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Growing up in a little town which nobody has heard of across the Susquehanna River from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, our family attended the Forty Fort United Presbyterian Church.

I have so many warm and encouraging and reassuring memories from that church.

I guess that's a big part of why I tell parents who want their babies baptized to keep their promise about bringing up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord so they aren't deprived of the joys and excitement and security of Christmas, Easter, Sunday school, picnics, Vacation Bible School, musical programs, youth groups, and all of the rest.

Anyway, I've got great memories from Forty Fort.

My 103-year-old Sunday school teacher Grace Blanchard who insisted on teaching only boys began the first class of every month by saying, "Today, it's S-O-S! Same old stuff!"

Then there was Helen Kobusky. I'll never forget that hayride. And to think some kids don't like youth group.

Scouts met in the church.

Miss Jones -- our school's guidance counselor who also taught Sunday school and ran the Yankee Youth Center on Friday nights and made prison wardens look like sissies -- always made us practice our parts for the annual Christmas Eve service in the sanctuary in front of her. I can still hear her yelling, "Enunciate, Bobby Kopp, enunciate!"

David Meeker and I -- members of Boy Scout Troop 122 -- would always chase Mark Tedrow -- a member of Boy Scout Troop 123 -- home in a Christian kind of way after meeting with Pastor Mante to work on our God and Country awards.

I remember the Reverend Harold F. Mante who will always be my model for ministry in the spirit of agaph love. He knew the bad and ugly about everybody but always concentrated on the good in and possible for everybody.

But most of all, I remember sitting in worship with Mom, Dad, Grandma Thelma, and Sister Sue. Long before it became a popular phrase and now long after the phrase has become tired, I experienced the blessed truth that families that pray together stay together.

There's one other memory that kind of bothers me.

My parents used to give me a dollar for "the collection." I used to give God his cut or tithe and spend the rest at the dime store.

And now that many years have passed, I've come to realize the stuff that I bought at the dime store hasn't lasted as long as what I heard and learned and experienced in that old Forty Fort United Presbyterian Church.

Too many of us get sucked into dime store faith. We place our confidence in people and things that are cheap and wear out.

Consider the futility of our fascination with heroes. Hero worship is the real fatal attraction of the generations:

-- Adam and Eve didn't stick to their diets.

-- Moses couldn't cover up a murder or bad temper.

-- Samson's strength was no match for the seductions of Delilah.

-- David remains the greatest king in the history of Israel, but he had zipper problems.

-- Thomas Jefferson could really write about life and liberty while enslaving people.

-- Babe Ruth struck out a lot more than he hit.

-- Mickey Mantle was a drunk.

-- Joe Namath wore panty hose.

-- Michael's gone.

-- Mike Tyson bit off more than he can chew.

-- And before the blinking of a newsman, we find out Evander Holyfield also bit an opponent and has six children by six different women.

-- Tiger Woods can't win every week.

-- Nobody's a favorite with the fans at Three Rivers Stadium for very long.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was right. He said, "Every hero becomes at last a bore."

And it doesn't help when I get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and don't shave. How about you?

When I turned 47, a friend called and said, "Life begins at 45! Then it's patch, patch, patch!" It's too bad we can't cover up our humanity.

That's why God gave us the second of his commandments: "You shall not make for yourself an idol."

It's a simple commandment. God commands rejection of anyone or anything that gets in the way of communion with him.

Martin Luther explained it this way in The Large Catechism (1529): "God will tolerate no presumption and no trust in any other object. He makes no greater demand on us than a hearty trust in him for all blessings."

It's a prohibition against "I-don't-care-if-it-rains-or-freezes-as-long-as-I've-got-my-plastic-Jesus-right-on-the-dashboard-of-my-car" religion.

Just in case anyone assumes our Lord is being a little picky about folks who get into brass plaques, dashboard deities, sports shoe superstars, and other kinds of hero worship, the commandment is a warning against placing trust in the untrustworthy.

The problem with human heroes and "carved idols" is that they don't work. They don't satisfy. They're cheap. They wear out. They don't save. "Whatever we may say about God," Augustine said, "no words or pictures or monuments or whatever will ever come within reach of his dignity." Or as Walter Harrelson wrote in The Ten Commandments and Human Rights (1980), "The commandment insists that there is in fact no reality on earth that suffices to provide the representation of Deity."

That's why Paul so mockingly addressed the people in the middle of the Areopagus, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription, 'To an unknown God' " (see Acts 17:16ff).

In other words, it's a waste of time, effort, and emotion to look to anyone or anything for what only our Lord can provide. It's dime store faith. It's cheap. It wears out. It doesn't work. It doesn't save.

God's people have found the truth in this old world. And it isn't dime store faith. He's Jesus! The knowledge of God in Jesus hangs around our necks like pearls instead of chains.

Ralph Earle, the great biblical scholar who taught at Kansas City's Nazarene Theological Seminary and helped edit The New International Version of the Bible, often told the story of John G. Paton who was a pioneer missionary to the New Hebrides. Dr. Paton soon discovered that while the natives had words for house, tree, stone, and the like, they had no words for love, joy, and peace. Worst of all, they had no word for believe. One day as he sat in his hut filled with frustration, an old native entered and slumped down in a chair. Exhausted from a long journey, the man said, "I'm leaning my whole weight on this chair." "What did you say?" asked Dr. Paton. "I'm leaning," the man repeated, "my whole weight on this chair." Immediately, Dr. Paton cried, "That's it!" And from that day forward for that primitive tribe, "Believe in Jesus" became "Lean your whole weight on Jesus."

That's what this commandment is all about. It's about leaning on God -- trusting him -- for existential and eternal security. No one nor thing can support us like our Lord. There are no substitutes for his ability. Therefore, there are no substitutes for the attention, affection, and allegiance due him alone.

Frederick Buechner put it this way in Wishful Thinking (1973):

Idolatry is the practice of ascribing absolute value to things of relative worth. Under certain circumstances money, patriotism, sexual freedom, moral principles, family loyalty, physical health, social, or intellectual preeminence, and so on are fine things to have around, but to make them your masters, to look to them to justify your life and save your soul is sheerest folly. They just aren't up to it.


But Jesus is!

Praise God!