The Ten Commandments

 

Service of Worship

October 4, 2020

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

My Creator,

You are so faithful to me. You never change, grow weary of me, or tired of helping me. If Your Word says You care, then I choose to trust in that care. I place every burden I carry in Your hands today.

I entrust my very soul into Your care. I will not worry for one moment. I refuse fear, for my Shepherd cares for me and You are well aware of every critical issue I am facing today. I will not be discouraged. I will not be moved off of this strong stance of faith. I will stand my ground and declare that God is good! You care for me! I can, therefore, live a carefree life, free from heaviness, oblivious to the confusion and quandaries the enemy of my soul tries to engage me in.

Thank you for Your loving care for me and all that is important to me. Teach me to trust You more and more every day.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

 

Exodus 20: 1-20

The Ten Commandments

20 And God spoke all these words:

² “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

³ “You shall have no other gods before^[a] me.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶ but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

⁷ “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

¹² “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

¹³ “You shall not murder.

¹⁴ “You shall not commit adultery.

¹⁵ “You shall not steal.

¹⁶ “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

¹⁷ “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

¹⁸ When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance ¹⁹ and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

²⁰ Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

 

A Message

“The Ten Commandments”

I’m sticking with our lectionary appointed scripture passages for the next few weeks, and this week’s lectionary-appointed Hebrew Bible passage are these very words: the Ten Commandments, dictated by God and chiseled in stone by Moses on top of Mount Sinai. Of all the hundreds and hundreds of laws that YHWH laid out for Moses and told him to write down and memorize, God clearly set aside these ten as especially sacred. These words are intensely familiar to us. For many of us, these were the first words we ever learned from Scripture. When I was nine years old I memorized them and earned a candy bar.

Yet for how familiar these words are, for how concise they are, and for how oft-quoted they are, they are significantly more difficult to abide by. They also carry a fair amount of controversy because of the arguments American people have had over who should be reading these words, where, and how often. If you’ve been near a newspaper lately, surely you know what debates I’m referring to. Should these words be displayed in court rooms? Should they be displayed in public schools? Should they be displayed in government buildings? These controversies open up a myriad of questions, and not just about the separation of Church and State. Underneath all of that, there’s a very compelling thought that keeps this fight bubbling back to the surface every time we push it down: how far do these words transcend our unique Judeo-Christian heritage, and speak to a social covenant that all responsible citizens of a peaceful country should uphold, regardless of religious affiliation? Is there something here for everyone?

But perhaps the more pressing question is this one: is there something here for us? Those of us here in America in October of 2020, sitting in the comfy chair in our living room reading words carefully crafted for you on the laptop of Your Friendly Neighborhood Pastor? These words are as mysterious as they are grave as they are foundational. We can certainly agree that they are very sound rules to follow, but figuring out how to follow them in a modern world, when the Divine first spoke them thousands of years ago to a totally different population, can be quite the challenge. Some of these feel very straight forward. For example: thou shalt not kill. Check mark, I don’t think I’ve done that. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Feeling pretty solid on that one. But thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, or wife, or slave, or livestock? Have I walked into someone’s house and declared all their stuff belongs to me now? No. But decades worth of my family and neighbors have dedicated a Monday in October to a man named Christopher Columbus who committed all of that, and then far graver atrocities, against the Indigenous peoples of this stolen land. So I would argue that we’re guilty by association until we stop singing that guy’s praises. And have I ever wanted something that belonged to someone else? Have I ever wanted something someone else had so badly that I considered bending my morals to get the goods? My hands are not clean there.

What about honor thy father and thy mother? I want to say I’ve been pretty good to my folks (hopefully they agree, and hopefully we can all exclude our teen years). But this must mean far more than just do what your mom and dad say. After all, when Moses repeated these words to the Hebrews in his company, he was talking to a bunch of grown men. How many adults do you see asking their parents if it’s ok to do what they want to do today? Some of us don’t have both a mom and a dad. Some of us have two moms or two dads. Some of us have step parents, and a parent’s boyfriend or girlfriend, or a guardian, or a grandparent, or aunt or uncle, or foster parent, or a vast diversity of possible caregivers from our younger years. Some of us had abusive moms and dads. Some of us had moms and dads we loved but couldn’t respect. “Honor” has to mean something more than “obey”, and “father and mother” has to mean something more flexible than “the two people who gave you your DNA”. How have we paid homage to those who got us where we are today? How have we honored our roots?

What about you shall not make for yourself an idol? I’ve certainly never made an altar to the deity of some other religion. But idolatry doesn’t have to literally mean worshipping another god. Idolatry means giving absolute importance to something of short term, relative worth. We’ve all been guilty of this one. We’ve all put other distractions in our lives—money, work, addiction, romance, materialism, you name it—ahead of Jesus.

What about thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain? So many of us learned that this is about what you say when you stub your toe. I was in college before I learned otherwise. While watching your language never hurts, God isn’t anywhere near so concerned about combining the Divine Name with a profanity as God is about invoking the Holy to justify our prejudices. Any time we declare that a group of people—LGBTQIA friends, or women seeking abortion care, or people who vote differently than us—are inherently bad because “God says so”, we are taking the Lord’s name in vain. We are using God’s power to hurt someone else.

None of this was easy. None of this was ever supposed to be easy. When God first spoke these words to Moses the Lord was starting a new relationship with a baby people who were fleeing from slavery, sojourning through the wilderness, relocating to a place they had never seen, living off the land, and learning monotheism. They needed structure from God to face so much that they had never known.

Life is different now. We live in an established society. Most of us have not encountered slavery first hand. We buy our food and water at Price Chopper. We’ve been attending the same churches for many years, and we’ve had loving mentors in our faith journeys. So what kind of covenant does God need from us now?

A clergy colleague of mine from Iowa, the Rev. Anna Blaedel, reinterpreted the Ten Commandments like this. May these words shine a whole new light on our relationship with God.

The 10 Commandments Remix by the Rev. Anna Blaedel of Enfleshed Ministries

 

1. Practice Loyalty to the Sacred

2. Remember every image of God is only a glimpse

3. Do not use God's name to do harm

4. Do not allow productivity to dominate life

5. Care for those who have cared for you and honor those who have paved your way

6. Do not be unnecessarily destructive

7. Be faithful to the commitments you make

8. Do not take what does not belong to you

9. Do not hinder justice from coming to fruition

10. Do not use power over others to get what you want

 

Wrap your head around that understanding of the Sacred. Can you imagine if we shared these sentiments with all of our friends and neighbors? Can you imagine if these practices made up the social covenant between all of us in this world?

May it be so.

Amen.

I invite you to receive this benediction: Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and our coming in from this time on and forever more. And as all of God’s people we say together: Amen.