THOU SHALT NOT!
Scriptures: Exodus 20:1-17
John 1:35-42
If you were to describe religion in one sentence, what would it be? That’s a rather daunting task. While you think about how you would answer that sentence for yourself, here’s how one bright student in a Christian education class responded: “Religion shows us the things we must not do.” Now, that may not be the kind of statement each of you would come up with, but I think we would have to admit that it represents a pretty pervasive point of view in our society about the nature of religion. Religion, to this way of thinking, is largely a series of moral maxims, of “dos” and “don’ts” (mostly “don’ts”) that must be followed or we’ll get in trouble with “the big Lawgiver upstairs” or find ourselves in the “wrong” place after death. People who experience religion – and especially Christianity – in this way are frightened by it and often reject it as a heavy burden that enslaves and fatigues rather than frees and empowers.
A lot of this kind of thinking, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, can be traced back to a strong emphasis on the Ten Commandments. I can’t speak for my Jewish colleagues, but certainly in the Christian traditions I have known – and I suspect this is the case for most of you, as well – knowing or at least studying about the Ten Commandments was a pretty basic piece of Christian education. And this is rather strongly culturally entrenched, too. I get bemused by efforts like those of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state courthouse despite contrary orders from a federal judge, with adamancy so intense that in November, 2003, Alabama's Court of the Judiciary unanimously removed Moore from his post as Chief Justice. Justice Moore certainly had his supporters, who, by-and-large, felt that the moral imperatives voiced in the Ten Commandments are crucial to our survival as a society.
But there are several things wrong with this picture, not the least of which is that the Ten Commandments embody a specific monotheistic religious viewpoint that is not in keeping with civil society’s effort not to establish any particular religion. I don’t know if this was the case in the Alabama courthouse, but one aspect of the effort to keep the monuments of the Ten Commandments in place that I find most amusing is that many of them were originally erected by Paramount Pictures to advertise Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film version of The Ten Commandments. By the way, as a bit of a side-bar which indicates how strong a pull these commandments have upon us, adjusted for inflation, The Ten Commandments is the fifth-highest grossing movie of all time, with collections of $838,400,000. In non-adjusted dollars, it held the record as the highest-grossing film with a religious theme until the 2004 film, The Passion of the Christ.
Another thing that’s wrong with this picture is that it’s not altogether clear in the Biblical record what the commandments are or how many there are. The passage that we read this morning from Exodus 20 (which parallels a similar list in Deuteronomy, chapter 5) actually holds maybe 14 or 15 imperative statements, even though the Bible itself refers to them as “Ten”. Moreover, various religions divide these statements among the Commandments in different ways, and may also translate the Commandments differently. (There’s that nice little satirical moment in Mel Brooks' film History of the World, Part I where Moses originally receives fifteen commandments from God on three stone tablets, but he accidentally drops one and so he decides to proclaim that there are ten commandments. Brooks may have been more accurate than he intended in this satire in terms of what’s really there in the Bible.)
What’s more, if you go to Exodus, chapter 34, there you’ll find a quite different listing of ten commandments, which has come to be known as the “Ritual Decalogue”. Some commentators have theorized that the commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 represent a later set of Ten Commandments, called the “Ethical Decalogue”, and that the ten listed in Exodus 34 were the original Ten Commandments. The differences between the two Decalogues highlight the development of sacred texts over vast amounts of time and from differing narrative traditions by incorporating two differing sets of Ten Commandments. And as we know about all Biblical texts, how these writings are interpreted is crucial to what meaning they can having for living our lives
So, you can begin to see with all this exposition that to say simplistically, “You’d better follow the Ten Commandments!” as a primary motivator for a religious life is problematic in relation to the history of their development. But there’s a deeper reason why following a list of “dos” and “don’ts” is an unhealthy form of religion.
The Ten Commandments, as they have come down to us, are imperatives of the law – those things that we are told we should follow if we want to lead a righteous life. But what Jesus offered in the gospel is what we could call imperatives of grace – what we have been given out of God’s great love for us.
As we read in John’s gospel today when John the Baptist first sees Jesus he identifies him as the Lamb of God. Immediately before the passage that is our scripture for today John declares, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” And he repeats it, as we heard, in verse 36: “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” Notice that well before John the Baptist confronted anyone with a demand related to Jesus, he identifies Jesus as the embodiment of good news. And what great, good news it was!
John the Baptist also calls Jesus “the Son of God” in verse 34. So powerful was the attraction and persuasion of the good news related to Jesus that several people with whom John the Baptist shared this good news followed Jesus after hearing John speak. The imperative of grace that John recognized caused people to follow a man who embodied love, not to follow the rule of the law. This, of course, is what got Jesus in trouble with the Scribes and the Pharisees, and it is what eventually led to his crucifixion. According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ memorable first words were, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mk 1:15) – an indication that the love which the kingdom of God represents has overtaken the law.
Actually, neither the words of John the Baptist nor the words of Jesus should come as a real surprise to anyone. Announcements of God’s love and the promises of God’s care had always been the foundation on which any other word from God or divine action was based – even in the giving of the Ten Commandments. Before God ever set down those laws that we came to call the Ten Commandments, God declared, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex 20:2). God’s intention in these imperatives is freedom. Obedience to the Ten Commandments is not a narrow prerequisite for receiving God’s love, but a broad and vibrant response to God’s love.
Also, the very possibility of us carrying out God’s imperatives relates directly to celebrating God’s acceptance of us. Only in a loving relationship with the God who delivers people from bondage do we discover the power to be moral in our life of freedom.
Now, I want to do a jump-shift at this point, but I hope I can bring it back and you’ll see the tie-in. Besides, I’ve been mostly theoretical and theological for the past several minutes, and you’re probably tired of that by now and want to hear something more practical or at least illustrative. Through the litany that we said together earlier we’ve noted the celebration of Dr. King’s birthday tomorrow and through that celebration we can once again affirm the direction and vision he offered for this society. That direction and that vision came precisely out of what I’ve been talking about – that the love God gives to lift all of us out of our bondage to old ways of thinking and acting means that we are empowered to move beyond strict adherence to the law. In the case of the Civil Rights Movement this also meant using that love to help us move beyond what were obviously unjust laws.
If you want to do something truly to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday tomorrow, I strongly suggest you go see the movie “The Great Debaters”. I don’t usually make unqualified recommendations of films, but this one is a must-see. Based on a true story, it takes place in Texas in 1935 where an exceptional teacher, played by Denzel Washington, molds a team of debaters at a small African-American school, Wiley College, who become so good that they are finally able to challenge national champion Harvard to what became an historic debate. The climax of that debate comes when they are told to debate whether civil disobedience is a legitimate form of protest. The Harvard student, taking the negative, makes a persuasive case that civil disobedience disrupts a social order which is based on a structure of laws that brings order and peace to society. The Wiley College student, nervous and somewhat over-awed by his opponent’s brilliant argument, takes a long time to begin, but finally he looks straight into the camera and says, “In Texas they lynch Negroes.” It is a riveting moment. He then goes on to make a passionate and compelling case for how when laws are used to oppress they must be fought by any means at our disposal – including civil disobedience. (That student, incidentally, was James Farmer, Jr., who later in the 1940s went on to found the Congress of Racial Equality.)
Laws like the Ten Commandments were never intended to oppress – but that can be the result when an interpretation of, say, “You shall not murder”, leads to an anti-abortion posture that tyrannizes women and treats them as second-class citizens. Our obeying of the Ten Commandments, or any other ethical imperatives of the law, needs to be part and parcel of the freeing, empowering energy of religion for us, if it is to make any sense at all.
Christianity as a religion is concerned with living life and living it abundantly. To do this we must apply the grace of God – which means freedom and empowerment – to the keeping of the law – which means ethical imperatives. That’s what Jesus did. In Matthew’s gospel, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Mt. 5:17) Earlier in John’s gospel the gospel writer says of Jesus, “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (Jn. 1:16-17)
“Truth” is a very important idea for John. It is what both grace and the law are pointing toward. It all comes together for him in that powerful statement he has Jesus saying in the 8th chapter: “…and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (Jn. 8:32) The grace of God, the law and the prophets, are all pointing us to the truth about ourselves, about our relation to the world, and about our relationship to God – and this truth is what gives us such an exhilarating sense of freedom.
In our scientific age we tend to equate “truth” with “fact” – that which can be proven objectively or by empirical observation. But there is also what I would like to call “living truth” – that is, a truth for you and me, here and now, which helps us to live our lives. The hope of the gospel is that through both grace and the law we may be released from a false view of ourselves and the world.
You remember the play, which was turned into a very fine movie with Henry Fonda, called “Twelve Angry Men”. (There was also a TV movie version of it with Jack Lemmon.) In it a jury of 12 men deliberates a murder case in which an 18-year-old boy is accused of stabbing his father. The prosecution has presented a tight case, and it seems like an obvious guilty verdict. But as the first vote is taken one man votes “not guilty” – not because he thinks the boy is actually not guilty but because he is not quite sure and thinks they should talk about it. Here is the interplay of law and grace – the law saying guilt is obvious and thus to maintain order there must be punishment; a small note of grace entering to say “can you be that sure of the truth?” As they sift each piece of evidence, the truth about the case becomes more elusive – but the truth about each of these men becomes more apparent. Some want to find the boy guilty for their own reasons – including one man who sees in this boy his own son whom he thinks did not grow up to be a man and therefore he desperately wants to punish this boy. At the end the truth of the case is not shown conclusively one way or the other – but the truth about the lives of each of these men has come strikingly to light. It came about because of two unique aspects of our legal system – the concept of innocent until proven guilty and proof of guilt beyond any reasonable doubt – and because grace allowed one man to be concerned about and enter another human life: the inter-action of law and grace.
As each of us lives through the trivial and momentous events of our lives, we are faced – usually in moments we least expect – with some truth about the way we are living that life. The way we respond to that insight depends, to a large extent, on how grace and law have operated on our reasoned actions and emotional reactions. Then can truth become “living truth” for each one of us and set us free to live life abundantly. It’s what Jesus wants for us.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
January 20, 2008