When I was in high school and taking European history, we started out the year by reading some ancient Middle Eastern documents that were foundational for the legal and social arrangements that eventually developed into European culture: the Code of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount, among others. In our American culture we often refer to our “Judeo-Christian heritage”; in large part, the ethical guidance given by these words that Christians refer to as the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue. They are more often referred to in the breech than kept in fact, but they are a part of the way we, as Christians and as Americans, think about how we are to act.
But they are not Ten Rules, with corresponding punishments if broken. In fact, if we dig into them a little more, we find that these words given by God to Moses are much richer and deeper than mere rules. These Ten Words (as the Hebrew puts it) are all about the relationship between God and God’s People – both as individuals and as a whole – after God has freed them from slavery in Egypt through the leadership of Moses. They have been led to Mount Sinai to worship God, back to the very place where Moses heard God’s call from the burning bush in the first place – to go and speak to Pharoah, to free the People from their suffering and oppression.
These Ten Words are a covenant – a outline for the relationship between God and the People. In fact, it’s the third covenant we have heard about in the Hebrew Scriptures. First, there was the covenant between God and all humanity, all creation that God made with Noah after the Flood. Then there was the covenant of trust and blessing that God made with Abraham and Sarah when they agreed to leave everything and throw their lot in with God. And now within that agreement between God and the descendants of Abraham and Sarah is a more clearly defined covenant of what it looks like to live as God’s People in light of God’s redeeming and saving act.
And right upfront God makes it clear: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. In Judaism the first commandment is verse two, the reminder of what God has done for the People, and then verses three and four are the second commandment. The Christian version starts with verse three and makes four a separate item. But either way, it is God’s initiative in saving God’s People that is the ground for this covenant renewal. Keeping the commandments is their thankful response.
The first four commandments are all about our responsibility to God. The remaining six are all about our relationship to our neighbor, to the community. What become clear when we hear this passage from Exodus is that the most important responsibility of the faithful is to live with God as the primary focus of their lives. Anything else is idolatry; and even the command for Sabbath-keeping is to remind us that it is God who makes and keeps the world, and not we ourselves. Taking time for rest, sleep, refraining from work, is a powerful statement or our recognition that God is ultimately in charge.
And if God is truly in charge of the world and of our lives, then God will have quite a lot to say about how we treat others, and the quality of our relationship with them; which is what commandments five through ten are all about: Honor your father and mother. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness against your neighbor. Do not covet. These are all aspects that will tear apart the fabric of life together, that drive a wedge into human society and under-cut God’s desire for us to live as a community of faith and trust, stewards of God’s good creation, all of us made in God’s image of loving relationship, giving honor and glory to God.
Anything else that captures our attention, our hearts, our energy, our time, our money and becomes more important to us than the Lord God is idolatry. As human beings we are all prone to that, and I think we can each identify for ourselves those people, ideas, possessions, shiny objects and glittering prizes that are hard for us to say “no” to, or at least put them in their proper place, which is “not God.”
And then we hear today’s Gospel – Jesus turning over the table of the money changers in the Temple in Jerusalem. All four Gospels recount this story; Matthew, Mark, and Luke place it in the context of Holy Week after Jesus has entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. There were good and practical reasons for the money-changers to be there. No non-Temple currency could be used to purchase animals for sacrifice, and most Jews coming to worship in the Temple could not bring their own animals; they lived too far away. But in John’s telling of it, the event happens very near the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, as if Jesus is saying right from the outset: even a place as holy, and beautiful, and important as the Temple must be put aside to make room for the Messiah, no longer God’s heaven-and-earth place, but now God’s heaven-and-earth Person. It was now to be in and through Jesus that the truest, fullest connection with God and worship of God was to happen. Anything else, no matter how sacred, no matter how time-honored, no matter how valuable, has to take second place.
And that’s still a challenge for us today. We all have ideals, traditions, habits, loyalties, relationships, possessions that sneak up on us, sometimes when we are not looking, and then claim pride of place in our lives. And then the divine anger we saw when Jesus turned over the tables and drove out the money changers becomes understandable. Time and again God has called us to be faithful, just as God is faithful to us. Time and again God has asked for our trust and loyalty and love; and how often have we given it elsewhere? We know that everything we have is a gift from God – good and necessary for human living. Our responsibility is to live with gratitude and faithfulness, putting all these good gifts in their proper place in our affections and loyalty.
This is why, when he was asked to identify which commandment was the greatest, Jesus said:
The first commandment is this: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:29-31.
This week ask yourself what are things that you are tempted to place above God in importance? Who or what can become a focus of loyalty and even worship for you? Is there anything that has taken God’s place in your heart, mind, or schedule? Then ask God’s forgiveness and strength, and commit to living your relationship with God in Christ anew, as well need to do, every day.
Let us pray.
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. ~ BCP, page 832
Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Third Sunday in Lent
March 4, 2018