Sermon from Lent 3B

Lent 3B

March 11, 2012

Exodus 20:1-17

When I was in high school, I thought things were pretty unfair.  I didn’t think it was fair that the other kids I went to school with got to go to parties and I didn’t.  I didn’t think it was fair that the other kids got to stay out past midnight on the weekends but my curfew was 11 o’ clock.  I really didn’t think it was fair that a couple years later, my parents extended curfew for my brother and sister…and when I turned 21, they admitted that maybe it wasn’t all that fair that they had been more lenient with my brother and sister than they had been with me, their first born.  But by that time…and even more so in the time since, I have come to appreciate the rules that my parents laid out for me when I was a teenager.  I know that those rules were intended to keep me safe and out of trouble...even though, for my parents, it meant putting up with some teenage angst every once in a while.

I don’t know if you would call it teenage angst that God and Moses and Aaron were putting up with…it was probably more like desert angst, or wilderness angst…whatever it was, there was some angst going around.  The Israelites had just been rescued from the hands of their slave masters in Egypt and were now in the midst of their journey to the Promised Land…the land that God had pledged to provide to Abraham, Sarah and their descendants.  But it wasn’t exactly a drive down I-70 from Lawrence to Kansas City…there were issues along the way, as tends to happen when you are on foot in the wilderness and there aren’t any oases nearby…and the people weren’t afraid to let Moses and Aaron hear how unfair they thought it was.

“Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”

“If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

When the Israelites cried out in protest of their conditions, God listened to their complaints and mercifully provided them with water from a rock, quail at twilight and manna in the morning.  Later, when Amalek attacked the Israelites, God made the Israelites victorious over their enemies. And, in Chapter 19, they finally reached Mount Sinai.  It is here, at Sinai, that God entered into a covenant with the Israelites.  A covenant unlike those God made with Abraham and Noah.  This new covenant that God was about to forge with the Israelites was a mutual covenant, one that depended on both the actions of God and the actions of the Israelites. 

“You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. ⁵Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, ⁶but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”

Now we stand with Moses, whom God has bid to come up Mount Sinai alone, and it is now that Moses receive the Ten Commandments.  The Ten Commandments were an outline of the rules that the Israelites needed to follow if they wanted to be God’s people.  They are a set of rules that show a way of life that has its sights set on peace and justice and was intended to put us in a right relationship with our neighbors and the community around us.  And this way of life lived in right relationship with our neighbors is informed by a right relationship with God. 

The Ten Commandments, as provided to Moses for the use of the Israelites, were carved into stone and given to the people as a way of showing the Israelites how they, as the holy nation of God, could live as a sacred community…worshiping God and serving their neighbors.  

And they do the same thing for us, showing us ways in which our relationship of God informs our relationship with those around us.  For example, we worship God together as community because we are intended to live together as community and the commandments show us how to best do this.          

At the same time, however, the Ten Commandments are much more than just rules.  They are reminders of who we are, whose we are, and what we were made for. 

In the formulations of some of the Commandments, we see the creation of the identity that belonged to the Israelites.  The commandments begin with a statement about God, the one who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt.  In the third commandment, there is a reminder that God created the heavens and the earth and the waters below the earth and then, on the seventh day, God RESTED.  In the fourth commandment there is a reminder of the ancestors who were first promised a land set apart just for them and their offspring. 

For Moses and the Israelites, and for us, there is in the Ten Commandments, not just a way of being in relationship with one another, but there is also an identity…as created, called, and claimed children of a God who is faithful and loving, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  We were created to live lives that show others the love of God, by being people who value justice, mercy, and love for our neighbors.  

And this is the good news that comes out of the Ten Commandments, God is patient with us…God is willing to give us extra chances to get it right…because left to our own devices, we’d be in trouble.  It wasn’t even before Moses came down the mountain with the commandments that the people had created the golden calf, and God was ready to wipe out this people whom God had said earlier would be a priestly people and a holy nation.  But Moses intervened and God changed God’s mind and the Israelites were spared.  And we continue to see a progression of how God is willing to look for different ways of connecting with God’s people. 

When we didn’t hold up our end of the covenant, God tried different ways of getting through to us.  But the problem is that none of us can keep all 10 commandments at all times.  Our sinful nature has bound in us the inability to be perfect, whether we like it or not.  That being the case, even if we try with all our might, there is nothing that we can do on our own to become perfect. 

So God came down in Jesus Christ and formed a new covenant, one in which Christ’s faithfulness was enough for all of us.  We are joined to Christ in this covenant through our baptism and we remember the covenant each time we come to the table, joining our brothers and sisters of all times and all places in a meal that gives us a foretaste of the feast to come. 

The commandments help us in our life together, they help us to live in community and in our relationship with God.  But they also remind us of who we are, whose we are, and what we were made for.