3 Lent B March 8, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Exodus 20: 1-17 + 1 Corinthians 1: 18-25 + John 2: 13-22
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Today we’re going to do something a little bit different. There’s not going to be a difference between the “kid’s time” and the sermon. Very often I think that if we would see things as children see them, we’d be better for it. I think Jesus even said something like that, which is probably where I got it in the first place. So, kid’s…c’mon up here and join me up front.
So, here’s what we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to make a tent. I have a big sheet here and…well you all just sit over there and watch me while I construct my tent.
(Futile attempt to make a tent stand on its own with just the fabric and no poles…)
Wow. This isn’t working out very well. Weird, huh? So, we’re going to have to think about his for a little bit. About this tent that wouldn’t stand up.
Now I’m going to do something that might make some of your parent’s a little bit nervous. But I’m going to give you a choice….you can either stay up here with me during the sermon while we talk some more about this tent….or you can go back to sit with your parents until I call you back up here in a few minutes to help me out again.
*Pause for chaos*
A couple of months ago in our First Sunday Faith Forum class we talked about what it was like to be in Confirmation class….then and now.
One of the biggest differences we noted was that way back in the day – like when I was in Confirmation class – we had to do a lot of memorizing. And one of the things we had to memorize were the 10 commandments. I remember very well the day we had our oral examination on the 10 commandments. After we’d struggled to say our memory work, our pastor asked us what we were thankful for about them. Oh, there were a lot of pious answers: “I am thankful that they remind me to respect my parents” “I am thankful that they remind me not to covet my neighbor’s stuff” When the Pastor got to the class clown he asked the question again: “What are you thankful for with regard to the commandments?” and he replied: “I’m thankful that there are only 10 of them.”
I suspect that we are also thankful that there are only 10 of them and not because we are trying to memorize them. It seems that too often the Ten Commandments are viewed as a burden. As grim rules set in literal stone reminding us of what we shalt not do. But I’m here to remind us this morning that the Ten Commandments are a covenant between God and the people of Israel. And between God and us.
In the case of Israel, in our first reading from Exodus this morning, Israel had been led out of captivity. For the first time in 40 years they were free! The covenant promise was in the process of being fulfilled. They were headed to the promised land! When Moses went up Mt. Sinai and received the Ten Commandments God was in the process of restoring the covenant with God’s people and the commandments were how God chose to do it.
And before God gets started laying out the commandments God reminds the beloved children of Israel of this important fact: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…
What God is reminding them is that they are free and that it was God’s doing. No longer are they captive to the demands and desires of the Egyptians. They have been liberated by the God of freedom and they are headed to the promised land. They are free to live as the people of God. They are free to worship God and only this God, because this is the God who knows them and formed them and freed them.
They are free to rest from their labors in sweet Sabbath rest – everyone will rest, slaves and free, livestock and people, immigrant and landowners.
They are free to hold life as sacred, worthy of our utmost care.
They are free to remain faithfully committed to one another in relationships that are designed to mirror the very way God cares for and is faithful to us.
They are free to speak truth because in speaking truth there is no need to hide behind falsehood and pretense.
And they are free for contentment….free to give thanks for what God has given to them, their own family and property and livelihood.
The commandments are not, after all, a restrictive set of do’s and don’ts. God’s finger isn’t wagging in the face of the Israelites saying THOU SHALT NOT. Instead the commandments are words of liberation to a newly freed people.
We like to think that these words are forever etched in stone and remain just as they are.
But the truth is that God offered many commandments to God’s people throughout Scripture. These “top ten” even changed by the time we go from this reading of them in Exodus to the commandments as they are listed in Deuteronomy 5. In Deuteronomy there are some “important new developments. For example: the wife — on a list of property in Exodus 20:17 — is removed from that list in Deuteronomy 5:21; wife is exchanged with house and given her own commandment, perhaps reflecting a changing role for women in that culture.”[1]
So the commandments reflect a covenant between God and God’s people. They offer freedom to live as God’s beloved people, with God and with one another and with every neighbor. And they are open to changing in ways that better reflect God’s relationship with the current society.
And now, I need the kids to join me back up here to help me finish the sermon. You see, the whole premise for this sermon came from a quote from one of my favorite theologians, Barbara Brown Taylor. She said that “a promise without law is like a tent with out tent poles. It won’t hold up. It looks one way to one person and another way to the next, with no way to tell which way is right. The promise meanwhile, has a very particular shape to it, and being heirs of it does not mean that anything goes. God knows there are ways of life that work and ways of life that do not work, and that the whole point of the promise is to give people a way of life that works.”[2]
So I invite you all to each take one of these cards that has one of the commandments written on it. And I invite you to stand here. You are now the tent poles. You are the ones bearing God’s commandments within you so that we can all live together as people of the covenant. And now I’m going to try to put up the tent again. And this time, with the promise that is inherent in the law, the covenant, the promise stands.
Bear the promise within you as you walk through each day and through life, mindful that this is the God who leads Israel and you and I from bondage into freedom.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Fretheim, Terrence E. www.workingpreacher.org
[2] Taylor, Barbara Brown. Peculiar Treasures” in Gospel Medicine.