Roger Ray, pastor
March 11, 2012 Lent 3
Exodus 20:1-17
Then God spoke all these words: 2I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3you shall have no other gods before me. 4You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. 8Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work--you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
12Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 13You shall not murder. 14You shall not commit adultery. 15You shall not steal. 16You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
I want to offer a warning to our YouTube and iTunes viewers that today's sermon contains the potentially offensive ideas that women are fully human beings with the same rights as men and that a heterosexual majority has no more right to vote on the legitimacy of same sex relationships than a gay minority has a right to vote on the legitimacy of heterosexual relationships.... Or to put it in more familiar Biblical language, "thou shalt not be a jerk and thou shalt mind thine own business."
And that being said, I would like to invite you to spend a few minutes considering that very familiar passage of scripture that all of us over the age required to buy discounted coffee at McDonalds saw posted on the walls of our schools and public buildings. For most of us that public debate about the 10 commandments is buried in a couple of generations of history but it still pops up now and then when some lower court judge or municipal official decides to try to drag us all back to Mayberry by posting the Decalogue in public again.
Most of those guys, even the ones who are not in Alabama, seem to think that it represents the values of their bygone days with all of those very peaceful and Christian segregated schools when women had to wear dresses, even in winter, on their way to their jobs as secretaries or school teachers where they earned wages that kept them dependant on a man for their food and housing. I hope none of you are feeling a wave of nostalgia right now.
But, let's humor them, let's look at the Decalogue in context. The ten commandments became the core of Jewish teachings as they evolved from being nomadic desert shepherds into being settled farmers with villages and walled cities. Survival in the desert with just your family takes a different set of values than it takes to suddenly have neighbors and sometimes lots of neighbors who are competing for the same resources and, in very fact, competing to survive.
Regardless of some of the exaggerated priestly accounts of Jewish history, they never actually had Palestine to themselves. There were always competing groups from the Philistines and Canaanites to that whole list of Hittites, Amorites, Havites, Jebusites, Perezzites and the annoying people who try to force you to buy something from them when you are stopped in traffic at the border.
To survive, to keep from just being assimilated into the genetic buliabez of the Ancient Near East, the Jews had these first four commandments that defined who they were. They were to worship only Yahweh, protecting even Yahwey's name from being profaned. And they were not to flirt with other gods by having idols, and they were to distinguish themselves by observing a day of total rest every seven days.
These four rules kept the Jews distinct and separate from Philistines, Cannanites or any of the other Middle Eastern "ites" and you can tell that it worked because you can't find any Hittites or Perazzites anywhere anymore.
This is a concept that really vexes a lot of modern Christians but both ancient Judaism and early Christianity are emphatically devoted to the value of the community over the value of the individual. Americans are big on rugged individualism but our Biblical faith is all about the nation, the tribe, the community of faith taking care of one another.
In fact, as much as modern evangelicals like to talk about having a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" it continues to shock them when you point out that the word "personal" is nowhere in the Bible. No one in the New Testament was invited to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and no one in the Old Testament talked about having a personal relationship with Yahweh. There is an indisputable personal dimension to the journey of faith but American rugged individualism is the opposite of Biblical faith and not its normative condition...... am I going to fast for you?
We can honestly say that when it comes to Biblical theology, it really isn't all about you. It is about us. Their devotion to Yahweh, their rejection of foreign gods, idols and their distinictive observance of the Sabbath defined them as a people and it was an immediate and distinct protection of poor workers from being abused in that everyone, even farm animals, got a day of rest every week.
The other six commandments had to do with how you live in community with these people of whom each of us is just a part.
As nomadic tribes, "survival of the fittest" was often the operative rule. Stealing, taking wives and slaves, murder and violence was a natural part of the pre-civilized world but as they were becoming a settled people, for anyone to have a decent life without having to be so hyper vigilant that you could never leave your tent or allow yourself to sleep through the night, you had to gain an emphatic respect for your neighbor, for the integrity of their family and you own.
You care for your mother and father because the elderly become as vulnerable as children and just as you instinctively protect your children you must decide that you are going to protect your parents..... which, as a society, means that they are going to be fed, housed and cared for.....right? You don't take away their food, housing or health care by calling them "entitlements" because, in a civilized and just society, our elders get to be housed, fed and provided medical care because, "Thou shalt not be a jerk."
Adultery was important in that society for reasons of real estate as well as for the sanctity of family. Property ownership followed male blood lines and so they had to know who the father of each child was but more than that, you see in this a religious demand that you respect the integrity of your neighbors' property, family and safety.
You can't murder them, that should be obvious, but more than that, you can't constantly be looking covetously through their bedroom window or into their garage and back yard. Your neighbor's spouse is not for you. Your neighbor's kids are not your kids. Your neighbor's car, farm implements and business tools are not yours.
The principle of believing that your neighbor's person and family is not yours to govern might come as a surprise to some of the people who have historically been so eager to put a monument with the 10 commandments chiseled onto it in front of the court house.
Legislation is often named to deny the reality of what is in the legislation. If you want to take away individual rights guaranteed in the bill of rights then you call it the "Patriot Act." As if it is patriotic to take away the rights that are at the bedrock of what it means to be an American.
I think we see the same in that bill that was passed in 1996 called the "Defense of Marriage Act" because what it actually does is it keeps about ten percent of the couples in America from getting married and it takes away from them the pension and health care benefits that they have earned.
That is, if George and Sally live next door to Ted and Sam, and George and Ted both work at the post office, at the end of their work day, Sally gets to be covered by George's insurance but Sam doesn't get to be covered by Ted's, even though George and Ted and done the same job. And at the end of their natural lives, Sally gets to receive survivor pension benefits from George's retirement plan but Sam doesn't get Ted's even though Ted paid in just as much as George did.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is coveting what belongs to your neighbors. It is not a "defense of marriage" it is a "I can be married and economically solvent and you can't be because I have stuck my nose into your personal life and business."
Which violates that whole, "Thou shalt not be a jerk" commandment... right?
I do understand that there are some things that happen when you live in close proximity to one another that we feel a need to govern for the integrity of the whole of society. And honestly, I can understand those who are morally outraged by the issue of abortion. If you believe that an unborn fetus is a human being then I understand why you believe that social norms have gone off the rails by legalizing abortion.
But the fact is that our society does not agree with that view. A woman's reproductive life is a matter to be governed by that woman and her physician, not her state legislator and that legislator's super pac contributors. And yet, in the name of morality, there have been those suggesting that when a woman is making the most painful and difficult personal choice of her life, that she and her doctor should be subjected to a state legislator who says that a medical device should be inserted into that woman's body, for no medical reason at all, but rather, as a form of humiliation because that woman is exercising a choice that the legislator does not agree with.
She may have been raped by a stranger but then her legislator gets to mechanically rape her again just to make her feel that much worse but I gotta tell you, in my humble opinion, the second rape is just as vile and disturbing as the first one.
When you talk about stealing from your neighbor, there is nothing you can steal that is of greater value than your neighbor's dignity so, from a Bible preaching pastor's point of view.... You need to leave Ted and Sam alone and however Sally decides to manage her womb, you should consider that to be none of your business. Because God didn't call us to be jerks.... God called us to be liberators and defenders of the dignity of our neighbors. Let the people say, "Amen
