Keep It Holy

A sermon preached at Old South Congregational Church, Hallowell, Maine, March 19, 2006.

Text: Exodus 20:1-17

The Rev. Susan M. Reisert, Minister

Sermon prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always acceptable in thy sight, O God, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.

An inappropriate joke: Moses comes down from the mountain and gathers together the people for his big announcement. And when the people have gathered all around him, he declares: “Well, I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is that I got him down to ten. The bad news is that adultery is still on the list.”

The Ten Commandments are a central part of our lives of faith. Many of us probably memorized them as children.

The Ten Commandments have now become a cultural phenomenon, of sorts, and a symbol of our own culture wars. Battles over whether or not they should be displayed in public buildings have raged in various parts of the country.

The Ten Commandments, then, have been placed in something of a difficult spot with an either/or approach. Either you follow them rigidly and entirely—they are called Commandments, after all—or you dismiss them as cute relics of the past. Somewhere in this either/or situation, we have missed something valuable, something important, something much more significant to our lives of faith.

This past Tuesday, during Bible study, we spent a moment considering the very first part of Abram’s story that we read last week, “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.” And be blameless. We stopped for moment there and wondered what it meant. What did it mean to be blameless? It certainly implies good behavior. But, we wondered how Abram would know how to behave without some rules and guidelines. The Ten Commandments had not been presented yet when God calls Abram. Without clear rules and guidelines, how would one know good behavior? What would it mean to be blameless?

Last week, we talked a about the grand story—the unfolding story of God and God’s people. We were reminded that we are a people of the story. Today, we remember another part of the story while we also strive to appreciate the Ten Commandments as part of that story as opposed to the Ten Commandments being placed in a vacuum, to be either mindlessly and legalistically followed or to be dismissed as irrelevant to today’s living.

Through the past few weeks, we have been highlighting the early covenants and agreements, the early setting of the relationship between God and God’s people. We considered the end of the story of Noah and his sons and the ark and the animals. After the Flood, God set the bow in the clouds and declared that he would never again destroy the earth through a flood: “I do set my bow in the clouds and it shall be a sign of the everlasting covenant between me and you and every living creature that is upon the earth.”

The covenant that God made was a universal one, made between God and every living creature upon the earth. Though called a covenant, an agreement, the living creatures with whom God made the covenant really had no responsibilities in maintaining the covenant. God promised never again to destroy the earth through a flood. The sign of the bow in the clouds would be his reminder. The human beings had little to do with the whole thing, but to be witnesses of God’s promise to every living creature.

Last week, we focused on Abraham in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis. The covenant takes a new turn with a narrower agreement and with a sign that is marked on the human beings—though just the male ones. Even though quite advanced in age, Abram is called by God and is told that he will be the father of a multitude, the father of nations. He is renamed Abraham and learns that the sign of the covenant is circumcision.

The covenant becomes a little narrower, with Abraham and his descendants as party of the covenant with God. And, this time, a mark to symbolize belonging in the covenant—a mark indicated on the men and on the male descendants.

Between Abraham’s story and the Ten Commandments, between Genesis 17 and Exodus 20 (where we find ourselves today), a lot happens. I can’t remotely do justice to the intervening story, but it is worth noting the highlights in order to understand the Ten Commandments in context; for the context brings new life to this ancient code.

Although they were both elderly, Abraham and Sarah had a son together, Isaac (Abraham also had a son, Ishmael, born to Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar). Isaac married Rebekah. Rebekah gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob.

Jacob ended up stealing the birthright of his slightly older brother, Eaau (with, I should add, the approval of his mother). And Jacob was offered his father’s blessing, when Isaac, whose eyesight was not so good, thought he was blessing his firstborn. Jacob marries Leah and Rachel. He flees for a while and then comes back.

Jacob famously wrestles God and is renamed Israel.

Jacob had twelve sons, which would come to form the twelve tribes. One of his sons was Joseph. Joseph was Jacob’s favorite, so, eventually, all of his brothers got together and sold him into slavery in Egypt and convinced the father that he was dead.

In Egypt, Joseph ended up doing quite well for himself. Through information he gained from a dream, he was able to warn Pharoah about a coming famine. Such information did not reach Joseph’s family, however, back in the land of Canaan. As they suffered during the famine, they eventually went to Egypt for help. They were reunited with Joseph. The whole family moved to Egypt, became increasingly numerous, and was eventually enslaved.

Then, there is Moses, rescued from the river by Pharoah’s daughter. He flees to the desert as a young man, encounters God in a burning bush and then delivers the people from slavery and bondage, finding their way in their travels to Mt. Sinai where Moses receives the Ten Commandments, where we find the sense of covenant in a very different way than the first one with the rainbow. In offering the Ten Commandments to the people, all of the work of the agreement is really on the people and not so much on God.

Wow, what a story. And, we’re still in the beginning of the story. What is important for us to have in our minds at this point, as we consider the Ten Commandments, is to ensure that we place them in context. In this narrative of the unfolding relationship between God and God’s people, it is significant to wonder: When they receive the Ten Commandments, God’s people (the descendants of Abraham) were very recently enslaved and held in bondage. In receiving the Ten Commandments, have they only been bound by another? Are the Ten Commandments offered to them as a prison of legalism and rigidity or are they offered as a sign of freedom and liberation?

When we pull the Ten Commandments off the page and out of the story, when we fashion them onto plaques and chisel them into stone tablets, we lose sight of this important dynamic. The Ten Commandments were not offered just anywhere at anytime. Their timing had a purpose.

The people had only recently been freed from bondage and slavery. Why would God enslave them in the prison of a rigid law with no purpose or vision?

The first part of the Commandments establishes our relationship with God. First: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. Two: you shall not make for yourself an idol. Three: you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain. Four: remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

The second part of the Commandments instructs our relationships with each other. Five: Honor your father and your mother. Six: you shall not murder. Seven: you shall not commit adultery. Eight: you shall not steal. Nine: you shall not give false testimony. Ten: you shall not covet your neighbor’s house or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The Commandments were not given to squelch everyone’s fun, nor were they given to be slavishly followed. Quite the opposite, actually. They are a method, if you will, for living a life in freedom and in hope. They are offered as a gift of grace to a special people.

The Ten Commandments offer critical guidance for how we interact with God and with each other. For, it is through our relationship with God and our relationships with each other that we may live a life worthy of God’s calling. The Commandments are the guidelines for living a meaningful life—living in freedom and perhaps to bring freedom to others.

Our human life is not simply a life of pain and drudgery and chaos. Our human life has the potential for holiness. And, God offers some clear guidelines, so that those of us lacking the wherewithal to live as Abram lived, blameless, might have a chance to live in righteousness and truth.

The Ten Commandments are the words God speaks to all whom He has set free. And God wants to know our response. These words are intended not as a document, but as a dialogue. When Moses gathers the people together to receive these words, the address from God comes not as, “If you read my message.” No, God’s preface to these words is, “If you hear my voice.” And the promise to the community that responds in obedience to his voice is that they will be God’s “treasured possession” (Exodus 19:5). The words are addressed to the community. But they are a conditional promise. God’s treasured possession is neither the community that has memorized these ten words, nor the community that has been successful in having these words posted for all to see. God’s treasured possession is the community who responds, “All the words the Lord has spoken we will do” (Exodus 24:3b, NRSV).

The tragedy of Israel was that they frequently forgot to fulfill their promise to God, the promise to structure their community life in ways that would keep them free, that would keep them holy. In fact, they traded their freedom in God for bondage to a golden calf in less than 40 days. It’s a sobering reminder to the Church in the season of Lent, this season of 40 days. Sometimes it takes as long as 40 days to remove distractions so we can renew our focus on God. But sometimes it takes less than 40 days to drift into old, freedom-destroying bondages.

Moses was so angered by the people’s 40-day drift away from God that he raced down the mountain and broke the tablets with the ten words. To this day we get confused about which is the bigger issue. Breaking (or banishing) the tablets always gets the headlines, but breaking the covenant is the real tragedy. In time, God promised a new covenant, written not on tablets of stone, but on the human heart. He did it in part, I think, to give us a clearer image of how these words are intended to work. They were never meant to be stone-cold words. They were always meant to be life-giving words, the words of God, reflecting the heart of God, pulsing through us, giving life with every beat. But even life-giving words don’t give life if they’re written on stone-cold hearts.

In this season of Lent we hear God’s voice again: “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession.”

[The preceding four paragraphs are borrowed from “How to Stay Free,” a sermon by Jim Fitzgerald, offered in Preacher’s Magazine, Lent/Easter 2006, www.preachersmagazine.org.]

As we continue on our journey through Lent, let us renew ourselves in keeping it holy, renewing our journey of faith in righteousness and truth, allowing God’s Spirit to blow through us, leading us away from sin and bondage to new life and freedom—that we not only live in hope and freedom, but that we may also bring hope and freedom to this world in which we live. Thanks be to God. Amen.