A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, October 5, 2008
Exodus 20:1-20
It’s the hottest electronics gadget on the market right now – a global positioning system, or “GPS” for your car. I don’t have one but I’ve read about them. For a couple of hundred dollars you, too, can buy this great device that will help you find your way. You type in your destination and press a couple of buttons and it will tell you turn-by-turn what route to take to get there.
If you make a wrong turn it will scold you. If you refuse to turn around it will begrudgingly recalculate your route. It does all this by drawing on a network of communications satellites that can instantly tell you where in the world you are. I wish I’d thought of this illustration before I titled my message “Road Map.” That’s so 20th century! Instead I want to update my title and call it “GPS,” or more accurately “God’s Positioning System.”
“God’s Positioning System” provides turn-by-turn directions on how to get from where we are to where we want to be. It lays out the route, figures distances and safe speeds, directs us around roadblocks and construction sites, and corrects us when we get off the path, then if we don’t turn around it recalculates the directions. That’s how I think of scripture in general and the Ten Commandments in the book of Exodus in particular.
What we have in the Bible is the record of commandments given by God through Moses to the Israelites who were in the wilderness of Sinai. The people had left Egypt about 1400 years before the Christian Era, and then wandered for 40 years before crossing into the Promised Land. Archaeologists date the earliest known samples of Hebrew writing at about 1000 years before the Christian Era. So the Commandments and anything else in scripture that may have happened before 1000 BCE was told from generation to generation in story form for hundreds of years.
What we have in Exodus 20 are God’s instructions on how to move from the wilderness wandering into a faithful and stable religious community that will put down deep roots in the Promised Land. The Commandments are the common core by which Jews remember the promises of God and their promises to God. So here we have instructions to the very early covenant community on how to build right relationships.
The Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes, in his best-seller The Good Book, says:
When we read in Exodus and Deuteronomy of the delivery to Moses of the law, in the form of the commandments from God on Mount Sinai, we are meant to understand that this is not simply a public occasion, but the establishment of what we would today call public policy… In Jewish history the community is formed when they are given the law: whereas before the delivery of the law they are a rowdy assortment of individuals with private personal agendas, they become something other than that when the law is given to them; they become the people of God. [pg. 69-70]
In Hebrew each commandment is just two words. Literally translated they’d become: One God! Honor parents! No swearing! No murder! No adultery! No lying and so forth. The Greek word we use, “Decalogue,” means “ten words.”
The first four Commandments instruct us about our relationship with God, and are introduced in verse 2: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” So God first reminds the Israelites that the ancient promise – the Covenant – continues to define their relationship. This Covenant is stated many times in many ways but the most familiar is early in Genesis when God says to Abraham and Sarah: “I will bring forth from you a great nation; I will be their God and they will be my people.”
The next six teach us about right relationships with others. God has shown all people that when we keep our promises, give of ourselves, and seek the well-being of others, two things happen. Of course, they are blessed and strengthened. But so, too, we are blessed and strengthened. The Then Commandments, like a GPS, pointed the way for the people of the Covenant and guided them so they could come in out of the wilderness and find a home place. When you violate these rules you and your tribe will rot from the inside out.
Let’s remember too, that centuries later a Pharisee asked Jesus of Nazareth to pronounce which of the Commandments was the most important. He answered simply – love the Lord your God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:28 ff)
We live in a wilderness as real as the barren desert of the Sinai four thousand years ago. It’s a wilderness of hearts and a famine of faith and a drought of community. We might recognize how hard it is to keep all ten of those commandments God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai… or the 613 laws that came from them.
But I believe we can remember and work harder at living the one that Jesus gave us – to love one another as he has loved us. Keeping that commandment is the secret to abundant, joyful living life.
We have a GPS to guide us – God’s Positioning System – more than a guidebook, more than a road map. We have the lessons and life of Jesus himself to set us on the right path and keep us there.
And today, on this World Communion Sunday, we have the assurance that in bread and in cup we can continue to draw on his life, his love and his instructions: love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself.