Third Sunday of Lent - March 7, 2021
Sermon: The Ten Commandments - March 7 2021 - Carolyn Smith
You’re here!!! You found the button to click “Play!” If you’re watching live on Sunday morning, “wow! You got out of bed just for church! NO judgement from me if you’re in bed still with your tablet. And if you’re listening on Tuesday at lunch, or squeezing it in on Saturday, I’m excited! Something about why we’re here and what we’re about - it matters!
You could have been busy. We wear “Busy” like a badge, whether for the ratrace we’re stuck in, fear of falling behind financially, or looking insignificant. But you’re here!
And I’d have said all this even if we were still in the sanctuary. It’s been one whole year this week since our EXODUS from the building we call Church and we’ve had to WORK at it, to keep connected and vibrant. Once upon a time, there may have been pressure to show up for the sabbath, and punishment even for your great-grandchildren’s children if you ignored Sunday traditions. So to all of you who are listening of your own free will, setting aside work, or even delighting at being part of this, I say Bravo!
Because EXODUS can be painful, mess with our heads. While I’m encouraging and cheerful, we also are grieving our togetherness in the building, our freedom to care for our loved ones. This is not whining- its our lament. We knew who we were a year ago, and how to be ourselves. Wandering in the desert is hard for a community but I’m sure it’s been done before.
Thanks to Laura who read to us the Ten Commandments. Legend has it that Old Moses has led the people into the desert wilderness after the Exodus from bondage under Pharaoh. After mighty plagues and the parting of the Red Sea, they would walk for 40 years in search of the promised land. Last week we heard of Old Abraham and Sarah wandering for years in the desert. The week before, we told of Old Noah floating aimlessly in his ark. This is our third story of Covenant with God, of wandering and anxiety, and this time the covenant made
-the relationship we focus on - is God with the community, the congregation - a band of wannabe - faithful people who remember how things used to be, making their way through and toward something strange and new. They had grown up with stories of Noah and Sarah and Abraham. But like Noah adrift on his smelly boat with all the animals, try being adrift in the desert with a whole mess of frustrated and worried people arguing about what to do next.
Now, as our story goes, Moses lived his covenant regularly conversing with God, it seemed, as if they were two old chess buddies. And the people counted on Moses’ friendship with God, but they had all come to a point where anxiety was taking over. After all, they could tell stories of their Exodus from all they knew, even if it was defined by surviving oppression. They remembered their history and their blessing, but ask them ‘what is righteous and blessed about you right now,” and that blessing seemed to have left them in the dust. They feel disconnected from all they recognize about themselves and they are grieving themselves. Does anything anymore set them apart from others? What indeed?
And so, with his people struggling in the desert, Moses talks to God again. And God offers the Ten Commandments. To our modern minds, those stone tablets are a stern and harsh list, and I cringe to read it. We WANT it to feel holy and transformational. And instead we have to make sense of punishments for great grandchildren. Let’s be relieved that I was gifted a wee little book by theologian Walter Brueggeman.
You & I have been socially distanced from understanding this list by about 1500 years. To our ears, this is archaic and cruel, and when we’ve thought “the Old Testament is too violent and wrath-filled,” it’s passages like this and worse that we stumble over. Hang in there though...from Genesis right through, the story is about discovering Covenant - People coming to know and understand God, and as we know with modern issues like Affirming Churches and Indigneous and
racial struggles, we as a human people are clumsy and slow and quick to judge. To cancel or dismiss or give up. So hang in here.
1500 years ago, in A time when everyone KNEW gods punished, and they’d not yet come far enough in their journey with the Divine to trust, but they’d come far enough to realize that this was something new: for the first time, they had The GOD who gave them an option to wrath-A God “showing love to a
thousand generations of those who love me.” In a world of violent arbitrary gods, This was a remarkably good step. But did they want to follow a God with this list of Do Not’s and Thou shalt? Was it really a blessing?
The first few commandments tell about relationship with the Divine - to love God, no other god, and no idols or misusing God’s name. The last few.... To Honour our family, we shall not kill, or cheat, or lie, or covet -they’re about those around us - our neighbours, including the creatures, including the workers, including strangers we encounter. Love God. Love your neighbour.... Sound familiar? Sounds like OUR Covenant.
Which one did I miss? Remember the Sabbath day.... And here is the gift hidden within the list. To these people who are anxious for the future, coming from a social structure of being worked to the bone and pitted against each other, God says “Rest. Love each other. Time time. Let everyone just catch their breath and give thanks." To people who are exhausted from making ends meet, from being good enough, from a dog-eat-dog world, God says “Replenish and renew. Trust one another, don’t fear or hurt! Honour each other, don’t lie or compete. These people are people of community and celebration.
Those are our kind of people. We’re Not people of the Pharaoh where every moment grinds through human resources. We’re a people that rests and replenishes so our work feeds the community. Rather than people of fear and distrust, or commerce and conquest, this gift from God described a purpose for the people and a vision of what the promised land was. Not Where. Because Wherever we find ourselves, like right here, on our couches in our pj’s, or talking
on the phone or someday singing together again in our sanctuary- and whether sabbath comes in moments throughout our days, or weekly on a Sunday, or however else - we are in Covenant with God as community of celebration and love and a flourishing planet!! The little Brueggeman book I mentioned is called “Sabbath as Resistance”. How better to resist a world that goads us to divide and hide from relationship? How better to resist all that pulls us apart, than to rest and celebrate this congregation of friends, as community and with our neighbours. As a part of this rainbow creation, as your own beloved self and in community, WE are not alone, thanks be to God.