26March2000sermon.htm

"A gift of words"

Sermon for Lent 3, Year B, March 26, 2000

Holy Spirit, Bellmawr / St Luke's, Westville NJ

Readings: Exodus 20: 1-17

It was a day
to remember.
One of those days
which will stick with you
to the end of your life.

"Tell me a story,
grandma," they say,
"tell me a story,"
and you will tell the story,
and watch their eyes grow big
with fear
and wide
with wonder.
"It was like this,"
you say,
"it was like this."

We had been traveling a long time
or so it seemed
two months
or more,
and we were tired. There wasn't much food - enough
but not so much
that we had it to spare.
And there was always the fear
that at the end of the day
we would come to a place
where there was no water
and we would be too tired
to travel any further
and we would die
in the desert.
And then one day
we stopped.
Right there
in the middle of the wilderness,
in the shadow
of a big mountain.
We stopped there,
and put up our tents,
and for three days
we rested.
It was one of those strange times
when time itself
seems no longer to matter.

We ate and we drank,
we slept and we talked,
we washed the grit
from our eyes
and the dust
from our clothes
and then we talked
some more.

"Do you remember"
someone said,
"do you remember
when we lived back in Egypt,
and the land was green and
the crops grew thick?
Do you remember?"

"Do I remember?" said someone else. "Of course I remember.
I lived in a house then,
no tents for us,
and we always knew
where to get water.
I remember."

"But do you remember?" came another voice, "do you remember
the work we had to do,
the bricks which crumbled to pieces when we tried to pick them up
because we didn't have the right clay and straw,
and the feel of the whip on your back?"

"And do you remember," came another voice,
"how we hid our children away
hoping they would grow strong and free
if only
we could
keep them safe from the cruelty around us,
and do you remember
that they shriveled before our very eyes
from the fear
which hung like smoke
in our houses?
Do you remember?"

"And do you remember"
came still another voice,
"do you remember
how God rescued us,
how we were brought out of Egypt
even though
they chased us
with chariots and spears
and we had just our feet
and our belongings on our backs,
do you remember?"

* * * * *
Sitting in those tents
there
in the shadow of the mountain
we remembered.

We remembered the pain of our bodies,
torn by bricks
and whips,
parched with thirst
and knotted with hunger.

We remembered
the terror
of pursuit
and the joy , and the exhaustion
of freedom.

And we remembered
the stories
of gods
who controlled everything
and gods who controlled nothing,
the sun and the rain, the sea and the sky.
We remembered
the stories
of gods to be feared,
powerful, unpredictable,
striking at any time
with bolts of lightening
and upheavals of the earth
that swallowed up cities
gods as likely to destroy
as to bless,

And we were afraid.
There in our tents
in the shadow of the mountain
we were afraid
of God.

* * * * *
And so
on the third day
there we stood
out in front of our tents
clean clothes, faces shining in the early morning sunlight,
and we were afraid.
Because Moses had said
that God
was coming
to speak to us.

* * * * *
And then the world erupted.
Flashes of lightening
forked the sky
and thunder
louder than an army of horses,
and a cloud
so thick
that our fingertips
seemed to disappear
into its depths.

And we huddled together -
the children were crying with fear
and the animals
pulling at their ropes
trying to escape.

Was this the God
we had come to hear?

And then the blast of a trumpet
harsh and ugly
reaching to the corners of the sky,
and we shook with the violence of it.

Was this the God
we had come to hear?

And then the shaking
was not our own,
for the whole earth
began to moan
and strain
and shudder,
and smoke
filled the air.

Was this the God
we had come to hear?

And Moses? He disappeared,
off up the mountain
into the cloud and the smoke,
into the thunderstorm and the earthquake,
and we knew
it was all over.

For if God was there,
it was not a God
we wanted to know.
It was not a God
we wanted to hear.

If God was there,
he was no different
than the unpredictable
dangerous gods
we had heard of before,
and we wanted nothing to do with it.
And so we went back into our tents
and it was not until much later
that we heard
what God had
to say.

* * * * *
What God had to say,
the words Moses brought back down from the mountain
that day,
are the words we know
as the Ten Commandments,
and few of us, I suspect, come to them with the fear
that the people of Israel did
back there in Exodus.

And I think that means
that we hear them with very different ears
than the first hearers,
and we tend to understand them
very differently
than the first hearers
did.
For most of us - if you all are anything like me -
for most of us,
the Ten Commandments
come to us
as laws,
straightforward
and predictable.
Rules imposed on us
which are to obey
or disobey,
and bear the consequences.
We think of them
as working pretty much
like the laws of our country.
Obey them,
and nothing much will happen,
disobey them
and you will be punished,
though of course we all know
that its not quite as straightforward as that,
there are ways of disobeying
which don't result in jail, or fines, or whatever -
whether its making sure you don't go over 62 miles an hour
in the 55 zone,
arguing extenuating circumstances,
or hiring a good attorney
to find the loopholes
- there are ways of getting round laws,
and we all know them.
And then there are the laws
which we all ignore
because we know
that they are never enforced,
we act as if
they aren't even there.
And so we get to thinking
that the only laws which matter
are those with direct consequences.

And if the Ten Commandments
are like this,
then they don't have a lot of importance for us.
You see, breaking some of them
does not,
as far as I can see,
seem to make much difference
if we're thinking in terms of consequences.
I read,
"You shall not covet",
and I think to myself,
Well who is harmed by a bit of honest envy here and there. Not one will
know. And
why shouldn't I dream
about having some of the better things in life.
Or "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy" - but we all know that life
has
changed, and is there is simply too much to do to take a day off. How could
I get the
shopping done, and the kids to sports, and...
The Ten Commandments
have become
just empty
threats.

And what does it say about God
when we think about the Ten Commandments like this?
Some people
keep the commandments
out of fear,
possessed by the image
of God at the judges' bench,
condemning them to hell
for disobedience.
Others
having decided that the idea of hell
belongs to some pre scientific age
see no consequences
and so God recedes in their minds
to a picture of a kindly,
impotent
old gentleman.

* * * * *
Let me take you back
to where I began
hearing these words
with the ears
of their first hearers.
Waiting
at the bottom of the mountain
after the thunder and the lightening and the clouds
the blast of the trumpet, the earthquake and smoke,
waiting
for an unpredictable God
whose word is as likely
to be a word of destruction
as a word of blessing,
waiting
you hear
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt."

And you remember.
You remember
the whips
of the overseers
and the fear of your children
and the food in the wilderness
and water
in the desert.

"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt. You are my people."

In Jewish tradition,
these words
are not known
as the Ten Commandments
but the Ten Words.
They are not so much
a list of laws - those of you who know your Old Testament know
that there are plenty of those to follow -
they are not so much
a list of laws,
as God's attempt to communicate
to build a relationship,
in the only way
the people know how
to hear.
Words about a world
which God is bringing into being
in their midst.

Words
about a world
which is not chaotic, crazy, time running in every direction,
but ordered
and rhythmical
a balance of work
and rest.

Words about a world
where people might learn
how to care for one another
how to rejoice together in good fortune
how to speak so you can trust
what they say
and who they are.

And most of all,
words about a world
where God is not distant
and capricious
acting, it seems, by chance,
but a world where God is
involved,
passionate about the everyday lives of the people,
the people
who God loves.

Those
are the ten words, gifts
for the people
of God.

And if we hear
the ten words in that way,
how different might things look?

You'll be glad to know
that I'm not going to go through the words
one by one
or else we'd be here
much longer
than we have time for.

But let me tell you what it looked like for me
when I heard just one of these words
as a gift
rather than a threat.
About a year ago
I heard a sermon
on keeping the Sabbath.
I'd heard sermons like this
before
but somehow
this time
it was different.
Because for the first time ever,
I heard
that keeping the Sabbath
was not something
to feel guilty
that I don't do
but a gift.
A gift when time
no longer
controls me.
Each Saturday,
or sometimes a Monday
I take a Sabbath.
I sleep
until I wake -
I eat
whatever appeals to me,
I think, I read,
I sit on the porch and drink coffee.
Sometimes
I have a meal with friends,
and most times
I go for a walk in the woods near my house -
now Spring is on its way
I look forward to watching the turtles
from the bridge across the brook
and the dark diamond shapes of fish
just under the surface of the water.
And I learn to pay attention
to the world around
and to myself,
and to God.

It hasn't been easy
to learn to do this. It means that the rest of my week
has more crammed in - I have two part time jobs as well as studying full
time.
It means I have to find another day
to do my grocery shopping
and I can no longer
snatch a couple of hours to go to the mall to check out the sales.
And some Sabbaths, I have to do some work.

But that time
has become precious to me. Because time
takes on a new dimension
not just that day
but the rest of the week,
and I remember God
in many places,
and there is a new wholeness
about my life.

The ten words

are a gift from God,
the gift of a God
who speaks.
A God
who loves.
And a God
who saves.
Amen.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
26 March 2000