Pentecost 17
October 5, 2014
Exodus 20:1-17
Pop Quiz friends!!
Let’s check your knowledge of the Ten Commandments.
1)
Who can name
all Ten Commandments in order? (put your bulletins down)
2)
Bonus question
– how many versions of the Ten Commandments are there?
a. 3 – Jewish (combines the covet commandments, 1st
commandment is “I am the lord your God who brought you out of the hand of
Egypt. 2nd commandment “you shall have no other gods, no graven
images”)
i.
Roman Catholic
and Lutheran and same
ii.
Reformed
(combines covet commandments, 2nd commandment is graven image)
Congratulations, you “passed” the test.
Now, before we move on to speak a bit about the commandments, we
need to do a bit of catching up on what has happened since the Israelites have
arrived at Sinai. After their arrival at
Mount Sinai, God spoke to Moses from the cloud that encompassed the mountain
and gave him instructions on what to tell the people before Moses went up the
mountain to receive the commandments. Moses is told that only he and his brother, Aaron,
were to go up to the top of the mountain.
If anyone dared to follow him or eavesdrop on their conversation, things
would end badly. The other important
thing that occurred when the people reached Mount Sinai is that God consecrated
the people, making them a holy people. God
did this as part of entering into a covenant with the people. But this covenant was not like the one that
God had made with Abraham, which placed no conditions that would rely on
Abraham’s faithfulness. Instead, this
covenant was dependent on the people listening to God’s voice and keeping up
their end of the covenant. In other
words, whereas Abraham couldn’t mess things up, the Israelites could…or,
looking at it from another angle, the covenant God entered into with Abraham
was focused on the faithfulness of God.
This covenant is focused upon the faithfulness of the people.
Ok, so there’s that.
What about these commandments in and of themselves. Surely I could preach a fire and brimstone
sermon about the importance of the Ten Commandments and how our world is
heading down a path in which the commandments are more and more forgotten. Certainly it would fit in with what we see in
the news and on television. Murders
happening each day, more and more parts of the world entering into the war
against Isis, tales of adultery in our newspapers and throughout daytime soaps
and prime time dramas, contests teaching folks to cheat each other out of
something that someone else has (which is the true definition of covet…to
desire something so bad, you are willing to go any lengths to get it), and very
few instances in our television landscape of folks going to church on Sunday
morning. And, as we near ever closer to election day, we see God being used
over and over as a political ploy to get the public on your side. As if saying “God bless America” enough times
will ensure that that senate seat is yours.
But I think, as much as it is appropriate to our times, on some level
that would be missing the point.
It is true that God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments as a
way of helping them to live well with one another, which was probably becoming
increasingly difficult as they wandered the desert. It’s like on the first day of football
practice when the players sit down with the coach for the first times, some
rookies and some veterans and the coach says, ok, if we are going to be
successful this season, these are the ground rules. And like with the ground rules put in place
for a football team, these Ten Commandments aren’t just rules, they also help
to form an identity. The identity of the
Michigan football team is different than the identity of the Michigan State
football team, and not because of win-loss records for the season…but because
Brady Hoke and Mark Dantonio do things differently...their ground rules are
different, their play books are different.
And so we have, with the giving of the Ten Commandments, the
continuation of God’s play book…only this time, we are seeing not what God is
promising to provide for the Israelites, what they can expect from God, but
rather what God expects in return. And
God set the bar pretty high. I can
almost guarantee that before the day is out, just about all of us will have
broken at least one commandment. Maybe you have already broken one this
morning. Maybe you will break one
watching the Lions or Tigers games this afternoon.
But I will argue that the easiest one to break is the one that, in
theory, is the easiest to keep. And that
is the first commandment. You shall have
no other Gods.
“But pastor, that is why we are here” we say. “But Jen, that is why you serve the church,”
I said to myself last night. And that is
true. We are in church this morning to worship God. To live into the identity we have been given
as God’s children. But do our hearts cling firmly to this identity or do we let
other things get in the way? Here is what Martin Luther had to say in the Large
Catechism, a volume written to help clergy instruct their congregations.
“Many a one thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when
he has money and possessions; he trusts in them and boasts of them with such
firmness and assurance as to care for no one. Lo, such a man also has a god,
Mammon by name, i.e., money and possessions, on which he sets all his heart,
and which is also the most common idol on earth. He who has money and
possessions feels secure, and is joyful and undismayed as though he were
sitting in the midst of Paradise. On the other hand, he who has none doubts and
is despondent, as though he knew of no God. For very few are to be found who
are of good cheer, and who neither mourn nor complain if they have not Mammon.
This [care and desire for money] sticks and clings to our nature, even to the
grave.
So, too, whoever trusts and boasts that he possesses great skill,
prudence, power, favor friendship, and honor has also a god, but not this true
and only God. This appears again when you notice how presumptuous, secure, and
proud people are because of such possessions, and how despondent when they no
longer exist or are withdrawn. Therefore I repeat that the chief explanation of
this point is that to have a god is to have something in which the heart
entirely trusts”
It is so easy to fall into a way of living in which other gods have
taken ahold of our attention…gods that are easier to please because they
require so much less of us. But the
thing is, if we can keep this one commandment, the rest all fall into
place. When we put all of our trust and confidence
in God, when we place God firmly in our hearts, when we put God above
everything else, our lives are changed in such a way that is visible to our
neighbors because when our lives are changed by God’s love, we reflect that
love to the world. It doesn’t matter how
much money we have, what car we drive, what clothes we wear, but that we live
lives that show radical love to our neighbor while not being afraid to take the
time to make sure that we stay healthy in order to keep on loving. So as we go out into the world this week, go
knowing that to keep the first commandment means this – to hold God firmly in
our hearts, to trust that he will provide for all of our needs, even if that
means some of our prayers receive a no response, and to live into the reality
that God’s love is life changing.
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