God's Ten(der) Instructions for Freedom ~ Exodus 20:1-17

Over 2,000 years ago, a young Jewish man went up onto a mountain to talk with God and teach people about what God wanted from us. 

No - it wasn't Moses. No, it wasn't Charlton Heston, either. It was Jesus. When Jesus inaugurated his ministry he went up on the mountainside and began to talk about God’s law and the prophets. At one point he says a memorable phrase, “You have heard it said, but I say to you.” And as we embark on an exploration of the Ten Commandments I want to ask, “What have you heard . . . about the ten commandments?” Let’s do a bit of group interaction and engagement. What words or phrases come to mine when you think about them (if you think about them at all)?

The Ten Commandments. Ugh. The spiritual version of classroom rules and no-joy advice. I imagine that most of us go to that place of legalism and soul-killing rules. I imagine this topic mentioned and you hear my voice like the teacher from the Peanut cartoons – “Mwa -mwa-mwa mwa mwa-mwa mwa.”

But I’d like to change that. The ten commandments were given by God at Sinai as a charter of freedom for recently freed slaves to ensure a healthy society. They were intended to help the Hebrews maintain their emancipation and protect against re-enslavement. Sociologists have noted that neighborhoods where these commandments are kept are good neighborhoods to live in. It is this context of freedom, both large and small, that is the setting for the ten commandments, which, by the way, is referred to in scripture as the ten "words" found in the Torah, which doesn’t mean law so much but "guidance." They are not, in other words, arbitrary commands from an ancient time but a resource for understanding God, being a healthy community, and exercising freedom properly. What do they teach us?

          1.    The God who speaks these commands is a liberator.

Who is this God? God defines God’s self in our passage not first and foremost by what he wants us to do or not do but by what God has done - by the very act of concrete, historical, liberation. This is not a God of this or that – of sky, or tree, or bumblebee – even though God is the creator. This is a God who liberates, who redeems. And this God is the One who gives these commands. This Liberating God is the One who

“brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” Let that sink in a bit. This means that if this God “spoke all these words” then these commands are intended for our good. So because God is liberator we can trust that the One who offers these negative commands wants our health and well-being, wants to fashion a healthy community, offers us love and grace, freedom and rests. This is what Jesus means when he declares to the Pharisees that they have misunderstood the fourth instruction – “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” This wasn’t made arbitrarily by God but designed for us – for our good (a constant refrain about the purpose of the law throughout Deuteronomy).

In this context, the best paraphrase of the first commandment might be: “You are set free from fear of multiple false gods.” Just as the second and third commandments intend to protect against the bondage of life-denying tendencies: Don’t be enslaved by man-made things. Don’t use God-talk for destructive purposes. Because these are spoken by God the Great Emancipator, we can know that these are warnings, in other words, for our freedom.

So we need to be grown-up about this. Why do we so often hear such negative commands like children listening to adults?

Thou must always look both ways when thy cross the street BECAUSE I am a parent who longs for you to have a horribly boring life while you wait for traffic!

When thou attendeth at sleepover at someone’s home, don’t make the parents do everything but help clean up BECAUSE I am a parent who wants to ruin your fun.

That’s funny – and any adult knows that the advice of good parents is to keep us safe and help us thrive. We say things out of the greatest love not the least. In the same way, the first four commands are all about rightly ordering our love for God so that we can be free because God wants us and others free.

Theology Moment: It’s worth asking at this point – how do we understand the “jealous” warning found in the second commandment to punish multiple generations for sins they did not commit? Has God liberated us only to hold us hostage or to punish children for sins they aren’t responsible for? I don’t think so – is the short answer. The longer answer is a bit more technical and theological but important because we are talking about God and the Bible. First, I think it reflects an ancient way of speaking about a reality that we even acknowledge in the modern world: the destructive patterns that get passed down through generations – abuse, neglect, addiction, etc. And while the Bible will sometimes suggest that God is the cause of this, taken as a whole, we gain an all-together different perspective. Jesus himself, for example,

will challenge such logic (John 9:1-5). Second, this brings us to the critical role of understanding Biblical revelation as something that happens continuously in the Biblical story and throughout time. The idea that God will continue to reveal more of himself and that later revelation takes precedent over what was said before. This isn’t simply happening between the Old and New Testament but in the Old Testament itself.  For example, God himself, through the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 18), will update this earlier revelation and will declare that this warning of generational punishment should no longer be declared against off-spring but that each person will be judged in light of their own response to God’s instructions. It’s also the case that the description of God being “jealous” will never appear in the New Testament. So the text is both naming reality and appears within a broader story that must be taken into account. And in this incident such progressive revelation should have us read the passage in the liberating arc the story wants to tell.   

           

               2.     There is a no that is necessary for freedom.

So the ten commandments aren’t ancient “fun-killers.” But maybe it’s worth asking why we have to have negative commands in the first place - ones with words like don’t, no, and shall not? We must recognize that there can be no real life, no real freedom, no real joy in life without laying aside the kinds of actions that destroy the very things we are seeking. Negative commands are the belief that any commitment to the joy of “yes” always entails an implicit “no.” To experience God’s joy and freedom you will at times have to say “no” to over-work, “no” to inappropriate sexual desire, “no” to consmerism, “no” to some other “ology” or “ism.” We must say “no” to things that seek to chain us down, harm us, deny our life and dignity.

But there is another “no” that we should hear when reading the ten instructions. We must say “no” to an understanding of spirituality that is purely spiritual. What are the social, material things that are talked about in the ten instructions? Our desire to turn things into gods, our need for rest, being honest, misuse of sex, craving what is not ours, even treating

our animals well. All of those things are spiritual. The Ten instructions remind us that spirituality is an orientation of all life toward God and the freedom God wants for us, our neighbor, even immigrants. It is not merely a mental or internal state. We often imagine spirituality is like a closed loop, where only the inside counts. The best illustration of spirituality, in Biblical terms, is the mobius strip. An example of a Möbius strip can be created by taking a paper strip and

giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip to form a loop. The point is that the inside always connects to the outside and the outside always connects back inward. 

           3.    We are not simply freed from but for and to.

Liberation is one of the Bible’s major themes. In Exodus we read how God’s people were liberated as slaves from Egypt and began their long journey to the promised land. The story continues with the liberating work of the judges, who delivered Israel from its enemies. Israel’s greatest king, David, liberated them from the Philistines and established a kingdom committed to Israel’s God. But this kingdom did not stand. The Hebrew Scriptures end with Israel once again in bondage to their enemies, but living with the promise of God’s deliverance. Throughout this story the freedom of God’s people is not just freedom from, but freedom to and for. They are set free from Egypt to worship and serve their God and be a light for the nations. In the law they are called to serve one another, but equally the stranger, the alien, the widow, and the orphan—all who suffer and are marginalized by the bitter circumstances of life. So freedom becomes a vehicle for harmonious life of mutual care and interdependence for everyone. Freedom was necessary for God to use Israel as a vehicle of blessing for the nations.

Now I’m proud of being American but the challenge is that American culture often wants to redefine what freedom is. In that context, freedom becomes the ability to do whatever I want to do. We imagine that freedom is like what Edgar Friendly says in the movie Demolition Man:

That’s right. You see, according to Cocteau’s plan, I’m the enemy. Because I like to think, I like to read. I’m into freedom of speech, freedom of choice. I’m the kind of guy who would sit in the greasy spoon and think “Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the big rack of Barbecued spare ribs with the side order of gravy fries?” I WANT high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese alright? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinatti in a non-smoking section. I wanna run around naked with green jell-o all over my body. Why? Because maybe I feel the need to okay pal?

So the “no” of the ten instructions redefines “freedom” itself. It means being what God intends us to be, free from actions that harm us but also harm others like killing, stealing, even coveting. It is not “doing whatever what I want to do.”

If I’m free then “no” I should not live like a slave. If I’m free then I should conduct myself in a freeing way toward others. That means I must say “no” to talk about people that demeans them – makes them less than people whom God loves. If we are meant to be free then I must resist the powers that want to enslave others – like materialism. I may need to say “no” to that company that mistreats its workers. If the ten commandments are an emancipation document, then I should teach my children to say “no” to those who use God-talk to steal people’s money. Say, "no" to those who make racist statements or jokes. We should say “no” to those who mistreat animals, no to instances when parents or elders are not cared for and honored. If we are to be free, we must live into God’s freeing and tender “no.” And when we can’t – always remember that God in Jesus Christ says,
“Yes.”

It's important to remember that when Jesus talked about his death - he didn't give a theory behind it. He gave us a meal. And not just any meal but the Passover meal. Jesus wanted to signal that his death was about not simply atoning for our sins. It was about our liberation. It was about freeing us so that we could love God and love one another.