Imagine I were to walk into a household of anyone in this room on a random night of the week – say, a Monday, around supper time, which, at least in my house, is never really our most stellar moment. Imagine I stick my head in the door of your household for just about five minutes – and listen to what’s going on.
I have no idea what has come before that moment. I have no idea what is to come after I pop back out. And I know nothing about the relationships of the people in the room –spouses, partners, children, friends – or what you’ve come through and what you’ve done for each other and what you’ve struggled with and what’s been joyous for you.
I know none of this. I just stick my head in, and I copy down the five minutes’ worth of conversation I happen to hear, and I leave.
When I get home and look at what it was I wrote down, what would I have? Well, if it’s anything like my household, it might be griping from the kid that dinner isn’t ready, griping from the parent to turn off the tv and help with dinner, God forbid. Or I might have heard disagreement or just sorting something out, or a shared humor, or the everyday expressions of love.
But whatever it was, I’d just be getting one little part of a conversation – maybe a very revealing part – but still, only a part.
And as much as I might want to say that because I stuck my head into the room, I can totally understand what that one part means, that’s simply not true. Because the truth is, that I couldn’t understand that one part because I wouldn’t understand the relationship that it came from. I wouldn’t understand the hearts and the minds and the history that those five minutes were part of.
If I really wanted to understand what I had heard, I would need to know what had come before, maybe for years before, and what’s planned for tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. To really understand it, I’d have to be part of that relationship.
Well, in a nutshell, I think that’s the best way to understand what we did a moment ago, as we overheard the part of Exodus containing what we so famously call the 10 commandments.
We overheard part of a relationship. One moment. An important moment, admittedly. That’s why we’re hearing these passages, and not other ones. These are important as they are, and there’s good reason for them to be up here on the wall in the chancel.
But still – they’re just a moment, extracted from a long, rich story of relationship between God and the Israelites, extracted from everything that had come before these 10 commandments and everything that is to come after.
And what difference does that make? After all, we’re not talking about a Tuesday night squabble. These are the 10 commandments, it’s big. Didn’t we all see the Cecil B. DeMille version of it, where God talks like a British male, and all the women look like something out of Petticoat Junction, only wearing a toga? Aren’t commandments, commandments? End of story?
Well, is it? A lot of time, we treat the 10 commandments as if that’s all there is. But let’s not take that for granted. Even without looking at the whole Biblical story, which really is the story that they must be understood in terms of, let’s see what comes just before and after this piece of conversation that we overhear, and see if that makes any difference.
What comes before them? Well, the Israelites have suffered for years, horribly, in Egypt, slaves under the yoke of the Pharaohs. And of course the current Pharaoh doesn’t want to lose the cheap labor. So Moses – with some help from God – does a little convincing, and after various plagues (frogs, locusts, gnats, flies, etc.) and the first Passover, which is, of course, a pretty bloody story, and the parting of the Red Sea, the Israelites finally get out of Egypt. And they head into the wilderness and end up near Mt. Sinai, which is when Moses and God have this conversation that we hear a piece of.
So that’s what came before. In short, deliverance from slavery. Salvation. Freedom.
But freedom isn’t just freedom from something – like slavery – it’s also freedom to do something. So when God says, ok, you’re free, God doesn’t just mean, you’re free from slavery, but “You are free to live more fully as my people. It’s been going on for awhile, but I want it to go further.” You know what that’s like – sort of, let’s go steady, or let’s get married. But the point is, let’s go deeper. “And,” God says, “the way we do that is covenant between you and me. Agreement about how we’re going to act.”
And that’s when we get the commandments – in the act of going further in relationship, further into a story. And that’s why it makes sense that God’s first line in delivering them isn’t a “You should, you shouldn’t.” God’s first line is about who God is: “I am the one who brought you out of slavery.” This whole commandment thing is based on who the speaker is, which is the one who already brought them out of what had been holding them back in life, what had kept them enslaved. On that identity, the commandments stand.
And in case that still sounds too abstract or distant, try this. Imagine in your own life – in as deep and secret a way as you need – imagine God saying to you, “I am Yahweh, your God, and I love you so much that I’m the one who brought you out of your bondage to….” -- what?
And then from that experience, that memory, that understanding of God, only then you can go on to Decalogue. They’re not called the Ten Commandments here – they’re just called words that God spoke. So we often call then the “Ten words” – or, the Decalogue. And there’s a lot to be said about them, much more than we can do here today. They sound simple – and they are, and they’re not really.
A few examples –
Are all the meanings of the words so very clear? – For instance, what does it mean to steal? In the Hebrew language and culture of the time, the word suggests lots more than simply taking goods – it could mean taking someone’s dignity, someone’s very personhood. I think most of us would say we could resist shoplifting a necklace, but are we all so sure that we’ve never leveled anyone’s dignity?
And what do these “words” really mean in real life? For instance, they were directed to the adult community, which means that the rule to honor parents was not mainly about making young children obey, even though it’s been used that way. Now – it’s ok that we use it that way, but if we’re going to interpret it to apply to young children, then we’ll have to interpret it in other ways, too, like applying to children – whether young or grown – of abusive parents. Maybe the best way for these folks to honor their parents is to not honor their parents’ worst sides. Maybe the best thing these children can do is step back from the abusive behavior. Maybe that is the deepest form of honor.
And here’s another question – are all the commandments equal? For people who don’t honor the Sabbath because they have to work seven days a week just to pay their rent, or just because they’re not good at setting work aside – is that on the same level as killing? God doesn’t say anywhere here that any of these are more acceptable to disobey than others – no A-list and B-list. And of course, we disagree all the time about what it means to kill. It’s alternately translated “kill” or “murder,” and when you look at the Hebrew, which uses an unusual word here, it’s ambiguous exactly what it would apply to, and not apply to.
You see, when we begin to open up these issues, suddenly these short, clear sentences don’t feel so very clear. Which leads to the question – if salvation and freedom came before the giving of the commandments, then what comes after?
Well, actually more laws. Lots more. The part of Exodus that comes next is often called the Book of the Covenant. It’s pages of what we call casuistic, or case, law, meaning the law as applied to individual cases that come up in everyday life – case studies, if it’s easier for you to think of it that way: property, slavery, violence, families, worship. Every gritty aspect of life.
Which means that God is telling us: God belongs in all those gritty places.
It also means that how the law worked, day by day, gritty place by gritty place, was not clear. It had to be hammered out.
And if it was that way then – how much more is that the case now?
The short is that in order to make sense of these severe sounding lines, we have to find ourselves in the story, just like the Israelites did. The Israelites were delivered, then they got these guidelines for how to be in relationship – and then they had to figure out what that meant over and over again.
Maybe it’s the same for us. Maybe we can’t understand the rules without living the story. These are important, they do lay claim to us, but like the Israelites, we are called to wrestle with them and find the ways they give us life. And that right there might be the key to what keeps these commandments truly alive, instead of being a list of New Year’s resolutions or, worse, a weapon for people to hit each other over the head with.
Remember, for the Israelites, salvation came first. They didn’t get the law first and then earn enough points to buy salvation. God saved them before anybody earned any points by saying which commandments they did or didn’t follow – because salvation can never be earned. Real love, God’s love, can’t ever really be earned.
And we can say the same. We can say, and we do say, every time we’re around that altar, that through Jesus, God has saved us, too. That’s it, it’s done. Salvation happened. Can’t go back and undo it. Instead, like the Israelites, we get to go forward and sort out what it means be in a story with someone who loves us that truly, madly, and deeply.
Because when love leads to covenant, as it did here in the Exodus story, as it does in marriage or the adoption of a child or our baptismal vows – when love leads to a covenant between two parties, that covenant is not there for the sake of coming down on either one of them when they stumble, as we humans will do. That covenant is there to further our human love – and to free our love to go beyond its own limitations.
That’s what I hope we hear, in this well-known passage from Exodus. Not something legalistic and judgmental, and certainly not a means to hurt ourselves or other people. They were never meant to be used that way.
Instead, I hope we hear an urging from a God who loves us beyond measure – and who wants to help us make the most of what it is to be human.