We come together to worship on this Lord’s Day, and our hearts long to do so in person. We come together to glorify God who created heaven and earth and continues to sustain all things. We come together to praise God who raised Jesus from the dead, and we celebrate that congregations around the world, in cathedrals and store fronts, in living rooms and tents, gathered around the table of Christ, sing and pray in more languages and dialects than any of us can imagine. We celebrate that in the bread we break and the cup we share we encounter our crucified and risen savior who makes us one. Separated from each other in more ways than we have the heart to name, we touch the table where Christ is the host, and each of us, a welcome guest, and we cling to its promise and vision and manners like never before.
I can feel the edge of his table in my hands and I can see all of you, and I can see multitudes from East and West, South and North, singing, laughing, gathering together in the beautiful place God has freed us to enter. We celebrate our liberation: the burden of sin removed from our shoulders, the drain of fear driven from our hearts. We are free, for we are no longer slaves to the powers that oppress us, but covenant partners of God.
Today we celebrate the covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai. They had left behind Pharaoh’s clay pits and the bosses who enforced the daily brick quotas. They had crossed the sea on dry foot. They had eaten the bread of angels and drunk water from the rock. It had been a long, slow journey through the wilderness. They had marveled and argued and complained, and through it all, they had begun to discover the holy stick-to-it-iveness of God.
Now they were at the mountain, and all of them heard God speak. All of them heard these words, the big ten, the divine utterances that from that day forward would be for them a constitution of freedom as God’s people.
How long has it been since you heard the Ten Commandments read out loud? It’s probably been quite a long time.
In some old churches on the East coast, worshipers and tourists can still find the words written on the sanctuary walls. Early Anglican tradition in the colonies, long before the American Revolution began, required that the Ten Commandments were to be “set up on the East end of every Church and Chapel, where the people may best see and read the same.” In those days, the East end was the front of the sanctuary. Before and during the service, you could sit in the pew and meditate on the writing on the wall and reflect on your life.
Today, more Americans insist quite emphatically on the importance of the Ten Commandments than can name more than four when asked. A news poll in 2018 found that more than 90 percent of Americans agree that the commandments regarding murder, stealing and lying remain fundamental standards of societal behavior. Other commandments that enjoy strong majority support include those about not coveting, not committing adultery and honoring parents. The numbers are considerably weaker when it comes to making idols or making wrongful use of the name of the Lord. And only 49% of Americans say that remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy is still important — the lowest level of support for any commandment.[1]
Several years ago, Tom Long pointed out that
in the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have somehow become burdens, weights and heavy obligations. For many, the commandments are encumbrances placed on personal behavior. Most people cannot name all ten, but they are persuaded that at the center of each one is a finger-wagging ‘thou shalt not.’ For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be publicly placed on the necks of a rebellious society.[2]
It’s easy to forget that the Ten Commandments are not prefaced by a directive: “Everybody listen. Here are the rules, ten of them. Obey them!” That may have been how the taskmasters in Egypt laid down the law. But these words are about an entirely different vision. They open with an announcement of freedom: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The ten commandments are affirmations of life after liberation: “Because the Lord is your God, you are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols. You are free to rest on the seventh day. You are free from coveting, lying and stealing as ways to secure your life.”[3]
Martin Luther was convinced that knowing the Ten Commandments was tantamount to knowing the entire Bible. “This much is certain,” he wrote, “those who know the Ten Commandments perfectly know the entire Scriptures and in all affairs and circumstances are able to counsel, help, comfort, judge and make decisions in both spiritual and temporal matters.”[4] He knew, of course, that knowing the ten perfectly doesn’t end with being able to recite them — but it certainly begins there. There are ten of them, which is very good because we can use our fingers to help us learn and remember. They are, for the most part, brief and simple, so we can take them to heart and be guided by them in our living – and living them is the key to knowing them perfectly.
Perhaps all this talk of perfection makes you nervous. Isn’t perfection just another yoke? Doesn't talk of perfection only create hypocrisy and self-righteousness or despair? That question is raised in another text from the Reformation period. The Heidelberg Catechism also contains a long exposition of the Ten Commandments. Question 114 asks, “But can those who are converted to God keep these commandments perfectly?” The response is refreshing in its frankness, “No, for even the holiest of them make only a small beginning in obedience in this life.” Only a small beginning in obedience — but it’s a beginning in the direction of God’s will and promise; it’s a beginning in the direction of life’s flourishing.
I’m still thinking about that news poll and that remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy received the lowest level of support for any commandment. When we don’t remember the Sabbath day, chances are we won’t remember long that it is God who has set us free. And once we forget whose we are, we open the doors to lesser gods and friendly looking idols to teach us their ways.
Stanley Wiersma grew up in the 30’s in a Dutch Reformed community in Iowa. One of his poems begins with a question:
Were my parents right or wrong
Not to mow the ripe oats that Sunday morning
with the rainstorm threatening?
I reminded them that the Sabbath was made for man
and of the ox fallen into the pit.
Without an oats crop, I argued,
the cattle would need to survive on town-bought oats
and then it wouldn’t pay to keep them.
Isn’t selling cattle at a loss like an ox in a pit?
My parents did not argue.
We went to Church.
We sang the usual psalms louder than usual -
we, and the others whose harvests were at stake:
“Jerusalem, where blessing waits,
Our feet are standing in thy gates.”
“God, be merciful to me;
On thy grace I rest my plea.”
[As the storm rolled in we sang,]
“He rides on the clouds, the wings of the storm;
The lightning and wind his missions perform.”
[We heard little of the sermon]
for more floods came and more winds blew and beat
upon that House than we had figured on, even,
more lightning and thunder
and hail the size of pullet eggs.
Falling branches snapped the electric wires.
We sang the closing psalm without the organ and in the dark:
“Ye seed from Abraham descended,
God’s covenant love is never ended.”
Afterward we rode by our oats field,
Flattened.
“We still will mow it,” Dad said.
“Ten bushels to the acre, maybe, what would have been fifty
if I had mowed right after milking
and if the whole family had shocked.
We could have had it weatherproof before the storm.”
Later at dinner Dad said,
“God was testing us. I’m glad we went.”
“Those psalms never gave me such a lift as this morning,”
Mother said, “I wouldn’t have missed it.”
“Were my parents right or wrong?” Wiersma doesn’t answer the question, but he acknowledges that his parents’ sabbath observance was at the root of his own attempts at faithfulness.[5] I’m drawn to this poem because it questions my own initial response to the harvest challenge. I probably would have mowed that field and later thanked the Lord that we got it all in safely before the storm. I would have missed the worship service and the singing in the storm. And I would have missed the closing psalm’s affirmation in the dark,
“Ye seed from Abraham descended,
God’s covenant love is never ended.”
It is difficult for us to grasp that obedience to God is at the heart of freedom. The world we live in tells us that to be free is to be able to do what we want. Then it goes on to tell us what to want. Our economy grows on the assumption that greed is good and coveting drives demand.
The world we live in tells us that we are what we do; and so we do more in order to be more. And the more we do, the less we remember who we are. Without sabbath, amnesia sets in.
And so on this Lord’s day, when love of neighbor demands that we do not gather in person, we find other ways to keep the Sabbath day holy and hold fast to the promise that God’s covenant love is never ended. Separated from each other in so many ways, we touch the table where Christ is the host, and we cling to its promise and vision and manners like never before. I can feel the edge of his table in my hands and my parched soul drinks the words Jan Richardson found for us,
And the table
will be wide.
And the welcome
will be wide.
And the arms
will open wide
to gather us in.
And our hearts
will open wide
to receive.
And we will come
as children who trust
there is enough.
And we will come
unhindered and free.
And our aching
will be met
with bread.
And our sorrow
will be met
with wine.
And we will open our hands
to the feast
without shame.
And we will turn
toward each other
without fear.
And we will give up
our appetite
for despair.
And we will taste
and know
of delight.
And we will become bread
for a hungering world.
And we will become drink
for those who thirst.
And the blessed
will become the blessing.
And everywhere
will be the feast.[6]
[1] https://www.deseret.com/2018/3/28/20642391/poll-are-the-ten-commandments-still-relevant-today-americans-and-brits-differ-and-millennials-stand
[2] See Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue.” Christian Century 123, no. 5 (March 7, 2006) 17.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The Book of Concord: the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, by Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, Charles P. Arand (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2000) 382.
[5] “Obedience,” by Sietze Buning (Stanley Wiersma’s pen name)
[6] https://paintedprayerbook.com/2012/09/30/and-the-table-will-be-wide/