Exodus 20:1-17 ~ Lent 3
No!
How many of you have ever had a toddler, a child whose very first word was that two-letter complete sentence, stand defiantly and tell you, “No!”?
Perhaps your parents told you that “no” was your very first word, or perhaps you remember the same from your own experiences of parenthood. If not the very first word, then “no” is often one of the first five words both in order of learning and in the familiarity of regular use for wee ones, applied as it is to everything from following the prescribed bedtime routine and timing, to what will be eaten off the dinner plate to the request to share your toys.
As over-functioning adults, we are often told that “no” is a good word to “add” to our vocabulary – as if we weren’t already very familiar with it. The thing is, we just become very selective in where and how we will use it, and often, following the teachings of Jesus and the way of the Lord become for us an easier place to assert the word, than applying it to more worldly pursuits and demands.
The use of the word “no” supports the truth or belief, anyway, that we have the freedom to make a choice – that we have (or have strong desire) for the control to choose what actions we ourselves take, or like control over someone else’s action.
“No” is a peculiar word, really, this complete sentence in two-letter word form.
Its use can solidify our agency in making choices for our lives or protecting us from the actions of others, or it can be directed at someone else’s action or decision that goes against our own desire, wisdom, or accountability.
In the chapter that precedes the one from our Old Testament reading, God tells Moses,
Thus, you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.
There are two things I want to point out in this message from God. First is the formulaic use of “if” and “then” common to biblical writings. “If” you do this, “then” that will be given to you, or will happen for you. In this case the promise is conditional.
But the final sentence and the covenant of God is not conditional: God states that while the whole earth belongs to him, out of it, the Israelites will be for God a priestly and holy people.
In other words, God has placed a claim on these people. They will be his people. He will be their God. Period.
But let’s remember the history of this people. Having immigrated to Egypt and settled on its fertile plains, the Israelites fell under increasingly harsh rule and oppression under a succession of Pharoahs, each one more concerned about the possibility of uprising from these people than the last.
The people were enslaved, because that is what tyrants do to a people to break a people, to weaken their resolve, and eliminate the possibility for revolt.
For four hundred years the people of Israel lived in this foreign land with its foreign gods and foreign ways, forgetting their God, and turning to the practices of the culture in which they lived.
When God freed the Israelites, the freedom they suddenly knew was foreign to them. This liberation was heady – they didn’t know what to do with it, how to act within it. They quickly forgot the one God to whom they owed everything. They sinned against one another and they sinned against God. Their sustained “no” was directed toward anyone and anything that got in the way of their present desires.
Then, God gives them the Ten Commandments which we read this morning.
As they were taught to me, they were conditional: if you follow these, then all will go well for you and you will remain close to your loving God. If you do not follow them, you will need to face the consequences and make reparation or face the fires of hell.
Perhaps the teachings you received were different, softer. However, I think many people placed these commandments as the conditions upon which they could earn God’s favor.
But the Ten Commandments are pure gift. As Adam Hamilton describes them in our current Lenten study, the Ten Commandments are the “guideposts and guardrails”: of life in and for the kingdom of God.
They are guideposts because they offer basic guidance in our relationship first and foremost with God, and then, of course, with one another and with God’s creation.
They help us care for the people who are in the sphere of contact, relationship, and caring. They guide is in healthy living with one another and in the world. They are life-giving for the people of God and they are the basis for understanding that we while we have freedom, we also bear responsibility for how we live in this world.
That is what life lived without these commandments was and is like. We are ready to plummet at any moment. God gives these commandments as a promise that freedom from sin doesn’t mean freedom from God. Being released from bondage doesn’t mean we have to be in a sudden ethical freefall.
If the rainbow promise shows us a God who is willing to curtail God’s own power for the sake of relationship, the Ten Commandments show us how to live in right relationship with God and with one another. To stay on the road. To make it around the dangerous curves and up the steep incline to safety.
Truly, God is thinking “gift” not “burden” when God gives these guidelines and guardrails for God’s people.
Martin Luther believed that knowing the Ten Commandments was all we really needed to know to be good citizens, good Christians, good teachers and followers of Jesus. He believed that they made a wonderful source and basis for prayer as well.
While the Israelites struggled with this new and strange sense of freedom they had, we, too, struggle the sense of freedom. Like the toddler who shouts “no!” to exert some sense of autonomy, we use our freedom as a weaponized tool in a harsh and divided world to express and exercise our power, our capability, and our rights and privileges. And we see the result. A society where something as simple as wearing a mask to protect yourself and others becomes a flash point for dissention, disagreement, disturbance, and even violence.
The beautiful truth of the Gospel is that we are tied through bonds of love to this God who chooses to give us some of God’s own power in order to be in relationship with us.
Yet, having put aside his chaos-taming, life-creating, water-producing power, God doesn’t leave us alone, in a vacuum, to suffer at our own games. Rather, God asks us to freely give up some of our self-centered, self-serving, seductive power to do whatever the heck we want, and to follow God’s guidance and Word to true freedom.
We have looked at the stories of Noah and Abraham and Sarah and God’s promises to them. We are reminded through those stories, that God blesses God’s people in order that they might be a blessing for the world.
Covenants are gifts of a loving God.
The covenants God made with Noah and Abraham reveal a God who desires nothing but that God’s chosen people would love him in return and walk in his ways.
God gives these covenants because God is a God of love, a God who wishes to abide in, through and around us. God gave these commandments and all covenants as acts of grace in which God bestows God’s love and blessing for life-giving relationships.
As we look with anticipation toward Holy Week and Easter, we will be reminded that God gave us God’s greatest commandment through Jesus – that we love God with all our hearts and minds, loving others as we love ourselves.
The Ten Commandments guide us in what following the commandment to love looks like - genuinely humble living, in a spirit of generosity and kindness, forgiveness and meekness – in other words, in lives patterned after Jesus.
“No” is still a useful word. As lovers of God and followers of Jesus Christ, we say “no” to sin each day, and “yes” to the love of God known through our Savior Jesus Christ. As we continue our journey through Lent, hungering and thirsting for God. let our embrace of these guideposts and guardrails set us on the holy ground we seek, all for the love of God. Amen.
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