The First Commandment

Sermon preached at Whitkirk Parish Church

Lent 3 (Year B) - 15th March 2009

As some of you know, I am an avid listener to Radio 4; “radio four inquisitive minds”, as the strap line has it.  I particularly like the comedy, which keeps me sane: not least a date with hell on Thursday evenings (Old Harry’s Game) and The Now Show on Fridays.  I have noticed recently, though, that there is a tendency for quite a bit of comedy, particularly that aimed at younger people, to be quite anti religious, or at least it can come over that way.  There are regular examples of this on The Now Show and I find that quite remarkable, because one of its main hosts is the son of a former Bishop of Knaresborough, Hugh Dennis.  I suppose that he doesn’t exercise editorial censorship.  What is interesting is the large cheer that goes up when a comedian takes a pop at religion and it could be easy to get offended.

Before we do steam off emails it is worth asking who the target of this at times quite vitriolic joking is.  Is it God, the almighty, the ultimate source and goal of all, or is it religions and the ways that those who purport to be religious behave?  Sometimes the dividing line looks quite thin, but often the attack is on the absurdities of religious practice and let’s face it there are plenty of absurdities.  I expect that Hugh Dennis will know that as much as anyone, just like all clergy children do!

Today’s readings have quite powerful things to say to comedy that takes a pop at religion.  We start with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) which begin with the utter and complete sanctity of God.  You shall not ridicule, take the mickey out of, try to set anything else up in God’s place.  God is God and don’t forget it.  This is not some jumped up, pumped up, over inflated egotistical despot who throws their weight around and who quite frankly deserves to be cut down to size by a bit of satire and humour; this is God.  The one from whom we are anything rather than nothing.  The one who is the very place we exist and without whom we would not exist.  To put anything else in place of the worship of God is utter folly and an attack on the purpose and root of everything.

That said, there is quite a noble strand in the Bible, not least with prophets like Jeremiah and in the Psalms, of having a right good moan at God.  In fact there is a place for letting off steam and screaming very loudly “I don’t understand what is going on, rouse yourself and do something about it”.  But behind the moaning and the cries of anguish is a profound trust that God is God and it is a cry of not understanding.  It is not mockery.  It is very much not mockery.  It is outrage but there is no trivialising in it at all, quite the opposite.

Then Jesus walks into the Temple and makes comedy mocking look very tame indeed (John 2:13-22).  He doesn’t poke fun at absurdity, he takes a whip of cords and drives out those selling.  He pours out coins from the tills and overturns tables.  This is on a par with troops returning from service overseas and facing protesters shouting abuse.  Think how you felt when you saw those news reports, and I bet outrage was one of the thoughts, and that is how those in the Temple probably felt about Jesus!  I make no justification for those who demonstrated in Luton, and I think they were offensive and profoundly wrong, but the outrage we feel at them is how those standing in the Temple would have felt at what Jesus did.  This is Jesus with attitude and out to make a stir.  And a stir he made.

The target of Jesus’ action, even attack, was not God.  That would be bizarre, given that we believe him to be God.  The target was the absurdities of religious practice where what we do has started to take the place of the God it is supposed to honour and focus on.  It is also a protest of liberation.  Religion should set us free and not enslave us.  When it starts to confine us and the God we adore, then it has lost the plot and a bit of comic relief is called for.  Protest becomes the cry of liberation, religious liberation, so that the Spirit of God can set us free from ourselves and the absurdities that would lock us in.  That goes for familiar rituals that can speak profoundly of heaven or can become an empty show and substitute for the divine.  It goes for devotion to the Bible which can challenge and confront our assumptions or can become a lazy substitute for thinking and really engaging with the issues we face.

The whip of cords and display of outrage stands in a noble tradition of redirecting us to the God who is God and in whose position we should place no substitute however much religious wrapping we might try to pack around it.  Comedy that might offend should also make us ask whether this is mockery of God or mockery of our own or others’ absurdities.  Usually to be honest it is practices and beliefs that are perceived to be absurd that are the target because that is what comedians have to place in the public arena and work on.

This is where laws against inciting religious hatred can become problematic.  There is a noble tradition of prophetic comment and Jesus would and did find himself incurring the wrath of those who were outraged at him.  We need to treasure the freedom of speech that we have and it is precisely when things cause offence that our first thought should be is this offence because I have departed from the first commandment to have no other gods before God, to place nothing in the place of God.  The laws need to be against inciting hatred, not against legitimate debate.

I think those protesting in Luton were inciting hatred because their placards were indiscriminate in their attack.  Yes things are done by British soldiers at times that we are not proud of.  But there are also things done by them that display incredible restraint in the face of intense provocation and threat.  It is a valid argument to question the validity of military action and we need to hear the wider political ramifications of actions carried out in our name.

It is valid to challenge extremist behaviour.  It is not valid to stir up hatreds against all Muslims in an indiscriminate way.  It is also valid to say that we don’t agree with certain religious claims and for others to say the same to us.  God is bigger than our claims about him.

I feel sorry for those who deliberately mock God.  They have such an empty life with no hope beyond now.  That seems very sad to me, without speculating on what may lie in store for such mockery.  But mocking religious absurdities is not the same thing and there is, as we see with Jesus what we euphemistically call ‘cleansing the temple’, a longstanding tradition of such prophetic challenge.  The test is quite simply does it redirect us to the one who should be the object of our devotions and no other, God, as the first commandment proclaims.

© Ian Black 2009