Lent 3
March 7, 2021
William G Carter
Then God spoke all these
words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land
of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before
me.
You shall not make for yourself an
idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on
the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not
bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a
jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and
the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love
to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my
commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of
the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit
anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep
it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the
seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any
work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock,
or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day;
therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honor your father and your mother,
so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is
giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness
against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s
house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or
ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Here is a text we have heard many times before. So many times, in fact, that we are certain sure we know what the Ten Commandments are going to say even before they speak.
This was brought home to me by a teenager in our church family. I don’t remember the setting, but I remember what he said. We were reviewing some of the basic texts in the Bible, those passages which we encourage one another to learn and memorize. Not only that, can you put in your own words? This tall kid blurted out, “I can tell you what the Ten Commandments have to say?” We turned to look at him, ready for an answer. He cleared his throat and said, “No!” “No what?”
He said, “That’s my summary of the Ten Commandments: No! That’s what they say. No!”
He had a point. Eight of the Ten begin with a negative:
No other gods. No idols. No abuse of God’s
name.
No murder. No adultery. No stealing. No false
witness. No coveting.
“Honor your father and mother” means “no
disrespect for your parents.”
Now, he knew the basic content. But he also took all the oxygen out of the room. Nobody was smiling. All the surging energy of teenagers evaporated. And I was struck that this is how a lot of people summarize religion, that religion primarily tells you what not to do, and the successful religious person is the one who enjoys not doing all those things.
Perhaps you have known some of those successfully religious people. They take pride in their restraint. They don’t need to have any fun. They are certain that those who get out of line will be punished, and that gives them great comfort. And they love the Ten Commandments!
What they are missing, I’m afraid, are three things. First, they miss the fact that the Ten Commandments weren’t given to them, any more than they were given to you and me. Second, they miss the truth about what it means to be human. Third, they can’t quite swallow what the Bible itself says about the Commandments.
Let’s
take these up in order.
First, the Ten Commandments were not given to you and me. Were you there when the mountain started to shake? Was I present when the trumpets blasted and the thunder roared and the sky turned black? No, we weren’t there. But a tribe of liberated slaves was there. The commandments were given to them. This is critically important.
There has been an infamous attempt to separate the Commandments from their setting. They were not given as abstract principles for all times and in all places. No, these are the words of God for a tribe of liberated Hebrew slaves. The setting is in the very first verse. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
You know the story. The old movie is rerun every year. Moses returns to Egypt and says to Pharoah, “Let my people go.” There is a contest back and forth. The God of Moses, the Lord God, prevails. His prophet Moses leads the slaves out of Egypt and into the freedom of the desert. Thanks to the powerful works of God, they escape their slavery. And it’s all because God had set his heart on them.
As we heard last week, God put a claim on Abraham and Sarah, their children, and their children’s children – even when they found themselves in Egypt. And it’s in the important Burning Bush moment when God calls Moses aside and says, “I have seen the misery of my people.” (My people).
And right before God speaks the Ten Commandments, God looks over that hapless, disorganized horde of former slaves. God smiles, and declares, “The whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” In a King James voice, God says, “You shall be my ‘peculiar treasure’” (That’s the King James phrase)” This is who they are – and then God adds a little two-letter word – “if they obey God’s voice and keep the covenant.”
What’s their side of covenant? The Ten Words, the Ten Commandments. They can’t ignore God, they can’t use God, or they can’t belittle God in any way. They can’t plunder one another, lie to one another, murder one another, or want one another’s stuff. Plus they gotta take care of Mom and Pop and spend one day out of seven remembering who made them and who has released them from slavery. This covenant is for the freed slaves.
Second, there is the truth about what it means to be human. That’s the truth that, when someone tells us what to do, we push against it. It seems to be a necessary individuation, as old as Adam and Eve, as fresh as the two- year-old who is learning to think for herself. “I can do what I want.” Ever hear anybody talk like that? Act like that?
God did not create us as robots. God did not plant an obedience chip in our operating system. Obedience is a learned behavior, usually after some bumps and bruises from leaning in our own direction. It does not come easily. If mandated, it can become another form of slavery. And the human tendency is to push back, and some times – many times – to get away with it.
Picture the man who says to his pastor, “The lung scan didn’t turn out very well. I’m full of cancer.” The sympathetic pastor says, “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?” The man says, “Can you pick up a carton of Marlboros and drop them by the house?” The doctor had said, “Smoking is killing you.” But the patient thinks maybe he will push back. Do it his way.
Now, I don’t judge this. I know what it’s like to be created with a free will by a God who loves us. And most of the sidewalk psychologists can take a lesson from the apostle Paul as he admits his own urges. “I don’t understand my own actions,” he writes in one of his letters. “If I hadn’t been for the [commandments of God], I would not have known sin. I wouldn’t know what it is to covet, if the Ten Commandments had not said, “Thou shall not covet.”
This is a most profound insight into who we are and what we push against. He goes on to say, “Sin seized an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me, and killed me... I do not do the good that I want to do.” (Romans 7:7-21). For this reason, Martin Luther taught that the Ten Commandments not only teach what to do; they expose what we are ultimately unable to do, at least unable to do under our own power. And that is why we need the Gospel of Jesus Christ – to expose, to forgive, to heal, and to restore.
Just remember the conversation Jesus had one day. A young man approaches, kneels before him, and says, “Good Teacher, what must I do to gain the life of God’s eternity?” Jesus smiles at him, loves him, and says, “You know the Ten Commandments, right?”
The young man says, “Oh, yes, yes, I’ve done all those things my whole life long.” Jesus smiles again, loves him, and says, “You’re missing only one thing. Give it all up. Give up your riches, give up your superiority, give it all away, and heaven will fill you with another kind of riches.” And the man can’t do it. He still wanted to live under his own steam. He would not entrust his life, his abilities, his failures to the grace of God’s eternity (Mark 10:17-27). This is the dark side of what it means to be human.
And so, here’s the third thing we miss if we reduce a living faith to merely saying No ten times: we miss the joy of saying Yes. When scripture speaks of the Ten Commandments and all the other teachings of God, the scripture speaks of delight. There is joy when we align ourselves with God’s will. There is freedom when we bind ourselves to God’s promises.
We could hear it in our opening hymn, which is a paraphrase of Psalm 19, a Torah psalm:
Your law, O
Lord is perfect, the simple making wise;
How pure
are your commandments, enlightening my eyes!
More to be
sought than riches, your words are my soul’s wealth;
Their taste is sweet like honey, imparting life and health.
Sweet like honey – that’s how it tastes to align your life to the commandments. To put it as simply as I know how, what God calls us to do is good for us. It creates wellness. It grounds us in good health. And as Jesus himself declares, the summary of all the commandments is love – the love of God and the love of neighbor. We do not cheapen our Creator. We do not harm the neighbor. All the commanded restraint is to make room for love, respect, justice, and grace.
So perhaps we are another tribe of liberated slaves, you and I. We did not stand at the foot of Mount Sinai when God carved the commandments into tablets of stone. But as those who belong to the tribe of Jesus Christ, we are also learning that we are not slaves to our own worst impulses. We sin, we make mistakes, sometimes we do terrible things to one another or ourselves.
Yet beneath it all, and above it all, God’s blessing to the Hebrews is also a blessing we claim in the Christ who says to us, “You are my peculiar treasures, a holy tribe, and all of you are the priesthood of all believers.” In this way, the Ten Commandments come to us as a gift. They teach us how to live. They promise to save us from destroying ourselves. That’s good news.
The poet Tom Troeger offers this in one of his reflections on the “no’s” and the “yes’s” of God’s commandments. Listen:
God marked a line and told the sea / its surging tides and waves were freeTo travel up the sloping strand / but not to overtake the land.
God set one limit in the glade / where tempting fruited branches swayed
And that first limit stands behind / the limits that the law defined.
The line, the limit, and the law / are patterns meant to help us draw
a bound between what life requires / and all the things our heart desires.
But discontent with finite powers, / we reach to take what is not ours
And then defend our claim by force / and swerve from life’s intended course.
And
then comes the lesson. Listen to this:
But free when freely we accept / the sacred bounds that must be kept.[1]
[1] Thomas H. Troeger, “God Marked a
Line and Told the Sea,” The Presbyterian Hymnal #283. 1989.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment