The First Four Commandment's - The Love of God - June 27, 2022
The First Four Commandments - God’s Love by Deborah Laforet
Based on Exodus 20:3-11 & Matthew 22:34-40
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
If we are not loved, if we do not know what it is to be loved, we won’t know how to share it. From the beginning of our lives, we have people who care for us. They feed us, keep us warm and dry, hold us when we are distressed, coo at us and hug and kiss us to express their delight in us. This is how we learn we are loved and this is how we learn to express our love to others. Hopefully.
There are still way too many people in our world who don’t get this from the beginning of their lives, or who have this love is interrupted very early in life. These people learn to distrust love. Sometimes the hurt they received is what they learn to share with others. It’s familiar. It’s sometimes even comforting in its familiarity. It’s also a way of keeping themselves protected from future hurt and pain. Love can be learned later in life, but, by then, it’s more difficult to get through the barriers of past pain and trauma.
Today, we are again looking at the story of the Ten Commandments. As we heard last week, these commandments are being given to a people who have been slaves for generations and have no idea how to live as a nation. It’s also possible that many did not know how to be good neighbours or love one another.
We’ve heard stories of slavery, especially slavery of the African people in colonial and imperial countries, like Great Britain, the U.S., and Canada. We’ve heard horrific tales of slaves that were used and abused, treated less than human. Their bodies were seen as objects to be used in any way their owners liked. There was rape and sexual assault, people were whipped and beaten, they were not housed or fed adequately, children were ripped away from their parents and sold elsewhere, and children did not have a childhood. They were put to work right away. The enslaved were trapped in a system and they had to learn how to survive within it. Some never knew the love of a parent. They were not free to speak their mind for fear of a beating. Some believed they had no value unless their owners were pleased with them.
These horrific stories and many more are what we have heard of slavery and I can only imagine that the Jewish people, enslaved by the Egyptians, held the same horrific stories. Of course, there was love. Romantic love, family love, community love, but it all would have felt tenuous and fragile, never knowing when their lives might be upturned by the wants and needs of their owners.
The people who left Egypt, the people Moses led through the parted sea and to Mount Sinai, were a traumatized people. Moses was probably one of the very few who had come from a stable and loving household. He was leading a people who had to learn to trust him, especially as someone who had grown up Egyptian, and to trust their God, who they may have seen as abandoning them. They had to learn to trust that Moses and their God would keep them safe and would lead them to a better place.
One of the first gifts that is given to these people are the Ten Commandments, ten directives that would help them to love God and love their neighbour. These commandments were the basics, but how did they help the Israelites to feel loved and learn to trust?
Now, today we’re just looking at the fist four commandments. Carolyn will look at the the rest of them next week. So, what are they?
Paraphrasing, they are: 1) You shall have no other gods, 2) You shall not create and then worship idols, 3) You shall not make wrongful use of God’s name, and 4) Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. These first four commandments deal exclusively with how to love and honour God and the holy. These first four come before the ones about loving your neighbour. These first four lay the groundwork for the rest. Now, you might question this. How are commandments about loving God going to be helpful to these traumatized people? How does learning to love God help them to love one another, or to know that they are loved?
The first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods.” Sometimes this is phrased as God being a jealous and possessive god, but this can also be seen as loyalty. This commandment asks for the Israelites to promise to be true to God. Learning to be loyal and faithful is important when learning to be a constant, caring presence for family and community.
The second is, “You shall not create and then worship idols,” an important commandment in our current society where there is much to worship. This could again be about fidelity and loyalty, but could also be about who or what we choose to worship. If we choose to worship our work, do we neglect family and community. If we choose to worship success and achievements, do we judge those who are not successful. If we choose to worship our belongings and strive to have more than our neighbours, do we risk our less privileged neighbours not having enough?
The third commandment is “You shall not make wrongful use of God’s name.” This has often been phrased, “You shall not take the name of God in vain.” This commandment has often been used to condemn people for using God’s name when they are swearing or when they are upset. Although if you can’t go to God when you’re upset, to whom can you go? I’ve heard another interpretation that makes more sense to me. For thousands of years, people have killed in the name of God. Religion and gods have been used throughout history to declare war, subject people to slavery, judge people, force people to assimilate, control them. People now shy away from talk of God because we have used God’s name in such harmful ways.
And the fourth commandment, “Remember the sabbath and keep it holy.” Take the time to stop and smell the roses. Be still and appreciate your gifts and blessings. This might mean taking a day as sabbath, it might mean taking 20 minutes a day. Stop, wonder, breathe, and be grateful. That’s how the holy is kept.
There is an image in a Godly Play book, in the chapter about this story of the Ten Commandments, or “The Ten Best Ways.” The story divides the commandments similarly to how I have this morning. The first three are how we love God, the last six are how we love our neighbour. The fourth sits in the middle as keeping the sabbath is how we love God and our neighbour. All of them together show God’s love for us.
The first four are the base. From them, we learn how to be loyal and true, not abandoning those who need our love and support. We learn where to focus our energies and spend the time we need with those we love, not forsaking them for other worldly distractions. We learn that harming people for the sake of others or in God’s name is not the way to create a better world, and we learn to appreciate what we have, accepting ourselves and being grateful for
others. This is the ground work for the other six commandments, for all other commandments, that help us to love our neighbour, love ourselves, and bring more love into the world.
This morning we also heard Jesus’ words as written in the gospel of Matthew. Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest. His answer? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This,” he says, “is the greatest and first commandment.” We see this commandment in the first four of those ten commandments. Jesus then says that the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” This commandment, he says, is like the first. Loving God and loving neighbour are entwined. In order to do one, you must do the other.
Now, some might say these ten commandments are outdated, or that they’ve been used in harmful ways so we should disregard them. I challenge that. Like most of our bible, like most of our faith, we need to see in new ways. We need to read these texts and interpret them for our context today. They can still give us powerful messages of love and hope, especially when we read about an Israelite people traumatized and learning how to start over. We are a traumatized people. Whether we are the oppressed or the oppressors, we have to learn new ways of living. We need to re-evaluate how we live in this world because what we’re doing doesn’t seem to be working. This world needs us. This world needs our love. We have to learn new ways of loving, and I think we can find wisdom in our text.
May these Ten Commandments remind us who we are and whose we are. May it remind us, like Jesus did, that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and love our neighbour as our self. May the Spirit bring us wisdom and the strength we need to learn to trust, learn to love, and learn to share that love, bringing God’s kin-dom to this earth. May it be so. Amen.