Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
(Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Sunday, October 8, 2023
The United Church of Santa Fe
PRELUDE TO THE READING AND SERMON
I am very honoured to be with you this morning in the absence of Rev. Talitha, who is away on travel.
When Talitha asked me if I would preside and be the preacher for this morning, I asked her, “What is the text?” And she said, “Exodus 20, The Ten Commandments.” And I inquired, “All of them?” And she replied, “Do your best.”
It is an awesome task. It would be akin to having been given the assignment to explain in ancient Christian History the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ as affirmed at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 CE, and reaffirmed at the Council of Constantinople in the year 381 CE.
In short, the Councils settled the debate about how Jesus is also Christ, how human nature and divine nature could exist in the same person. If you are really interested in that we could talk about it later. But, I digress.
What you really should do this afternoon is to go home and read Exodus starting in chapter 18 up to chapter 20. I will do my best in the Sermon, I promise to lay down the background of what comes before the reading you are about to hear. And with God’s grace I hope to say something memorable about at lest what we know as Commandment Number 1.
Before you hear the text itself, I would like to read this message which I (and many others) received yesterday from Rabbi Neil Amswych of Temple Beth Shalom here in Santa Fe:
[He writes:] Today [October 6] is the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and is both Shabbat and Simchat Torah. While the Jewish community around the world should be rejoicing with the Torah, Israelis were brought back to fifty years ago as Hamas commits brazen acts of war. Israel is suffering rocket attacks, militant attacks, and hostage situations, and has been compelled to respond with force. Authorities in both Israel and the Gaza Strip report at least 300 deaths in one day. We pray that the war ends quickly with minimal casualties. We pray for an enduring peace. We pray that the hope of two thousand years continues to burn strong.
[Included also was this prayer “Kavannah in unity with the State of Israel” by Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple, in Los Angeles, which we will now pray together:]
El Maleh Rachamim – Compassionate God.
We pray not to wipe out haters but to banish hatred.
Not to destroy sinners but to lessen sin.
Our prayers are not for a perfect world but a better one.
Where parents are not bereaved by the savagery of sudden attacks
Or children orphaned by blades glinting in a noonday sun.
Help us Dear God to have the courage to remain strong, to stand fast.
Spread your light on the dark hearts of the slayers
And your comfort to the bereaved hearts of families of the slain.
Let calm return to Your city Jerusalem, and to Israel, Your blessed land.
We grieve with those wounded in body and spirit.
Pray for the fortitude of our sisters and brothers.
And we ask you to awaken the world to our struggle and help us bring peace.
[And let us say: AMEN.]
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-18
Then God spoke all these words:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses God’s name.
Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work.
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of God upon you so that you do not sin.”
No Other “gods”
+ In nomine Domini. Amen.
Let’s begin this Sermon with some of the many things most of us sitting in church this morning learned about the Bible as we were growing up.
We came to think of the Bible as a sacred object. In fact in my Grandparents house one afternoon as I put a book I was reading down on top of the large Family Bible, my Quaker Grandmother exclaimed, “Don’t ever do that!” “Do what?” I asked. “Don’t ever put anything on top of the Bible!” “Why not?” I asked, ever the contrary adolescent. “Because,” she said, “It’s the Bible.” Being a “smart” adolescent, I said, “So what happens if I put another Bible on top of the Bible?” My sweet Grandmother just stared at me. I quickly added, “What if I put ten Bibles on top of the Bible, which is the offending Bible?” She said coldly, “Go ask your Grandfather.”
To this day I still avoid putting anything on top of any Bible, unless of course it is another Bible, or a Bible in a different translation, or one in Greek or Hebrew — you get the idea.
We thought of the Bible as one long narrative beginning with the book of Genesis and ending with The Revelation. We were taught that it was history, that everything in it really happened the way it was written, and that God was behind all of it, in fact even wrote parts of it Himself as he whispered into the ear of people like Saint Jerome.
Followers of Jesus (my preferred name for Christians) were taught that there are two parts to the Bible: the Hebrew Scriptures (what we called the Old Testament) and the Christian Scriptures (what we called the New Testament). If we grew up in a Roman Catholic Church, then we learned that there was a different Bible for us that included writings between the Old and New Testaments, writings that were called the Apocrypha containing some really fascinating stories such as my all-time personal favourite “Bel and the Dragon.”
Followers of Jesus also learned that for our Jewish friends, their Bible only had — as we called it, the Old Testament. And I have to admit that there were some rather anti-Jewish remarks made even in my otherwise loving and accepting Lutheran congregation, things like “Well, they only have half a bible, we’ve got it all‽” Not very nice, not true at all.
In time — if we were lucky and blessed — if we had really intelligent clergy, and if we happened to take some courses at college or university in Biblical Studies, then things changed. We learned that what is in this “book of books” is a Story an inspired Story, many inspired stories, which were compiled from several sources among people of faith beginning about some 3,000 plus years ago with the people who became known as Israel. And we learned that the Bible was not written in English with red letters for the words of Jesus, but in Hebrew and Greek, translated into Latin, then English and every other language.
We even learned that in spite of Charlton Heston in the role of Moses in the Hollywood version of Exodus that whether things happened exactly as the Story said or not — for the Bible is not a police report or a verbatim — the Story is Sacred and has Power, life-changing Power.
It is the reason we are here. We come to worship the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and plunge ourselves into the Story. We read it, we study it, we sing it, we pray it, we gather around it, we eat bread and drink wine — AND then the Story grabs us and holds and changes us, so that we are different people of faith when we leave this sacred space, than when we entered. When in our worship we breathe in the gifts of God’s Peace, Hope and Love — we leave here and move out into the world to bring those very gifts into the world, into the lives of those around us, into places we know, and places we only hear about when news of terror and war rise up as they have this weekend in the land where our story of faith begins.
So, here is a very quick summary of what happens in the chapters of Exodus prior to the 20th Chapter where we are spending our time this morning: the people of Israel are grumpy and unmanageable and hungry and thirsty. Moses strikes a rock at place called Meribah (quarrel) and everyone drinks to their fill and are happy, but only for a while. Then the Amalekites, a nomadic tribe, attack the people of Israel but the people survive. Chapter 18 does not belong in the whole sequence of this story, it’s about Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro. You will have to go home and read about it this afternoon during the football game. Then the people come to the Sinai and camp at the foot of a huge mountain that thunders and smokes, maybe volcanic. Moses goes up and down the mountain many times and talking with God including that in three days God will appear before the people in a fiery smokey dense cloud with thunder and lightning.
[NOW, doesn’t all this make you want to go home and read Exodus?]
Now, the dénouement. Chapter 20. The Ten Commandments. God offers these to Moses to give to the people. Actually, they are never called “commandments” in Scripture. They are דְּבָרִ֥ים in Hebrew, “words.” “d-e-b-a-r-i-m” — debar is “word” and to make that or any other word plural in Hebrew, you end the word with im — debarim [words].
The words are directed to the people not to bring fear of punishment, but obedience to God’s desire. To say this another way: when we read Exodus 20, what comes from those words, that story, is a desire to keep the covenant. It is as if we say, “Because God loves us, and we love God and we love our neighbors as ourselves, therefore of course, we will have no other (small “g”) gods whom we will worship, of course we will not violate the very creation God has made, of course we will honor Shabbat (the holy day of rest), of course will will not murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, or lie in order to get what belongs to our neighbor.
And just who is our neighbor? Yes, those we know, those we have yet to know; the ones who live with us, around us, near us — those whom we like and those whom we do not — those who are like us and those who are different — friends, strangers, even enemies — all are open to the possibility of our love.
So, here is the first “Word.” [Let me pause by saying that one does not ever pronounce the name of God as it is spelled out in Hebrew, with the letters Yod He Vav He. When you come to those four letters in Hebrew (in English we might see as Y-H-W-H) we say instead Adonai.
It sounds like this: אנכי יהוה אלהיך Anoki Adonai Eloheka “I am Adonai your God.”
אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים Asher ho-tze-tika m’eretz mitzraim m’bet abadim “Who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage.” לא יהיה־לך אלהים אחרים על־פני ׃ Lo yiyeh leka elohim aherim al’panaya “No other (small ‘g’) gods before me”
Or, as the great Eugene Peterson [of blessed memory] in his translation of the Bible, entitled THE MESSAGE (2012) translated: “I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery. No other gods, only me.”
The question is: Who is God? And further, which god is this “God.” The Bible always defines who God is by what God has done, is doing now, and promises to do in the future. God, you see, is not a “thought” or a “concept” or an “idea” but a verb — “the one who ____________.”
As the people came into the Sinai, they were entering into a region of gods — agricultural gods, fertility gods, war gods, peace gods, many gods for many things. The one thing that distinguished the people of Israel was their tenacity to one God.
So, no other “small ‘g’” gods.
Martin Luther in the 16th Century said: “That to which your heart clings more than anything else, that is your “god.”
For me, many days, that would be the vintage fountain pen for the day from my collection of Seven Pens for Seven Days (plus the others I keep in my shoulder bag and the one I keep in my pocket. There are many who cannot function without their fountain pen, and I seem to be one of those. My daily struggle is not to let the “Pen be Mightier than the Lord.” 🙂
I had a professor in Seminary who said continually, “Of all the Candidates there are for the position of God, the one we worship is the God Who (and then came the list): “Who created the heavens and the earth” “Who pushed Abraham out of his home to a place he did not know” “Who came alive in the leader Moses” “Who led the people through the Wilderness” “Who spoke through the Prophets” “Who came to be human in the child of Bethlehem” “Who was present to the people Jesus” “Who raised Jesus from the Dead” and “Who comes to us in Bread and Wine” “Who is present and living with and among us even now as we tell the Sacred Story” “Who lives in us as we share ourselves with those who are sick, dying, in distress, hungry, poor, lonely and in despair.”
This first Word [debar] sets the whole agenda. Where do we plant our feet? Do we follow the God of the story who from the fiery smoking mountain conversed with Moses? Or is there something else we love more? Money, power, prestige, whatever. That’s the question of Exodus. Where do we put our trust? Which Story do we tell?
We tell the Story of God who loves God’s People more than God’s People could ever know.
Violence erupts after 50 years in Israel. Which God is present here? The god of destruction, racism, hatred and termination? Or — is it the God of Peace and Healing and Understanding and Love who one day trembled from the Mountain of Sinai and risked becoming attached to the very humanity which God had created; asking only that we human creatures would become so attached to God and just so thereby attached to each other for the preservation of life, not death. That is the God for whom we pray this morning and always.
In Hebrew we would say — and please repeat after me: כן יהי רצון [Kein yihi ratzon] “May it be God’s Will.”
And let us all say: AMEN.
Deo Gratias (+)
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III
Retired
Nota(ble) Be(n)e 