Sermon 10-4-20
Grace to you and peace from
God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of
the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Imagine the topic of
conversation between Moses and God, just after Moses presented the 10
Commandments to the people. God asks, how are things going? Moses replies,
“Good! We’re working on the commandments… how hard is it to not murder?” God
follows up by reminding Moses that God also told them not to depict God in any
earthly form ... you know, so people wouldn’t get something silly in our heads
about God looking like an old white man with a big beard… so, “Make no graven
images.” Horrified and confused, Moses replies, didn’t you mean “make
….Caucasian images?”
This was actually a TikTokvideo made by Lutheran Pastor Emmy Kegler, playing off a recent trend to depict
heavenly conversations where God clearly said one thing and someone else – an angel, the devil, Moses -
misunderstands and ends up doing exact
opposite of what God actually wants. For example, God wants the
dinosaurs to be more muscular – “meatier” – and the angel hears “meteor.”
Pastor Kegler’s TikTok is also a commentary on these videos themselves, because
in almost all of the others, God is depicted with…. a big white beard.
I bet you never thought
something as serious as the 10 commandments would become such a great subject
of fun irreverent fun on a social media app. However, God actually “started it”
the 10 commandments with a pun in Hebrew! I have heard it “loosely translated”
as “I am Yahweh and not of these
other Yahoos are allowed to be more
important than me.”
I for one did not learn that in confirmation class…. Even
though confirmation class was probably the last time most of us studied the 10
commandments for any length of time. How many of you memorized the Small
Catechism in confirmation? I have a confession to make – I didn’t memorize it until
my second year of seminary … its hard! You could tell when the second year
seminary students were about to have their final exam when you them wandering
glassy-eyed around campus, muttering to themselves “The first Commandment: You
shall have no other gods. What does this mean? We are to fear, love and trust
god about all things…”
I think that many of us,
myself included, can tick off most of the 10 commandments and think “well, this
week I didn’t murder anyone, I didn’t rob a bank, I didn’t sass off to my mom,
and I haven’t wrongfully used the Lord’s name. All things considered, I think
I’m actually doing pretty well.”
Let me tell you a little
secret. The Ten Commandments were not given to us to make us holier people. God
gave us the Ten Commandments in order to minimize the damage I could do
against my neighbor, especially in Commandments four through ten.
Old Testament Guru Walter Brueggemann
explains that Commandments 4-10 “all attest to a different kind of community in
which others …. Are an end and not means, not threats to be killed, not objects
to be exploited….” (Preaching the Old Testament, P. 57)
As God led God’s people out of
bondage into freedom, God realized that the people needed to learn a new way to
live. All too familiar was their old
way of life – the damaging power structure, the constant need to consume, the
tireless economy of productivity, and the endless tasks of Pharaoh. New
patterns of free living must be learned in order to become a DIFFERENT kind of
community. In this community – God’s community – you are not just responsible
for yourself, but also accountable for the good of your neighbor. And how you
treat your neighbor is a direct reflection of your relationship with God.
Moses joked with God, “How
hard is it do not murder?” Not so
fast, Moses. well, as it turns out, it is actually much harder than it seems. In
Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, Luther provided clarifications for each of the
commandments. For the 5th commandment, “you shall not murder,”
Luther writes: “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor
harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all
life’s needs.”
As with each commandment, it
is not enough to simply refrain from doing something bad. Keeping
the 5th commandment, for example, is NOT about NOT killing,
pardon the double negative. Truly keeping the 5th commandment as
Luther adds, also means living together in unity and helping our neighbors out
when they are in need.
Just when we thought that one
was in the bag! That rascally Luther, reminding us that living as God’s people
is not just about doing the bare minimum!
This is something the people
of God have struggled to get right since the 10 Commandments first existed - The
people at the bottom of Mount Saini didn’t always – or even often – get it
right. The people who eventually followed Jesus didn’t get it right. We don’t get it right.
Even religious authorities and
leaders don’t always get it right. We are currently neck deep in the middle of
some tough parables – Thanks Matthew! – and this one is certainly a doozy. This
one especially has a long history in being used as justification for
anti-Semitic violence… even murder, through events like the Holocaust – this
parable proves that Jesus thinks
violence and murder is ok, right? Well,
actually, when Jesus asked the religious elite – pastors and theologians of his
day – what the landowner should do to the evil tenants… it is the PASTORS and
THEOLOGIANS who say – “the king should put those terrible people to a miserable
death!”
And Jesus NEVER condones violence
and murder. Not for one hot second. Instead, perhaps for that very answer,
Jesus basically says “don’t you guys read the Bible? Did you hear what just
came out of your mouth? You, who claim to intimately know the will of God? You have just cast God in your own
image, and you couldn’t be more wrong.”
God is not a king or Pharaoh who tosses people aside and murders on a
whim. God is not a harsh task master of productivity or a strict arbiter of
rules. God does not glorify violence. And when we cast God in this way – making
God in images we are familiar with – exclusively in the image of power,
hierarchy, authority in the guise of old bearded Caucasian men… God gets ANGRY
and HURT when we do this. Just as God is angry and hurt when we meet God with
violence – in the ways we continually are creating violence against those who
bear the image of God… our neighbors.
We create violence against one
another in all kinds of ways– physical, mental, emotional, systemic,
institutional, and environmental. We do horrible things to one another out of
fear, and injuries fester and poison our relationships. But God never meets
violence with more violence. God never meets our violence with more violence. God does not act like us…. God does not look
like us….. and yet, God’s image can be found in the likes of ALL Of us.
Who is God then? God is love.
And God created us to love. Jesus is the love of God
with skin on, literally love fleshed out. And WE are the
love of God with skin on. Love asks us for our words and our deeds to be
life-giving, not life-limiting. And, ironically, these Ten Commandments God
gave us help us to live into this more fully.
We – together - are called to be part of a different kind of community - the kingdom of God, where we all find welcome, where we all are made whole. This community defies time and space, spans political parties and world views, resists racial and economic divides. A community that doesn’t just refrain from doing harm, but instead intentionally acts for the good of our neighbors. That is the body of Christ, the kingdom of God, which we are all part of. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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