What's it all for and how does it happen?

 

Exodus 15:22-16:36, Exodus 19:1-20::21. Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Leviticus 25 David Brooks recently had an article in the Atlantic where he said he’d been obsessed with two questions: Why are Americans so sad? and Why are Americans so mean? He says, there are lots of theories, most of them at least partly true. But, he opens, “The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.” He writes that restraining our selfishness, welcoming our neighbor, disagreeing constructively, and finding purpose in life are not things our culture is currently intentional about learning and passing on. We don’t collectively address the question, what is life for? Humans need practical guidelines for a meaningful existence. We need moral formation -  to be formed into something and for something.   In our ongoing narrative, the Israelites have been led out of slavery into wilderness. These are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah: blessed to be a blessing to the world. But for centuries they’d been formed as slaves, for the benefit of the empire. They were disposable, existing for work by a system that stripped them of personhood and gave them daily patterns of living that reinforced this definition. They were slaves. They knew how to do this. Now they’re free. How do you be free?  They’ll need a new understanding of what life is for, and some practical guidelines for a meaningful existence.   The first time I preached on the Ten Commandments at Lake Nokomis, Owen was four and Maisy was one. The day before, in a fit of frustration with his baby sister, Owen threw a Star Wars action figure at her.  “No throwing things” isn’t a rule we’ve needed in our house for a long time, and time-outs are a faint memory (except for self-imposed ones), but back then, throwing things led to an immediate time-out.  After Owen’s grueling four minutes on the time-out chair, I knelt down in front of him and asked him if he knew why he had to sit there – my line of the often-repeated script. He avoided looking at me and parroted his line of the script,  “Because I threw something at Maisy. Sorry.”  But something stopped me this time, and since I had his attention, I asked him, “Owen, do you know WHY we don’t throw things in this house?”  He looked at me, big eyes and pensive stare, “Why?”  “We have that rule because we want this house to be a safe place for everyone to play, a place where everyone is protected and free to have fun.  You, Maisy, Mommy and Daddy, and even people who visit us.  If people were allowed to throw things here, nobody would be safe or protected or be able to play without being afraid.  That’s why we can’t have any throwing.   Do you think that is a good rule for us to have?” And he paused, then he nodded.  Then he said, with a very concerned face, “Mommy, that’s a good rule. But I forget! I forget what to do when Maisy touches my things! So I just throw things at her!”   And I promised that next time she touched his things, I would help him remember to tell her NO, then ask me to help get her away.  Because just as we don’t throw things, we also don’t take other people’s things without asking.  And he left satisfied.  That first year this blew the Ten Commandments wide open for me. Because the ten commandments are not actually grammatically commands  - they are descriptive – they portray the way life in the household of God works. In this house, we do not throw things at people, we don’t take other people’s things without asking. Here is what life looks like when people are honored and respected, all people, in a safe place where everyone can grow, and play, and not be afraid.   This is not just a list of rules, it’s not even just helpful moral formation, it’s a relationship upheld by God. You are no longer slaves, you are children.  So first, before even the words themselves, God claims them as children by caring for them in the wilderness. The first story today is about how God gave the Israelites manna for breakfast and quail for dinner, and provided water where there was none. Every day God gave them just what they needed for that day, and no more. If they tried to save it up it went rotten. But every seventh day was for rest, so the food from the sixth day could carry over. We’ve called this period in their lives “Trust training school.”  For 40 years they practiced being cared for, received belonging to God – I am trustworthy, I will take care of you. And then, in that place of upheaval and unknown, God gives them a word. Like the word that spoke creation into being, and the word that will become flesh and dwell among us. God’s word always brings life.  The majority of the Ten Commandments address Who is this God and what is God up to? “I’m the God who saved you and called you my own and cared for you and looks after you. I give you your name and identity and freedom. I am trustworthy and I expect you to trust me. I can’t be possessed or controlled, only encountered. I am who I will be, and I say who you are – not anything else that would enslave you or totalize you. So respect me. And then God says, you’ll forget you belong to me, and forget who you are for each other and what life is for, so every single week every single person stops working, to enjoy life and rest, just like I did when I created the world, because life is for joy and connection. You are not slaves defined by endless production, you my are children held in my love and called to bless the world. And then the commandments turn to, What is a good life and how do we live it? The moral formation part, practical guidelines for a meaningful existence. And with simple “We don’t throw things here” language, they talk about how to treat each other: in this house we hold one another as sacred and valuable, we uphold other’s dignity and personhood and treat people with respect, honesty and fairness instead of jealousy, greed or envy. In this home, God says, everyone has what they need, and we practice belonging to each other. But to notch it all up a level and really hit the message home, we’ve got another story from the law where God commands that every 7th year is a big, year-long sabbath for the soil, and every 49 years this sabbath thing becomes a mega sabbath jubilee celebration year. The whole gameboard gets wiped clean and reset. Master and marginalized, insider or outsider, generational wealth or poverty, it all disappears. Momentum crushed, balance sheet zeroed out. Only God can tell us who we, not what we’ve achieved or lost, not how people see us or our role in society, not our smart investments or poor choices. We are children, not slaves. And the earth is God’s beloved creation, also not meant to be endlessly worked. So in case we begin acting like what we do is more powerful and permanent than it is, God writes in a reset button. Come back home. You are my children, here to bless the world.  When God gave the law, God said, Here is what life is for. Here is how you live it. This is not hypothetical and idealistic. This is concrete and practical. The only way to life fully human, fully alive, fully who you are made to be, the only way to be free, is inside the perimeters of God’s love and order. Anything outside that makes us into slaves, steals our joy, binds us in patterns of destruction and division and isolation. For 16 years I’ve loved the ten commandments and insight I received from the experience of Owen’s time out.  But this time through I hear something different in that story. I hear a four year old's honest cry of anguish, how he knows it’s wrong to throw things, but when she takes his stuff, he forgets.  And I feel that part.  We’re sad and we’re mean. And we can wish we weren’t sad and try not to be mean – but most of the time we forget what to do. We agree they are good rules: let’s be kind and forgiving and generous. Let’s restrain selfishness and disagree constructively and welcome our neighbor. Yes, yes to all of it. Let’s do those good rules. Let’s practice them and be formed by the practice. But I still forget. I forget when a stranger is short with me, or something doesn’t work like it should, or people say dumb false things, or when I feel judged, or even when I’m just in a hurry.  I forget when I’m insecure or afraid, and I forget most often with those closest to me. When I’m interrupted or impatient, when I get stressed or anxious about things outside my control, when life feels overwhelming, I forget.  We need moral formation. Thank God for the places we learn to practice kindness and civility. Seriously, thank you, God. How will we ever remember unless we practice? But more than practice, I need a savior. I need someone to bring me back home, because sometimes I can’t find my way. I’ve practiced striving and self-protection so much for so long, that it’s hard to just choose to live what I know to be true. I forget.  But God gives more than good moral formation. God gives God’s very self.  To the Israelites God said, I will care for you, I will lead and guide you, and you will care for others. You are no longer slaves, you are my children. I make that so. You are those whom I am with. We are children of God in the household of God. We are those whom God is with. And Christmas is the concrete promise come to fruition in flesh and blood, God is with us. GOD is with us. The word made flesh to dwell among us. Jesus comes to make us fully at home in love. And when we are fully at home in love, that feels like joy.   Joy is a gift, we can’t make it happen. Jesus said that the point of all his teaching is that we have his joy. His joy – not that we try to act joyful or produce joy out of thin air. Jesus enters our death, our impossibility, our deep, existential forgetting, and takes it into himself. And Jesus give us his life. Jesus is fully at home in love, and the inner life of Christ’s own complete belonging to God and belonging to the world is for us. We can be at home in love. Even in pain and suffering. Even in disappointment and confusion. Even in our failure to live up to the values we believe. We drawn into life that doesn’t come from us and will not end with us, that is beauty, and wonder, and mystery, and awe, and delight and sorrow shared, poignant and powerful. And those moments when life eternal breaks through tangibly grabs us, we taste joy. We forget to forget. And we are remembered into life by God who is with us. So together we will practice. Freedom instead of slavery. Rest instead of relentlessness. We will turn our hearts to our creator and seek to trust in the I AM who holds the world, and we’ll help each other with the  kindness and generosity and peace too. But we will undoubtedly also forget.  So, Jesus, God with us, be with us here and set us free again. Speak a word that brings life. God who comes in, come into our places of stuckness and forgetting, remember us into life and bring us back home into love. Amen.

Never forget

Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. 200,000 people in tents.

Deuteronomy 5:1-21; 6:4-9

You know how whenever the school year starts, a whole bunch of time is spent reiterating the rules? Or when you pick up a sequel to a book, the whole first chapter or two tells you again who the main characters are and what they’re all about? Well, we are starting over in the Old Testament, friends, and even though we just had the Ten Commandments last year, these things bear repeating, and, this is actually a different iteration of them, with a different context.

The first time we heard them, Moses had just come down the mountain and delivered the message to the people – here is what life with God at the center looks like, here is what our lives as the people of God will look like.

But the people turned away from God and made for themselves an idol, and God told them that none of them would enter into the promised land, so forty years goes by and they wander in the desert, eating manna, and I imagine, being shaped as a people just as much by their wandering rootless existence as they were by the slavery they endured in Egypt.

When a generation’s turn was over and their children were adults, Moses gathered them together on the threshold of the Promised Land to tell them again – here is what it means to have God at the center, and here is what it means to live as the people of God.

And he addresses them first by saying – these are your words from God- they weren’t just given to your parents; they belong to you, they define you.  And Moses proceeds to again tell them what in Hebrew are called The Ten Words.

There is a very little difference between the first telling and the second one, in fact, they are all identical except for the Sabbath command, but what is different is quite significant.

In Exodus the Sabbath command says Observe the Sabbath, and then gives the rationale…For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

So the people, who have come from a relentless kind of existence as slaves, are given the command now as they set out on their journey to the Promised Land, that they are to observe the Sabbath because they are made in the image of a God who rests.  Their lives are not defined by their slavery; they are human beings with worth, children of God, brought into God’s rest.

But in the Deuteronomy version, a generation later, after they’ve ostensibly been living with these Ten Words guiding their lives their whole lives, it says this:

Remember the Sabbath, and then it goes on to say why the command says that everybody should rest, including livestock and slaves and strangers in the land…so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

As they stand, a migrant people, on the threshold of what will be their home, God is reminding them again what kind of life they are made for and what it will look like to share that life with others.  Sabbath tells them, through rest, that they are responsible to shape a different kind of life for all, one that keeps in mind that they were once enslaved, and that God delivered them. By stopping work and resting together, the whole community is restored to the way of God – if only for one day every week – where people are all worthy and valuable by another standard than the one the world of commerce and caste tells us is true every other day.

This week the global immigration crisis has come to the forefront-  millions of displaced people in what is being called the greatest humanitarian crisis since WWII and the biggest mass migration in modern times. People dying in the sea because a paid smuggler and rubber raft is safer than staying in the war-ravaged rubble of no-longer home.  Hundreds of thousands in refugee camps, living in tents, thousands a day arriving on the threshold of new countries, not knowing what they will face.

And so this week, awareness of this story unfolding around us has been the backdrop of our scripture text for me, and I can’t help but be reminded again that the very origins of our faith story is here.  Our forefathers and foremothers were almost all migrants.  In fact, throughout all of scripture, the people God chooses and those through whom God consistently works are homeless, exiled, and wandering people without a whole lot going for them by the world’s standards as the moment God claims them and uses them in his schemes of salvation and hope. 

There are things we say over and over again because they tell us something about our identity or purpose as a people – the pledge of allegiance at baseball games, the karate creed before class begins, the girl scout law, the 12 steps. 

A little later in Deuteronomy, this book of instruction, is a direction from God, a creed to be spoken every year in their new home when they’ve settled down and made a life for themselves, that each person was supposed to say when they would bring their first portions of the harvest to the Lord’s house on the Feast of Pentecost (First Fruits), and it goes like this:

When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God: 

‘A wandering Aramean (Syrian) was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ 

You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. (Dest. 26:5-10)

Every year, at this festival when they brought their offerings of gratitude and trust to God they were to speak aloud a reminder, “that they descended from wanderers who had often depended on the merciful hospitality of strangers to survive.” Scholar Harvey C Kwiyani explains,, “This is their history. This is their identity. Deuteronomy 26 is talking about Jacob (whose mother was a Syrian, married two Syrian women, and raised up his children in Syria for a long time). But, at a distant, we can tell they would have Abraham in mind for he was a Syrian by birth. There is no telling of Jewish history apart from migration.”

In fact, cast your mind back in the scriptures – Adam and Eve ousted from the garden, Noah and his family settling a new earth, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel, Joseph bringing the family into Egypt, Moses and the Israelites fleeing Egypt… and it continues on with the prophets of the Exile and onward to Jesus and Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt, and much of the early church story…

All throughout scripture, the people God chooses are the outsiders and migrants, those who know what it is to be displaced, to be at the mercy of strangers.  Jesus himself had no home of his own, and when he sends out his disciples he tells them to bring nothing but the clothes on their back – go and rely on the hospitality of strangers to survive as you bring to them the message of hope, the gospel of God.

Why is this so?

Why does God choose to have so much of our faith story in the hands of those who are journeying and unsettled?

Maybe that’s because, in the real reality, we are all this. 

Maybe it’s to remind us that here is not our true home.  We are always searching, always a little bit fish out of water, always relying on the hospitality of each other and giving that to others, in the journey to what will really feel like life as it was meant to be, at home in the very presence of God.

All this time we’ve been talking about the Kingdom of God, about another reality that is more real than the one we are living – where we exist with and for each other instead of against each other, where we are meant to live in trust instead of fear, in generosity instead of stinginess. 

And God is taking these people here in today’s scripture about to settle into a “home” – (which, by the way, displaces others!), and there is a warning here in this, an urgency to this reiteration of the Way of God in the Ten Words – don’t forget!

Don’t forget where you came from; don’t forget whose you really are. 

Because things are going to change when you see yourself as “settled,” when you begin to feel as though you belong and you and your children and your grandchildren adjust to the comforts of power and predictability, and forget what it was to be rootless. 

It’s one thing to rely on God when, every single day, your very food – your only food, comes directly from God out of the sky, when you have no other existence than this dependent one of transition between places, sharing the journey with each other without settling, without staying, without an identity that can come from vocation and labor, from wealth and success or place in society.

You’ve been off the grid for your whole life, the identity as slaves has slowly been drained out of you and been replaced, hopefully, with an awareness of what it means to trust God, and be in this with each other – and God doesn’t want you to forget this.

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise...

Don’t forget whose you are! Don’t forget who you are!

Sisters and brothers, we are not from here; this place is not our final home. We are all in transition, on a journey, hopefully growing in our trust of God alongside, with and for each other, instead of against each other.  

Both our ancestors and our future remind us of this truth – there will be a day when we will be at home in God, when nobody will be hungry or thirsty or without shelter or voice or hope. When love will be the rule. We were made to live that way.

And we should never settle in so much that we forget this.

We should never just accept that life as we know it now is what it is meant to be or will be.  God is calling us to live another way.

We must see one another; we must see our sisters and brothers who are feeling their homelessness more than we are, who are journeying more literally you and I at the moment, who have had what was secure taken from them and find themselves at the mercy of the hospitality of strangers. 

And in the times that you or I are the ones feeling acutely our own displacement or transition, our own rootlessness or journey, and we, like Jesus’ parents, and Paul in Damascus, and the children of Israel and Father Abraham and all the rest gone before, like God incarnate who came vulnerable and dependent into this world, are without resources and forced to rely on the love and care of others, when we do, we will meet God, because that is where God is most with us.

When we look at the world and wonder where God is, what God is up to, we should look where God has always been – with those who are suffering, those who are journeying, those who are in need, with and for us, alongside us, that is where Jesus always is. 

So this week, when I looked for Emmanuel, God with us, I saw Jesus in the heartbreaking photo of Aylan Kurdi’s father, holding his little shrouded body at his funeral with what is left of his beleaguered community gathered around him. 

And I saw the Kingdom of God in the overwhelming response of 10,000 Icelanders who told their government that despite their nation’s quota of 50 immigrants, they were willing to open their homes to welcome in those in need-  “I’m happy to look after children, take them to kindergarten, school and wherever they need. I can cook for people and show them friendship and warmth. I can pay the airfare for one small family. I can contribute with my expertise and assist pregnant women with pre-natal care.”

I saw the love and life of Christ in the wealthy family who runs their own Mobile Immigrant rescue ship – meeting boats in the sea and providing medical care, food and water, rescuing thousands of people.

 

Hungarian woman and man on the freeway with
food and water for Syrian refugees approaching on foot

I saw God-with-us in the trail of people walking across Hungary into Austria, holding sleeping children and supporting tired friends, and I saw the Kingdom of God, Christ alongside us, in the Hungarian men and women who went out and bought crates of food and lined up on the side of the highway in anticipation of those who would soon be walking past.

I got a glimpse of God’s Kingdom when the crowd of German men, women and children who left work and home and gathered with only their voices and their hands, cheered and applaud their to welcome to the weary refugees as they passed across the border into Germany.

I see you. You are my sister; you are my brother. You are not alone. You are welcome here.

Remember, God says. Don’t forget.

I am giving you life in a different way, my way.  Not a way of slavery.  Not a way of isolated independence. Not a way of dominance or self-advancement.  A way of sacrifice and love. A way of joining and sharing. The way you were made for to begin with. 

I am the Way.

It begins with me.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

And, Jesus summarizes the rest of the law, Love your neighbor as yourself.

I alone, I am Lord. No ruler or pressure or prestige, no rat race, or religion, or regret. 

I am your God.

Love me.  Listen to me. Find your home in me.  I will be at the center of it all. I will care for you. 

And I will show you what it means to be my people. Join me in loving each other, welcoming each other, treating one another with respect and honor.

If you do this, it will go well for you in the land in which you are living, the land in which you wander.  And one day, I will bring you home.

Sisters and brothers, as we sharing the journey, the seemingly settled times and the times of obvious upheaval and redirection: may we never forget where we come from or where we are going, never abandon or ignore those alongside us, and never turn from the One who is at the center of it all. 

Amen.

The Move Back into Freedom

A friend and colleague, Rob Smith, pastor of Spirit of Life Presbyterian Church, invited me to blog on the topic of Sabbath as part of their Year of the Bible, Here is what I wrote.  (You can find the original post here).

What if I told you that most of us live like we believe we are slaves most of the time?  In slavery, you belong to a master who dictates your entire identity, worth and purpose, and even directs your very days and hours. Like the Israelite slaves of Pharaoh, we are told that we matter only if we produce, produce, produce.  In our modern day slavery, it’s a little more sophisticated – we also matter if we consume, consume, consume.  As long as we are part of the relentless system of production and consumption, we have value.  So we measure our worth  – and others do too – by how much we produce or consume in a day.

But how does life work for a people who are free?  
The Ten Commandments, or “Ten Words,” are given by God to a people coming out of generations of slavery into a new life of freedom.  The first few commandments talk about our connection to God – to whom we truly belong, and the last few talk about our connection to other people with whom we share this life. But right in the middle of these valuable guidelines is this long and very detailed “hinge” command about keeping the Sabbath.  
What is this doing there? 
Why is this so essential that it would make it into God’s top ten instructions for life? 
And what could it possibly say to us today?

I want to suggest that Sabbath does two absolutely vital things, without which we lose our very humanity.

First, Sabbath reminds us whose we are.

You belong to the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt!  begins the Sabbath command.  (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)  Outside forces can’t dictate the terms of your existence.  Only God can.

Sabbath refuses to let us be defined by a lifestyle of slavery and relentless production.  When you are just being and not doing, your worth cannot come from what you contribute.  You are not defined, owned or measured by what you make, earn, buy, sell, own, produce or accomplish, Sabbath says. You are free.

Also, Sabbath as God commands it is when everybody rests, even the land!  So my neighbor and my daughter and the kid who mows my lawn and my boss, and the person on TV who seems so important and essential are all just people, just like me. Loved by God, and caught in the cogwork of an overextended, under nourished life, just like me.  You can no longer measure your worth by what you produce and consume, or rank yourself against one another. You belong to God and not to Pharaoh.

Second, Sabbath reminds us who we are.

This God to whom we belong is the creator who looked on creation and called it good, the maker of heaven and earth who rested and enjoyed what had been made.  (Exodus 20:8-11) And rest itself is part of creation’s cycle, and actually is part of how God created everything on earth to function, you and me included.

We are made in God’s image and called to participate with God in the world. How can we do that if we never stop to rest?  We are actually supposed to enjoy what we are part of in this short life, and to call life good, like the Creator in whose image we are made!  
We are all God’s beloved children, and we are all made in God’s image– each one different, each one with specific things that fill us with joy and satisfaction and express our true self and God’s unique delight in us.  
When we stop doing and allow ourselves the space to be, things slow down and we notice.  And we can see, sometimes in tiny, ordinary and surprising ways, God’s pervasive presence in the world and our own place within it.  And our capacity to praise our creator, and to delight in life, grows deeper.  
Observing the Sabbath reconnects with who we are, and celebrates who God made us to be.  Resting on purpose makes us human again. 

The other nine commandments take the people out of slavery. The Sabbath commandment takes slavery out of the people.* Sabbath sets us free, by grounding us in us again in the truth of whose we are and who we are.

I want to invite you to accept the life-saving gift of Sabbath.

This week, set aside a day.  Or if you need to start slower, a half day, or an evening, an hour early in the morning, and STOP. Rest. Notice. 

Turn off your phone and the TV.  

Put your work in another room.  

Ignore the dishes in the sink and let the laundry wait for tomorrow.  

Pause to hear the voices that compete to tell you who you are supposed to be and let them go.  

Listen to the lies that try to tell you what owns you and let them go. 

Close your eyes and look deep in your soul and ask yourself, What would give me joy right now?  What does my soul need? 

Look into the face of your kid or your spouse, or call up a friend, and ask them, What do you need to say no to today, to remember that you’re free?  

And let God meet you at that place.

*I think Walter Brueggemann said this somewhere, but if so, I can no longer find the citation. But props anyway - check out his awesome book, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now.

The words that make us free

Exodus 19:3-7, 20:1-17

Every few years we come again to the Ten Commandments.  And when we talk about them it feels like something we need to hear again and again, to be reminded of, which makes complete sense, because they are God’s description of how life with each other and God works best.  But like many “rules,” it’s easy to lose the heart of them and think of them as something only that limits, squashes, constricts, when in reality, the Ten Commandments set us free.

I preached on the Ten Commandments when Owen was four, the day after he and I had a moment that made me realize what the Ten Commandments are all about.  In a fit of frustration with his baby sister, Owen threw a Star Wars action figure at her.  In our house, throwing something leads to an immediate time out, a rule we thankfully don’t have to employ much any more, but which was one of the biggies at that time.  After his grueling four minutes in the torturously boring time out chair, I knelt down in front of him and asked him if he knew why he had to sit there. 

This is a routine that happened, by the way, daily, and several times a day on bad days. I did not expect him to engage me, and hoped only that repetition of these consequences would cause him to figure that it wasn’t worth it, and give up on throwing things as a means to get his way.  So far it hadn’t happened that way, but forge ahead I did. 

So I asked him if he knew why he was on time out, and he said, “Because I threw something at Maisy. Sorry.”  But something stopped me this time, and since I had his attention along with his contrition, I asked him, “Owen, do you know WHY we don’t throw things in this house?”  He looked at me, big eyes and pensive stare, “Why?”

“We have that rule because we want this house to be a safe place for everyone to play, a place where everyone is protected and free to have fun.  You, Maisy, Mommy and Daddy, and even people who visit us.

If people were allowed to throw things here, nobody would be safe or protected, or be able to play without being afraid.  That’s why we can’t have any throwing. 

Do you think that is a good rule for us to have?”

And he paused, then he nodded.  Then he said, with a very concerned face, “Mommy, that’s a good rule. But I forget! I forget what to do when Maisy touches my things! So I just throw things at her!” 

And I promised that next time she touched his things, I would help him remember to tell her NO, then ask me to help get her away.  Because just as we don’t throw things, we also don’t take other people’s things without asking.  And he left satisfied. 

We’ve been bouncing through the Old Testament, watching God’s interaction with the Israelites, and last week they were delivered out Egypt, and came to the Red Sea, where the standoff between Pharaoh and God had a decisive winner.  But the Israelites begged to return to slavery rather than face the terrifying unknown of the wilderness.  Then they watched God defeat their oppressors, and bring them through the waters into a new way of life and a new identity.

This week God claims them as God’s people.  We call this portion of scripture “The Ten Commandments,” in Hebrew they are referred to as, “The ten words” , and they are the foundation to all the laws and teaching of the prophets that follow in the Torah.  More than that, these ten words are to define them.

God said these are the things that will characterize you as a people, as my people.  They are not worded as suggestions or guidelines or requests or even, really, as commands  - these are descriptive – they describe the way this new life they will build together will work.  No contingency plan, simply the way it is. Period.  In this house, we do not throw things at people, we don’t take other people’s things without asking.

The ten words are grounded first in God – who God is and what God has done for them.  The first word that shapes all others is: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt – and gave you water and food and fed you and parted the red sea and destroyed the Egyptian army and led you day and night across the dessert – that is all implied here as well.   

I am the God that saved you and claimed you as my own and guided and protected you.  That’s me – and now, here’ s you – you wont serve other gods, you wont covet or steal or murder or commit adultery.  That’s how we behave here, that’s how this relationship works.

After 400 years in slavery, these people are used to being told what to do.  They are punished when they don’t obey, and their wills don’t factor into their lives much at all; they are slaves. There is no such thing as choice, they are not seen as human, they are valued only for what they provide and do, and they are basically disposable.  This is life for the Israelites under Pharaoh.

And now, suddenly and quite dramatically, they are given freedom.  They are given personhood, ontology, being – being in relation to each other, being in relation to God.  They are valued for who they are and claimed as God’s own. They have an identity, and a purpose not tied to what they can produce for others, they have freedom.

My kids and I used to spend quite a bit of time in the summers at Como Zoo. It is only about 2 miles from my house, and admission is free, so almost once a week, we would park outside the gates and load up the stroller and spend a few hours visiting the monkeys and gorillas, lions and giraffes, zebras and sea lions.

Sparky the sea lion is not the Sparky from when I was a kid, in fact, I think we are about 4 Sparkys removed – as the offspring of the offspring of Sparky carry on the title and perform as Sparky.  For decades and generations these sea lions and the other zoo animals have been raised in captivity – their parents were born into captivity and their grandparents too. 

I wonder what would happen if these animals were one day, for whatever reason, released?  If some benevolent billionaire animal lover loaded them all into crates and planes and brought them all back to their native habitats and released them into the wild, penguins to Antarctica, Lions and zebras to the Savannas of Africa, tigers to the jungles of southeast Asia, Sparky dropped off by helicopter on some rocky island in the Bering sea, just released them all and bid them farewell as free creatures.

What would happen to these animals? How would they find food? Where would they sleep?  How would they function, outside the enclosed walls they’ve only ever known?  Would any of them survive their first 48 hours? 

With the move from Egypt to the Wilderness -these Israelites are dramatically and irreversibly thrust into a radically different way of life, perhaps imagined, but never experienced.   Slaves for generations, now suddenly, they find themselves with no rulers, no forced labor, no mandates dictating their daily activity.  They are free.  How will they know how to be free?  How does a free people live?

When God gives the Israelites the Ten Words, it isn’t about exchanging one set of restrictions and orders for another.  It is about delivering them from slavery into freedom.  The rules in freedom are rules for life, for liberation, not for enslavement and oppression.   These are rules for the promised land – filled with promise. 

Here is what it looks like in the Promised land, God says, what it will be like in the home I give to you.  Here is what life looks like when it is done in a way that honors and respects people, all people, in a safe place where everyone can grow, and play, and not be afraid.

This is not a burden on you – taking away your freedom.  This is your freedom. Freedom to live for God and one another.  Where everyone matters and who you are gets to breathe, and grow and dream and thrive.

 This is a description of life in my house.

Hear again the ten words God gives the people of Israel:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt.

I am your deliverance and your freedom.  You are not on your own, facing the elements and the enemies by yourself.  I am in charge here, and I delivered you out of slavery and into freedom.  You can trust me.

You will not have other gods before me.

You are not to be a slave to anything else – nothing else can dictate who you are, you’ve been freed from slavery.  Not money or power, not self-promotion or personal security, not your work or your reputation. Nothing else defines you – I am your God, and I made you free.

Make no idols for yourself – and no images of me. 

You cannot possess me or control me, and as soon as you try, you make yourselves slaves again, this time to an idea of your own making.  I am not a political party or a stance on an issue, I am not a way of worshipping or a particular denomination. 

I am not what you make me to be with your songs and your prayers and your stained glass windows and your infighting.  I am always more. 

No box can hold me, I am free to be mystery.  I am to be encountered instead of encapsulated.

You wont take my name in vain. 

I am not something to be used to back your point or vent your frustration.  Just as you are free, I am free as well.  Treat me with respect.

Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy.  

Freedom is harder to grasp than slavery, so you’re going to need a way to keep living the truth.  You see, in this house, you are not defined by what you produce or consume, but valued for who you are.  You are free, and you are all equal – there is no difference between sick and well, rich and poor, young and old – everyone matters. But if you keep working day after day without stopping, you will forget this, and you will believe that those who make more, or know more, or buy more, are worth more.  This is a lie, but it is hard to resist.  So here’s how we’re going to resist it: Every single week, everyone must stop working and simply be.  Enjoy life and rest, as I celebrated life and rested when I created the world.  Resting connects you to me and helps you to remember that I have called you out of death into life, out of slavery into freedom, out of fear into trust, out of striving and competition into gratitude and generosity.  The Sabbath is a holy, special, set aside day to remember who and whose you are.

Honor your parents and your life will be long in the land I am giving to you.  

Cherish those who gave you life and nurtured you, respect them and esteem them. And those you raise and love will do the same for you as well. In this home, we are in this together, grateful for those who’ve gone before and aware of those yet to come.  There is a generational cycle of love and respect and honor that characterizes life here.

You will not murder. 

You are human beings, persons made in my image, not a workforce, not possessions, not a number, or a credit score, or a diagnosis or a burden or a threat.  Each one of you is sacred, your life is valuable - not to be tossed away or taken away, precious and irreplaceable.

You will not commit adultery. 

Your relationships will never betray or trivialize someone.   Within your relationships you will be safe and respected; you can trust the bonds you have, they are real.

You will not steal.

You can be assured that in this home what is yours will never be taken from you unfairly.

You will not falsely testify against another. 

The truth about you, or anyone else, will never be sacrificed in order for someone to “win”.   Everyone’s integrity and personhood will be upheld, and matters will be decided honestly and fairly.

You will not covet your neighbor’s house, or spouse or kids or car or job or vacation home or anything that belongs to your neighbor. 

Jealousy, greed and envy have no place in this home.  Everyone has what they need, and we all live in awareness of our blessings, in joy and gratitude.  We have not become slaves to things or to the belief that having more makes us better.  We’re all different, and all valuable, and our relationships come before the things we have.

The “Ten Commandments” at first blush sound like a dry list of rules.  Follow the rules so you don’t get put on time out.  But fresh from slavery and newly, bewilderingly freed, maybe that is the way the Israelites needed to hear it at the time.  Truthfully, it is the way we all need to hear it from time to time.  You will not throw things at your sister.  PERIOD.

But the Ten Words are protection and freedom, radical promise and enduring hope. They are a description of life in relationship with God and each other, life in the home God makes for us, the trust and belonging that God gives to us and calls us into, and they can be summarized like this:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. Jesus said, And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Today we celebrate World Communion Sunday – all over the world in congregations of all denominations, all cultures and languages, people are sharing the bread of life and the cup of salvation and speaking out the promise of God’s love and liberation for the world, and for our very own souls as well.  All over the world, sisters and brothers are gathering with their own fears and failings – and all the things that enslave them, figuratively and literally, that keep them from living the trust and belonging that God gives to us and calls us into.  And they’re gathering here, at the table of our Lord Jesus Christ, to remember and receive again, the Spirit of God who sets us free to live for God and each other.  As members of the household of God, let us join them at the table of life.

Amen.