2023-10-10
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
October 8, 2023 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 The Federated Church, UCC
When I was a child, my parents were sticklers about manners. My brother and I were taught to hold a door open for someone entering a building after us; to lay out the forks, knives, and spoons in the correct order when setting a place at the table; not to put our elbows on the table when eating; to ask, when wanting to leave the dinner table, “May I please be excused?”; and any number of rules of English grammar.
I confess I didn’t always like being corrected when I violated these rules. And I certainly was not beyond breaking them, often because I forgot, but sometimes, truth be told, willfully. Some of you know that when I was in seventh grade, I was sitting at the back of the classroom one day next to my best friend, Steve Jacques. While my social studies teacher, Mrs. Liscomb, was teaching, Steve and I were gabbing away at the back, paying absolutely no attention to what she was saying. Finally, as if to catch me in the act of ignoring her, Mrs. Liscomb called on me: “Hamilton?” I, having no idea what was going on, said to her, “Sorry—I wasn’t listening.” Mrs. Liscomb said exasperatedly in reply, “I know.” To which I pithily responded, “Then why’d you ask?” Ooh, not a good thing to say! Mrs. Liscomb paid a visit, later that day, to my house, where she sat my mother down and told her how rude I’d been. Not one of the highlights of my childhood! And definitely not something to be emulated!
The scene of Moses getting the Ten Commandments from God may be one of the most well-known passages in the Bible. Two tablets. Ten laws. And while most of us would be hard-pressed to name them all, it’s also likely that every one of the commandments has been violated by at least one member of this congregation—with the possible exception of “You shall not murder.” And most of these commandments have been violated by every single one of us, with the exception of the commandments against murder and adultery. Who of us hasn’t put something else before God, or worshiped an idol, or made wrongful use of God’s name, or neglected to take Sabbath time? Who of us hasn’t dishonored our parents, or stolen, or borne false witness against someone we know, or coveted what a neighbor has?
So given how easily we can go off the rails and do what we shouldn’t do, and given the apparent necessity of rules and laws that keep us on track, what are we to do about the fact that the rules so often really irritate us and seem so devoid of apparent grace, just one more way for God to keep us in line and figuratively rap our knuckles? How in the world could we possibly conceive of the rules, and maybe especially the Ten Commandments, as something actually to be celebrated, something for which to be thankful?
So it’s worth a closer look at these foundational laws. As it happens, much to our surprise, these core edicts are presented, of all things, as a gift. They may not seem it, but here’s the way the biblical story frames these laws. From the perspective of the Exodus story, these laws are the opportunity for us to return the favor God has already done for us. Before the first commandment is even spoken, this is what we hear: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (20:2). These laws are given to us, in other words, as a way of living out a deep and loving relationship with God. God has loved and cared for us. So these rules, these guidelines, are given to us as a way to instill and shape in a mutually loving life with God.
There are reasons we have laws and rules. While they can sometimes seem petty and nonsensical, at their heart, they’re structuring our behavior so that we are ensuring the best for each other and for the society in which we live. We hold the door for someone else so they’ll have an easier time coming through it. We put our knife and fork together on the plate when we’re finished eating so the server will know it’s OK to clear our plate. And we don’t make snide remarks to our teachers because—well, it’s just not a nice thing to do. As I’ve gotten older, I see more clearly some of the wisdom in many of the rules we were taught. While some of them may seem overly fussy and trivial, and may even seem irrelevant, it’s also the case that they’re guidelines that set expectations for us, expectations that are intended, in some sense, to give us a way to thank God, and a way to enhance the common good.
At their heart, in Jesus’ words, this is what these laws say: love God with everything you have; and love your neighbor as yourself. This is the law of God in a nutshell. God gives us this law not as some onerous burden, but as a beautiful gift, something we often don’t perceive when we’re told “the rules.” In English, we call these “the Ten Commandments.” But in the original Hebrew, they’re called “the Ten Words.” These are words of God given, not so much to hold us to strict standards or to give God grounds for punishing us. They are, rather, given for our edification, for our fullness of life. Far from pinching and constricting us, they enhance this strange and wonderful and gorgeous life we share. They enrich it.
Psalm 19 makes precisely this point. It says that the law is an astoundingly beautiful gift. The law revives us. It makes us wise. It gives us joy. “More to be desired are [these laws] than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb” (19:7-10). And these laws are sweet precisely because they make the life we share together so much better than it would otherwise be.
The heart of the law, and its most crucial reminder, is the very first one: “You shall have no other gods before me.” The striking thing about that verse is that we so often render it as an imperative: this is what you are supposed to do. Intriguingly, though, in the original Hebrew that verse can just as easily be rendered as an indicative—not so much “this is what you need to do” as “this is what is already, in fact, true.” In other words, we could just as easily phrase that first commandment this way: not so much, “You shall have no other gods before me,” but “you, in fact, have no other gods that rival me.” Which gives it an entirely different spin. This is God’s way of saying, as in verse 2, ‘I have taken you out of slavery and given you freedom; I have done what no other god could possibly do. Remember that unending grace; bask in it; and be thankful.’
So the heart of the so-called law isn’t “do this.” It’s: “this is what God has done and is doing for you. Wow!” These are God’s ten special words for us. They’re life-giving words, words that make all the difference, words that remind you and me that we live every moment in the palm of God’s hand, a tender hand that never lets us go. Remember and give thanks.
At the heart of these words, these so-called laws, says a minister named Liz Cooledge Jenkins, is the conviction, to quote Poor People’s Campaign leader Solita Alexander Riley, that “No community or society can stand unless all lives are honored, are deemed sacred, are valued.” And as Jenkins says, “Every life valued: Surely this is the intention of the Ten Commandments—and all of God’s laws.
“From this view,” she says, “God’s authentic words are the words that refresh the soul of the Black Lives Matter activist. God’s true teachings are the teachings that open the way for all people to have access to quality truth-telling education. God’s genuine edicts are the edicts that brighten the faces of women who continue to struggle for bodily autonomy, of queer folks who have been abused and denied basic rights. God’s real communication is the communication that makes room for people with disabilities to shine, recognizing that they’re brimming with gifts to offer.” The Bible’s laying out of these so-called laws has all this and more as its focus. These laws, says Jenkins, “expect nothing less [than every life valued], and neither should we” (The Christian Century, newsletter email Oct. 2, 2023).
“Every life valued . . . the intention of the Ten Commandments—and all of God’s laws.” And all of this has an acute relevance on this holiday weekend. When I was growing up, Christopher Columbus was one of the great heroes of history. We schoolchildren were taught to revere his bravery, to celebrate his vision in extending the known world. Columbus was daring and bold. He was said to have discovered “the New World.”
I have mentioned before my childhood reverence for Gen. Robert E. Lee, and how wrenching it was for me to discover in my adulthood that he was so much more compromised than I had learned when I was young. While I didn’t have quite the same reverence for Columbus, I, like so many of us, nevertheless thought of him as a heroic figure, a valiant and courageous model for human life. For many who are worshiping here today, there may well be something painful about seeing people we have esteemed struck down from their pedestals.
And yet, in the interests of truth and the standard articulated by Liz Cooledge Jenkins, the call that comes from God to value all lives, and the corresponding call to hold accountable those who so egregiously violate its spirit, seems to be precisely what is asked of us given what we have learned about Columbus in more recent years.
The tales of Columbus’ violence in coming to what was for him a new world virtually slap us with their cruelty. When Columbus and his sailors first came ashore, the native “Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. [Columbus] later wrote this in his log: ‘. . . They willingly traded everything they owned . . . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features . . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane . . . They would make fine servants . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
The great historian Howard Zinn, in his remarkable book, A People’s History of the United States, reports what extraordinarily hospitable hosts were those who greeted Columbus and his crew when they landed in the Bahamas. And what does Columbus himself tell us about these people who were so generous to the newcomers? “As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn.” Subjugating them was his intent. And greed was the motive. What Columbus most wanted was the answer to this question: “Where is the gold?”
Columbus’ trips to this continent resulted in a brutal violation of the integrity of the indigenous peoples he encountered. In the course of two years, says Zinn, “through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead” (pp. 1-5). That was a scorched earth decimation of whole peoples. To convey the utter brutality of this conquering mindset, the great Harvard historian Jill Lepore, in her magisterial history of this country called These Truths, quotes Spain’s royal historian Sepulveda, who said that “the difference between the natives and the Spaniards was as great as that ‘between apes and men.’ He asked, ‘How are we to doubt that these people, so uncultivated, so barbarous, and so contaminated with such impiety and lewdness, have not been justly conquered?’” (p. 25). Lepore sums up the brutal mindset of these conquering Europeans: “the nation’s founding truths were forged in the crucible of violence, the products of staggering cruelty, conquest, and slaughter, the assassination of worlds” (p. 10).
Given that history, is it any wonder that we are driven now to remember that chapter in our nation’s history in a far different way, and to celebrate this holiday instead as Indigenous People’s Day? And while we can’t undo the violence and devaluing that are such an endemic part of European colonization of this continent, we can heed the heart of the Ten Words that have been handed down to us as we are re-called to the valuing of every human life. And we can at least recognize that the land on which we live and work and worship was land inhabited long before people of European descent arrived here. We can mark this recognition with a deep repentance, a turning again to God, and a renewed embrace and valuing of all people. And while we may never know who precisely inhabited these lands all those centuries ago, we can still turn to those earlier times with gratitude to our indigenous forbears, and to thank what may been the Erie and Wyandot and Seneca and Iroquois for their stewardship of this land.
Far from being a burden, God’s laws are a holy gift. They are provided as a way for us to return the indescribable love God has shown to us by honoring each person we meet, and by valuing them as though they are our own kin. Every life valued: that’s what God’s law enables and points us toward. And that’s a good thing. It’s a fabulous thing. May we live by its standard, treasuring God, and valuing every life and the life of the earth itself. This is what it is to be a child of God. What a privilege! Thanks be to God!