Sermon, 3/7/21. Contractual Agreements: Read the Fine Print

3 Lent

Psalm 19; Exodus 20:1–17 ; I Corinthians 1:18–25; John 2:13–23

“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2)

Question: What do “the Ten Commandments” and the Constitution of the United States of America have in common?

Answer: Both are contracts.

Goal of the contracts:

1. “Now if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all the peoples…”  Exodus 19:5
2. “A republic…if you can keep it…” Benjamin Franklin (as recorded in the diary of James McHenry, 18 September 1787, from Library of Congress)

When my telephone first rang on Wednesday, 6 January, and the ID indicated a call from in-laws from Germany, I was surprised as it was not a birthday or other anniversary, at least, not as I could recall.  The voices on the other end expressed excitement and horror, and raised the question:  “We’re watching evening news (Austria and Germany are six hours advanced of the U.S.); what’s happening in your Nation’s Capitol?”  As I do not own a television (and, if I did, I would not have been viewing at that hour of the day), but driven by the distress in their voices, I directed my laptop computer from my work to a news network, only to witness the invasion of the Nation’s Capitol by insurrectionists. 

As we further spoke, I expressed neither surprise nor shock, something which my German family and Austrian friends could not understand.  Indeed, I lamented the travesty.  However, I was neither surprised nor shocked for I, neither a non-political scientist nor sociologist, had anticipated such an event for over four years.  For me, it was simply a matter of “when.” But neither was I indifferent to the event unfolding on my computer screen, nor defeated in my hope for what positive good we humans could accomplish still, if/when we work in community.  My lamentation?  I reminded them that, although not German by birth, I was a student of German history from the early Middle Ages through contemporary history.  And their response to me was:  Did America not learn from the mistakes of our parents who suffered under Nazism?  This was my lamentation.

In 1972, Vernard Eller (1927 – 2007), a minister in the Church of the Brethren, wrote a book, to which he gave the title The Mad Morality or the Ten Commandments Revisited.  He gave the final chapter of his book an equally interesting title, “Freedom needs Fences.”  This may strike some of us as strange, as an oxymoron even, because when we think of freedom, of being free, we conjure up a situation with no barriers, where one is free to say or do whatever pleases one, not obligated to anyone but self.  And you may well wonder why I mention Eller’s book?  Well, I do so because I believe it beneficial to us individually, as well as to us collectively, to think about the role that the Ten Commandments, which are rehearsed in our lectionary on this the Third Sunday in Lent, has played in our religious and our secular lives.

Here in the United States, we have come to accept those Biblical axioms as the foundation of our common life, indeed, so much so in this great land of ours that individuals, as well as individual municipalities, seek to have them engraved on stone or etched into metal and erected in the public marketplace.  Such periodic attempts usually bring out the religious, the non-religious, the atheists, and the agnostics, all to do battle with each other about the separation of church and state and the establishment of a particular religion in a secular and multicultural and multi-religious society. 

We have a Constitution, a Bill of Rights, and myriad secular laws, but according to a recent poll, 90% of Americans when asked, responded that the Ten Commandments form the basic for our informal, day-to-day social interaction.  Indeed, because of that conception, many are quick to proclaim with the same breath that we are “a God-fearing nation.”  Given the tragic events of Wednesday, 6 January, and our time of self-reflection during Lent, perhaps it may be time to ask ourselves the question: “And what does the Book of Records have to say on the topic? 

Because we humans are social by nature, but also because we initially see the world always from our individual point of view, from our vantage and advantage point, we need a structure for the harmonious interaction and the establishment of the common good.  The Ten Commandments are all that, but then more.  When the ancient, biblical Hebrew reached the safety of Sinai, Miriam, the elder sister of Moses and Aaron, led the people in a song of thanksgiving.  The song reminded them that the escape and safety were not of their doing but came by the grace of God.  As a further demonstration that God has only good intentions for the Hebrew, God gives to Moses a set of guidelines that places God’s grace in appropriate dosages for them. 

If you were to engage in a little Biblical detective work and search out all the covenants that God made with the Hebrew, you might be surprised by what you find.  What you will find, including the Ten Commandments, is that wherever there is a covenant between the people and God, there is never any coercion.  Stated ever so simply: God says, if you do thus and so, I shall do thus and so.  God never forces them to follow those commandments.  That is a fine, but essential distinction.  When we hear the word “command” we think of coercion, obligation, forced obedience.  We do not hear contract and choice.  There is, you will discover, always an “out clause,” a contingency clause, an “if … then” clause.  “If you would but follow my commandments, then I will recognize you as my people.”   

By accepting the Commandments—the Covenant—the people of God declare themselves ready to be in relationship with God.  The fences are in place, fences that will preserve that relationship.  The law, so set down, is a product of God’s grace.  The Ten Commandments, as well as all subsequent divine laws, were established for the maintenance of the covenantal relationship between ancient Israel and God.  They are to live in the world yet be separated from it by maintaining a unique relationship with God.

These words from God, these Commandments, were the declaration of God’s will without coercion, threat, or punishment.  This concept and belief are captured in our collect when we pray “to whom to serve is perfect freedom.”—an odd figure of speech.  But why should that seem odd?  There are many instances, in which we undertake emotionally, spiritually demanding, physically tiring tasks, willingly and freely. 

The task of the biblical Hebrews was a simple one.  “Exceptionalism,” a term often applied to the United States, could be applicable in describing the ancient Hebrews.  Yet, that “exceptionalism” came with a caveat.  If we accept the biblical account, we see that the message really does not place the Hebrews in first position or declare that there is something in their genetic makeup that makes them were somehow special.  Rather, God sought them out, if we look objectively at the recorded stories, in order to use them as an example, in order to illustrate to the other nations of the world what God’s hope and expectation for all humanity was and is: Community.  However, time and time again the biblical Hebrews got it wrong.  They figured that it was about them, that they were the center of greatness, not God.

“If you can keep it…”

All this brings me to today’s gospel.  “Keeping it” is where problems and abandonment of the covenant arise.  The anger expressed by Jesus as depicted in today’s Gospel tells me two things.  First, if we are to believe that Jesus was truly human, we must likewise believe that he was capable of feeling and of expressing those moments of outrage and disappointments that we all sense and express (sometimes appropriately, sometimes uncalled for, due to a misunderstanding).  Second, though, if we are to believe that Jesus was truly divine, we must believe that his disappointment (and thus his anger) arose out of a knowledge that the covenant that was to express freedom and grace had been turned into institutional serfdom by and to the advantage of an enforcement class. 

Both the will of God and the appropriate response of the people had been corrupted.  What should have been a matter of free will, was twisted into a money-making enterprise.  Either out of fear of a vengeful God, as interpreted to them by their religious leaders, or because the non-literate population trusted the interpretation of the religious leaders, the uneducated masses were taken advantage of.  And, thus, God’s offer, with its “if clause,” became coercion.

And then there is an even more perplexing observation that Jesus makes about the Ten Commandments.  Recall, if you will, the story of the rich young man.  Even if we were somehow able to fulfill the Ten Commandments down to the letter, we may still not have fulfilled the law.  For although all the outer trappings may be in place, we may still not have gotten the essence behind the law.  And that is an uncomfortable paradox.

If the Ten Commandments were to teach us anything, it would be that we cannot justify ourselves before God, even as we in these forty days of Lent reflect on how we may have broken our own promises to uphold our own covenantal relationship with God.  To submit oneself to the law was to place oneself under God’s tutelage; it was to admit that they were dependent of a divine being, but without knowing the outcome.  The law established a relationship.  Failure to respond to the law is an affront to the covenant relationship and is a rejection of God’s grace.

Since we have accepted through our baptism the New Covenant, to honor God as one and to love neighbor as self, must we adhere to the laws found within the old?  Do the Ten Commandments have meaning for us today?  If indeed law is divine guidance for a committed people, then the Ten Commandments can speak to us today.

The Ten Commandments, their essence given us by Jesus in the Great Summary of the Law, were intended to free humanity from the notion of self first, which had led, and still leads, to a breakdown of community.  By placing ourselves, willingly, under God’s law, we are freeing ourselves to love and care for others, even the unloved and the neglected, for it is in and through them that we encounter the Divine.  Through our baptism, we sign on the bottom line of the revised contract.  We obey God’s law, not in order to collect points to our advantage, but to demonstrate to the world that we are God’s.  We are no longer our own but belong to and with Christ.  And if we belong to Christ, then we will obey God’s law.  And that law is stated simply in John’s gospel: that we love another.  Amen

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tablets_of_the_Ten_Commandments_(Bible_Card).jpg