Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You 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.
When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.”
The entire people of Israel ran out of Egypt. They ran because they knew Pharaoh had been stung and soon he might recover. Recover he did, and Pharaoh’s army gave chase, backing them against the sea. In what seemed to be a hopeless crisis, a path through the sea was opened and the people passed through with Pharaoh’s army swallowed up in the wake. But that turned out to be far from the end. Disaster followed disaster. Crisis followed crisis. Bitter, undrinkable water, a shortage of food, blazing hot weather, and an endless stretch of wilderness and sand with an unseeable end to it all. Imagine what they would have left us if they had been able to create MEMES!
It was in the midst of all of that crisis, trauma, and trouble that they were given the commandments. They didn’t get them back when they believed Pharaoh was the worst thing that could ever happen, nor after they had finally made it to the Promised Land. No, these commandments were given IN and FOR a long term time of crisis. When the people of Israel cried out in crisis after trauma after horror, “How can we possibly remain the people of God in times like these? Is there any way for us to retain our humanity and dignity with an onslaught like this?” THIS is the answer God gave them, “Live together in relationship with God and each other using this set of rules.”
God knew their temptation would be to sink to the selfish and destructive ways of those around them. God knew (because God made them after all) that diving deeper into the water currently swirling down the drain was NOT the path to better days! God knew the real way to better days was through the crises, through the horrors, through the traumas.
To make it through, God laid out a path paved with these commandments. This path, God promised, would get them through when all the world around wqs determined to keep swirling them ever deeper. And… spoiler alert… God’s way turned out to be right! It worked. They got through it all by following this set of rules… through each crisis and each horror and every trauma and in the end, they stepped into the Promised Land.
So what does that have to do with us? After all, we’re a people far removed in time, culture, and circumstance from the people of Israel way back then. We’re not like them, swayed back on our heels by the awesome power of thunder and lightning (very, very frightening) coming from the top of a mountain. And yet, if you tilt your head just a tiny bit and honestly look again, they end up looking a lot more like you and me than we might have first thought.
Could it be that a world wide pandemic has driven God’s people into a new wilderness time? Could it be that we’ve been backed up against a wall of political chaos, rather than backed up against the Red Sea? That we face an unknown time before a safe vaccine is developed, rather than an unknown time in the sun and sand? Could it be that Pharaoh’s injustices and irrational behavior in the face of a threat to his power isn’t all that strange after all and that Federal police in riot gear don’t actually look too terribly different than Pharaoh’s charioteers? Could it be, that in our own way, we too have been knocked back on our feet, fearful not of constant lighting but of each new terrible flash of white supremacist dog whistle… not of thunder but of each new crashing bombshell news revelation? Could it be that these rules given to God’s people to see them through THEIR ongoing set of crisis after crisis THEN, might just be the rules that we need to see us through OUR ongoing set of crisis after crisis NOW?
If that is true... if this is our path through, then our path includes not using or manipulating God’s name to get our way. Others do it all around us…“You can’t be a faithful Christian and vote for this person or party”… but we are called to not sink to that level. We are called to use God’s name instead as a means to spread the selfless, steadfast love and compassion that we have first been given by God so that it might give light in the darkness and hope to the hopeless.
If these are our rules too, then we are called to take time out, ESPECIALLY when we think the world can not spare us for a moment. As Eugene Peterson reminds us that, “If you don’t take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You’re doing too much, you’re being too much in charge. You’ve got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you’re not doing anything.” This will strengthen us for the long road ahead.
If these are our rules too, then we can not dismiss the lives of the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions. Dismissing over 210,000 deaths by saying “COVID wasn’t the only condition they had” or “that is just a tiny number compared to everyone who dies each year” does not honor those fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, EACH of whom was a precious child of God.
If these are our rules too, then we must look beyond just me, myself, and I. That greed and selfishness has resulted in the hoarding of resources from toilet paper to health care, stealing from our neighbors with tactics from phone scams to unjust policies and tax dodges. Wanting what others have and hoarding what others need always leads to breaking other commandments. Our path instead is to bring life and build up our neighbors and their resources.
And lastly, if these are to be our rules to see us through our own time of crisis, horror and trauma we must remain impeccable with our word. In these dark times when so many treat bearing false witness as a sport where the goal is to continually drive up the score… if these rules are to be our rules, then that can not be our path.
These commandments pave the path that will see us through this time. Many around us seek to race to the bottom in a fatal downward spiral, but that is not what God wants for us. So, if you are willing, I would ask that you help me to follow THESE rules. Rules that saw God’s people to the Promised Land and I will help you do the same. I believe it is loving God and loving neighbor, Jesus’s own summation of this path, that will pave a Way in Truth toward the Light of a world ruled in justice... a world of healing, wholeness, dignity for all. May the One who calls us to this path through these difficult times give us the strength to walk it, all the way to the end. Amen.
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