Has anyone told you lately that you are a delightful child of God? I’d like you to look at someone near you that did not come to church with you. I realize that eye contact threatens most animals, but humor me. Look at someone and say to each other, “You are a delightful child of God.”
Thank you. I wanted to start with that because we are talking about some heavy-handed moral content in the Bible today. Most people that I know tend to either worry that they are being told that they are bad or they suddenly feel superior when I bring up topics with specific moral implications.
It’s like racism. Just saying the word and acknowledging that it exists makes some people say, “That’s not me, but I can sure tell you who it is” even though the ‘isms’ in our world are generally not about a person as much as they are about how we behave as people. Sure, they bubble up in the actions of the few, but they are baked into our social systems – which is kind of odd for people who claim the 10 Commandments as the cornerstone of their legal and ethical framework.
I’m not going to pretend to have an answer for that issue today. Instead, I want to invite you into an exploration of the moral framework that we are being given in the 10 Commandments and in Jesus’ claims about the law and righteousness, and I’d like you to think of these texts as a bountiful table of good and beautiful things.
If this sermon were a meal at that table, then the practice of calling one another “delightful children of God,” was the appetizer. Now that we all know that we (and our neighbors) are delightful children of God, we can tuck in and dig into the main course, which is a heaping plate of ICYMI – in case you missed it. I’m not saying that to promote Jonathan’s Sunday School Class that goes by the same name (although I kind of am), nor am I saying it because I already preached a four-week series on the 10 Commandments last June. I’m saying it because Exodus 19 begins with a recap of what God has done for the Israelites and an explication of what God expects of them as they move forward together. Then in Exodus 20, the story seems to backtrack to make sure that we know what God told Moses to tell the Israelites.
Likewise, in Matthew 5, Jesus drops a big ICYMI on his disciples, on the Pharisees, and on the great crowd that gathered for the sermon on the mount by telling them that he was not there to do anything new. He was there to fulfill every letter and every stroke of the law. Not only that, but unless those who were listening were even more righteous than the Pharisees, they would not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Now, in case you missed it, Jesus was not saying that you have to follow the rules to the letter. The Pharisees were already doing that. He was saying that you have to follow the intent of the law, and he continued to bear witness to that teaching by healing on the Sabbath, eating with outcasts, and demonstrating what the law of love looks like when it is fulfilled through actively living in a right relationship with God and neighbor.
You may recall that as we leaned into the law this Summer – looking for grace and mercy in these rules that tell us what to do and what not to do – we kept coming back to Jesus’ summary of the law in Matthew 22:37-40, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
As we dig deeper into the meat and potatoes of this text…are y’all gettin’ hungry? You know, we can’t talk about food down here witout gettin’ dem Cajuns involved. Maybe there’s a Cajun in here who can give us a recipe for happiness wit dah 10 Commandments. Hey, Richard! Can you help us out with the Cajun Ten Commandments?
[Richard steps up from the choir.]
Now, listen you, for de things dis says about God and about our relationships…
1. Jus be one God... and das' all.
2. Don't pray to nuttin' or nobody... jus' God.
3. Don't be cussin' at nobody, specially the good Lord.
4. When it be Sunday... pass yo'self by God's House.
5. Listen to yo mama an' you daddy.
6. Don't be killin' no people... duck an' fish das' okay.
7. God done give you a wife, sleep wit' jus' her.
8. Don't take nuttin' from nobody else.
9. Always told da whole troot.
10. Don't go wantin' somebody's stuff.
That’s pretty good, but I still wonder if there is something more to this list than “dos and don’ts.” Especially after Jesus sets up the idea that the rules by themselves don’t assure salvation. I struggle with that and with the way the text starts with God saying, “You remember what I did to those Egyptians, right?” Then in 20:4, God says, “I will punish the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” It’s nice that this is followed in verse 5 with “showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” but woe to you if mom or dad were on the naughty list!
Without going into great detail, I’ll just say that I’ve come to see the punishment of children for the sins of the parents as an acknowledgment of the way we have a tendency to pass on our fears more than our hopes when we neglect the faith that is the source of our hope. I could go on and on about this and more, in fact, I did last June and you can look up that series on our website or our Youtube channel. If you really want to go to an all-you-can-eat buffet on the 10 Commandments, our friend Barry Chance in Hammond did a 12-week series on them that you can find on their Facebook page. You are, of course, more than welcome to look at his series or mine or someone else's, but there’s another take on this problematic list of “dos and don’ts” that I want to invite you to consider today.
Dr. Joy J. Moore is an African American woman who is ordained in the United Methodist tradition and is the Professor of Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary. They put out a podcast on the Narrative Lectionary that’s called, I Love To Tell The Story, and in it, she tells the story of a student who connected the dots between God’s activity of blessing and covenant and the fulfillment of the law through Jesus.
From this perspective, the law was never about authoritarianism or threats of punishment. It was always about permission for enslaved people to know their God, know their worth, and know how to live in the right relationships with God and one another!
Bear in mind that all these people really knew about God was a family story from a cousin twice removed about some promise that they would be more numerous than the stars. Maybe they also knew about Joseph. Who knows. What really matters is that this is no longer about a promise passed down through one family. This was now a people group, an identifiable tribal reality that the God who was greater than all the Gods of their oppressors was promising to care for, to name and to claim and to demonstrate what it meant to be in relationship with this God for all the world to see!
That means that they were given permission to name the Creator God as their own. That may not seem like a big deal, but in a world where there were so many forces competing for power and dominance, it is pretty freeing to say that there is a God not made of my hands or yours! Likewise, for those who have been enslaved to the expectations of others, the permission to keep the sabbath may have been a level of care they had never experienced. I’m not going to say that we can relate – because none of us are actual property with no rights – but without Sabbath rest, we can find ourselves enslaved to the whims and wills of the world.
Taking Sabbath rest is the greatest permission imaginable to the enslaved, as Jesus said in Mark 2, “Sabbath was created for humanity, not the other way around.” Maybe you take a day as prescribed in the law, maybe you take it where you can get it. I’ve heard stories of Susana Wesley, mother of ten, including John and Charles who would found the Methodist church, hiding under her apron to pray. Lord help us if we end up like that, but thanks be to God for her witness and her faith, and the invitation to find peace in the presence of God always!
Really, that is the hope and the permission that we find in all of these commandments. The first four are about our relationship with God as God’s people. The rest are about the permission-giving presence of the God who goes with us. Honoring our mother and father is permission to celebrate our ancestry – the good, the bad, and the ugly whether we are descendants of slaves, abolitionists, or slave traders – in light of the God who is always good, always present, always moving us toward right relationships regardless of what we’ve done and what’s been done to us.
All of that is pretty new and revolutionary for the Israelites, but the last five commandments are pretty much the kind of thing you find anywhere that people live together in civil society. I like to think of that in connection with Jesus saying [in my paraphrased version], “I did not come here to do anything new. I came to fulfill what you all know is supposed to be happening so that you can see what it looks like when it does happen.”
In this sense, we see the rest of the commandments giving us permission to honor life – even when others do not. In honoring the life and our covenant relationships, we are given permission to expect a sense of belonging – which is why most of us are here. We come here because we are reminded that we are delightful and beloved to God and to one another.
Finally, in the invitation to honor one another’s covenant relationships and personal belongings, we are given permission to know of God’s providence in a way that shortcuts our desire for the things we do not have. That last one is a struggle in a society that is economically dependent on desire, but it does remind me of a quote attributed to Mother Theresa, who is said to have gone shopping just so she could look at all of the things she will never need.
Friends, my hope in all of this is that your hearts are full. I hope I have left you with a longing to talk more about these things as one does after a good meal. More than that I hope you will think of these commandments as permission to love rather than threats for when you forget how. John Calvin wrote about the law as being a gift to let us know where we have erred, a warning to keep us from sin, and an example to follow.
While these all may be true, my hope is that we may follow the example of Jesus, who fulfilled the law by putting it into practice. May it be so with me, and with you, and to God be the glory now and always. Amen!
Thank you. I wanted to start with that because we are talking about some heavy-handed moral content in the Bible today. Most people that I know tend to either worry that they are being told that they are bad or they suddenly feel superior when I bring up topics with specific moral implications.
It’s like racism. Just saying the word and acknowledging that it exists makes some people say, “That’s not me, but I can sure tell you who it is” even though the ‘isms’ in our world are generally not about a person as much as they are about how we behave as people. Sure, they bubble up in the actions of the few, but they are baked into our social systems – which is kind of odd for people who claim the 10 Commandments as the cornerstone of their legal and ethical framework.
I’m not going to pretend to have an answer for that issue today. Instead, I want to invite you into an exploration of the moral framework that we are being given in the 10 Commandments and in Jesus’ claims about the law and righteousness, and I’d like you to think of these texts as a bountiful table of good and beautiful things.
If this sermon were a meal at that table, then the practice of calling one another “delightful children of God,” was the appetizer. Now that we all know that we (and our neighbors) are delightful children of God, we can tuck in and dig into the main course, which is a heaping plate of ICYMI – in case you missed it. I’m not saying that to promote Jonathan’s Sunday School Class that goes by the same name (although I kind of am), nor am I saying it because I already preached a four-week series on the 10 Commandments last June. I’m saying it because Exodus 19 begins with a recap of what God has done for the Israelites and an explication of what God expects of them as they move forward together. Then in Exodus 20, the story seems to backtrack to make sure that we know what God told Moses to tell the Israelites.
Likewise, in Matthew 5, Jesus drops a big ICYMI on his disciples, on the Pharisees, and on the great crowd that gathered for the sermon on the mount by telling them that he was not there to do anything new. He was there to fulfill every letter and every stroke of the law. Not only that, but unless those who were listening were even more righteous than the Pharisees, they would not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Now, in case you missed it, Jesus was not saying that you have to follow the rules to the letter. The Pharisees were already doing that. He was saying that you have to follow the intent of the law, and he continued to bear witness to that teaching by healing on the Sabbath, eating with outcasts, and demonstrating what the law of love looks like when it is fulfilled through actively living in a right relationship with God and neighbor.
You may recall that as we leaned into the law this Summer – looking for grace and mercy in these rules that tell us what to do and what not to do – we kept coming back to Jesus’ summary of the law in Matthew 22:37-40, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
As we dig deeper into the meat and potatoes of this text…are y’all gettin’ hungry? You know, we can’t talk about food down here witout gettin’ dem Cajuns involved. Maybe there’s a Cajun in here who can give us a recipe for happiness wit dah 10 Commandments. Hey, Richard! Can you help us out with the Cajun Ten Commandments?
[Richard steps up from the choir.]
Now, listen you, for de things dis says about God and about our relationships…
1. Jus be one God... and das' all.
2. Don't pray to nuttin' or nobody... jus' God.
3. Don't be cussin' at nobody, specially the good Lord.
4. When it be Sunday... pass yo'self by God's House.
5. Listen to yo mama an' you daddy.
6. Don't be killin' no people... duck an' fish das' okay.
7. God done give you a wife, sleep wit' jus' her.
8. Don't take nuttin' from nobody else.
9. Always told da whole troot.
10. Don't go wantin' somebody's stuff.
That’s pretty good, but I still wonder if there is something more to this list than “dos and don’ts.” Especially after Jesus sets up the idea that the rules by themselves don’t assure salvation. I struggle with that and with the way the text starts with God saying, “You remember what I did to those Egyptians, right?” Then in 20:4, God says, “I will punish the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” It’s nice that this is followed in verse 5 with “showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” but woe to you if mom or dad were on the naughty list!
Without going into great detail, I’ll just say that I’ve come to see the punishment of children for the sins of the parents as an acknowledgment of the way we have a tendency to pass on our fears more than our hopes when we neglect the faith that is the source of our hope. I could go on and on about this and more, in fact, I did last June and you can look up that series on our website or our Youtube channel. If you really want to go to an all-you-can-eat buffet on the 10 Commandments, our friend Barry Chance in Hammond did a 12-week series on them that you can find on their Facebook page. You are, of course, more than welcome to look at his series or mine or someone else's, but there’s another take on this problematic list of “dos and don’ts” that I want to invite you to consider today.
Dr. Joy J. Moore is an African American woman who is ordained in the United Methodist tradition and is the Professor of Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary. They put out a podcast on the Narrative Lectionary that’s called, I Love To Tell The Story, and in it, she tells the story of a student who connected the dots between God’s activity of blessing and covenant and the fulfillment of the law through Jesus.
From this perspective, the law was never about authoritarianism or threats of punishment. It was always about permission for enslaved people to know their God, know their worth, and know how to live in the right relationships with God and one another!
Bear in mind that all these people really knew about God was a family story from a cousin twice removed about some promise that they would be more numerous than the stars. Maybe they also knew about Joseph. Who knows. What really matters is that this is no longer about a promise passed down through one family. This was now a people group, an identifiable tribal reality that the God who was greater than all the Gods of their oppressors was promising to care for, to name and to claim and to demonstrate what it meant to be in relationship with this God for all the world to see!
That means that they were given permission to name the Creator God as their own. That may not seem like a big deal, but in a world where there were so many forces competing for power and dominance, it is pretty freeing to say that there is a God not made of my hands or yours! Likewise, for those who have been enslaved to the expectations of others, the permission to keep the sabbath may have been a level of care they had never experienced. I’m not going to say that we can relate – because none of us are actual property with no rights – but without Sabbath rest, we can find ourselves enslaved to the whims and wills of the world.
Taking Sabbath rest is the greatest permission imaginable to the enslaved, as Jesus said in Mark 2, “Sabbath was created for humanity, not the other way around.” Maybe you take a day as prescribed in the law, maybe you take it where you can get it. I’ve heard stories of Susana Wesley, mother of ten, including John and Charles who would found the Methodist church, hiding under her apron to pray. Lord help us if we end up like that, but thanks be to God for her witness and her faith, and the invitation to find peace in the presence of God always!
Really, that is the hope and the permission that we find in all of these commandments. The first four are about our relationship with God as God’s people. The rest are about the permission-giving presence of the God who goes with us. Honoring our mother and father is permission to celebrate our ancestry – the good, the bad, and the ugly whether we are descendants of slaves, abolitionists, or slave traders – in light of the God who is always good, always present, always moving us toward right relationships regardless of what we’ve done and what’s been done to us.
All of that is pretty new and revolutionary for the Israelites, but the last five commandments are pretty much the kind of thing you find anywhere that people live together in civil society. I like to think of that in connection with Jesus saying [in my paraphrased version], “I did not come here to do anything new. I came to fulfill what you all know is supposed to be happening so that you can see what it looks like when it does happen.”
In this sense, we see the rest of the commandments giving us permission to honor life – even when others do not. In honoring the life and our covenant relationships, we are given permission to expect a sense of belonging – which is why most of us are here. We come here because we are reminded that we are delightful and beloved to God and to one another.
Finally, in the invitation to honor one another’s covenant relationships and personal belongings, we are given permission to know of God’s providence in a way that shortcuts our desire for the things we do not have. That last one is a struggle in a society that is economically dependent on desire, but it does remind me of a quote attributed to Mother Theresa, who is said to have gone shopping just so she could look at all of the things she will never need.
Friends, my hope in all of this is that your hearts are full. I hope I have left you with a longing to talk more about these things as one does after a good meal. More than that I hope you will think of these commandments as permission to love rather than threats for when you forget how. John Calvin wrote about the law as being a gift to let us know where we have erred, a warning to keep us from sin, and an example to follow.
While these all may be true, my hope is that we may follow the example of Jesus, who fulfilled the law by putting it into practice. May it be so with me, and with you, and to God be the glory now and always. Amen!
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