October 5 -- Covenant & Commandments

Well today is a good day, because there is nothing but good in the Ten Commandments!  On October 5, 2014, thank God for the Ten Commandments!  

These are not rules meant to break us down and take our fun away, they are rules meant to build us up and bind us together, even more in Christ.  They are rules--that is, ways of living--that enrich our lives, not detract.  And in this boundary-less society, these 10 commandments are liberating. 

Heather and I had a friend in college who once told us about her childhood:  how she had parents who never really gave her any rules.  One of my most vivid memories of her recollections is how she talked about playing out in the neighborhood before supper, and about the same time the street lights came on, all the mothers and fathers were calling their kids, her friends, in for “dinnertime!”, but little Suzanne never had that curfew or boundaries.  I imagine a little girl left at dusk in a lonely cul-de-sac with street lights sputtering on and the faint sounds and smells of families in their warm houses around her:  healthy suppers and family conversation around the dinner table.

The 10 Commandments are a warm house, and without them we are left out.  They are not rules meant to break us down, they are rules -- ways of living -- meant to build us up, nurture and sustain us.  They are rules meant to free us even more.  The one left outside is the prisoner, the one who is gathered in and given structure, routine, work, play, community -- that’s where we find freedom in Christ.  The 10 Commandments, God’s covenant with the wandering Israelites then, is still God’s grace and love poured out on us today in 2014!

Rule #1: I am the Lord your God, I’m the one who brought you out of Egypt.  (Remember your story.)  Don’t make anything else your god.  

There is so much freedom in that!  We are tempted and even taught to bow down and worship so many other things: money, fame, power and authority, sex, sports, security and military might, family, technology, entertainment...the list goes on.  What is it for you that draws you away from trusting God, and letting God be God?  So many foreign gods as we wander through the wilderness of this life.  But, sisters and brothers in Christ, we don’t have to let those other things rule us.  There is so much freedom in this first and most important commandment.  All the other commandments, actually, point us back to this one: 

Let God be God.  We don’t have to play that role anymore, or seek it out anywhere else: it’s right here.  Let God be God.  Don’t forget who got us all here in the first place.  Put your faith only in one thing -- not in money, not in fame or power or strength, or even family or friends, not in the the technologies of the future, and not in “the way things were”.   Let’s try again to stop worshiping those false idols and start worshiping God.  Worship comes from the same root as worthy, and if you’re wondering what it is you worship, just look at your credit card bill.  That’s a spiritual document -- it’s where you put your money, it’s what’s worthy of your money (actually its all God’s money).  Where are you spending what God has entrusted to you?    

We don’t have to be slaves to those things anymore.  This commandment is calling us out of self-serving, idol-serving lifestyles, and into lives of service, of worship, of trusting God.  This is grace poured out on us.  We don’t have to seek after and bow down to foreign gods and graven images any more!

Rule #2: Don’t make wrongful use of God’s name.  Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.  Yes, watch your language.  But even more, this is a follow-up on the first and most important commandment.  Almost, a bit of a corrective, a clarification:

“OK, God, if I’m supposed to trust you so much, I guess I’m supposed to just sit here and let you do everything...let you find me a parking spot, let you ace my math test, let you take care of starving children and homeless veterans, and abused seniors.  You’re God, not me, so I’ll let you take care of it...”  

This commandment expounds on the first.  Don’t just throw your hands up and hope God takes care of everything, all our world’s problems.  That’s missing the point.  Live as if it all depended on us -- hunger, housing, health care -- don’t call on God’s name for that.  [Dali Lama refusing to pray for world peace.]  I heard it said once “Live as if it all depended on you, and pray as if it all depends on God.”  Don’t use God’s name in vain, asking for God to fix things, and ducking our own culpability and responsibility.   The trash on the ground, and in the ocean, and in the sky: that’s on us!  All the violence we’ve perpetrated and endured as a human species: that’s on us.  Don’t use God’s name in vain, asking God to just take it all away, and getting angry at God when it doesn’t all just disappear.   Let’s take responsibility with our words and with our actions.  That’s liberating.  We don’t have to live helplessly.  This commandment frees us to live and speak helpfully.

Rule #3.  Take a break...to remember that first commandment.  Practice, live out these commandments, don’t just memorize and recite them.  Make sabbath a part of your weekly life.  

We have no boundaries anymore.  With smart phones and wireless connections, we mix up free time and work time all the time.  We’ve lost the ability to take it easy.  But even God rests on the seventh day.  This commandment calls us to stop, and go to church -- not to see what’s in it for me -- but rather to worship God.  To remember our story, to gather around the gifts of God: Word, Wine, Water, Wheat.  We forget so easily that God is God.  I wonder if we’ll remember it by this afternoon, when all our games are on, our families are beaconing, our cell phones are buzzing with little tasks in preparation for Monday morning...See?  This commandment frees us to stop.  Breathe.  Remember how we got here.  Remember that God will bring us through.  And -- I think this part has been lost too -- the Sabbath is to be joyful.  People get stressed out being told they should take a break, so that’s missing the point too.  The sabbath is meant for joy.  Let me put it like this: the sabbath is for sex, healthy, fun sex.  Morning at church -- remembering and giving thanks that God is God.  And then a little afternoon delight.  [Tell ‘em you heard it here!]  Yes!  You get what I’m saying, though?  The sabbath is for relaxation.  The sabbath is for re-creation.  The sabbath is God’s gift, the way we were intended.  We were made for frolicking.  That’s the original state of things, right?  Adam and Eve in the garden -- what do you think they were doing?  Just sitting there, checking their work email accounts?  They were having fun.  This commandment frees us to have fun.

I’m not going to talk through every single commandment here, but let me just say that when God says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, who freed you,” is an intro for continued and enhanced liberation, and that’s what these commandments are:  Sabbath liberates God’s people from only working.  We have a freer society when people aren’t stealing from each other, when people aren’t killing each other -- how locked up would you feel if you’re always fearing for you life?  Or fearing that your spouse is committing adultery, or fearing that someone wants what you have?  See, each of these commandments point us, continues to lead us out of bondage and into freedom.  Out of fear and into life.   “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”  AMEN.