“Divine Relationship, Part 2: God Guides Us” by the Rev. Don Wahlig, March 3, Lent 3 Year B - Exodus 20:1-17 • Psalm 19 • 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 • John 2:13-22

THEME:  See the Ten Commandments as proof that God loves us and wants us to learn to love him and live with one another in harmony and happiness.

Does anybody here wear glasses or contacts? How many of you got them before age 30? So, I am not alone. I did not think I needed glasses until one day in my late 20s. I was walking down the sidewalk on the Upper East side and I saw someone walking toward me. They were kind of fuzzy, but I could tell they were waving at me!  Of course, in New York, you do not make eye contact with anyone while you’re walking. They will either ask you for money or directions, and both will slow you down. But this person kept on waving at me, as if they knew me. But I could not tell who it was. So, I ignored them. But then, when they were a few yards away I suddenly realized that it was one of my pastors. Talk about embarrassed!

That is the day I realized that I needed glasses. My vision needed to be corrected.  The optometrist diagnosed me with myopia and gave me a prescription for glasses.  When I got them, I was amazed. Suddenly, I could see everything clearly. It occurred to me this week that we need a similar sort of correction in the way we see the Ten Commandments.

In this Lenten series we have been walking with the Israelites as they come to know and trust God. Along the way, we are looking for lessons that you and I might learn to help us walk with Jesus on the road to Holy Week. Last week, we explored the Covenant that God made with Abraham and Sarah. We realized that God’s Covenant is the expression of his fundamental nature, which is loving kindness. The lesson for us was that walking with Jesus means sharing God’s loving kindness with those around us. 

This morning we are going to amplify that lesson by exploring God’s relationship with Moses and the Israelites. The question we ask is what do the Ten Commandments say about God? And what impact does that have on how we should live? By the time God gives the Ten Commandments to Moses, the Israelites have already been on a very long journey with God. That journey began back in Egypt where the people were enslaved. God heard the cries of the people suffering under Pharaoh’s oppressive thumb. So, from the Burning Bush, he called Moses to be his prophet and the people’s liberator. He even gave Moses his personal name – Yahweh.  Along with it, he gave Moses a mission.

In Egypt, God conquered Pharaoh’s stubborn will and crushed his army.  With Moses leading the people, God guided them through the Red Sea to freedom. But that is not the end of the story. It was just the beginning. God then took the Israelites on an epic 700-mile journey south through the harsh desert wilderness to Mt. Sinai. Along the way, God tested his people. The lesson he taught them was to depend on him and him alone. 

Now, they have finally reached Mt. Sinai. And there God puts on a show. As far as dramatic biblical scenes go, they do not get much bigger or better than this one. God descends onto Mt. Sinai in smoke and fire.  The whole mountain shakes. Someone – an angel, no doubt – blasts a trumpet, again and again, each time louder. That’s the cue for the people to draw near to the base of the mountain as Moses climbs to the very top to speak with God in the hearing of all the people. Up there, in the midst of an ominous dark cloud, with lightning crackling and thunder rumbling, God gives to Moses the Ten Commandments and orders him to give them to the people. Those of you of a certain age will be picturing Charlton Heston.

Let’s look at those Commandments. They begin with a reminder to the people of who God is and what he has already done for them. I am Yahweh, your God, who delivered you from slavery in Egypt. You shall have no other Gods before me.” This very first commandment shapes everything that follows. The people must allow nothing to come between them and their absolute loyalty and faithfulness to God. That means no idols, no misuse of the divine name, and no deviation from the divine pattern of creation – work 6 days and rest on the 7^th. Those first four commandments set out the shape of God’s intended relationship with his chosen people.

That leads us to the next set of six commandments. All of them have to do with how God intends his people to be in relationship with one another.  The key is the 10^th and final one: you shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.  That attitude is downright dangerous. It leads to all manner of evil.  It causes children to withhold care from aging parents. It leads to murder, adultery, theft, and lying in order to defraud a neighbor of his property. At its root, coveting is the triumph of self-interest over the needs of our neighbors. And that is the very opposite of what God intends. The God who redeems us and demands our exclusive fidelity makes a claim on us, not only as individuals, but as a community. How we think about God deeply affects how we feel and act toward one another. 

But that, friends, is where we have trouble. Far too often we miss that connection between God and neighbor. In order to reconnect them, we need to correct our vision. We have theological myopia. We need to see the Ten Commandments differently, because we have become short-sighted when it comes to understanding them. If there were such a thing as a theological optometrist whose goal is to correct our vision of God and the Ten Commandments, she would make two observations and give us one spiritual prescription.

First, she would notice that you and I tend to focus on the Ten Commandments as if they exist in a vacuum. As children in Sunday School, we learn about them.  We even memorize them. But too often we ignore the context around them. We disconnect them from the Covenant God made with Abraham generations before. By the time Moses receives these commandments at Mt. Sinai, the Covenant God made with Abraham and his offspring has been in place for more than 400 years. Nothing in this new covenant with Moses changes anything in the covenant God made with Abraham. The promise of land and progeny and blessing that we talked about last week remains firmly in place. In fact, God is adding to those promises. He will set aside this people for himself.  They will be his treasured possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.  The Commandments tell the people how they are to love God and live with one another so that they may become that holy nation, enjoying the promises of the Covenant.

Second, our theological optometrist would observe that, in addition to understanding the connection of the Commandments to the Covenant, we also need to see them as connected to the rest of the Jewish Law.  We tend to emphasize the Ten Commandments and then ignore all those strange provisions that follow. Things like the prohibition against mixing different fabrics or eating shell fish or animal fat.  When we do that, we miss the key point.  The Law is so much more than a list of rules and the penalties for breaking them.  The law shapes the people’s relationships with others.  It even contains the mechanism to heal those relationships when they are broken.   And so the Ten Commandments, like all the rest of the law, are fundamentally relational. They all have the same purpose: to shape Israel into a sacred community, rooted in the right worship of God, and living in harmonious and happiness with one another. 

Finally, once our theological optometrist has helped us to see the connection of the Ten Commandments to the Covenant and the Law, she will give us a prescription. She will direct us to focus our newly-corrected vision on God himself.  We will see that all three – Commandments, Covenant, Law – are proof that God loves us. He wants us to learn how to love him.  And to love him so deeply that we can live with one another as God himself would live among us, with compassion, justice, and mercy. When we finally reach Holy Week 3 weeks from now we will see what that divine, love-shaped living looks like in Jesus Christ. 

That is the lesson we take with us as we walk further into Lent. So, between now and then, let me ask you this. How will you keep God first in your life? What idols do you need to burn along the way? And how will you keep the temptation to covet at bay? Friends, however and whatever you do, above all, remember why you do it. Not because God is angry and vengeful, just waiting to punish our every misstep.  Rather, because he loves us so much that he became one of us to show us how to love and live with one another in harmony and happiness. 

That is how we walk with Jesus to Holy Week. May it be so.