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St. Paul tells us in the early chapters of his Letter to the Romans that the
Law is our teacher. The law, all those "thou-shalts" and "thou-shalt-nots" that make us squirm in our
pews, makes us aware of the reality of sin. But this sin is not just the breaking of a set of rules we
call the Ten Commandments. Sin, as Paul experiences it, goes much deeper than that. And to see how deep
it goes, we need to begin with the context, with the circumstances under which God gave us what we've come
to call the Ten Commandments.
"The Ten Commandments," a friend of mine reminds us, "were something many of us had to memorize at
some time in our lives. The 1928 Prayer Book required that children presented for confirmation be able to
recite the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostle's Creed. So we studied them the way we
now study traffic laws before going in to get a driver's license, as a set of rules. We forget or
separate the Commandments from their setting in the Book of Exodus. And thus we lose the whole point.
For the Ten Commandments were not intended as a set of traffic laws, but as a revelation of the life in
freedom" God created us for.
Remember? Remember the context? Remember the Exodus story? "The children of Israel are freed
from their slavery in Egypt, delivered from Pharaoh at the Red Sea. For forty years they trek through the
wilderness of Sinai. They arrive at the banks of the Jordan and enter the Promised Land, no longer a band
of escaped slaves but a nation, God's special nation, his chosen people. Think about what a change that
was, and what the commandments mean in that setting!
"Israel in Egypt had no need for the commandments. The law of the slave is the command of his
master: build me a pyramid; make your bricks without straw! But at the Red Sea and in the wilderness
Israel got a new master: Adonai, the Lord, the God of creation and freedom. And God was a different
master from Pharaoh. He was a God who delivered his people, a God who freed them."
That's when God gave us the Decalogue. Not ten "commandments," but "deca-logoi," ten words. Not
ten "Don't-step-on-a-crack-or-you'll-break-your-mother's-backs!" but Ten Words about life lived in
freedom, now that we are no longer slaves subject to a slave-master's arbitrary commands.
Several years ago a poll was taken that asked 1,500 people if they could name the Ten
Commandments. Of the 1,500, only a few could recite as many as three or four. Some even claimed that
it's impossible for any person to remember as many as ten. And this in a land that claims to be in search
of excellence in education, enduring family values, and moral direction.
God's Decalogue, God's Ten Words, are God's Word of grace, God's path for a free people, God's
revelation about what good life, free life, is like, God's Word of truth about life lived in the goodness
of freedom rather than the dead end of slavery.
But we squirm in our pews because we can't remember as high as ten, and because we know that we
don't use our freedom that way. And because we know that instead of using our freedom to choose and do
what is good, we all too often use it to choose and do what is evil, to choose to take what is good and
use it for evil.
That's because of sin. And that's what St. Paul is talking about. "I dearly love God's Torah,
God's path for life lived in freedom," says Paul. "But there is a reality close beside me, and living
within me, that leads me to act differently, so that the thing I most want to do I don't do. And the
very thing I don't want to do in my deepest self, I find that I do. So I know that, in and of and by
myself, I am doomed to death. Because, although I love God's revealed path of freedom and life, I
actually walk the way of slavery and death. What a wretched man I am! Who will save me from this? Who
will save me from this way I walk, doomed to death?"
At this point, I'll offer you a way out. If you don't experience within yourself this tension
Paul is talking about, then maybe you'll want to take out a book and read for the next few minutes, or
step outside to enjoy the sunshine until the sermon's over. Maybe it's only Paul and I who experience
this tension. But I rather suspect that at least some of the rest of you also know what Paul is talking
about.
If you do, then let's look for a moment at ourselves as a people.
At Sinai we exchanged masters. We exchanged Pharaoh for the God of the Covenant, we exchanged the
god of arbitrary command for the God of loving wisdom. And in this Covenant, the Lord not only brings us
out of slavery into freedom, he also tells us what the purpose of freedom is. He tells us that the
purpose of freedom is to act as persons who are grateful for free life, persons who choose life rather
than death. The purpose of our freedom is that we ourselves might choose what is good, and live it.
Adonai, the Lord, is the liberator of Israel, the Lord to whom we owe our existence as free
people. That's what the first Word tells us, the primary Word which is surely no commandment at all but a
context, an affirmation of who God is and who we are, the Liberator and his liberated people: "I am the
Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."
This is the context in which the other nine Words make sense, and without which they make no sense
at all. For those who have been set free, there can be no god save the God who sets us free. So we shall
not bow down to any other god.
And since it is the Lord who set us free, it would be ungracious and senseless to take the name of
the Lord in vain. Surely this Word is more than a prohibition of the use of certain naughty words. It
means, if it means anything, that we shall not invoke the name of the Lord for evil, whether to deceive or
to call down a curse on another, for the Lord, having used his power for good in creating the world and in
giving freedom to his people, will not and cannot himself be used for evil. What is vain about it is the
futility of calling upon the Lord of creation and freedom and goodness for a purpose that is contrary to
his nature.
And because we value our freedom, we will keep a holy Sabbath. We will stop to remember. We will
take a break to remember that it is the Lord who sets us free. We will stop, not in some mechanical way,
but in gratitude. And because we know that if we do not stop to remember where our freedom comes from and
what its purpose is, we will surely lose it, for the price of liberty in personal life is as high as it is
in political life -- eternal vigilance.
And free people, people whose purpose is to choose the good, will surely honor our parents. We
will choose to respect, support, and care for those who gave us life and who saw to our well-being when we
had no resources to provide for ourselves. We will respect all who in one way or another help to train or
direct our lives for good.
Indeed, free people respect every human being. Therefore, free people do no murder. Not only do
no murder of the body, but also do no murder of the soul. For how can a person who is thankful for his
own freedom do otherwise but to choose to enable and encourage others to be the fullest human beings they
can be?
And how could a person who is thankful for the gift of his own freedom ever choose to exploit any
other human being , or choose to take what belongs to another? Free people respect what belongs to
others. Certainly, when people are free, those who have less do not covet what belongs to those who have
more, and those who have more than they need will want to help those who have less. Because of their
gratitude for the gift of their freedom, free people do not enrich themselves at the expense of
others.
Nor do people who are grateful for their own free lives harm others by speaking falsely or
maliciously about them, by slander or false reports or gossip, or even by statements that may be true but
derogatory, and that serve no beneficial purpose when shared. For the Lord who freed us for good is
Goodness himself, and he chooses only good for us and gives us our freedom in order that we, like him,
might ourselves choose what is good. And now that we are free to do so, surely we will want to do so.
Above the entrance of my friend's law school library are these words: "Laws are the wise
restraints that make men free." That's what the Ten Words of God are -- Ten Words of life the Lord gave
us when he set us free, words of wisdom God gave us when we exchanged masters, a revelation God offered
when we exchanged slavery to Pharaoh's commands for the freedom of God's Covenant, Ten Words of wisdom and
support and encouragement about how to live in freedom so that we do not fall back into slavery.
They were Words that Jesus loved and lived by. Not only by the letter of the words, but by their
spirit. So, for Jesus, to do no murder meant not only that he would not kill another in his body. It
meant that he could not bear even to act as if the other did not matter, and so to murder the other in his
soul. To do no murder, for Jesus, meant that he would take steps to be reconciled to a brother or sister
he was estranged from, even if he was his enemy, and so, through reconciliation, overcome evil with
good.
So when Jesus comes into the courtyard of the Temple, where the Lord who gave the Word of freedom
to his people is to be worshipped and where offerings of thanksgiving and praise are to be offered to the
Lord for the free life he has given us, he is outraged to find religious traffic cops enslaving people
once again to a set of rules and exploiting their weakness. He is outraged to find the spirit of the Word
of life being violated and emptied of its meaning. Means and ends, letter and spirit, were being
confused.
The end, the purpose of Temple worship was thanksgiving and praise to God for the life of freedom
God has delivered us into. But the means, the letter, the offering of sacrifices, were being pursued as
ends in themselves by those in power, and in such a way that they exploited the poor and the powerless.
Freedom was being turned into a new slavery. Wise restraints, freely acknowledged, were being turned into
thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots: so many pigeons offered for so many cracks stepped on; and only the
right animals for your sacrifice, and only those bought with the right coin. To put it in a Christian
context: so many prayers and offerings for so many indulgences, so much grace for so many right answers
and so many good works. And we can make all this happen for you, for a fee.
Committees and rummage sales and prayer books, good works and commandments and liturgies, and all
the rest of the things that can be wonderful means to holy ends have a way, for us human beings, of
becoming ends in themselves, a way of becoming absolutes. And maybe that's why so many people think of
religion as slavery rather than freedom -- because so often it is.
Such a perversion of prayer and freedom, such a confusion of means with ends, outraged Jesus. It
was a sacrilege, a violation of the God who frees the poor and the powerless, a taking of the Lord's name
in vain. It was a choice for a god of slavery, and not for Adonai.
Anger, with Jesus, was always a moral passion. Think of the things that made Jesus angry. The
things that made him angry were hypocrisy, cruelty, meanness, self-righteousness, and unkindness. And as
he looked on the Temple scene, profane in its irreverence for sacred things, hypocritical in its use of
religion as a mask for greed and power, unkind and cruel in its organized robbery of the poor, condemning
in its choice once again for a god of slavery, anger swelled in him. And he took a whip and threw the
scoundrels out.
The revelation of God at Sinai, God's Ten Words, is not an expression of compulsion or law, for
God is not a God of force, but of freedom. The revelation of God at Sinai is an expression of God's
grace, a revelation of life lived in wisdom and gratitude and freedom. God's Ten Words are not rules or
orders. Rules and orders were what Pharaoh gave. What God's Ten Words provide is a choice. God's
revelation at Sinai is God's way of saying, "I know who you are, because I created you. And then I found
you in slavery and brought you out of slavery. And I know what you need to live as a free people. Here
it is. Wise restraint, restraint freely chosen, is what makes you free. Freedom and goodness are the
purpose and end of life, the purpose and end that give meaning to life. Choose it, and you will
live."
And Jesus said to those in the Temple courtyard, "You turn my Father's house into a market. God's
freedom and goodness and grace are not for sale. They are gifts freely offered, and they can only be
chosen and lived, not bought."
So we are brought back to Paul. Paul found himself in a dilemma. Because of the revelation of
Sinai, he knows what to choose. But he also knows that, like the money changers in the Temple, he does
not choose it. Like the children of Israel in the wilderness, he prefers the comfort and illusory
security of the slave's full belly in Egypt over than hunger and risk of a free life in the wilderness.
Contrary to what he knows and really wants to do deep inside, left to himself and the law of sin working
within him, instead of choosing the Word of life and freedom he chooses the commandment, test-passing
religion of the gods of slavery every time. Who would rescue him from this intolerable state, from this
state of slavery and death? The same God, Adonai, the Lord! The God of grace who brought us out of
Egypt in the beginning. The Lord who delivers, who liberates. The Lord who comes to forgive us, to free
us. The Lord who suffers for us on the Cross rather than condemn us at court. The God of the Covenant of
freedom rather than a god of slavery. Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ, whose life-giving law of the
Spirit has set us free again, and for good, from the law of sin and death!
So here's a test at the end of this sermon. Can you remember the Ten Words of free life? You've
heard them three times this morning.
If not, then remember these two: Love the Lord your God. Choose him with all your heart and mind
and soul and strength by choosing for yourself the good that he has chosen for you. And love your
neighbor as yourself. Choose what is good for your neighbor as you would choose it for yourself. On
these two Words hang all the Words and the Prophets, the whole of the revelation of life as God would give
it to us.
Or, if you're having trouble even remembering as many as two commandments, here's just one in the
form of a footnote for those of us who live at this moment as a people at war with others, just as Paul
was at war within himself. Do what Jesus would do. "Love your enemies, and pray for them, for only so
can you be children of your heavenly Father, who causes the sun to rise on the good and bad alike, and
sends the rain on the innocent and the wicked. If you love only those who love you, what reward can you
expect? Even the tax-collectors do as much as that. If you greet only your brothers, what is
extraordiary about that? Even the heathen do as much. There must be no limit to your goodness, as your
heavenly Father 's goodness knows no bounds."
Choose what is good for your enemy as you would choose it for yourself. Not only the enemy you
may perceive in some distant land, but also those in some nearby pew who may not see things as you
do.
For, thanks be to God, we have a unity that is deeper than our differences -- the One whose
death on the Cross fulfilled the covenant of Sinai, and thereby completed it with his blood, and therefore
with his love. Not for some of us, but for all of us.
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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