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Printer Friendly VersionThe United
States Supreme Court issued two rulings last summer on lawsuits that had challenged
displays of the Ten Commandments on public property. Their rulings seemed
to demonstrate how torn our nation is on the role of the Ten Commandments.
In separate 5-4 rulings, the justices declared a small, framed Kentucky display
to be unconstitutional, while ruling that two, six-foot granite monuments
in Texas were constitutional. In commenting on the case, Justice Scalia noted
the paradox of the Ten Commandments in American life. “I think probably
90 per cent of American people believe in the Ten Commandments,” he
said. “90 per cent of American people believe in the Ten Commandments,”
even though “85 per cent couldn’t tell you what the 10 are.”
So where do you begin to tell the story of these words about which we are
so ambivalent? Where do you begin?
I. Joseph
would be a good place to start. Do you remember his story? Joseph was foolish
enough to taunt his brothers with a dream where he was the hero and they were
the fools, so they decided to show him. Some wanted to kill him, but compassion
intervened and they decided just to sell him as a slave to the first caravan
of merchants that passed by. As the caravan faded out of sight on the horizon
it looked for all the world like Joseph was enslaved and his brothers were
free. But it’s a funny thing, being free. Sometimes the ones who have
their freedom don’t have much freedom. Joseph was enslaved by the Egyptians,
while back home, his brothers were slaves to no one. Yet they were enslaved
by the secret of their sin. The story they concocted grieved their father,
Jacob. The only thing that would grieve him more was if the truth came out,
the truth that they had so despised Jacob’s favorite son that they sold
him as a slave. Joseph’s brothers had a measure of freedom, but we all
know you can only be so free if your life is staked on a lie; if you dread
every day that someone will find out about your sin; if you have betrayed
someone as close to you as a brother.
Meanwhile
Joseph bounces back and forth between slavery, freedom, and imprisonment.
For most of his time in Egypt, he doesn’t have much freedom. He’s
either enslaved to someone or indebted to someone. But he’s able to
live with the truth. And if you can face the truth head-on with no fear, you
have a kind of freedom that nothing can take away.
You remember
the rest of the story, don’t you? Joseph rises to prominence in Egypt.
He’s still a hired hand, but he’s an awfully important hired hand.
When famine begins to spread far and wide, when it gets so bad that his brothers
come to Egypt in search of food for their father and their families, Joseph
is in the only position that could have saved them. And while he makes them
sweat it out a little bit, he eventually frees them from the death sentence
of famine in the land. He also frees them from the death sentence of their
guilt, and of their dread of ever having to face him again. He forgives every
sorry one of them, and there’s not much better than the freedom forgiveness
brings.
II. Joseph
and his brothers are reunited in Egypt. They are all experiencing a measure
of freedom, and it’s passed along to their kids and grandkids. The sons
of Jacob all do pretty well in their adopted home. In fact, they get so comfortable
there that they just settle down. They prosper and multiply. And the Egyptians
get that fearful look in their eyes, and that fearful feeling in the pit of
their stomach. So many Israelites are living there that the Egyptians are
afraid they’ll be outnumbered in their own country. They’re afraid
they’ll be overrun by these foreigners, so they clamp down on them.
They restrict their freedom; they try to restrict the number of kids they
can have.
So over time,
these descendants of Jacob who came to Egypt searching for freedom from famine
find that having a full stomach is one thing, but freedom is another matter
altogether. The very land that once gave the brothers of Joseph a new lease
on life has now begun to drain the life out of them, and they want it back.
So they cry out to God to save them. They cry out to God to give them back
their freedom. He hears their cry and sends Moses. And God says to Moses,
“They will know that they are my people when I free them from Egypt.
I’m going to take them from slavery to freedom, and they’ll know
that they’re mine.” Moses is a reluctant freedom fighter, but
he finally accepts the task. After days and days of wrangling with Pharaoh,
Moses leads his people out of Egypt. Across the desert, through the sea, and
into the wilderness they march. But most important of all, they get out of
Egypt.
Once they’re
out, Moses begins immediately to tell the story of what God has done. “The
Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation” (15:2a).
Moses sings it, but it’s not just Moses’ song. It’s the
song of all whom God has set free. It’s not Moses who is their savior,
it’s the Lord. The Lord has brought them into the wilderness, and in
the wilderness they find both freedom and three square meals a day.
Some would
say the hard part has been done. They’ve been set free from the slavery
of Egypt. That’s what they had cried out for, and God had provided it
for them. But now comes the really hard part: once you’ve been set free,
how do you stay free? How do you live a life that is truly free? Someone who
has been set free can become enslaved again. Someone who has been saved can
be lost again. They don’t have to be! But God knows there is only one
way to preserve that freedom. That’s the way of life God describes to
Moses on Mt. Sinai. That’s the covenant He establishes with His people.
III. We’ve
called them rules, we’ve called them commandments, but above all, they’re
a way of life. In fact, they are the only way of life for people who want
to be truly free. There is power in these ten words, but not the power we
might think. Their power is not to create freedom, but to sustain it. Freedom
comes only from a decisive act of God. But freedom never comes as an established,
full-grown oak. Freedom always comes as a fragile sapling. For freedom to
survive, it must be nurtured, tended, cultivated. These ten words are the
tools God gives us to cultivate the freedom He has given us.
The world
would be a better place if more people lived by these ten words, but they
don’t really work if you haven’t first been set free by God. They
don’t make sense if you don’t know the story from which they came.
Oh, the last
six can more or less be lived by anyone with a strong will and a solid moral
foundation. But the first four can only be lived by people who know the story,
the story of being caught in a way of life with no way out. You can’t
begin to live this way until you’ve come to the place where you cry,
“God, save me.” But if you have ever cried out, “God, save
me,” then this is your story too. Listen again to how these ten words
begin. These words were spoken this way:
“I
am the Lord your God who brought you out of . . . slavery” [20:2].
I’ve
set you free so you’ll be able to make choices. The first and most important
choice of your new life is whom you’re going to serve. Freedom never
means you’ll never have a master again. It means you can choose your
new master. Choose another god, and your freedom will shrink day by day. Choose
Me, and your freedom will increase. There are many things you can acknowledge
as a god, but I am the only true God, the God who has brought you salvation.
Don’t ever settle for a second-rate god.
I’m
a God, not an object. If you need a visible reminder of your God, you should
look at the change He has made in lives. Inanimate objects are never worthy
of being a god. Great people are not worthy of being a god. In fact, if your
god is something you can paint a picture of, make a statue of, or set on a
coffee table, your god is too small.
If you make
Me into an object, you’ll forget that I’m a living being, someone
with whom you have a relationship. I am not an “it,” but I have
a name, and that name is to be honored. Don’t use it cheaply, and don’t
bring disgrace upon it by the way you act.
In Egypt
your taskmasters forced you to work seven days a week. I’m your boss
now, and I insist that you rest one day out of seven. You’re going to
have several years in the wilderness where you don’t have to work for
your food or shelter. I’ll provide it all for you. But you still are
to honor the Sabbath. When you enter the Promised Land, you’ll walk
into houses you didn’t have to build, and you’ll harvest crops
you didn’t have to plant. Even in those days when your work is lighter,
you still are to honor the Sabbath. When your kids are too young to know what
work is, or when your parents are too old to be expected to work, they are
still to honor the Sabbath. If you become rich enough to hire maids or gardeners
or chariot drivers, give them a Sabbath too, so you don’t become the
kind of boss the Egyptians were to you. You see, the Sabbath is only partly
about rest. It’s more about the reminder of who’s in charge of
your life. If you let me be in charge, you’ll honor the Sabbath. If
you don’t honor the Sabbath, it will be evident that someone else is
in charge of your life. Don’t let yourself be enslaved to anyone else
ever again. Don’t trade the taskmasters of Egypt for any other taskmaster,
no matter what they promise you.
Honor your
parents. Don’t be like the sons of Jacob who dishonored their father
by mistreating one of his children. You saw how long it took to straighten
out the mess they created. Nothing takes quite as long to mend as a fractured
family.
That goes
for your relations with every generation. It does no good to honor your parents
but dishonor your spouse. Keeping harmony in the home is hard enough when
it’s just a husband and wife. It becomes well nigh to impossible if
you bring a third person into the picture. Don’t give your bed, your
eyes, or your affections to anyone else. Whomever you choose, and however
you choose, once the choice is made, make it for life, and see it through.
Don’t
take what’s not yours. And this includes all kinds of things. Don’t
take someone else’s life. But neither should you take what is equally
precious to them: the love and relationship with their spouse. Don’t
take someone else’s possessions away with your hands. But neither should
you take their reputation away with your words. People who honor my name should
honor their neighbor’s name as well.
You may think
it is okay to wrap your heart and eyes around something, as long as your hands
don’t take them. You may think that, but it’s wrong. Keep both
your hands and your heart off of things that belong to your neighbor.
IV. These
are the words God speaks to all whom He has set free.
And God wants to know our response. These words are intended not as a document,
but as a dialogue. When Moses gathers the people together to receive these
words, the address from God comes not as, “If you read my message.”
No, God’s preface to these words is, “If you hear my voice.”
And the promise to the community that responds in obedience to His voice is
that they will be God’s “treasured possession” (Exodus 19:5).
The words are addressed to the community. But they’re a conditional
promise. God’s treasured possession is neither the community that has
memorized these ten words, nor the community that has been successful in having
these words posted for all to see. God’s treasured possession is the
community who responds, “All the words the Lord has spoken we will do”
(Exodus 24:3b, NRSV).
The tragedy
of Israel was that they frequently forgot to fulfill their promise to God,
the promise to structure their community life in ways that would keep them
free. In fact, they traded their freedom in God for bondage to a golden calf
in less than 40 days. It’s a sobering reminder to the Church in the
season of Lent, this season of 40 days. Sometimes it takes as long as 40 days
to remove distractions so we can renew our focus on God. But sometimes it
takes less than 40 days to drift into old, freedom-destroying bondages.
Moses was
so angered by the people’s 40-day drift away from God that he raced
down the mountain and broke the tablets with the ten words. To this day we
get confused about which is the bigger issue. Breaking (or banishing) the
tablets always gets the headlines, but breaking the covenant is the real tragedy.
In time, God promised a new covenant, written not on tablets of stone, but
on the human heart. He did it in part, I think, to give us a clearer image
of how these words are intended to work. They were never meant to be stone-cold
words. They were always meant to be live-giving words, the words of God, reflecting
the heart of God, pulsing through us, giving life with every beat. But even
life-giving words don’t give life if they’re written on stone-cold
hearts.
In this season of Lent we hear God’s voice again: “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession.”