Lies and the False gods Who Tell Them

John 8:31-36

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Jesus says here that when we continue in his word… in other words, when we live our lives the Jesus Way and walk through life on the path of love, compassion, inclusion, generosity, and grace… the WALKING of that path is what makes a person truly a disciple.  When you walk through life THAT way, you will discover the truth.  And the truth is, THAT way of walking makes you free.  Jesus goes on to let us know that when we DON’T walk the Jesus path, we inevitably end up walking a path of hatred, cruelty, exclusion, crudeness, and selfishness… a path that then traps you, imprisons you, and enslaves you in a life without dignity, purpose, or meaning.  

500 years ago Martin Luther discovered that although this truth from John’s Gospel was clear to him, the regular people who sat in the pews were lost.  They had been so confused and manipulated over the years that Luther felt the need to go back to the very beginning to teach this truth.  For him that meant starting with the life-walking-path God first laid out… the Ten Commandments.  He did that by preaching hour long sermons. You’ll be relieved to hear… I ain’t doin’ that today or any day!  Instead, let’s just look at a couple to get a feel for how the commandments are meant to guide us walking the Jesus Way.

Luther’s method was to lay out the commandment:  “You shall have no other gods” is the first one. Then he would ask rhetorically, “What does this mean?” Then he’d give his answer, “We should fear, love and trust God above all things.”  If you look at Luther’s Small Catechism you’ll see he starts the explanation to every commandment with “We should fear and love God” so we need to get straight from the beginning that Luther isn’t telling us we need to be SCARED of God.  God loves us without limit and without condition after all.  Instead, Luther’s trying to remind us that we need to always keep in mind the unmatched POWER of God… the All Knowing Nature of God… that when it comes to knowing what is best for humans, God literally wrote the book!  No one else even comes close, which is why when people suggest they know a better way than God’s way, it always leads to problems.

In the summer of 1934, Dorothy Thompson, who at the time was writing for the Saturday Evening Post about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis was suddenly expelled from Germany.  When asked why she had been expelled she said, “My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all. That is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people…. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail.  I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris. Worse things can happen….”  

Breaking this first commandment happens when a person either elevates themselves or others elevate a person to a place they suppose is equal to or even superior to God.  Breaking this commandment happens when people dismiss or distain GOD’S guidelines for living in this world (these ten commandments) and adopt or promote a different way… their own WAY.  That is why whenever any of the other commandments are trampled, this first commandment always gets trampled as well in the stampede.

Let’s use, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” as an example of how that happens.  Luther asks, “What does this mean?”  He says, “We should fear and love God, and so we should not tell lies about our neighbor, nor betray, slander, or defame him, but should apologize for him, speak well of him, and interpret charitably all that he does.”

The sin doesn’t just stop with the lie itself you see, because in telling the lie… the lier is insisting that they have a better way of living (lying) than the way God has laid out for us to live (telling the truth).  Now, lying isn’t exclusive to politics, but our current political climate makes for some ready examples.  Lying, as Hannah Arendt tells us, leads the followers of those telling the lie into a cynicism where they begin to actually admire the tactical cleverness of using lies!  With that admiration, the liars continue to lift up lies as a better WAY, a better Truth and a better LIFE than God’s Way and their followers then begin walking the path of lies themselves.  And there it is!  A leader who has set themself up as having a better path for people to walk than the path God and Jesus call us to walk and then insisting their followers walk their path, instead of God’s.  Lies are never good, brazen lies are worse, and lies that lead others down a path where they end up running roughshod over all the other commandments inevitably leads to greater and greater horrors in our world. 

So if you continue in Jesus’ word… (in other words) if you continue to walk the Jesus Way… the Way of God’s Commandments (which Jesus summed up as loving God and loving neighbor)… that means you are truly Jesus’ disciples; in the walking you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.  For those who continue in another person’s word?  For those who walk and promote a path other than the Jesus Way?  The person selling that alternative path is not only lying to you but is also telling you they know better than God.  THAT, my friends, is not the way, the truth, or the life and… IT IS NOT SO AMONG YOU!  Amen.