name. It’s not crystal clear what the misuse of the name is. If it’s not likely to be cussing that is going to cause God to be more displeased with you than if you had stolen or killed, what is it?

Then there are those who pronounce it all the time. “God bless you,” “God told me to talk to you,” “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” A lot of these people are kind hearted and good folks. They are sincere believers. Then there are those who use it thoughtlessly. Then there are those who use it for power or greed. Pat Robertson said we had hurricane Sandy because God was angry with America and had withdrawn his protection from the country because of the pagans, feminists, abortionists and gay people. There is the Phelps family who pickets the funerals of American soldiers with big posters that read “God hates fags.” There are those, like Ted Haggart, President of the American Association of Evangelicals, representing about 30 million people, who lift high the banner of the name of God to wade into the fray against gay and lesbian American citizens. A few days ago he was accused by a gay escort of hiring him once a month and asking him to buy crystal meth so they could get high together. There are those like Jimmy Swaggart, who raised millions as a televangelist, then was caught, twice, with prostitutes. Once DUI. Of course, those things could happen to anyone, I guess. But not everyone makes money making people feel guilty, then feel like there is hope for them if they send money in to support the television ministry.

Some preachers regularly ask for donations, claiming that those that give will reap the benefit of God’s blessing. People are told if they give enough, even if they are in debt, God will erase their debt. And if God doesn’t ease their financial troubles, then they aren’t giving enough. This principle is known as the “prosperity gospel.”

A person who used to work for Robert Tilton’s ministries said they were given bundles of envelopes and a letter opener. They were to take out the cash and toss the letters. They pulled in nearly $1,000 an hour.

The problem came when the televangelist watchdog group, The Trinity Foundation, founded by a man named Ole Anthony, sent a squad of detectives to Tilton’s office. They went through the dumpster and found piles of letters that were still folded in their envelopes, which had been slit to extract the money. One of the detectives, who earns a salary of $80.00 a week at the Foundation, carries a letter from that dumpster in his wallet. A worried mother was writing for prayers for her son, who was suicidal. “This reminds me why we do this,” he said. They leaked the story to Diane Sawyer and Prime Time, and Tilton went down.

Politicians who cloak their ambition in God talk are breaking the Third Commandment by introducing legislation to keep the Ten Commandments in the courthouses, but not knowing what they are, sponsoring anti-gay legislation when your numbers sink in the polls, hammering at folks about family values while cheating on their spouses, stealing money or beating their children. Those who say God is punishing homosexuals by sending AIDS. Those people are carrying the name of God in an empty way, pretending to know the mind of God.

These commandments are binding for Jews and Muslims as well, and those who break them are those who say God is punishing the US for its foreign policies with hurricanes and floods, those who say “In the name of God” before they blow someone up or cut off someone’s head.

It seems this commandment is about religious hypocrisy and violence, about claiming that you know something about what God thinks, who God would bomb, what God would drive.

Do UUs fall short of our ideals of behavior and right relationship? Yes. All the time. We are short with one another when we should be kind. We male-bash, or we get ugly about our differences of opinion, or we denigrate one another, or ignore the stranger in our midst because it’s uncomfortable to talk to someone new or because we just don’t have energy for a conversation that day. Or we don’t go to the polls and vote our principles. Do we carry the banner or our principles cynically, for power or money? Maybe. I can’t really figure out how to do that, but maybe during the discussion you can help me. There is good religion and bad religion. Most of it is mixed. Only a little religion has to do with God, I think. No one really knows, even though most people speak like they do. Our task is to clean up our own hearts and minds, and to name hypocrisy as breaking the Third Commandment.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776