Mar. 15, 2009 - No Other Gods - Exodus 20:1-17
I confess that every time I think about the Ten Commandments, I am reminded of that wonderful 1956 film directed by Cecil B. DeMille – the one starring Charlton Heston as Moses that so powerfully depicts the life of Moses, the miracles of God that resulted in the 10 plagues, freeing of the Hebrew slaves and the journey through the wilderness.
And for anyone who has ever watched the movie, the scene of the giving of the Ten Commandments is as exciting as it is dramatic. Fire and lightning, the two tablets of stone carved and engraved by the finger of God – and the voice coming from above speaking out the commandments as they are engraved.
Did you know that the voice of God in that scene is actually the slightly slowed and slightly deepened voices of Heston and DeMille?
It’s a great movie, but for most Christians, the movie is more exciting – and perhaps even more memorable - than those commandments. We somehow have missed the point of the commandments and the society of God they were intended to guard and guide. We’d like to imagine that the God of the First Testament is a different God than the one who came to redeem us by his sacrificial death on the cross, that the God of love of the Second Testament is separate from or at least nullifies the angry God of the first. We’d like to throw out so much of the Bible we find offensive – including the 10 commandments because it cramps our style and limits our freedom.
But when we do that, we forget why the law was given and the grace – yes the grace – that the Lord showed when they were presented for our good and our benefit.
------------------------------------------
As Presbyterians, and people who affirm that we are saved by grace rather than by works, we chafe at the most popular thinking of the commandments: the belief that the commandments were given to show us that it is impossible to keep those commandments, that we stand condemned by God for this inability and that God’s grace and redemption are given as the only remedy for living a life pleasing to God.
This speaks of a God of wrath, a holy parent who raises children by telling them how worthless they are, how despicable and how unworthy – a God who sets up children for failure, wrath and shame.
Rather than try to live the commandments, we’d rather just ignore them. Yet, in doing so, we risk ignoring God, calling God a liar, and even making God irrelevant in our lives.
-----------------------------------------------
If we look more closely at the beginning of this morning’s text, the preamble as it were, we can see that these were not given because God hates us or condemns us. Verse 2 says:
‘ I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt , out of the house of slavery ’
I am the Lord your God, who brought you from slavery to freedom, from bondage to one nation to being a nation of your own. I am the Lord your God who saved you from death, delivered you from danger and leads you through the wilderness. I am the Lord your God who promises you a land flowing with milk and honey, supplies all your needs and cares for your every necessity. I am the God who loves you and chooses you to be my people.
The commandments start with a call to remember. They start with a reminder of what God has done. They are about grace and love and salvation that have already been demonstrated by a loving God and who now wants to show us how we can live in peace and harmony.
----------------------------------------------
These were a people who had been only slaves before now, whose laws and rules had been dictated to them, forced upon them by their captors ad enforced by those who used them as animals. Now that they are free, they need to know fundamentally the rules that speak simply of the situations and choices they will be making in everyday life in the realm of God.
First, we must love and honor God. We do this by worshipping no other Gods, honoring the name of God and keeping a Sabbath for rest and worship.
Second, we must love and honor one another. We do this by honoring parents, protecting life and property of others as well as ourselves.
They are two halves of a greater whole. For those of us who might think that faith is a purely personal and spiritual matter, the commandments remind us that we cannot truly love and honor God if we cannot love and honor one another. For those of us who might think that the only thing that matters is a social gospel, one that shows our faith by how se serve the less fortunate in the world, the commandments remind us that we cannot truly love and honor One another if we cannot love and honor the God who created it all.
We hear these commandments echoed in the Jesus Creed, the two commandments given by Jesus that are the focus of our joint worship series with our brothers and sisters at the American Lutheran church.
-------------------------------------------
Just what are the alternatives to these commandments? [1]
1. We can choose to worship some other God - because being merely human, we will worship someone or something.
2. We can worship something less than God. Idols come in all forms. We may not bow before graven images but many worship at the feet of money, power, or even football heroes.
3. We can trivialize God by forgetting that God’s name is holy, by using the Holy name as a curse instead of a blessing.
4. We can make gods of ourselves by thinking that we are too important, that our activities are too important, that we need more time fulfill our agendas because we are working for our salvation and we need to earn a few more brownie points for God - NOT.
5. Rather than honor our parents, we can live as if we did it all ourselves. We can choose to live without gratitude, without acknowledging the contributions others have made for our well-being. Without our parents we would not be here. Without their care, we would not have survived to be where and who we are now.
6. The last commands are to respect life and marriage and property and truth. To see results of ignoring these commands we need look no farther than the jail a few blocks away or the front page of the newspaper. We can choose to ignore these commands and we can murder and steal and lie and covet because we think of ourselves as more important than our neighbor and because we look at our needs as more important than the needs of others. Maybe we can link this new commandment to the one that lets us worship ourselves. Certainly, if we are the most important thing in the world, what we do to others doesn’t really matter.
-------------------------------------------------------
But others do matter. God matters. The story of God breaking into space and time and revealing the Holy self is real and true, simple and sure.
The commands of God are not grievous. The commands of God are not intended to beat us down, torture us,
The commands of God are life and health and peace. They are a way through the wilderness of our soul and through the shadows of doubt. They are the light in the darkness that lead us through all of the barren passages of life and lead us to the glory and joy and redemption of the cross.
----------------------------------
Out theme through Lent this year is that of a journey through the wilderness. We show our progress visually by the candles we light in the entrance hall and by the steady progression of Lenten banners we hang on the walls of our sanctuary.
As we continue our journey, our personal way of the cross, perhaps this is a good time to meditate on these commands of God and write them on our hearts and minds and souls. Amen.
[1] Thanks to David F. Wells: God Spoke These Words (Exodus 20:1-17), The Christian Century, March 15, 2000 p. 301.
