TEN POINT TEST
Text: Exodus 1-4, 7-9, 12-17
October 2, 2011
Faith J. Conklin
A few months ago one of our youth said she had a challenge for me. She
wanted to know if I could recite the Ten Commandments. They didn’t have to be
in order; I just needed to name them. Caught off guard I managed to stammer my
way through 6 or 7. (I won’t embarrass you by asking what your score would be.)
Besides, you heard them read in the Scripture lesson this morning.
One poll taken indicated that although a majority of persons believe that the
Bible is in some way the word of God, only a small percentage can name as many
as four commandments. Another survey showed that just 1 of every 10 Americans
believes in all of the Ten Commandments; 40 percent subscribe to five or fewer. (I
wonder which those are!)
Every once in a while there’s a lot of public controversy over the Ten
Commandments and what we do with them. Judge Roy Moore’s position is one
view. For me, however, it’s not whether we memorize the Ten Commandments
perfectly and in order—there’s more than one version you know—or whether we
post them on our buildings, offices or homes. The real question is whether we
obey them. Are they written on our hearts and rehearsed in our lives? Do our
choices reflect our belief about them? More importantly, do we see them in terms
of how they help us follow Jesus?
This morning we read the list of Ten Commandments from Exodus 20. We
hear it against the background of what’s happened so far. Under God’s leading
Moses brought the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. God delivered them
from Pharaoh’s army. God gave them bread in the wilderness and water to quench
their thirst. The people are now gathered at Mount Sinai. Moses climbs the
mountain to receive God’s word. God kept his promises to Abraham and Sarah,
Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Leah and Rachael. Now God sets forth his expectations
of what it means for his people to live in covenant with him and with one another.
A pastor was teaching a confirmation class. The first day he started with a
simple question. “What is religion?” he asked. Immediately one young boy raised
his hand. He answered, “Religion shows us the things we must not do.”
Too often that’s how we view the Ten Commandments. We see them as
negative. We see them as restrictions on our freedom, a list of “Thou shalt not”.
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We name them “law” in contrast to the gospel’s “grace”. We assume they make
God’s love conditional. Do this or else…We misunderstand.
Michael Lindvall preaching on this text offers us a good image of the
purpose and function of these commandments. He writes:
Imagine that you are an eight-year-old boy or girl who has just opened his
or her main birthday present. It’s a complicated mechanical or electronic toy, one
that comes with 36 pages of instructions in French, Spanish, and English and the
words: “Some assembly is required.” You burst with excitement and rip the toy out
of its Styrofoam packing.
Mom says, “Slow down, kiddo, let’s sit down and read these directions. I’ll
show you how it works.” You answer, “No, I want to do it all by myself”. You trot
off behind the couch leaving the directions in dad’s lap. In twenty minutes you’re
back, angry and frustrated, on the edge of tears. The stupid thing doesn’t work.
Nothing fits right. One piece is already busted.
Lindvall continues: You and I have been given one very precious and
complicated birthday gift: our precious lives lived in a complicated world. Our
first temptation is to try to assemble life all alone and make it work all by
ourselves. We may seem to get it together for a moment, but then something goes
wrong. We struggle to figure the thing out, what plugs into what, where all the odd
little pieces go. It only gets more frustrating. The stupid thing doesn’t work.
Nothing fits right.
But here’s the good news! Our gift came with directions. In fact, there’s a
patient parent sitting on the other side of the couch holding those directions, ready
to hand them to us and even willing to get down on the floor and show us how to
put the thing together right.1
He’s right. The Ten Commandments are directions for living. They’re God’s
instructions for putting our lives together right. They’re a gift of God’s love for a
people struggling to live and make decisions in a complicated world. God knows
what works and what doesn’t. God gives us a way of life that works. It’s what
Jesus meant when he said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
The first four commandments are about how to live in relationship with God.
The other six have to do with our relationship to one another. We live in
relationship to God as a faithful community. We live with others in ways that
demonstrate our concern for, respect for and compassion for them. The Ten
Commandments thus shape us into a community that places loyalty to God and
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Michael L. Lindvall from his sermon, “Thank God for Rules!”
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care for others at the center of our lives. Following them points us in God’s
direction and continually keeps us attuned to God’s holy presence.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes of the commandments saying: “All of them are
limits of one kind or another—the lovingly drawn boundaries of a creator bent on
reminding creatures of their size—but it is entirely possible to hear them not as
conditions on the promise but as part of the promise itself.”
Then she puts these words into God’s month: “Here is a way of life that
works. Sink these ten posts in the center of your camp, hang a tent on them and
together you may survive in the wilderness. Ignore them and you flirt with your
own destruction. Guard your life together. Guard your life with me. Here are ten
rules that will help you do that. Please accept them as a gift from me.”2
It’s a helpful way to see them. They’re a gift, not a restriction. They’re not
given to limit us but to love us. They’re a way God guides, protects and provides
for us. Like a loving parent God sets boundaries to keep his children safe.
The Ten Commandments aren’t just a “ten point test”. They do however
offer us a way to measure our faithfulness. They invite us to examine our hearts
and choices and to raise hard questions about how well we’re keeping them.
How deep is our allegiance to God? Does God have first place in our hearts
or do other loyalties and pursuits have a greater place than they should? Do we
arrogantly speak for God and use his name to judge others? Do we assume we
know whom God favors and whom God doesn’t? Do we set aside time to rest in
God’s love or do we drive ourselves continually day after day? Have we been
faithful in our relationships to family, friends and neighbors, locally and globally?
Have we lied when it was to our advantage or told “less than the truth” when
honesty would have harmed our standing or hindered our goals? Have we simply
told others what they wanted to hear? Have we envied what isn’t ours and let the
lack of what we have make us bitter and resentful toward those who have more?
Have we taken what wasn’t ours to take? Do we seek to gain advantage with the
rich, the powerful and the influential and neglect to pay attention to those we think
have nothing to offer us? Hard questions.
The commandments demand radically honest relationships with God, self
and others. Sometimes keeping them seems an impossible task. If you’re like me,
when you truly ask and answer those questions you don’t always measure up well
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Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine
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as you wish. The good news is that God doesn’t “fail us” for not passing the “test”.
God doesn’t stop loving us when we fall short of his expectations. The very
struggle to stay faithful is part of our way of life together in covenant with God.
Even when we’re unfaithful, God isn’t. It’s this knowledge of God’s unchanging
and unconditional love that keeps us striving to live in his way.
As Christians we need to keep wrestling with how to live out the Ten
Commandments. We can put them aside as an irrelevant, outdated part of the Old
Testament. We can’t stop there. We need to take the next step of looking at them
through the lens of Christian faith. We look at them with the mind and heart of
Jesus. To help us, Jesus gave a succinct summary of the Ten in what we call, the
“Two Great Commandments”. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, mind, soul and strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Here
again we’re confronted with the two dimensions of life-giving relationship: love
God and love one another.
Jesus made it clear what he meant by “love God”. We live in trust of God’s
love. We’re open to God’s grace and the leading of God’s spirit. We spend time
with God in prayer and worship. We surrender our will to God’s. Jesus also gave
us a new wider definition of who our “neighbor” was. Our neighbor is anyone in
need—far away or close at hand, like us or very different from us. We love our
neighbors by serving them. We see that they have food, clothing and shelter. We
work for their health and health care. We advocate for systems that are just for all.
We make a place for them and share our gifts with them.
Pastor Todd Outcalt attended his family reunion some years ago. It was held
at a local park. Everyone was excited about re-connecting with distant relatives.
As the family began enjoying their fellowship and food, they noticed one young
man who seemed out of place. He was painfully thin and dressed in threadbare
clothes. No one seemed to recognize or claim him.
Slowly, it dawned on the family members that this young man was probably
homeless and definitely hungry. He’d just entered into the family gathering in
hopes of getting a good meal. They immediately decided to make him a member of
their family for the day. They fed the young stranger platefuls of food, and included
him in all their games and activities. Everyone had a great time.
There are no outcasts and strangers in the family of God. As Jesus showed
us, God’s love embraces all. How wide is ours?
Today is World Communion Sunday. As we break bread at the Table we
remember. We remember the bread God gave the people of Israel in the
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wilderness. We remember the bread of life Jesus gives us. We remember also
God’s children here and across the world who are starving and hungry and have no
bread. As we drink from the cup of God’s grace we remember the free-flowing
water God provided for a thirsty people. We remember the wine like his blood that
Jesus poured out for us. We remember also the millions of people (the majority of
them children) who die of thirst, dehydration and diseases that come from drinking
dirty, polluted water. We remember that to be in relationship with God as a faithful
community is to be in relationship with them.
To eat and drink at this Table is to receive God’s promise for our lives. To
eat and drink here is also to commit ourselves to being the church and working so
that all God’s children may know and claim that promise. As Mike Slaughter
repeatedly told us this last week: “Our mission is not to get the world into the
church but to get the church into the world.”
Sandra is five years old. She’s a smart little girl who’s very involved in
Sunday School and in her Church’s Children’s Choir. Sandra’s parents make the
bread for Communion every month. Making it is one of their gifts to the Church.
One Sunday morning when she came into the kitchen Sandra saw all the
extra bread piled up on the counter. She gave a glad clap of joy “Oh!” she said
smiling, “Is it community today?”
Is it community today? I hope so. I hope we never forget what it means to be
God’s holy community; the sign of God’s love present in the world. In every “test”
God sets before us, I pray we will be found faithful. Amen.
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