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Exodus 20: 1–17
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be
acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
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Twelve years ago, I was deeply honored to baptize my first two
grandchildren, both on the same joyful day. Francesca was then ten
months old; Jonas just five weeks. And both young families had
to come from quite a distance for the occasion. But somehow we
managed it, right after Christmas, and the chaos and the joy of that
week is something I will always remember.
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At the time, I wondered what gift I could give to these two dear babies
that might come close to expressing the significance of the
day – to them, to me and to God. Finally, I settled on a
small book I’d found in The Cathedral Bookstore in
Atlanta. It was titled, I Belong and was a small
scrapbook to be filled with photographs taken and inscriptions written
on the day of their baptism in the Episcopal Church. So we engaged
a photographer for the day to take the pictures, and then invited every
grandparent, every aunt and uncle, every godparent, friend and neighbor
to inscribe those books with prayers and blessings – all to
commemorate how special this day was – to each child and to God as
well.
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It’s those little books that I think of today as I think of
God’s welcoming gift to his children as they arrived at
Sinai with Moses. For these children too, in a sense, were
newborn. By God’s grace they had just escaped
Pharaoh’s clutches in Egypt and had been delivered through the
Red Sea to new freedom on new shores. Now, on the edges of the
Sinai desert, they were free to worship God. They were free to
pursue holiness, which was God’s purpose for them. And they
were free to learn what it meant to belong to God. And just as I
inscribed the I Belong scrapbooks to my grandchildren, so God
wrote careful inscriptions that day to his own dear children – only
he inscribed the words with his finger on tablets of stone.
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But there were differences in what we wrote. I was writing to
grandchildren who had already been welcomed into families who loved
them and would continue to love them, would continue to care for them
in love. I trusted this would happen for I had raised their
parents in love. But God realized that this people He was now
calling His children, the Children of Israel, had not been raised
in love — so much as in fear. Pharaoh had not loved
them. Pharaoh had taught them to fear him – so he
could get more work out of them. And no one loves the man whom he
fears.
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So through the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments, God set out to give His
children a new way of life, a way of love – love not just for Him,
but for each other. So how do you begin to teach a people the way
of love? How do you begin to teach them the mutual love and
respect that will lead to a life of peace and prosperity – not
just for each individual, but for the whole community? Wherever
do you begin with teachings this basic?
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The Lord God said they would have to begin by finding out who He
was. They would have to begin by getting to know Him – the
one true loving God who had brought them out of slavery. Otherwise,
He said, they might be tempted to worship a different god, a god who
would do them no good at all. And what good would that be?
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Second, He said, they would have to beware of making idols for
themselves, of worshiping something smaller than God, something God had
made. This is what people do when they confuse created things with
the creator. And that step leads straight back to slavery, to
addiction and bondage.
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Third, He told them, they weren’t to trivialize God’s
name – calling on Him to advance their own schemes rather than
following His ways. That would be putting the cart before the horse.
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And finally, He said, they were to keep the seventh day, the Sabbath, as
holy to the Lord. On that day they were to do no work. God
himself had made the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that was in
them in six days. But on the seventh day He had rested. And
so, he said, must we, blessing the seventh day as a day holy to the
Lord, a day when we begin to trust that this God who has provided for
us all week long will continue to provide for us, even on a day when we
do no work. Once again, it’s a matter of trusting love
instead of fear.
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Now, up to this point God’s words on those tablets of stone had
told the Children of Israel how to think about God, how to treat this
loving God they’d just begun to discover. Perhaps as they
come to know Him they will begin to follow in His holy ways. But
we can’t be holy in a vacuum. Holiness only exists in the
context of others. So now, God turns his attention to how we are
to treat one another – and He begins with how we are to treat
our parents. Honor your parents, He tells us – for without
them, there would have been no ‘you’. Our respect
and gratitude for our parents will become a practical
demonstration of our thankfulness to God.
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Similarly, the way we think of others, the way we treat others will
reflect the way we have learned to think of God. Treatment of God
and treatment of others go hand in hand. So the commands that
follow – commands to respect life, marriage, property and truth
simply underline what it means to be a people who belong to God – a
people who love one another as He has loved us.
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Now, at this point you might be wondering why I’m bothering to
rehearse these words that are foundational to our way of life, our
whole social contract. Why am I even talking about something
that ‘everybody knows’?
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I am talking about them this morning because it occurs to me that we are
all on the verge of a fresh new beginning, a fresh new start – not
unlike the fresh new start the Children of Israel made with Moses at
Sinai. Not unlike the fresh new start each new soul makes as he or
she is baptized into the life of Christ. As more and more people
get vaccinated against this Covid virus that has changed our
lives . . . as we restart our social
contract after this pandemic . . . a
new administration in this country begins to help the millions who have
suffered . . . as we all begin to go out
in the world again . . . it occurs to me
that we all have some fresh opportunities. We can reject the
politics of fear that have divided us for so long and choose instead the
old ways of God, ever ancient and ever new – ways of forgiveness,
ways of respect, ways of love.
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We can all begin to behave as if we belonged to God – and to one
another.
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That is my hope, my prayer for us all. I wish us all a blessed Lent.
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Amen.
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