Ten Commandment Sunday
Lent 3
March 15th 2009
John Wall


In the name of God: Our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Comforter. Amen.

        OK, so this must be Ten Commandment Sunday. Twice in one day . . You shall not this – You shall not that -- Talk about Lent . . . whew! Pretty clear, what the rules are, right? And that it’s about rules. And following rules, and breaking rules, about someone keeping score, about measuring up, or – more likely – not measuring up. God the carrot, God the stick, and God the cop on the beat.

        Lent comes to this, at some point. Lent comes down to behavior. And behavior means. Is religion – religious belief, religious practice -- essentially about crowd control? I met a woman at the Good Shepherd Church a few years ago who thought so. I had just preached a sermon in which I said that God is a living God who in Christ has overcome everything that separates us from Him, that we are all blessed wedding guests at God’s eternal banquet. And she said to me – at the back door of Good Shepherd Church – that I should not preach sermons like that – and I asked why and she said, because if you don’t talk about God’s anger and wrath and judgment, how are we gonna get those people to behave themselves?

        There is good reason, after reading the Bible, to conclude that it is about behavior. I mean, after all, the Psalmist says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom – today we heard that the fear of the Lord is clean and endures forever – The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether/ By them is your servant enlightened -- Who can tell how often he offends?

        Well, OK, I’ll bite -- who can? But should it matter? Is our faith about behavior? Is it about crowd control, through fear and intimidation? Is it about being scared straight? About being fearful of divine wrath and punishment, about earning our salvation through obedience to God’s laws?

        Well, on the one hand, its true that behavior matters, in the broad scheme of things. Behavior matters – people decide to do awful things to each other and to themselves. People who do awful things need to be confined, restrained, limited in their access to us when they want to do awful things.

        So I’m not here to advocate doing away with rules. And with that sense of should or ought, that sense that in breaking the rules one is trespassing, and there will be consequences. As the wise saying goes – a good scare often does more for a man than good advice. A good scare can do a lot to change behavior when reason or good sense fail us.

        So I don’t reject out of hand the value of that good scare. But is my religious faith, my religious practice based on fear? But is that what religion is about, our religion is about? Is that what Lent is about? Is our membership in the Christian Community, our being loved by God, dependent on our behavior?

        Jesus, in today’s Gospel, gets really angry about the money changers in the Temple. He makes a scene, turns the tables on them, throws them out. And this is not the only time that the Gospels tell us that Jesus is capable of great anger. But is he angry with us? And even if he were angry with us, it that a deal breaker?

        There is a great tradition in Christianity for which that is the case. God is a God of justice, and this God of justice is angry, God is offended by us, and whatever good things God might have in store for us depend on our realizing what wretched creatures we are and throwing ourselves on God’s mercy.

        A milder version of this always holds before us the model of what we might do, but aren’t yet doing. In either case, we are always starting over, always falling short, always losing ground. Everything depends on conversion, on devoting one’s life to Jesus, on making a major reversal of priorities in one’s life. This tradition is out there, it is one we are familiar with. It is profoundly Southern. It must meet some needs we have. If we don’t take it too seriously, it can be a lot of fun. My former colleague Suzanne Britt Jordan used to say that in a small town in North Carolina the tent revival was the most exciting thing that happened every summer; she looked forward to getting saved again every year. It was dramatic, it was emotional – well, at least, it was entertaining.

        The conversion model does have one drawback for me, however, in it we are always starting over, always outside the community, always at the beginning of our story. The conversion model is a one-trick pony – we never get anywhere, but always looking in, always being told by someone who claims to know better than we do that we are falling short, are still beginning, still starting over. There is no history, no past to build on, only someone saying “you’re not there yet, not good enough, there is always more to do before you are really a member of the community. That’s why my friend Suzanne could always look forward to next summer when she could get saved again, get born again yet again.

        Fortunately, the conversion model is not the only model of Christianity our tradition has on offer. Another model is one which starts with the idea that I mentioned earlier – that God basically loves us, that our human capacity for messing things up in our lives is profoundly disturbing to God, and that in Jesus God is working to overcome everything that can separate us from him. As Paul says, there is nothing in heaven or earth, in what is or can be, that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

        In this version, God in baptism makes us a new people in Jesus Christ our Lord, God incorporates us into the Risen Body of Christ on earth, which is the Church, this very real, very fallible bunch of folks who feel drawn and empowered to come together here, in this place, week by week, to share table fellowship with Christ, to celebrate, to make Eucharist, to give thanks, for what God is doing for us in Christ.

        And who we are is not so much a people apart from the rest of the people in the world – the ones who are going to heaven while everyone else is going to hell, that kind of setting apart and marking difference -- but the people who are entrusted to know who this God is who is working to reconcile all the world to himself. Entrusted to know that, and to live out our lives as people who know that, in our daily relationships with our spouses and partners and our children and friends and colleagues in the day to day conduct of our lives.

        That is ministry, the ministry to which we are all called – to know what God’s values are and to live like we know that. And we also know God’s special and abiding concern for justice in the world, and so to know that if we want to be aware of God’s presence in the world, we are called to work for a world in which all people are treated justly and the dignity of every human being is respected and honored and acknowledged.

        And we also are the people who know of God’s special concern for the suffering and the poor and the outcast, the least of these – be with those people, not so much because we bring God to them, but because we know God is there before us and we want to be with God, and be part of His reconciling work in the world.

        This Christian faith – in these terms – is about relationships – our relationship with God and with God’s people. And it is a life of delight in God’s world and a life of thanksgiving for the gift of the lives God has given us and the world God has made for us, and opportunities it affords to become people in whom God delights.

        And what about the Ten Commandments – What about the rules, in this view of our faith? Well every relationship has rules, or at least guidelines, or at least boundaries that define it and give it meaning. And in a version of Christianity in which our relationship to God comes first, the rules look more like those guidelines or boundaries, the behaviors that enable our live together or at least help us avoid strife in our life together. The commandments are about honoring our relationships, about living up to people’s expectations, about being trustworthy, about keeping our priorities in order. Remember that Jesus summarized the commandments by saying we should love God and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So another way of thinking about the Ten Commandments is that they constitute the negative side of a positive. The positive side is living and growing together in a loving and accepting community and the negative side is actually a call to keep those commitments and responsibilities we must keep to preserve this community. After all, community is difficult to keep when people steal from each other, when people violate commitments of trust and commitment to each other, when people act violently toward each other.

        Beloved, I believe that when we gather in this place, we are not starting over – certainly we are not starting over with each other – we are building on our past together, we are growing in our relationships with each other and with the God who calls us to be His people, who calls us into relationship with Him and with each other, and who invites us to take part in God’s reconciling work in the world. We are growing together on a journey together toward a common future we have together.

        It is not as though we have never been here before, and are starting over. We in this place have been about this life together for a long time. Some of us have been here a short time and others have been here a long time, but It is the case that we not starting over, but growing in our faith, not finally getting what it is that we are about, but deepening the understanding we have had all along, developing our relationship to each other, seeking to discover what God is about in our world, even as we build on our common history and common experience here as we move toward our common future.

        In the words of the early Christian Saint Gregory of Nyssa,

This is true perfection:

not to avoid a wicked life because we fear punishment, like slaves;

not to do good because we expect repayment, as if we had a business deal with God and could cash in on our virtuous behavior.

On the contrary, disregarding all those good things which we do hope for and which God
has promised us, we regard falling from God’s friendship as the only thing dreadful,

And we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing truly worthwhile.

Beloved, as we come to this table to which God invites us, week by week, may our prayer for ourselves and for each other be that we find here that blessed assurance that with God we are in good hands, that assurance that enables us to put aside faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that assurance that we matter to God, that assurance that enables us to regard the stranger among us as one of us, that enables us to set aside personal concerns and find our God among those who need us. AMEN.


©2009 John Wall