There is a sense in which God is saying to us today, “Are you finished talking now? Can I say something?” [pause]
Are we finished doing the God-playing? Are we finished doling out advice like we know everything there is to know? Are we finished pontificating? Are we finished with our opinion columns and news spins and ego-driven debates? Are we finished with our need to have the last word?
“Are you done now?” God asks. After all this chaos in the world: after shooting after shooting? After hunger and drought and disease and war? After division and isolation. After pride and ignorance. After years and years of wandering through the wilderness. Is it OK if God says something now?
“Hear O Israel” is the title for this Sunday. Not the 10 Commandments. “Hear O Israel” sandwiches the Ten Commandments in our text. It comes at the beginning and it comes at the end, like how many of us cross+ ourselves at the beginning and at the end of our worship service. (That means it’s very important.) When it’s at the beginning and at the end, you know God’s got something to say.
Are you finished breaking down community, damaging relationships with each other, with your own bodies, with the planet itself and with me? OK, then listen to this...
“I am the Lord your God. Don’t have any other gods.
“Don’t live and hoard and speak as if I don’t exist.”
I was at a worship service a few weeks ago, where the words of the Confession and Forgiveness at the beginning of the services just hit me. (Ever happen to you? We say this stuff all the time...but.) Forgive us for planning for the future as if you didn’t exist. We hoard and invest and save and store up treasures as if God wasn’t even real!
We say God’s real, we go to church, but how quickly we forget or loose trust in God’s providence.
“Can I say something now?” God asks. “I am the Lord your God. I’ve got you. Don’t put other things in front of me.”
Now we clarify commandment by commandment:
Don’t waste my name on frivolity, excess and vanity. “Dear God, find me a parking space. Dear God, let the Chargers win today. Dear God, I didn’t study for my exam help me pass it. Dear God, I don’t really want to do anything myself about children shooting guns and killing other children in schools, and churches and movie theaters and college campuses. You do do something about it; I’ll just pray to you about it. I’ll just hope it doesn’t happen again; but I’ll be sure to pray to you when it does.” I’m supposed to take God so seriously right? That’s what the first commandment says...so I’ll just let God take care of all the problems in the world, I’ll just let God take care of all the things God actually created me to do...like take care of homeless veterans and uninsured mothers and survivors of torture...you can do that, God; like conserve water, and oil, and protect endangered species...you can do that, God. Not me. This is misusing God’s name. “Can I say something now?” God asks, “Hear O Israel: Don’t do that.”
Honor the Sabbath. Stop each week to remember that I am God, to have fun in this world that I made -- healthy, re-creative, life-giving fun. For the love of God, stop working.
For the love of God, turn off your phones and your televisions, for the love of God, have dinner with your neighbors and friends and family. For the love of God, get in bed with your life partner and have fun. That’s why God made you: to frolic. We don’t frolic anymore. What happened? We don’t sabbath anymore. We don’t go to church to worship God anymore...as a culture. We do go to church -- to stadiums, to the marketplace, to the computer screen, to our investment bank accounts...to worship. We definitely put our trust in things. And there it is again: Forgive us for planning for the future and living in the present as if you didn’t exist, God. Sabbath is for remembering and resting. Remembering God’s promises -- I’ll always be with you and I forgive you -- and resting now in that promise. It’s for praying and playing, as Eugene Peterson puts it. Stop, for the love of God. Give thanks and kick back.
Take care of your aging parents. I’ll remind you that that’s what “honor your father and mother” meant. It wasn’t a finger wag at children, as much as I’d like to use it like that. Honor your father and mother so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that God has given you. Let’s reach out to all our seniors so that their days may be long, and go well, so that their quality of life and our life may be healthy and good.
Now we’re shifting into our commandments about creating wholesome communities. We honor God when we serve our neighbors -- our young neighbors, our children, and our elderly neighbors. To that end, don’t murder. And don’t make murder such an easy and accessible option. I could just kill myself. I could just kill another person. That wouldn’t be very difficult at all these days. Weapons are easily accessible, pills are easily accessible.
It is so troubling that the commandment I used to skip over the quickest, because it so clearly didn’t apply to me and my life, is now way too central for our world. “Can I say something now?” God says.
Don’t steal, don’t commit adultery. These guiding lines are again freeing us to play and worship God safely and securely. The Ten Commandments are a fence in the back yard that allow us play within bounds. We’re protected, and we’re freer and we’re better, when we don’t go outside the bounds. These commandments are a gift.
God didn’t free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt in order to chain them up all over again...this time to a set of rules and restrictions. Rather the commandments are a warm home (Suzanne), where we can calm down and live out our truest calling.
You know, it’s taken me a while to get this -- that the commandments are a huge piece of Good News. But the more I study and reflect on these -- Martin Luther’s explanations helped me with this -- the more I hear God calling us and freeing us. “Hear O Israel, let me say something. You can be even better, even safer, even more trusting of me. Come play, come frolic in this huge yard I’ve given you. Come care for one another, come care for yourselves even better, come worship me, come trust and open your lives to my grace and my promises, come and remember all that I’ve done for you and for your ancestors in the faith up to this point, and come remember that I will lead you home, a warm home that I’ve prepared for you.
“Are finished now?” God asks, “Can I say something? I love you and you are mine.” AMEN.
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