1st READING: Exodus 20:1-212nd READING: Matthew 22:34-40
SERMON ‘Love God, and do what you like’
Let us pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, o God our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Picture the scene:
the wind is blowing mightily.
The very air is alive with crackling tension.
Thunder thunders,
lightning flashes,
there is a sound of trumpets in the air....
swirling smoke and cloud cover the mountaintop.
Far down below, in the shadow of Mt. Sinai, people huddle together trembling, afraid...
trying to find a little distance from the terror and the noise
and the all-pervading, utterly terrifying,
voice of the all-powerful God.
Too much.
It’s all too much to bear – and if they hear much more,
the people feel that they will surely die....
The description of the giving of the ten commandments is certainly not filled
with fluffy bunnies, pretty butterflies, or people skipping merrily along the way.
Nor, for that matter, does it feature Charlton Heston in glorious cinemascope,
with his long, grey beardy locks blowing in the wind –
as much as I, and Hollywood, certainly would like it to.
Rather, it is quite literally awe-some; designed to make you pay attention.
Something big is happening here, something of tremendous importance:
God... speaks.
The people of God tremble.
They think of death...
and miss the point completely:
God speaks:
ten words.
Words of life, not death.
Words of liberation, not captivity.
‘Law’...and...’liberation’?
But surely, ‘law’ and ‘liberation’ in the same sentence must be a bit of an oxymoron:
are contradictory?
Don’t quite compute.
Or, do they?
An Orthodox Jewish reading of the ten commandments has as the first commandment:
‘I am the Lord you God who brought you up out of the
land of Egypt, out of bondage and slavery.’
Bill Wylie-Kellermann, writing for the magazine Sojourners asks:
‘This is a command?’
And he continues, by answering his own question:
that it’s a command that focuses upon the identity of the people of Israel...
and of what God has done...
it’s a command that implies to those who have ears to hear it:
‘Know that whose you are precedes what you do.’
You are God’s people...
this, then, is how to live as God’s people...
But are the 10 commandments merely just a bunch of
rules and regulations designed to spoil our fun?
As someone who’s been a very keen student of church law,
of course, I’d be inclined to say ‘no!’
And I’d add, that law – rules, regulations, codes of practice,
however you might describe them –
often get a bad press, which, I think, is a little unfair.
On the other hand, it is fair to say that the manner in which the
Ten Commandments are phrased don’t seem to help:
‘thou shallt not...’ is not the most positive of starting phrases, after all.
The phrase is a little like a verbal slapping before you’ve actually done anything.
‘Don’t do that!’
slap...
‘Stop it!’
slap...
It feels almost designed to beat us into submission...
The ‘thou shallt nots’ are all too easy to caricature, and in doing so,
misrepresent what I believe to be the actual intent of the commandments.
At this point, I’m hoping you’ve all been given a copy
of ‘the positive 10’ in your orders of service ...[copied below]
When I stumbled across this version of the commandments,
it really helped me see them with fresh eyes – and do feel free to take them
home with you and pin to your fridge. On the back of the service sheet,
in the ‘food for the journey’ section, you’re invited to sit with the
commandments over this coming week...
and I’ll be interested to hear where some of your thinking takes you!
Now, let’s go back to that comment about knowing ‘whose you are’ preceding
‘what you do’...
And while we’re at it, let’s also lose the word ‘commandment’ –
in the original context the Ten Commandments were known as the ‘decalogue’ –
‘ten words.’
The ten words are almost a foundational document of liberation:
And that liberation is founded on relationship.
Let’s have a look at the first four commands, or ‘words’...
These first four ‘words’ concern God in relation to God’s people,
and the people in relation to their God...
Just ‘whose’ are these people?
They belong – are in relationship with – the One who freed them from captivity,
who took them out of Egypt, and on a journey into the wilderness wastes,
a journey where daily, they saw God’s saving hand at work:
keeping them fed and watered on the way.
A rocky journey at times, and this is not just a comment on the terrain:
Mumblings, murmurings, complaining:
even doing a little revisionist history concerning their time in Egypt –
to the point where some were inclined to believe that slavery, on the whole,
was actually pretty darned good.
But now, at the foot of Mt Sinai, they are no longer Pharoah’s:
they are God’s particular people, and God begins the process of
guiding them into a particular way of being.
Having liberated them for a particular purpose,
they are now in the process of learning what it is to live in relationship with God...
and, as we look at the other six ‘words’,
learning how to live in relationship with each other - their neighbour.
Ten words,
calling God’s people to serve God, and each other, in love,
Ten words that are a radical call for commitment to God and to neighbour...
and extending to all creation.
Ten words that continue to confirm my growing suspicion that God is indeed a Presbyterian.
After all, these words enable life to be lived decently, and in good order...
God, in the giving of these words to the ones liberated from Egypt,
provides a way in which order is created out of the former chaos
and reinforces that, even in the wilderness, life can be meaningful, and fruitful.
Importantly, that in the midst of it all, that there should be time to rest:
a clear message that there is more to life than work –
that we are defined by being in God, not by what we do.
These ten words paint an alternative picture to the Israelites previous life in Egypt:
a place where there was little interest in regeneration and rest, and no freedom....
In contrast to the Egyptian custom,
the commandments don’t sanction a human king or a leader to assert power over,
or demand allegiance from the people.
The community isn’t going to be defined according to the whims of power-hungry
human rulers. Instead the commandments demand loyalty and obedience to God alone.
The commandments also serve to formalize the connection and the
relationship between the realms of God and this particular people.
As Patrick Miller eloquently expresses it:
‘...neither community, nor deity have separate existences
once the covenant is established. Even though both experience
real abandonment on the part of the other for a time, they are forever linked.’
But what about us, the spiritual descendants of the children of Israel?
What about us, God’s people, the church...
God’s living stones...
called into community...
called to tell God’s story?
We certainly haven’t been released from captivity in Egypt...
And given the sudden drop in temperature over the last couple of days,
it’s not as if we’ve been stumbling about the searingly hot desert wilderness of Sinai.
So, what might these ten words have to say to us in our situation,
as we sit comfortably in our seats here in church?
I’m fairly sure that most of us here are aware of the ongoing talk of the church
being in a kind of terminal decline.
Of talk concerning how we, in the Church of Scotland in particular,
no longer seem to hold the privileged place in society that we used to,
when it came to having some kind of public influence.
Everything seems to be shrinking away...
the glory days seem so long ago.
In that sense are we, in a different way to the Israelites, wandering in the wilderness?
Is there a small sense of terror, as we watch the depletion of resources
and of the depletion of people and skills, of time and talents?
And like the Israelites, do we long for a return to the good old days?
Journeying in the wilderness can be terrifying –
all the securities and apparent guarantees of survival are gone.
But the wilderness could also provide the church with an opportunity
to re-define itself according to what matters most,
and in doing so, find fresh ways of touching the hearts of all we encounter;
for in the wilderness, free from unnecessary distractions, we are reminded of whose we are:
God’s particular people, in this particular time and place –
in our parish,
in our homes,
or wherever, and whoever, we are with.
What might our lives look like if we lived the Ten Commandments
as invitations to freedom, to life, rather than a set of rules to be followed?
What would life be like if we lived in the awareness that life comes from God,
that we don’t need to worship the false God of consumerism,
or bow down to the idol of celebrity?
What if we celebrated that we can still freely and publicly speak
God’s name in praise and prayer?
What if we recognised that life was about more than work and
took up God’s invitation to Sabbath?
What if we took up God’s invitation
to respect people,
to honour life,
and to honour relationships?
And what if we were on the receiving end of that respect and honour?
What would that feel like?
What would life be like?
Writer Joe Roos notes that:
‘the Ten Commandments don't begin with:
"Here are ten commandments, learn them by rote,
or
"Here are ten commandments, obey them."
Instead, they begin with a sweeping announcement of freedom:
'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery'.
We will probably always think of the declarations that follow as the Ten Commandments.
But we could, and probably should, think of them as invitations to God's liberation -
the ‘positive’ ten.
As we learn what it is to walk in the freedom that God gives to each one of us,
I’m reminded of the words of 5th century theologian, Augustine, who famously said:
‘love God, and do what you like’...
meaning, that although there’ll be the occasional glitch,
for we’re none of us perfect yet...
if we love God, what we like will tend to be that which pleases God
for we are his, and he is ours, and we live within the immense bounds of his amazing grace.
Let us pray:
God of justice and liberation,
may we, as your people, learn to speak
with echoes of your life in our hearts and minds,
nurturing ways of behaving that are just and compassionate.
Free us as we begin today.
God of justice and liberation,
may we, as your church, learn from you
what it is to be rightly angered at injustice in the world.
May we, as individuals and communities,
see the speck in our own eye as we pass judgement on the log in another's;
and learn to challenge one another with sensitivity and care.
God of justice and liberation,
may we, as your church in the world,
be free of all that holds us back from loving you radically and openly.
In the name of the justice-bringer and liberator,
Amen.*
[*adapted from 'Roots']
The Positive 10:
• Put God First
• Give worth to the one who gives worth to you.
• Use God’s name with respect and love.
• Spend time thinking about God.
• Honour and love your whole family.
• Live towards other people with love and generosity.
• Find the richness in faithfulness towards others.
• Celebrate what you have rather than dwell on what you don’t.
• Speak well of others and truthfully to yourself.
• Why get down about what others have when you can share what you have with others?
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