Third Sunday of Lent
Exodus 20; 1-17, John 2:13-22
“Do you have rules at your house?” I asked innocently.
“Rules?”
“Yeah, rules. Do you have rules at your house?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“What kind of rules?”
“No T.V. till my homework’s done. No beating up my little brother.”
“Could you stay out all night if you wanted to?”
“No, my parents pick me up before 11:00 or if I’m just outside, like
in the summer, then I have to be around the house before dark.”
“So why do they have these rules.” I query.
“Do you parents have these rules so they can find ways to punish you? Are
they setting a trap for you?”
“No, no I don’t think so” comes the reply.
“Then why do they have the rules?”
“Well I suppose because they want us to do good and to be safe.”
“Okay. I buy that. Now why do your parents care whether you are safe and
fulfill yourself as a person.”
Usually this is met by a long silence. It’s hard for teenagers to admit
but I’ve found if I’m quiet long enough they’ll eventually say,
“Well I suppose it’s because they care about me.”
“Oh so your parents love you then. They make rules because they love you
and they want the best for you.”
“So why is it then that God gave the Israelites and gives us the Ten Commandments.
Could it be that God gives us these rules because God loves us and wants us
to live together safely and fully?”
This is a regular dialogue I have with our confirmands
as we discuss the Ten Commandments and to me it is the starting point to any
understanding of their application and meaning.
Recall the context. Israel is in slavery in Egypt. Before Moses, a murderer
minding his own business in Midian, a bush bursts into flame. There is a voice:
“I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt: I have heard
their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings and
I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out
of that land to a good and broad land.”
Here is not a God who distantly sits in heaven
nonchalantly plotting ways to trap humanity. Here is a God who hears, intrudes,
acts, calls. Here is a God who is invested in these people who he has called
and liberated.
Here is a God that gives freedom to the people
for two reasons; that they might worship God and that they might be an example
for others. Indeed before giving them these commands God says to Moses, “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.”
When this text says priests it means that Israel exists for the sake of the
whole world, to intercede, to make sacrifice, and to mediate, to live in such
a way, in obedience to the commandments, that other less enlightened and obedient
peoples will say to themselves, “Surely this great nation is a wise and
discerning people!”
So these commands are given as a covenant, a promise;
“I will be your God, I who love you, who have saved you, will guide you
and direct you so that you might be a shining light for all peoples.” The
Ten Commandments are a noble body of rules for all people, but the way we discover
that is by seeing their embodiment in the people of Israel and the church.
This is the same language picked up in the first epistle of Peter when it claims
that, by the grace of God, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty
acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1Pet.
2:9) The Ten Commandments must be read and lived within this background as the
vocation of a saving god. Today we live as those who have been chosen by God,
called, claimed, possessed, owned by God that we might proclaim in word and
deed, what God has done. We live by the commandments as a way of worshipping
the true God, we show forth to the world the sort of people God is able to produce.
Our little lives are caught up in the great purposes of God for the world.
This is no little matter. Merely paying lip service
will not do. Making laws to have them put on schoolroom walls or in courtrooms
is not what it’s about. It’s about soul searching, heart rending,
nail biting moral and ethical deliberation taking place under the rule of an
awesome God.
Jesus testified to that. He got angry, whip snapping,
ranting angry because people were pretending. In carrying out their hollow rituals,
in the business of buying and selling they had forgotten who it was and why
it was that they were worshipping. They had trivialized and domesticated the
God who had given them freedom. Annie Dillard has written, “People in church
seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute.”
Get out of bed, get dressed, open the hymnal, sing the songs, keep your eyes
open, stand for the benediction, say hello to God, get a little dose of the
divine, and go home. It’s all just nice, very nice, very pleasant. Our
God is not looking for our niceties, our pleasantries. Our God is looking for
our lives.
It is impossible this week to write a sermon without
considering the backdrop of the war in which we are engaged. For weeks, months
the papers, the newsmagazines, the airwaves have been crammed with analysis
and opinion. The situation has been looked at militarily, politically, diplomatically,
internationally, humanitarianly, ecologically, commercially and every which
way. As covenant people, called by the Holy Spirit we are compelled as well
to consider this war faithfully.
Last Thursday the North Conference Lutheran pastors
met here at Holy Spirit. Though our program was to be the continuing work of
Project Build we rescheduled so that we might pray for peace and talk together.
Clearly people of faith have differing and opposing views not about the desire
for peace and freedom but about the clearest path to obtaining peace and freedom.
Though we might disagree on the method, what is important is that we derive
those views ever aware of God’s covenant with us. Our ELCA Bishop Mark
Hanson has written “No matter how grave our differences, let us be united
in the affirmation that it is through the gospel that the Holy Spirit calls
and gathers people from all nations to worship and witness to the God of peace.
As we say in the ELCA social statement entitled “For Peace in God’s
World” the most valuable mission for peace for the church “is to keep
alive the news of God’s resolve for peace, declaring that all are responsible
to God for earthly peace and announcing forgiveness, healing and hope in the
name of Jesus Christ.”
This is no small thing!
Amen.