You may
remember last week I shared with you teaching that accompanies the Exodus
story—the Wilderness. The Wilderness
story is a Wisdom tale, relates not how life is to be, but how life is when we
have lost our familiar landmarks, forsaken our familiar food, and left behind
our familiar roles. Freedom is no easy
path, the Children of Israel learn. The
Wilderness leaves them whining and complaining, “Moses, we want to go back to
Egypt.”
What we
learn from the Wilderness story today, however, is one of those big life
lessons. More times than not, God does
not teach us how to live in liberation and freedom when we remain in slavery in
Egypt or after we have crossed over the Jordan River into the promised
land. We learn how to live in the
promised land, in the inbetween, when we walk in the wilderness.
There is
something about being dislocated and having to depend on O/others for our
well-being that offers us a change in perspective, an opportunity to see the
world in a different way. I have seen
this reality on any number of youth group mission delegations I have
taken. Leaving home, the dislocation, is
important because we realize that we are much freer than we ever imagined
possible--to be who we want to be, to be who God wants us to be--to incorporate
a broader vision that would not have been possible just by staying home. As any of you who have been on youth mission
trips may have learned or taken trips to places like Back Bay Mission, the
border at Nogales, or my favorite place, Chiapas, Mexico, dislocation and
walking in a new place can transform your life.
You return home to see the everyday and the most mundane of your life at
home differently. Your whole value
system is up for grabs. Your return home
leaves you disoriented and trying to figure out how you will incorporate your
new knowledge and wisdom with your old life.
You may have shed your skin seeking something deeper, more integrated
with the rest of the world.
Folks in
the mission field refer to this as re-entry.
Those who have been on mission delegations to places like Haiti, Zaire,
Zimbabwe, or stay for lengths of time on a Native American reservation in our
own country, probably know what I am saying.
When you have been to a place with such basic need, such gut-wrenching
poverty, walking into a grocery store with the almost obscene choices we have
threatens to rip the fabric of your soul.
And we have to decide whether the ethical code we learned in the
Wilderness, the life rules, the deeper truths, will hold in the homeland, a
place of abundant milk and honey and . . . potato chips. Can we integrate, the deep truths of life and
liberation, how we might maintain our freedom,
what we learned in the Wilderness, or do we let it pass like it was a dream?
I have
seen members of a youth group go to seminary because of such mission
delegations, a work camp, or church camp experience. At the same time, I have also seen youth try
to distance themselves from such experiences, even the church. So that they can return to their “normal”
lives? They exchange depth of soul for
potato chips.
Sometimes
those mission delegations, for the first time in our lives, integrate us into
the real world, into a world where we really see the world as God sees it . . .
with poor and hurting people who are also strong and resilient. For the first time, we might actually see
ourselves connected to them. And we
return back to our homes, do re-entry, trying to remain integrated. As we move further and further from that
mission experience, it becomes tougher and tougher to integrate it into our
lives. Strong and resilient poor fade
from our memory and we begin to dis-integrate.
Do we
remember, remain integrated with our new experiences and new relationships, or
conveniently leave those experiences and relationships behind because the
culture or peer pressure makes it easier to forget? Do we dis-integrate?
In the
same manner, do the Ten Commandments, given to the Children of Israel in the
Wilderness, hold sway when David and Solomon reign over the greatest Empire on
earth, when Israel is the most powerful nation? Can the Children of Israel
continue to live integrated, with integrity, depth of soul, when they are the
world’s number one super-power? The
whole David and Bathsheba story asks that very question. Shall David, the King of Israel, be exempted
from coveting his neighbor’s property?
The very person David is supposed to remember and protect as king, Uriah,
the stranger, the immigrant, the alien, even more so his wife Bathsheba are the
people David has raped and killed.
Remember,
you were once strangers or slaves in Egypt.
Said 36 times. And David forgets
the lessons of the Wilderness. He loses
his integrity. He dis-integrates. In later Biblical story, prophets believe that Israel was conquered and
forced into Exile because what God gave the people in the Wilderness, that depth
of soul, the rules for living the promised land, the Law, the Ten Commandments
were forgotten.
We do that
forgetting from a very young age, don’t we?
“God, I promise, God, if you just get me to the promised land, help me make the junior high basketball team,
the cheerleading squad, have that boy go out with me, cure my aunt, let my
uncle live, spare ME!, I promise, I will be devoted, I will stop, I will do . .
.” And maybe, by chance, God as fairy
godmother works this once, and the glass slipper fits, and once we are safely
perusing our silver, we forget what life was like when we were sweeping cinders
in the wilderness and miss out on what God would teach us. We
forget at a huge cost. For the
Wilderness is about shaping us for life in the promised land.
Some time
ago, Nelson Mandela, the same person who went from political prisoner of South
Africa to president of South Africa, wrote his autobiography, Long Walk to
Freedom, with help from author Richard Stengel. Stengel shared in a Time magazine article about Mandela:
Ultimately,
the key to understanding Mandela is those 27 years in prison. The man who
walked onto Robben Island in 1964 was emotional, headstrong, easily stung. The
man who emerged was balanced and disciplined. He is not and never has been
introspective. I often asked him how the man who emerged from prison differed
from the willful young man who had entered it. He hated this question. Finally,
in exasperation one day, he said, "I came out mature."[1]
I
came out mature. Though the Wilderness
may be more about just real life than what God wills, what we learn from this
story over and over again is how we are to live our lives in the promised land
by walking through the Wilderness. The
Ten Commandments, the Law, are given in the Wilderness. We come out mature.
That
is why I bristle a little bit when someone tells me they like the God of the
New Testament better than the God of the Old Testament. To me, the God of the New Testament seems
almost unattainable while the God of the Old Testament seems much more real,
seems about some of the true life grit I experience.
And
the Ten Commandments passage, here in Exodus 20, is one of those Hebrew Scripture
passages folks hold up to say that the Old Testament God is much more scolding
and vindictive than the New Testament God or Jesus. But such a statement ignores the context of
the Ten Commandments, does not recognize that the Law is received by the
Children of Israel as they come out of slavery in Egypt to walk to the promised
land in Canaan. Slaves live by the whim
and fancy of their taskmasters, more broadly, by the whim and fancy of Pharaoh,
King of Egypt. So how are these newly
freed slaves to live in the promised land without the death-giving edicts of Pharaoh? What will be their values? Their code?
How shall they distinguish themselves from not only Egypt but the
peoples who surround them?
Along
with seeing that Hebrew Scripture God as much more scolding and vindictive, I
have heard a few sermons upset about the fact that the Ten Commandments are
about “Thou shalt nots!”
(valley girl voice) I mean, like, God is
so negative. If God in the Ten
Commandments would just chill. I mean,
like, be positive.
But
again, remember the context. And the
context of the Ten Commandments is to, “Remember, remember that you are not to
be like Egypt.” We could sum up the Ten
Commandments in that way. “Thou shalt
not be like Egypt.”
“Do
not build up for me,” God declares, “these huge monuments or graven images, or
chase after gold to build statues in my honor--pyramids, temples, palaces and
pretend that is what I want.” Thou shalt
not be like Egypt. Do not become
enslaved by these behaviors. To live
free in the land, this is how you shall live.[2] Thou shalt not be trapped by such pursuits as
the Egyptians were.
Do
not work the land, or yourselves, or your slaves, or your animals, or your
immigrants 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
To do so is to return or force someone else or some other part of
creation to return to the very existence you left as slaves in Egypt. Do not go back. Thou shalt not become slaves like you were in
Egypt.
Do
not covet, the word “covet” used again and again in the Ten Commandments. The Hebrew word literally means “to seize” or
to steal using position or power or influence to get what really belongs to
someone else or community at large. Hebrew Scripture scholar Robert Gnuse
writes that “Property and land were given to be used for the glory of Yahweh
and the good of all. The command not to
steal spoke against those who sought to appropriate communal possessions for
their own private use.”[3] The latter meaning of the commandment was ’do
not reduce a person to slavery by monopolizing the wealth.’” At a time, during
pandemic, when we have witnessed the devastation of so many families and the
explosion of wealth for the uber wealthy, we should ask if we are continuing to
promote a slave economy.[4] At a time when we have a rent crisis spurred on the by the pandemic,
where Wall Street investment firms have turned eviction into their new billion
dollar baby, landlords find it easier to evict than get rent, and housing
courts are designed for people to fail,[5]we
should ask if we are continuing to promote a slave economy.
The
purpose of the commandment not to covet was to curb those who steal from
society at large by amassing great wealth, for such theft will ultimately break
down that society.[6] Society will begin to dis-integrate and
relationships will unravel. Why would
former slaves, seeking to keep their integrity, foster an economic system that
would lead people into economic slavery?
Thou shalt not use your riches or your royalty or your power over someone
else like the Egyptians did.
Thou
shalt not! This is not a scolding,
vindictive God. When you hear the Ten
Commandments in their context, this God sounds like a mother lion defending Her
people from the dangers of the world--willing, desiring that they become more
than what they left in Egypt. She will
defend the freedom of Her people.
And
once we know this to be the character of our God, the Ten Commandments then
become self-evident for how we should treat our neighbor. As Jewish Law becomes further and further
elaborated on, the major concern becomes how the Jewish people shall prevent
their neighbors from falling into debt slavery—that injunction still resounding
in the heart of Christ: “Forgive us our
debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
One
of my favorite theologians, Dorothy Soelle, puts it best, describes the desire
of God within the Ten Commandments, “God dreams for us today. Today, at this
moment, God has an image and hope for what we are becoming. We should not let
God dream alone.”
God’s
desire is that the Children of Israel would truly become a free people through
the Ten Commandments—to not worship God through gold and pretend that this was
what the Living God required of them, to not work and be anxious or force
others to work and be anxious all their days, and to not seize what each person
needed for the bases of life. God had an
image and hope, an image and hope for a legacy that they would leave their
children and grandchildren of what they, as a people, could become.
So
let us remember our story so that we do not lose our integrity. So that we do not dis-integrate. On this
Stewardship and Legacy Sunday, may we remember that God dreams for us today.
Today, at this moment, God has an image and hope for what the congregation of
St. John’s United Church of Christ is
becoming. We should not let God dream alone.
Amen.
[1] Robert Stengel, “Mandela:
His Eight Lessons of Leadership,” Time (Wednesday,
July 9, 2008).
[2] David Gill, “Ten Words on
Life, Love, and Justice,” The Journey
with Jesus: Notes to Myself http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20080929JJ.shtml .
[3] The Hebrew word for
“covet” is hmd. Robert Gnuse, You Shall Not Steal: Community
and Property in the Biblical Tradition (New York: Orbis Books, 1985), p 6.
[4] “Wealth and Income
Inequality and Covid-19,” https://inequality.org/facts/inequality-and-covid-19/. As ordinary people around the world suffer from
the health and economic impacts of the pandemic, billionaires have actually
seen their fortunes expand. According to Institute for Policy Studies analysis
of Forbes data, the combined wealth of all U.S. billionaires increased by $821
billion (28 percent) between March 18, 2020 and September 10, 2020, from
approximately $2.947 trillion to $3.768 trillion. Of the more than 600 U.S.
billionaires, the richest five (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren
Buffett, and Elon Musk) saw a 59 percent increase in their combined wealth
during this period, from $358 billion to $569 billion.
[5] Megh Wright, “Patriot
Act Returns to Terrify You about an Eviction Crisis,” May 18, 2020, https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/patriot-act-netflix-hasan-minhaj-rent-eviction-crisis.html.
[6] Gnuse, “You Shall Not,” pp.
7-8.
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