First Congregational Church, UCC, Auburn MA, October 1, 2023
Exodus 20
I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery.
No other gods, only me.
No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don’t bow down to them and don’t serve them because I am God, your God, and I’m a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I’m unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.
No using the name of God, your God, in curses or silly banter; God won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God, your God. Don’t do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days God made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.
Honor your father and mother so that you’ll live a long time in the land that God, your God, is giving you.
No murder.
No adultery.
No stealing.
No lies about your neighbor.
No lusting after your neighbor’s house—or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbor’s. (The Message translation)
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
The Ten Commandments give us a really clear picture of what God thinks a community should look like.
Except, of course, except that it’s not a drawing but rather words, and with illustrations which made perfect sense two thousand years ago, but are a little obscure today. So we’re tempted to take those Ten Commandments and make them, actually, into wordy idols, things to be worshipped, carved into stone, words which have no more meaning that anyone can see on the surface.
When we do that, we miss the entire point of the Commandments.
Because the last thing they are, is some sort of marble monument. They are, instead, containers of the truth of a life lived with purpose and meaning. They are a guide, a road map, to that life.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of the ethical life this week, after the deaths of two famous baseball players. Even if you’re not into baseball, these two men were exceptional people, worth remembering, worth honoring. And each of them lived their lives according to an ethical code, lived their lives so fully that when they died, it was not how well they played the game (and they both were very good at what they did), but how well they lived their lives that everyone is remembering.
The paper said, “people in Baltimore didn’t name their sons Brooks or Robinson because they hoped it would make them world class third basemen, but in the hopes that the model of Brooks Robinson’s way of living would guide them in the same path.
And I think few of us in Massachusetts have not heard about the dedication of Tim Wakefield to the Jimmy Fund, to being a supportive friend to kids with cancer.
We’ve plenty of examples of folks who take their fame to be what makes them worth knowing. But the Commandments tell us that it’s a way of life that holds the key to real worth.
The Commandments tell us to be sure we know, name and follow God at the center of our lives. This isn’t just about showing up here on Sunday morning, but it’s about allowing God to be the balance point in every moment of our lives. It’s about remembering who we are, about not losing our way in the midst of all the calls upon our time, our power, our presence.
Every other commandment builds on that first one. It’s all about keeping God in the center of our world.
Don’t let something else sneak in and take over your life. Today’s translation talks about carved gods because that was a big thing in those days. But think now about the kinds of things we make into things that distract us from being good, kind, loving, welcoming, honest people –
Remember that just as the good we do lives long after us, so will the bad. Let your life be governed by grasping greediness, for whatever – land, money, sex, power – and know that your children, and their children, and sometimes even their children’s children, will pay a price.
Take time off. Back in the days when this was written, taking any time off was enormously radical; it still is today for many of us. Now, as then, for some of us we have to work non-stop just to keep even with the bills. That said, the Commandments tell us that just as the story says God rested after making the world, we also should rest. If we can’t afford to rest from work for a day, try half a day… or an hour….or, if you’re the parent of toddlers, maybe it’ll only be fifteen minutes in another part of the house… but take some time, rest, and remember that God loves you.
The final commandments lay out the most common ways in which we practice greed or allow anger to take over our lives. Take care of those who’ve taken care of you. Don’t let your greed or anger pull you into murder; don’t let yourself slip into illicit relationships, don’t steal, don’t tell lies, don’t get out and outright greedy.
Easy to say, maybe even easy to preach – but you know, and I know, that living this out, fully allowing these values to center our lives is not easy – not to do every day, day in, day out, for the rest of our lives. The commandments are good news, but challenging news, because they set up a standard that’s not just right, but impossible to live up to all the time.
I can’t speak for you, but I know I can’t do it. Perfection’s not going to happen in my life. And that’s why, in addition to the commandments, we have Jesus. In the letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul calls upon his readers to live their lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Repeatedly, he calls upon the members of his churches to live honestly, knowing that when (not if, when) we fall short of the goal, there will we find Christ, ready to welcome us back, ready to help us start again.
The Ten Commandments give us a picture of who God is, what it means to follow God; the Good News of Jesus Christ also calls us to be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph 5)
The Gospel reassures us that we are loved and accepted, as we are, whether we think we are successes or failures, and that when we aim to live as God has called us, we will find a deepness and value in our lives that is indeed God’s richest blessing.
Live as God would have us live.
Love one another.
Share that love with our world.
Never fear, for God’s love never ends.
Amen.
© 2023, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 