An Episcopalian
walks into a bar, hikes onto the barstool and says to the bartender, “Gimme a
scotch on the rocks.” The bartender slides the drink across, and replies,
“So…what have you been up to lately.” The person on the barstool replies,
“Well, let’s see, I committed adultery last week.” Or maybe, “Oh I knocked off
my neighbor last night because I covet his wife.” I wish I had a great punch
line for what sounds like the beginning of a joke. But instead I’ll ask you how
recently you’ve heard someone boast about breaking one of the Ten Commandments.
Then
again, how recently have you heard this happen, and not even in a bar? Two
people drag out their pocket calendars, or Smart Phones or iPhones. The
conversation begins like this, “I just don’t know when I can meet. My schedule
is completely full. I don’t even have time for a day off.”
There
we go, boasting about breaking one of the commandments. “Remember the Sabbath
day and keep it holy.”[1]
Our reading from Exodus continues, “Six days you shall labor and do all your
work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do
any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your
livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh
day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”[2]
I am hardly suggesting
we return to the rigid and uncompromising Sabbath of our Protestant forbears.
What I am suggesting is that we are desperately in need of a Sabbath. A time
each week to slow down, hush up, and turn off. Many of us, even in retirement,
are too busy to rest, to enjoy the gift of time God has given us. This gift of
time, of slowing down, of being quiet, and turning off the busy world, is how
God draws us back to God’s self. It is in quiet and rest that we so often find
or re-find our selves as we are known to God.
Perhaps the
reason, then, for Jesus overturning the temple tables, has to do with calling
the temple and its people back to its reason for being, its reason for being
created: as a house of worship and a place in which time stands still before the
living God.
And, this
Sunday, when we are halfway through Lent, is a good time to remind ourselves of
who we are and the covenant we have made with God, in particular the covenant
to rest so we have time and energy to find the blessings in all the commandments.
The Ten
Commandments, especially the commandment to rest, to have a Sabbath, have
become “the ten suggestions” in contemporary society. We need to remind
ourselves the Ten Commandments are the word of God, given by God, as part of an
agreement sought by God, between God
and God’s people.
The Ten
Commandments are not law in the sense we know secular law. The Ten Commandments
are a law of redemption and mercy rather than a law of judgment. As God
redeemed the nation of Israel from bondage to Egypt, the Ten Commandments are a
gift rather than another kind of bondage. They are a gift of freedom in which
the community can now act; free to form the obedience to which God has called
them. Rather than subjection to Pharaoh or any other despotic leader, the Israelites
can now claim their freedom to make a covenant, an agreement, with the Almighty
God who rescued them from bondage.
At
the same time, the Ten Commandments are not something that we can pick and
choose. Since it is the covenant between God and God’s people, the commandments
choose us, rather than us choosing any or all of them. When we are invited into
covenant with God, we do not get to choose what we promise. God does the
inviting. God manages the terms of the contract.
We
must never forget that in these Ten Commandments we have words that are living
and true, words of redemption and grace. These words invite us into a
“speaking” relationship with the Living God, in which the commandments laid out
from the beginning continue to speak to us and bless us. Keeping the
commandments becomes not a burden but a blessing. These are living words in a
living world, with things to say to us about how we are dealt with by God, and
how we respond. They are living words from a living God that speak to us about
how we treat ourselves and how we treat our neighbors. The commandments speak
to us not from the walls of a courtroom, not from the judicial system, but from
the mouth of the Living God, in response to our relationship with God. AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2017
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