like this, Have you done anything to violate the sanctity of another person s marriage? Uhhh, what?! Ok, not so helpful. However, the questions about

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1 The Ten Commandments Scripture Lesson: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, Rev. William E. W. Robinson Salem Presbyterian Church World Communion Sunday October 5, 2014 Some people march to the beat of their own drum. Not me. I m more of a rule-follower. I was even more so when I was younger. In kindergarten nowadays, students who follow the class rules are on the green light. Those who don t are on the red light. I would ve been on the green light. Even when I was in high school, I rarely missed my weekend curfew at home. I wasn t perfect, mind you, but I obeyed the rules more times than not. My rule-following persona may partially explain why I ve sometimes thought of Christianity as a bunch of rules: Do this. Don t do that. In high school, it was mostly a list of don ts : Don t listen to that song or to that band. Don t look at that or read that. I think the Ten Commandments were even more to blame. Though I didn t know them (who did?), I nonetheless viewed them as the mother of all lists of do s and don ts. They also made God seem mad, and I didn t want him mad at me! I m not alone. Amy Merrill Willis is an ordained Presbyterian pastor in our presbytery and professor at Lynchburg College. In an article on the Ten Commandments, she writes: As a relatively earnest Roman Catholic kid in a Catholic parochial school, the Ten Commandments played a significant role in my moral formation. In preparation for Confession, teachers regularly gave us lengthy reflection guides based on the commandments. Some of the questions were completely inappropriate for us as fifth and sixth grade kids, asking, for instance, if we had committed adultery. The question was delicately worded, running something

2 like this, Have you done anything to violate the sanctity of another person s marriage? Uhhh, what?! Ok, not so helpful. However, the questions about honoring God and parents, stealing, and bearing false witness were relevant enough and merited serious reflection. It didn t hurt that Sister Beatrice our firebreathing, ruler-wielding nun from Ireland dispensed the fear of God along with the study guides. 1 When you think about when and how Willis and many of us learned the Ten Commandments, it s not surprising that they re frequently seen as a universal list of do s and don ts. Made by a fearsome God. In order to suck all the joy and fun out of our lives. By keeping us in line. So that we would avoid God s wrath. And eventually make it to heaven. If or when we look at the Ten Commandments like that, we ve got them all wrong. They re not meant to be a burden to us. Ten boxes that we have to check off in order to be good Christians. Moral hoops that we have to jump through again and again in order to stay on God s good side. They re not meant to be an onerous weight, a killjoy in our lives. No, the Ten Commandments are meant instead to be a gift. A gift from a good and loving God. To a people he knows and loves. He heard Israel s cries in Egypt. Saw their misery there. Knew their suffering at the hands of Pharoah. He freed them from their slavery. Saved them from Pharoah at the Red Sea. Guided them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Fed them manna from heaven in the wilderness. Provided them water from a rock. 2 1 Amy Merrill Willis, Between Moralism and Moral Vision: Rediscovering the Decalogue Exodus 20:12-16, Political Theology Today, June 23, Available online at

3 Those are all gifts. Then he gives Israel the gift of these commands. How are they a gift? They re a gift of expectations. Think about your own family: when you were a child, your parents set expectations for you: What you should and shouldn t do. What you could and couldn t watch on TV or on the internet. How you should behave when there was company in the house. How you should act in church. We may not think of those as gifts, especially when you re a child. But they are. How so? Because our parents expectations conveyed to us and instilled in us values and morals that over time helped us to develop from children into adults. Our parents set them because they loved us. Because they wanted what s best for us. Because they wanted us to grow into mature adults. Likewise, the Ten Commandments are expectations that God sets for us. (They re not the only ones, of course, but they re some of the biggest.) He does it because he loves us. Because he wants what s best for us, his children. Because by meeting his expectations in these commands, he knows that we will prove to be mature people, faithful people, people like his own Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, when someone who loves you gives you a gift, what do you do (or what should you do)? You thank them. You might say it verbally, or you might send a card. However you do it, you express your gratitude. We show our gratitude for God s salvation in the exodus and supremely in his Son by doing our best to meet his expectations for us. Yes, obedience to God s commands should be the required response of a grateful people! Grateful for what God has done, for his never-say-die love, we won t put anything else in the world before him (the first commandment). We won t worship anything else but God (the 3

4 second). We won t abuse his holy name (the third). We ll observe the sabbath (the fourth). As both Moses and Jesus do, we can affirm these first four commands by saying: we will love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. That s our thank you to God. But we don t only thank God by obeying these first four commandments. They have to do with God s expectations of us in our relationship with him. (Some call this the divine-human or vertical relationship.) We also express our thankfulness by observing the last six. Those have to do with God s expectations of us in our relationships with one another. (Some refer to this as the human-human or horizontal relationship.) Even as Jesus affirmed the first four commandments by saying Love the Lord your God, we can affirm the last six by saying: we will love our neighbor as we love ourselves. That s how Jesus himself summarizes these last six commands: love your neighbor. Yet, too many times, when we read or hear the Ten Commandments, we put the spotlight on ourselves. They become a laundry list of things we should or shouldn t do. They are, of course, addressed to us: You shall not murder. You shall not steal. At the same time, each of these last six commandments points us to love of our neighbor. They re saying in effect: You shall not murder your neighbor. You shall not steal from your neighbor. For example, the seventh commandment isn t just about restraining your sexual appetite. It s even more about respecting your neighbor and his or her family. It s loving them by honoring the boundaries of marriage and family. And the word neighbor is stated explicitly in commands nine and ten. We should be grateful to God for each of these good gifts. 4

5 Why? Because, here again, God has our best interests at heart. He s not only thinking of us as individuals, he s thinking of us as his special, called and redeemed community. If we re to live together as mature, faithful believers in that community, then we should preserve and protect these boundaries. We should build and maintain these guardrails for the good of everyone. Elsewhere in her article, Amy Merrill Willis confesses that when she was a student in Catholic school the Ten Commandments were only about personal conduct, a check-list for good behavior...the goal of the commandments was about being good, staying right with God and scary Sister Beatrice and, most of all, avoiding Catholic guilt. This is the reality of simple moralism: it tends to be utterly self-centered. If and when we view the Commandments as self-centered moralism rather than God- and neighbor-centered love, we lose sight of their God-given purpose. Instead, as Willis rightly observes: they are better viewed as a means to form and nurture an alternative community. So, they are not a personal burden to bear but a gift we give in love to God and our neighbor. I end with this question: Did you know that there s an old Presbyterian practice of saying the Ten Commandments in worship? It dates to John Calvin himself, the Father of Presbyterianism. The congregation would read each of them right after the confession and assurance. Why did they do that? Having been forgiven, the congregation is then reminded of what we re expected to do: love God and our neighbor. What a gift! Thanks be to God! Amen. 5