"Commandments of Freedom"
Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-20
In 2001, Alabama Supreme
Court Justice Roy Moore had a Ten Commandments monument installed in the
rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building, without the knowledge of the other
justices. This resulted in a legal battle over establishment of a particular
religion in a government building and eventually to his being removed from
office over his refusal to comply to the federal court injunction. Eventually,
the monument was placed in a storage room, and later it was taken on a flatbed
trailer on tour by a group called “America for Jesus.”. There was controversy between
a those who thought that was a good idea and those who saw it as worshiping a graven
image,
a form of idolatry.
What I hadn’t thought a lot about at the time is how much
this monument weighed: 5,280 pounds. That’s
just over 500 pounds per commandment.[1]
As Tom Long suggests, in the popular religious
consciousness, the Ten Commandments have come to represent, for some, weights
and heavy obligations. Most people in
our society would have a hard time naming all ten commandments, but they may
still think that the Ten Commandments are about finger-wagging “thou shalt
not’s.” For some others, the commandments are heavy yokes placed on the necks of a rebellious society. As Tom suggests,
a two-and-a-half-ton rock sitting on the bed of a truck is a perfect symbol of
this.[2]
The gods of ancient Babylon were heavy idols that had to
be carted around. The prophet Isaiah was referring to them when he said, “These
things you carry are loaded as burdens
on weary animals.”
Those who see the Ten Commandments as a series of burdensome
rules
overlook something essential.
The Ten Commandments begin not by an order to obey a set of rules,
but by an announcement of freedom.
“I am the Lord your God, who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”[3]
This was God’s direct address to the people of Israel:
“God spoke all these words.” “Words”
-- not commandments. So, it is really more accurate to speak of
them as “the Decalogue” -- the ten words.
“Because the Lord
is your God,” the Decalogue affirms, “you are free not to need any other gods. You are free: free to rest on the seventh day…free from the
tyranny of lifeless idols… free from stealing and covetousness as ways to establish
yourself.
The Decalogue begins with the good news of what the
liberating God has done and then describes the life of freedom that God desires for people.
“I am the Lord your
God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
Although this introductory sentence of freedom and redemption is often left out
of printed versions of the Ten Commandments, in Judaism it is recognized as the
first
word.
“You shall have no other gods before me” is the second word.[4]
Idolatry is the focus in this second word. Idolatry commonly refers to
worshipping graven images, such as the golden calf.[5] Idolatry, the worship of “other gods” could
include any person place, or thing that we hold to be more important than God.
These other gods could also be money, property, fame, power-- anything in which
we place our ultimate loyalty and trust or worship. So, this second word is a
call to love and trust in God above all things. This is the grounding for all
other commandments or “words.”
The Ten Words we heard in today’s lesson were not new for Israel, but they were a good
listing for their time and situation, when the newly liberated people of Israel
were wandering around in the wilderness, learning how to be free people. The Ten Words were adapted at
different times and places. That’s why when we compare the Ten Commandments in
Exodus and the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, we see some differences that
reflect some changes, such as a changing role for women in the culture.
“I am the Lord your
God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The Ten
Words had been given to the people to celebrate and maintain their emancipation
from Egypt and the Pharaoh.
In the Pharaoh, the ruler of ancient Egypt, was a brutal
concentration of power and wealth. Walter
Brueggemann has often pointed out how every time a “Pharaoh” turns up in
history, it turns out that this empire is propelled by a sense of not having
enough, a system designed to accumulate more and more--more money, more power,
more land, more food, more cheap labor for the ruler.[6].
When Pharaohs--or tyrannical emperors or kings or
dictators-- rise up in history, they act in violence against vulnerable,
disadvantaged people. The Exodus from Egypt and the celebration of Passover is
a powerful demonstration of how God broke in to liberate the people from their
oppression, and to give them a life of freedom.
But it becomes clear that we don’t always know what to do with
freedom. There were times in the
wilderness when the people of Israel when they grumbled and wished they could
go back to slavery in Egypt.
So, Brueggemann says the Ten Commandments “are nothing
less than strategies for staying emancipated
in the new life that the God of Sinai governs.” These strategies are urgent, he
says, because Pharaoh, in a variety of forms, always wants to coerce us back
into Pharaoh’s domain of exploitation.
This new strategy for living as free people is to honor
God to the exclusion of every other idol…to honor God’s name and God’s purpose
for our lives. I love and am challenged by the way Brueggemann points
to the scripture’s truth, as he says this strategy for
freedom means to “refuse every other ultimate loyalty, every idolatry in our
lives among all the ‘isms’ including racism, sexism, and
nationalism. It means not to worship stuff,
not stuff that is rare, precious, attractive, beautiful or empowering. It means
not to recruit God’s name for our pet projects of religion, morality, economics
or politics, because the only God is no party to our proximate causes.”
The season of Lent calls us to a reality check. Moses, through the Ten Commandments, or Ten
Words, at Sinai, declared new possibilities for a life of freedom, outside the
oppression, anxiety, fearfulness, and scarcity under Pharaoh-- a new life that
honors God’s holiness, that loves the neighbor in concrete ways, and that
honors the Sabbath and makes time to be holy.
Lent invites us to look honestly at the ways in which we
have failed at living freely. We’ve heard Pharaoh say, “Be very afraid,” and
lived anxious lives. We’ve believed what those in power tell us about scarcity,
so we’re afraid we won’t have enough and accept that the poor can’t have what
they need for lives of dignity. We hurry to try to keep even, and are
over-extended and exhausted.
The season of Lent is a time for us to ponder the gospel life to which Jesus calls us: an alternative life that is unafraid…a life
of abundance Jesus showed us when he multiplied loaves and fishes to feed
the multitudes. Jesus calls us to a life of healing and forgiveness and
generosity to neighbors.
The season of Lent
reminds re-presents the outrage Jesus demonstrated at what he saw in the Temple
and how he challenged the status quo. It reminds us how determined the empire
and the keepers of the status quo were to maintain their power and privilege
and control, to the point of executing Jesus on the cross where his followers
and other would see him being tortured.
“You destroy this
temple… in three days I will raise it up.” Even the disciples couldn’t
understand Jesus’ words until after the
resurrection. The story of Jesus doesn’t
end at the cross. Only after the resurrection can we reflect on
what the cross of Jesus means for a life of faith.
In these last weeks of Lent, we are invited to ponder
what the apostle Paul wrote: “The message about the cross is foolishness to
those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”[7]
The powers of this
world will tell us that it is foolish to think we have enough to feed a crowd…
and that it is a sign of weakness to practice mercy, justice, and faithfulness.
But we can trust that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s
weakness is stronger than human strength.
Thanks be to God!
Amen!
.
[1]
Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue,” in
“Living by the Word,” in The Christian
Century.
[2] Tom Long, in “Dancing with the Decalogue.”
[3] Exodus 20:2
[4]
Rolf Jacobson, Commentary on Exodus 19:1-6 and
Exodus 20:1-17. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2113
[5]
Bull worship was common in some cultures in the
ancient world, including Egypt. The golden calf is first mentioned in Exodus
32:4
[6] Walter Brueggemann, “Strategies for Staying
Emancipated.” http://day1.org/8145-walter_brueggemann_strategies_for_staying_emancipated
[7]
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
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