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Sermon - March 8th, 2009
Back to the Basics II
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Mark 8:31-38, Exodus 20:1-17
Joan Chittister begins her book on the Ten Commandments by saying, “We need to think again about the moral fibers of society.” And she’s right, we do. We need to think about what it means to be a holy person. In this time, when many people are saying we are in the “great emergence” of a newly shaped world, we need to know who we are and whose we are and what that means. We live in a time when what we do on a daily basis affects not just those around us, but the whole world. So, what better time to go back to the basics, the foundation of our moral code--the Ten Commandments.
They were given to a nation of slaves who had just got their freedom. And you can take the slave out of slavery, but you can’t necessarily take the slavery out of a slave. At least, not in one dramatic political act. It was something that required a lifetime, a generation, maybe even forever. Even today we do not clearly distinguish being free to work or being a slave to our work.
And the Ten Commandments are not without controversy…believe it or not. One controversy that seems to rise up regularly is where the Ten Commandments can be displayed. We all want security and order and justice in our lives. Will preserving the Ten Commandments as the foundation of our faith help us do that? The Ten Commandments:
1. I am the Lord your God.
2. You shall have no other gods before me.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain.
4. Remember to keep holy the Sabbath.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness.
10. You shall not covet.
The Ten Commandments begin with the grounding of our relationship with God. “I am God who brought you out of Egypt and out of the house of bondage.” God was not many gods. God was not just the Lord of heaven and earth. God was God who acted in history, who freed the slaves, who brings justice, who gives life, whose love embraces the lowly, the downtrodden, the powerless. God is a partner in our destiny. God is the great “I am.” And you shall have no other gods before God.
All of us have other gods. Seriously. The power of this commandment is that it calls us continually to remember what is ultimately important in life. Where do we put our hopes and dreams and our attention? Who and what do we give the power? Does our self-confidence come from other people or from deep within us? Do we go to other things to ease the pain of living? Do we surround ourselves with idols that block our vision of what is real and authentic? There are even times when we do our idol worship in the name of God. We become the center of the universe with our own opinions and agendas. There are times when we make God into our own image instead of remember that God created us in God’s own image. There are times when we worship our religion, rather than our God.
This commandment reminds us that God is more than we can imagine, a lot more. God is not of human making. God is not anything material. The first commandment tells us to examine again and again what it is that we have put before God and what we have made into gods.
Paul Tillich defined God as whatever is a person’s ultimate concern. God is that which elicits our deepest feelings and our singular allegiance. If this definition is accepted then there are no atheists. Every life has an ultimate concern, which means every life has a god. The question is not, then, is there a god? But what god do we serve? What is our ultimate concern?
The next commandment is you shall not take the name of God in vain. Most people believe this commandment refers to profanity that uses the word “God” or “Jesus.” It is much more than that. The Hebrew people were taught that to speak the holy name of God was to defile God. No creature could possess God or have power over God, so no creature could utter God’s holy name. Names disclosed another’s character. God is beyond every image, every claim, and every apprehension of God’s nature. The name of God was too holy to be spoken. This is the Jewish tradition.
Then along came Jesus who brought the presence of God much closer to us. Maybe too close. We have become best friends with Jesus and sometimes even arrogant in that friendship. We use Jesus’ name to prove our piety. We quote scripture as if God is on our side. We use God’s name to advance our own agenda.
This commandment tells us not to use God’s name as if we know the mind of God. We take the name of God in vain when we make God responsible for who we despise, who we hurt, the war we are fighting, the people we are excluding. This commandment is about leaving God out of it when God has nothing to do with it. The Jews decided not to risk it and do not use the holy name of God at all. Maybe it’s a good idea.
The next commandment is God’s gift to us. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. This was a gift from God to an enslaved people. God gave them Sabbath. Of course, sometimes we can be skeptical about free gifts, so God made it part of the Ten Commandments. This is the one commandment of the Ten that has an explanation and a rationale. On the seventh day, do not work, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and everything, but rested on the seventh. Remember is a clue. Remember means there is something that already happened to remember. And in this case that something is the covenant. The Sabbath was a gift. Thomas Cahill points out the “no ancient society before the Jews had a day of rest.” He calls it “surely one of the simplest and sanest recommendations any god has ever made.”
The Exodus began with God announcing to Moses through a burning bush, “I am the Lord your God, who will bring you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” And in the midst of the Ten Commandments is “I am the Lord your God who gives you rest.” That rest, the Sabbath is a gift, a gift of grace. A gift that was to be extended to others—sons, daughters, servants, livestock, and even foreigners. It was a gift for all of humanity and creation, to who ever would receive it. Why? Because God works and God rests. Each has its place, we work to survive, so God set a boundary on work and gave us a holy honor to rest.
The challenge in today’s world is to keep the holiness in our rest. Many have turned the holiness into legalism, restricting the celebration right out of the Sabbath. Jesus refused the legalism of the Sabbath. His answer was “the Sabbath was made for human kind, and not human kind for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). Jesus was saying: God gave us the Sabbath so that we might enjoy rest. But some of us have been so zealous in piling restriction upon restriction rather than simply rejoicing in God’s generosity. We try to institutionalize grace; but God simply cannot be contained in any institution. Thanks be to God!!!
The Sabbath is a once-a-week gift—meant to be pure grace. Not earned even by six days of labor. Nor was it meant only for God’s chosen people. The Sabbath is a gift for all of creation. It is not a burden and it cannot be reduced to a religious debate or another day of frantic activity.
It was given to us as an honor and a privilege, as a day to be free from worrying about our daily sustenance. Unfortunately, it is a luxury that some cannot afford. The Sabbath, and it doesn’t matter what day of the week it is, for me it is Friday, is an act of faith. It is proclaiming that there is more to life than work. God rested and the universe kept running. We can trust our world will keep running while we take a day-deep breath. It is not about piety. It is about living a holy life in relationship with God. It is about God being our God rather than our work, or money, or what ever else we claim is more importation. It is about honoring God by receiving this simple gift—a day of rest from our labor. Otherwise, every day, every moment would be an average, routine, working day. We would lose our sense of joy and gratitude and beauty. “And God looked and saw that it was good.” When we pause and take in a breath and realize this, then we are keeping the commandments, we are living a holy life, we are honoring God, and we are honoring ourselves.
Peter was listening to Jesus intently that day when Jesus was teaching about suffering and rejection and death. Jesus talked about this very openly and honestly and Peter stepped in wanting to play God. Jesus rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. For you are setting your mind on human things, not divine things.” And that was so true. Bless Peter’s soul, because he often takes the words right out of our mouths. Peter must have thought that, in the name of God, he would not let anything happen to Jesus. But Jesus’ words state that clearly he had no idea what the mind of God was. “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life.” God is God, and you shall have no other gods before God, and not take God’s name in vain. So take up your cross and follow Jesus. For those who lose their life will save it and those who save their life will lose it. These are powerful and odd sounding words in our culture. Yet, the state of the economy and the world and shown us that we do have many gods, we do take God’s name in vain, and we do work seven days a week, not once taking a holy break to honor where all of this has come from. The state of the world shows us that our relationship with our creator is fractured to the very core of our being. Because the Ten Commandments are not about law and order. They are about our relationship with God and creation and each other. We are to be transformed by them. God has given us the responsibility of sculpting our lives out of our own lump of clay. These ten commandments are words about praise, human responsibility, honesty, veracity, desire, justice, and simplicity in life. They are a way of life and a gift from God.
Amen.