Covenant of Law and Love, March 15, 2009

Exodus 20: 1-17
John 2: 1-22

One of my earliest memories of Sunday School, was in making a plaster of paris 10 Commandments. We carefully shaped something like two headstones, believing the shape holy, then were taught how to write Roman Numerals 1-10. At the time, none of us questioned the irony of writing Roman Numerals on Hebrew Stone tablets 2000 years before the Roman Empire.

When I first began Seminary, I came home on Spring break and my mentor a 40 year pastor asked: “Tell me what the latest thinking is about the 10 Commandments?” At 23 I tried to answer the test, “The 10 Commandments are The Covenant for us as a community of faith, as a holy people defined by God, defining our relationships with one another and with God. What is unique is that they are not set up as a Law Code unto themselves, as the Greeks and Romans and others have done down through America today. Instead the LAW is described in the midst of narrative about Exodus and Red Sea. The people came through crisis, and God, who had saved them gave them the Law, so God was understood as both LAW GIVER and LIFE GIVER and SAVIOR.”

Over time, I have returned to the question, “What is the 10 Commandments, the Covenant, about” many many times. What I've come to appreciate is that an Enslaved People had miraculously been set free. They had been out-numbered and overwhelmed by the whole of the Empire of Egypt, by Pharaoh and his Chariots. Moses had prayed to God, Moses had lifted his arm, and the Sea parted for them to be set free, then closed in to crush and destroy the Empire. This Slave People would have turned from serving Pharaoh, to serving Moses, making him a God, bowing down to him. Instead, MOSES RECEIVED and GAVE TO THE PEOPLE the 10 COMMANDMENTS as a New Covenant, THE LAW defining this community as a LOVED People.

In North America in the 21st Century, we don't really have a context for the idea of COVENANT. We understand LAW, and CONTRACT and BUDGET. These are hard and fast legal documents, which the nuance of words, the bottom line of accountability and personal responsibility on time, are all that really matter. Covenant is different. Covenant is not based on accountability, on payment or time, or even responsibility. COVENANT is a STATEMENT OF IDENTITY in RELATIONSHIP, that this PEOPLE IS LOVED by this One, not only for 90 days or 30 years, but beyond generations.

In the Covenant with NOAH after the Flood, God made a COVENANT to hang up the bow, to never again be a destroyer, but instead to seek REDEMPTION of God's Creation.
In the Covenant with ABRAHAM and SARAH, God made a Covenant with one Family, to SEEK LAUGHTER and the fulfillment of dreams, not by human schemes but God's Grace and Love even when/especially when, this defied human expectations.
What is different in the COVENANT of the 10 COMMANDMENTS, is that GOD HAS EXPECTATIONS for us as a Community of Faith, as a PEOPLE OF GOD. Rather than Laws or Taxes handed down for masses to obey, The Commandments are POLICY STATEMENTS which underscore and help define who we are and who God is. Humanity has a propensity to use everything at our disposal for our purposes, not necessarily as created or intended. Human beings are to treat God as God, to treat one another as Creatures of God, rather than as our Slaves. The question is not whether ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS, but rather that we maintain ENDS are ENDS UNTO THEMSELVES not to be used as the means to something else. Our PARENTS are to be HONORED literally to be treated as Weighty, to our NEIGHBOR we are to be NEIGHBORLY.

The people had just witnessed God exercising power over Pharaoh's army, and the temptation might be to try to use God as a Weapon, to use Faith as a Power at our Command, to make Moses/ Our leaders react to our fears and respond to our worries rather than leading the Nation.
The COMMUNITY OF FAITH are to be MONOTHEISTIC in a POLYTHEISTIC WORLD!

Then as well as today, we are so tempted by our desires for SAFETY as to worship MARS the God of War, tempted by our fears of DEATH to worship the ALTAR of POSSESSIONS and ESTATES; in our desire for fun for JOY we worship BACCHUS and SATYRS who SATIATE and Anesthetize our fears; in our desire for LOVE we worship at the altar of EROS. We have made IDOLS of Youth, of Fertility, of War, of Wealth, of Property. We have used these, as GODS of our our CREATION, rather than following the Commandment to have no other Gods, to make no idol, to not take the Lord's Name.

Our FEARS of the Economy stand in opposition to the Commandment for SABBATH. For ultimately, what drives the ECONOMY is belief in Scarcity, that there are limited resources, so we try to buy and own, and possess what will insure against shortage. SABBATH is God's assurance that there is plenty, that we can trust to feed one another and believe in the future.

JOHN's GOSPEL is different from MARK's. In Mark, there is a Divine Secret as Jesus and the Disciples, and we are all searching for WHO IS JESUS, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE MESSIAH? Decades later, when the Evangelist of John's Gospel is preaching the story, it is to convince all the world that Jesus is the Messiah. So after he has been baptized by John, and called disciples, he goes to a wedding. During the Feast there are fears that there will not be enough. Even Mary, the Mother of Jesus, becomes so concerned about being left out, not having enough, that she calls attention to Jesus, to perform miracles. But the power of what happens is not that he can miraculously change substances from water to wine, rather that what he gives is SO MUCH BETTER than anything they had ever had, better than they could ever provide. Not only an undercutting of fears of scarcity, but an assurance that the best is yet to come.

He goes from there to the TEMPLE, and in order to respond to people's fears and desires, worship has become a SHOPPING MALL. The point of worship at the TEMPLE was to make an OFFERING of ATONEMENT so as to be forgiven. But what if people forget to bring an offering? What if the doves fly away, or the calf or goat were to be stolen? So an entire industry is created that takes over the Temple, selling goods.

It is easy for us to become caught up in our fears.
In these ECONOMIC TIMES, I have been meeting with the Sessions of Churches and advising different Non-Profits which are panicked about their endowments. But the Bible never instructs us to protect our endowment, never suggests that we worship our 401K. Rather, the guidance of the Messiah is to consider the Lilies of the Field and the Sparrows and Butterflies, each of which enjoy life, do what God created them to do, trusting that as we provide for one another, there will always be enough.

Last night we received a phone call, that my father is terminal. All my life I have looked up to and admired my father. Not only as a Father, but as a role model, for he too is a Presbyterian minister and a learned and ethical man. But all of life, he has preached about faith, faith in God, faith in ever-lasting life. Yet he has reached a point where I am not certain if he is seeking additional surgery so as to avoid belief in his own death, or whether he believes death on the
operating table might be quick and painless.

The problem of faith in the 10 Commandments, and all of faith, is that as POLICY STATEMENTS as a PHILOSOPHY, faith is pretty good... But, there comes a point in time when we must question our fears, and whether we truly do believe? Do we celebrate Christmas and Easter simply because of the EQUINOX, or do we believe that God Loved the world so much as to give us God's only begotten child, and as afraid as we all are of scarcity, and of death, we can trust that there is something better yet to come?

Do we believe in the 10 COMMANDMENTS as LAWS or as a COVENANT of LOVE?