Lent III, Year B
Exodus, 20:1-17
Romans, 7:13-25
John, 2:13-22
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A couple of summers ago, I was swimming in the ocean, relatively far out, and I saw a dorsal fin, just feet from me, heading directly at me. I panicked, about had a heart attack and rushed to shore. Of course, it was almost certainly a porpoise. When I told one of the beloved lawyers of our congregation about my overly active imagination, he told me that when he swam in the ocean he never worried about sharks eating him. "Sharks don't eat lawyers," he said. "It's a matter of professional courtesy."
All of our lawyer jokes arise from our culture's mixed feelings about the law. We highly value self-reliance and independence; we romanticize the cowboy image; we have enormous confidence in our own judgment to determine justice. And at this time of year, as I start fumbling with my 1040 and my Schedule SE and all the other confusing tax rules and regulations, I find my appreciation of the law seriously diminished.
I suppose that if the Commissioner of the IRS had brought the Internal Revenue Code down from Mt. Sinai that the Jews also would have had a much different attitude about the law. But they received the law of Moses, the Torah, and the Jews understood it as God's gift to them. They loved it – not just the Ten Commandments, but all 613 stipulations, some as detailed, obscure, and esoteric as the Internal Revenue Code. The Jews understood the law as part of God's ongoing creative activity; it brought forth order out of chaos. They understood the law as forging their identity. They understood the law as evidence of God's love.
Usually we think of law as being restricting and annoying, a burden we tolerate with varying degrees of humor and grumbling. The Jews understood God's law as liberating. Today's psalm praises the law as more desirable than gold, sweeter than honey and the honey-comb. The law is life-giving and enlightening; it rejoices the heart. Keeping the law is a reward in itself. Keeping the law doesn't earn God's favor. God already loves us. Keeping the law is a way to experience and know God's love.
The presentation of the Ten Commandments does not include a scolding demand to obey, but a proclamation of freedom. In Exodus today, God tells Moses, "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." God's law is about freedom, not slavery. We think about freedom as coming from wealth and comfort, as being autonomous, free of responsibility and obligations. But Judaism and Christianity say that true freedom comes from serving God and other people; it comes from accepting responsibility and building relationships with other people.
The starting point for the Ten Commandments is what God has done: God has delivered Israel out of slavery. The Ten Commandments describe what this new life looks like. They describe how we should respond to God so that he may be a bigger part of our lives. We keep the Commandments out of gratitude for what God has done and out of self-interest – the desire for a richer, fuller life. The first four commandments are about our direct relationship to God, and the next six are about our relationship with other people. But really all of them are about our obligations to God because our relationships with all other people – family, friends, strangers, enemies – are sacred, because our relationships with other people involve God.
On the back of your bulletin, there's a quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. He has written and read extensively of the Desert Fathers and Mothers – those passionate Christians who went out into the Egyptian desert in the fourth century to escape society and focus on God. Archbishop Williams finds in their writings evidence that a healthy spirituality, a healthy relationship with God, with eternal truth and love, requires having strong relationships with other people: "relation with eternal truth and love simply doesn't happen without mending our relations with Tom, Dick, and Harriet. The actual substance of our relation with eternal truth and love is bound up with how we manage the proximity of these human neighbors."1
So how do we do that? First, we must have no other God. But, alas, we worship a host of other gods: wealth, social status, acclaim, accomplishment, power. We put our trust in many things other than God. God wants to liberate us from our false gods. We're to trust him alone.
Second, make no idols. This is not a ban against making images, but a ban against worshiping anything we make. We must not limit God to what we know, to what we experience. While we experience God and know something about his ways, ultimately he is a mystery, far beyond our comprehension. We approach him in reverence and awe.
Third, do not take God's name in vain. We must not use his name to support human agendas. All of the time, we confuse what we want with what God wants. We try to enlist God to serve us, to serve our vanity. God's name is holy, not to be manipulated for our narrow purposes. We should only call upon God to bring him into our lives so that our lives serve and glorify him. We call upon God to transform us.
Fourth, keep the sabbath. As in God's work of creation, we are to rest on the seventh day and honor God. Even the Creator rests, and we are not greater than the Creator. We will come undone if we work all of the time, if we rely only upon our efforts. We shouldn't trust in our hard work. We trust in God.
Fifth, honor your father and your mother. We honor God, the source of all life, and so we honor the source of our lives. This is not a one way street. It implies that fathers and mothers should tend to their children with the same love, care, mercy, and forbearance we receive from our heavenly Father.
Sixth, do not commit murder. Life is precious, and it's not ours to take. We have to honor and serve life. The sanctity of life has to inform the way we deal with lots of complex, thorny, heart-rending matters: war, abortion, capital punishment, end of life issues, even the environment. The sanctity of life includes the way we treat other people, especially the poor, the hungry, the vulnerable, the sick, the stranger. Jesus said, "You have heard that is was said to the men of old, ‘Thou shalt not murder; and whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother [his fellow human being] shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the judgment, and whoever says, ‘You cursed fool!' shall be liable to the hell of fire." (Mt 5:21-22) In other words, any abuse or neglect – physical or verbal – denies life.
Seventh, do not commit adultery. It's a call to fidelity and integrity, to being trustworthy. We honor our word, our commitments. Our culture does dirt on sexuality – vulgarizes and exploits this tremendous gift from God. It encourages us to live for ourselves, to be intimate without being intimate, to divorce the body from the soul. Jesus says, "I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery." (Mt. 5:27) We're to treat others with gentleness and respect and tenderness – not as objects, not as commodities for our own satisfaction.
Eighth, do not steal. It's not the loss of property that is most troubling. Stealing comes from a lack of respect for others. It violates people. Jesus tells a parable about a person going to a marriage feast and taking a seat of honor. (Lk 14:7-11) Stealing exalts ourselves. We are to be humble.
Ninth, do not lie. We can have no self-respect unless we're honest; we can have no strong relationships (with God, with other people, with ourselves) unless we're honest. Bearing false witness also includes slandering. It works malice, breaking down relationships.
Tenth, do not covet. We are jealous and envious about things we don't need. God alone is what we need. Things – a better house, a servant, a car – won't make our lives better, and we are foolish to define ourselves by what we possess or want to possess. Coveting makes us dissatisfied and leads to grumbling and gossiping. What makes life better is our growth in character that comes from strong relationships with God and with other people. To combat covetousness, the Church encourages us to tithe, to be generous, to sacrifice.
Now two follow-up points. First, as we hear these commandments, most of us would cry out after each one, "Lord, have mercy upon me." And God does. God forgives. That's the good news. God frees us from sin and death, frees us from our past, and in him we have strength to amend our lives, to grow, to be transformed. In reflecting on the Ten Commandments, we recognize an eleventh, an implicit, commandment: be merciful to one another, forgive one another, forebear one another.
Second, occasionally the media will direct our attention to heated controversies about the role of the Ten Commandments in our society, usually whether we should post them in courthouses and schools. Our world diverts us to secondary issues all of the time. Ultimately, I don't much care if the Ten Commandments are in courthouses and schools. I want the Ten Commandments in my heart and mind, in my words and deeds. Jesus told us he came to fulfill the Law and the prophets, and week by week the gospel shows us that Jesus embodies the Ten Commandments. That's why we welcome him into our lives and receive him in the Blessed Sacrament – that's why the Blessed Sacrament is far sweeter even than honey and the honey-comb.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1. Rowan Williams, Where God Happens.
© 2006 Lane John Davenport
