Sunday, March 3, 2024

Lent 3

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

The Rev. Clint Brown

I trust that you noticed that we’ve heard the Ten Commandments twice today – once as part of the Penitential Order and, once again, as our first scripture lesson? Now one way we might think of this is as needless repetition, to hear the same thing twice; but we also might think of it more positively, as a unique opportunity not only to see how this text has been and is used in our liturgy, but, today, to also see where it comes from undetached from its scriptural frame of reference. Now time will not permit me to comment on every single Commandment this morning (as everyone breathes out a collective sigh of relief) – for that you’ll have to come to this year’s Lenten series on Thursday nights – but I think I can, in the space of the next few minutes, offer what I hope to be some helpful context and ponder with you what makes this law code so enduring and so foundational.

Actually, time was when there was no escaping the Ten Commandments, as every child candidate for confirmation could tell you. Along with the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, children were required to memorize every single one of them at their confirmation. And, from Elizabethan times, the Commandments were, literally, required to be “written on the wall.” Any of you who have had occasion to visit a colonial era church can testify to seeing them prominently displayed on the wall at the front of the church. They were there to be a constant presence, a constant witness to what was done there, and a constant reminder that these are the pillars of our faith; and also, perhaps, to give the wandering eye something edifying to ponder during long or uninteresting sermons! 

But what exactly are the Ten Commandments? Why assign to them the importance that we do? It’s not just because of a famous movie or that a great many people believe we ought to affix them to our courthouses. To answer why, you’ll need to recall where we are at this point in the Exodus. Moses has brought the children of Israel to the foot of the mountain of God – in some places it is called Sinai, in some Horeb – and this is because, at his commissioning at the burning bush, this had been God’s directive – not only to bring out the people, but then to lead them to this mountain (Exodus 3:12). The mountain was the objective all along. And this was so that the covenant that had been made with Abraham could now be renewed with these his newly liberated descendants. “I am the God who has acted on your behalf to bring you out from under the taskmaster’s whip,” says Yahweh, “and now that this is done there are certain things you owe me in return.” But notice what it is that God actually asks for. God does not ask for a great sacrifice of bulls or rams or the payment of some other tribute, like a king might demand of a vassal in exchange for his protection. Rather, God simply requires that the Israelites now act in a certain way. It is their behavior God is interested in. Before anything else, the God of Israel cares for ethics, and this sets up an ongoing tension in the Old Testament between form and function, outward ritual and the inner disposition of the heart, that finally finds its resolution in Jesus, who answers the question definitively: “Go and learn what this means,” he admonishes the Pharisees, “‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” As the Psalmist had declared centuries before, “the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). Clearly, God in interested, first, with one’s disposition, and only secondarily with ritual.

And, so, returning to the Ten Commandments, we see that they express what we might call the “religious view of life;” that is, that we purposefully bind ourselves to God’s Law and, therefore, to the attitudes and behaviors it prescribes. Ethics itself becomes a kind of offering, a kind of sacrifice. We accept that God gets to tell us both who we are and how we ought to live, and this tells us, in turn, what kind of people God expects us to be. We are not that already – there is work for us to do – and it is in this sense that ethics is a kind of sacrifice, a kind of offering.

Now I know that guilt, shame, judgment – all things that follow necessarily from law – are not hugely popular ideas these days. We tend to think of laws and regulations and their accompanying judgment as odious and limiting, as offenses to our freedom. But, more positively, we might think of law as accumulated wisdom; as getting us further, faster; as expressive of the values that are meant to give our lives the proper “shape” to becoming who it is we ought to be. Yes, laws are restrictive. Yes, we are subject because of them to continual judgment. Yes, it would be easier to just ignore sin and not speak of it. But if we never faced the reality of our falling short of our ideals, we would never grow. It is judgment that enables transformation. 

So my advice to you today would be to recover somewhat the omnipresence and reach of the Ten Commandments into your life. Hang them on your fridge. Tape them to your mirror. Make it your Lenten discipline to read through them everyday and pray with them to discern how these commands can become more than law – how they can become principles. The Ten Commandments are there to shape us and recreate us, and that, I think, is the main point. The sacrifice that God most desires is the sacrifice of yourself.