The 10 Commandments: Shaping a People
October 4, 2020 sermon by Jamie Howison on Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
“Then God spoke all these words…”—these words being what Christians call the Ten Commandments and Jews call “the Ten Words”. They actually appear in two slightly different forms in the Torah. Tonight we heard them as recorded in the book of Exodus, as given to Moses on Mount Sinai, and the other form is in Deuteronomy where they are offered as part of a long address by Moses as he nears the end of his life. In both contexts they are offered as something of a summary of the heart of the Covenant law or way of life. There are a whole lot more laws in the Torah, of course, but there is a real sense that these ten stand at the heart of it all in a form that could be easily memorized and liturgically recited.
Of course those words have landed up in all kinds of places over the centuries, often because they are thought of as generally applicable rules for any decently thoughtful culture with roots in Christianity. We have two stone monuments of the commandments here in Winnipeg; one in Kildonan Park, and another in Assiniboine Park. The former was placed in 1968 by the Knights of Columbus—a Roman Catholic men’s service organization—and the latter in 1965 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles and its Ladies Auxiliary. They’ve not really been there all that long, in other words, and I have to wonder if it was the unrest and ferment of the 1960s that inspired those two service organizations to set up those monuments as statements of stability and tradition in the face of the changing times.
Without some deeper reflection, it is easy to think of the Commandments as being timeless, traditional, and the stuff of good civic order and common-sense values. And hey, what self-respecting society would protest the prohibition of murder, adultery, and theft?
Yet there is a strong case to be made that these Commandments were not about maintaining good civic order at all, but were rather meant to be both visionary and radical in the construction of community. This is something Walter Brueggemann has been arguing for decades, and which our own John Badertscher points to in his little book, Ten Steps on Freedom Road.
One of the first things to note about the commandments is that they are fundamentally linked to the covenant between God and the people. “I will be your God, and you will be my people” is a rough summary of this covenant, to which one might add, “and these commandments and the way in which you will express your commitment to the covenant relationship.” Live this path, in other words, and let that be an expression of your relationship with your God. And while some of the laws contained in the Torah might strike us as odd, arbitrary, or lost in the mists of time—what’s the problem with eating shellfish, for example, or why are mixed fabrics not to be worn?—taken together these ten still place a claim on us, whether we are Jews or Christians.
The first three quite clearly deal with ways of thinking about God, the final six are about relationship to neighbour, and the fourth—the one about Sabbath—forms a bridge between the two sets of commandments. I don’t have time to do anything even close to justice to the Sabbath commandment, so I’d just say this. A call to set aside a day to not work, not run madly around, not fixate on the consumer culture in which we live, is perhaps one of the most important things to which we should attend. Much has been written about incorporating a Sabbath sensibility into our own lives, but here I’d just commend to you Brueggemann’s little book, Sabbath as Resistance.
Now we read a somewhat abridged version of what is actually there in Exodus, but the heart of each commandment remains. And so we began:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me
You shall not make for yourself an idol
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God
Here’s the force of things when you take these together: I am your liberator—I, and no other—and I insist that you see me as utterly unlike the many gods of other tribes and nations. You cannot carve a statue of me to be carried about as a sign of protection, and you cannot cheapen my name by using it to swear oaths or invoke power. I will not be domesticated or harnessed in such ways, for I am God. My people, you must trust that.
Walter Brueggemann (and note that this material is from Brueggemann’s essay “Duty as Delight and Desire,” in The Covenanted Self. Fortress Press, 1999, pp. 35-47 ) insists that these opening commandments are about identifying for the people their first and primary desire, namely to love God. At the Mount Sinai setting given in today’s reading, the people have not yet learned that this is their true desire. It will take time to get the old gods, the old assumptions, the habits and worldview of Egypt and enslavement out of their systems, but this is the starting point. I liberated you; you cannot domesticate me.
Now listen to what Brueggemann has to say about the commandments regarding neighbours:
The second tablet asserts that the second true desire of our lives, derivative from the first (which is love of God), is to have “good neighbors,” that is, to live in a neighborhood. A true neighborhood is never a gift that floats down from the sky, but is wrought through the revolutionary work of obedience.
The revolutionary work of obedience, Brueggemann says? How is obedience revolutionary? Precisely by building the sort of container or framework within which a whole new way can be shaped, forged, and practiced. No, more than just a new way. This is about forging a whole new people.
But can how obedience to these commandments begin to do that? Let me offer an analogy or two. If you are needing to take a good, long drink of water you’re going to need a container; a cup, bottle, or glass. Sure there is such a thing as a drinking fountain, but maybe we bracket that off during covid times! And yes, you can cup your hands under the water and bring them to your mouth, but that’s going to take you a good long time to get the drink you really need. And what if what you’re wanting is not water, but that good, hot morning cup of coffee? Cupped hands are definitely out, a coffee cup is in order. You need the container.
Or consider music. Actually, consider live, improvisational jazz music, which is a particular delight of mine. Realizing that a good many of you don’t share that passion, and maybe even think that a lot of jazz is formless or unstructured, I’d point out what the theologian and musician Jeremy Begbie says about improvisational jazz being what he calls “multiply constrained.” Begbie points first to what he calls the “musical constraints,” which in jazz are things such as meter, harmonic sequence, and even the scales that are used. Here you just have to think of how different Indian or Arabic music sounds to our ears, drawing on scales and modes unfamiliar to Western listeners. I have a jazz album which brings together Shankar, an Indian musician who plays a 10-string double violin, with Jan Garbarek, a Norwegian saxophonist. Had they not made some decisions to be musically constrained in the way that Begbie describes, it would have just been a cacophonous mess. Rightly constrained, however, they create some stunning and adventurous music.
Similarly, the kind of constraints offered by the commandments dealing with neighbours actually make space for good and right things to take place. Oh, and not just long ago at Mount Sinai, but here and now as well. Again from Brueggemann:
If we ever gain clarity about our true desire, it will quickly become evident to us that the yearning for good neighbors cannot be satisfied by any shoes, deodorant, beer, car, or detergent. They are not what we desire! And so our energy might be redirected toward neighborly matters like housing, education, health care, and away from coveting and all the distortions of commandments five through nine that serve coveting.
“These commands,” he continues, “are not primarily social restraints or modes of social control, but are about possibilities for life that emerge from ‘coming down where we ought to be.’”
And in case you might be thinking, “but that’s the Old Testament… what about grace and freedom from the law?” I’d just remind you that Jesus himself said that the greatest of the laws is to love God, with the love of neighbour being “like it” or at one with love of God. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” Jesus said, effectively distilling the 613 Torah laws down to these two foundational claims, by way of a sort of detour through the Ten Commandments. We still, all of us, need to be reminded that our true freedom is lived out within the strong container that is obedience to this foundational call to love God and love neighbour. All else, really, is commentary.
