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October 5, 2008 Prayer of Illumination: So
this is the place, O God, where you have called us to hear with ears that
open to your leading, and we so hate to be led.
This is the place where you have called us to see with our
heart, and our hearts are so cold. This is the place where you have promised to
teach and love us, and we are fed up with empty promises.
So, re-organize our thinking, that in these precious words of ancient
prose, your spirit might erupt new and bold and actually surprise us.
We pray in Christ’s name, Amen. Ten
Commandments God did give to you and me to help us live….that we might
learn to love our God and live together in peace… The
Ten Commandments have become a political volleyball in recent years…..with
politicians and judges fighting over where they can go and how they are to
be used in public places. So,
we open this text with some fear and trembling, knowing that they are fodder
for ideological posturing more times than they are food for spiritual
thought. Steven Colbert in
early September interviewed a Georgia representative--- Lynn Westmoreland,
known for his support of the display of the commandments in public places.
Worth looking up for a predictable Colbert kind of laugh, I didn’t
dare show it, because when pressed by Colbert, Westmoreland couldn’t even
name the 10---he sort of got three and then gave up…I couldn’t show it
because his humiliation would probably be ours….if I were to give a pop
quiz right now, wonder how many of us could name them all.
So I’m asking you to suspend all previous jargon, pre-conceived
notions and impressions of
these very old words…I’m going to ask that you try hard to erase in your
hard drive the image of rules, do’s and don’t’s, the big ethical and
moral code meant to reign us in and restrain our personal conduct….. and
do your best to re-think their value in our ongoing examination of
leadership, Moses, and the Israelite’s wilderness experience.
Martin Luther once wrote: With
practice, one can take the ten commandments on one day, a psalm or chapter
of holy scripture on the next day and use them as flint and steel to kindle
a flame in the heart. That’s
what we’ll try for, ok? A
flame in the heart.
Another of our ancestors in the faith, Karl Barth, wrote that “the
law is the form of the Gospel and the gospel of grace is the content.”
I’m not sure I see them as that distinct, but it’s a good
analogy…..the law by itself can be just what the public perception is:
hard, moralistic rules…..but grace by itself….doesn’t require
much of us…..so the two together do offer a holistic picture of how it is
we will ever get to the place of “living together in peace.”
David Gill, ethics professor, uses this metaphor to think about the
law and grace. The
law is like a cup; the gospel is the coffee. If you have the cup
without the coffee, the empty cup just reminds you of your thirst and what
you are missing; but if you just have the coffee and no cup it is,
practically speaking, impossible to get the coffee into your lived
experience. (journeywithjesus.net)
So whether it’s a cup of coffee or a flame in our heart, one way or
another, we want to try and look again at what is technically called “The
Decalogue” or Ten Words.
The 10 words are grouped in three basic categories……a category
about God, a category about the Sabbath, and a category about living
together in peace. But before we ever get to these three categories….our
text begins with startling purpose: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land
of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
That’s a statement. It’s
not a commandment. It’s
not a question. It’s
not a test. It is the truth that sets the context for all that
follows and it is one of the places where grace enters our text----long
before our New Testament would begin to use that word.
The liberation comes first.
Then…..the 10 words of instruction about what to do with their
liberation come second. This
is really pretty crucial before we ever get to what comes next.
Predating by thousands of years Paul’s words about justification by
grace through faith, the defining moment for the Israelites in the
wilderness is one of grace. I
have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
And even as the people have cried out in weeks past----for what?
For what did you bring us out of the house of slavery for….exactly?
God is about to tell them. So,
as nuances go this is a big one…..because I think we’ve come to think of
these 10 words as a prerequisite to salvation from slavery.
But if you read the text closely, they are instead the resulting
behavior that is expected post-liberation.
It is the same nuance we will argue with our Christian brothers and
sisters when we talk about ethical requirements for heaven.
If I do all the right things will I someday earn enough brownie
points to get into heaven OR
will my guarantee into heaven because of Jesus Christ ….somehow
affect my commitment to do the right thing in response?
So…..let’s jump into the 10 Commandment water.
3 Categories. The
first three commandments are about God.
Worship one God. Make
no other Gods. Respect God’s
name and use it carefully. As
we’ve said in weeks past, this is the fundamental challenge for the
Israelites through their history.
Can God be the number one God, the number one source of life, the
only one on which the people rely?
Can they do it? Can we do it? Walter
Bruggemann says that these three commandments in effect state that God’s
holiness is not available for our partisan control…..that God is not
useful…..in that we cannot use God’s name to sign on to war or to sign
on to a stewardship campaign….that we cannot use God’s name for
anything! (Countering Pharoah-dvd series)
God’s sovereignty is undisputed, then, and not up for discussion.
So this is way different then being careful about using God’s name
alongside some slang or swear word, it’s about using God’s name to
endorse your own agenda….the very thing I was talking about a couple of
weeks ago when I railed a bit about the common use of “God Bless
America” by the politicians---all of them.
Today, I’m feeling a bit vindicated by that rant a bit----because
by extension I think we could say they are breaking one of the commandments
when they do it….presuming that they have control over God’s blessing or
God’s endorsement or God’s anything.
The last six of the words…..concentrate on the way we are with our
neighbors…in our community….in the social places where our behaviors
really do affect one another…..This is the real shift….the real radical
piece of discovery for these folks who have spent their lives entrenched in
a very different reality…..the world of Pharoah’s Egypt laid down one
set of guidelines…..make bricks and you will eat.
Make a lot of bricks, and you will do well.
Get out of line and you’ll die for it.
Complain about your conditions and you’ll be called un-patriotic,
oh, I mean, a bad slave. Work
long hours with no hope for a pension while the pharaoh and his henchmen are
living the life of luxury. Bow
down to foreign gods, and you will do even better.
But the 10 words stop these Israelites dead in their wilderness
tracks and say: we’re not going to do it that way anymore.
Liberated people behave this way:
they take care of their old folks.
They don’t murder people….and notice it doesn’t say except
if you’re in a war….don’t murder people, because people---all
people belong to God; don’t cheat on your significant other….honor the
relationships and commitments you’ve made even if every television or
movie star or marriage statistic would lead you to believe it’s really
ok…..; don’t steal….don’t lie…..don’t want what your neighbor
has……so all of these lumped together have the same message…..to live
together in peace requires of you an honoring of the neighborhood….a sense
that the fate of the neighborhood rests in your hands…..what you do
matters, how much you take as your own matters, how much you take from
someone else matters, whether you slam your friends behind their backs or to
their face matters, whether you cheat on your taxes matters…..because the
fate of the neighborhood, or at least the peace of the neighborhood (and
I’m using that term broadly) requires that you think about someone besides
yourself! These six
commandments aren’t trying to curtail your fun or keep you from enjoying
life…..they are trying to offer life…..and a life that is so removed in
form, function or relevance from anything in Pharoah’s regime.
In Pharoah’s regime, it’s all about getting to the top of the
pyramid…..in God’s kingdom it’s all about making a one level dwelling
where no one ego outshines another, where all have enough to eat, and where
equitable justice is sustainable because we are all looking out for the
other. This sounds so
idealistic and counter-cultural, even in our day, but think how these
Israelites must have reacted to it……no culture, no state, no place that
they would encounter would subscribe to such a far out set of
beliefs---words---commandments. Of
course you kill your neighbor if he offends you…..that’s just the
way…..well, it’s not God’s way.
To bear up under the weight of this law took some backbone, and I
think we have to give it to these folks for even considering this plan!
What? Moses?
You brought us out in the desert for this? I picture Moses…..saying…..I didn’t know
either…..isn’t this the wildest thing you ever heard?
So, if this were the context with which we really, truly understood
these commandments, maybe having them more prominently displayed would make
some sense….but if they are just a symbol for all the ways that Christians
would like to tie people down and keep them in their places….well,
that’s another story. Before
I let myself be distracted, we need to get to the third category.
Sabbath. I should just have silence here. That might demonstrate it the most. Friday night at the Taize service we went 10 minutes over!
Scandalous! The way this service works, for those of you who
haven’t ever been, is that we have a series of short, repetitive songs we
sing, interspersed with some scripture and a long period of silence. In between every song and every scripture we try to
intentionally pause…so as not to rush through the service.
When we first started doing Taize, we actually clocked those pauses
so we could make sure we were taking adequate time. Now, we just kind of let the spirit guide us.
Friday night, I was aware that we were going long…..and it didn’t
really matter to me….hungry for quiet, hungry for an extended “pause”,
I was in no rush to push the pieces along and neither were my partners in
leadership at that service.
For those of us who come to Taize, we have this respite from the
frenetic pace the world sets for us once a month on Friday nights….for
most of us, this is a luxury we cannot even picture…..for one hour or
maybe a bit more. But God
calls us to that same place of reverence, not one hour of one month, but 24
hours of every week! Can
we actually picture doing this? Completely
checking out of the rat race for 24 hours of every week?
I expect that just the mere mention of that makes some of us start to
get the jitters. 24 hours away
from television? Horrors!
24 hours away from news? Unthinkable!
24 hours away from our work? Incomprehensible!
So while the other nine words of the Decalogue can at least get a nod
from us---oh yeah, those sound manageable….I love God alone, I’ll love
my neighbor as best as I can…..the concept of any real Sabbath---24
hours----scares the living daylights out of us!
What? Would that mean
spending time in my own company? But
I don’t really like myself all that much.
What? Would that
mean resting…….but I wouldn’t get through my weekend list. What?
Would that mean letting go of the world that so wants me to either
make bricks or buy bricks or invest bricks or throw perfectly good bricks
away or even re-cycle bricks…..letting go of that world…..to ponder the
benefit of another world----the one that is based on a promise that God’s
care in our lives is secure and so important that we don’t have to slave
away day in and day out proving ourselves….being the most productive, or
the most clever, or the most convincing, or the most articulate……we
don’t have to slave away day in and day out beating ourselves up for not
being the best or not being the most alternative or not being the best
friend or not being the best provider…….we don’t have to slave away
day in and day out for anything…..because…… we are not slaves…..we
are free to hit the “pause” button….to escape from Pharoah’s grasp,
if only for 24 hours each week, and consider another way, another
grasp….the grasp that heals and inspires and brings meaning and relevance
and love to our lives…….we won’t know real peace……without the
discipline of Sabbath……and without Sabbath we are destined to just make
bricks…..day after day after day….brick after brick and never even see
the palace being built with them.
Ok, so I expect some of you were wagering how long it was going to
take me to include Geneva in a sermon.
That’s my new dog. She’s
a little bit of a thing and all puppy.
She cannot contain her enthusiasm for life---chewing, barking,
annoying the cats. She seems
completely unaware that the world is in such a mess right now! She
is relentless in her pursuit of our cats.
Every time they enter the room, she jumps all over them, she can’t
stop chasing them. On their side, they are behaving predictably.
They get just out of her reach and swat at her.
If she corners them they hiss and jump over her and away.
They think they are so superior.
But still she persists. She
persists to the point that I find myself saying things to her like:
Geneva, they are never going to
like you if you keep being such a little pest. Ok, so there’s a hint at how far gone I am---talking
to my dog this way….but yesterday something kind of interesting happened.
The morning hours were just as I described….jump, pester, make the
cats run away…..and then in the middle of the afternoon when the cat was
sunning in the kitchen, Geneva went up to Zwingli (one of the cats) and with
her tale wagging wildly (communicating I think that she really wanted to be
jumping all over her)….she edged up to Zwingli the cat and started licking
her face, a big sloppy, indiscriminate lick---all over her eyes and nose…
And Zwingli didn’t move….or lash out at her….or hiss….or run
away. She just received the
affection. Geneva seems
oblivious to Pharoah’s rule that dogs and cats aren’t supposed to get
along. So, it might be a
stretch, but I think this is what it means to participate in the discipline
of a radical Sabbath. You
keep after it…you practice separating yourself from the world view,
Pharoah’s world view that would claim that dogs and cats are always
enemies…..you practice separating yourself from that view and that set of
beliefs, and you just stay after that 24 hours after 24 hours until one day
dogs and cats aren’t enemies any more…peace looks probable and possible
and the promise makes sense….Go Geneva….the little queen of Sabbath
living.
The Sabbath table waits. That
table where around this world today people will gather----to practice living
in covenant, to practice Sabbath living, to be sustained for the most
radical way of being that the world has ever known…..the way that will
have us….one day live together in peace.
Amen.
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