Decathlon
Exodus 20:1-20

October 2, 2005

It needs to be said that the Ten Commandments have become boring. I need to go slowly. The Ten Commandments have become boring because we have de-storied them and reduced them down to a list to memorize or sign. Lists do not inspire precisely because they tend to forget about the stories of human beings.

The tendency for an awfully long time has been to treat all ten as one coherent unit, one big grand idea. Do you have difficulty remembering what each of the ten are and in which order. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day whether there are nine or eleven Ten Commandments as long as you believe in the Ten Commandments.

That means you don’t really have to believe or obey any single commandment as long as you accept as orthodox the whole package. Each commandment is not a simple matter of yes or no, but is a struggle against our human nature and our societies, and against the nature of cunning and evil.

It is a decathlon, a series of ten struggles in the ancient Greek roots of the word, in which we are wrestling all ten at one time. In the track and field event of the same name, the ten disciplines - some running and hurdling, some throwing, others jumping - no one is ever a master of all the events. You cannot avoid or pass on any one of them; you have to keep them all in mind in your preparation. Some come easy for certain athletes, but there is always at least one in which one’s deficiencies become publicly clear under moments of stress. Each one of the Ten Commandments is a struggle that requires you to engage it actively. You cannot be a good person by avoiding doing anything wrong, passively doing nothing. Following the Ten Commandments is not that normal an existence.

It only took three months to reach the mountain of God at Sinai. The Israelites camped around the base of the mountain and Moses would be up and down that mountain so many times it is hard to keep track, mediating a conversation between God and the people.

There was an old idea that if a human being came into physical encounter with God, and actually saw God face to face, the utter difference between the two natures would destroy the human being. Jacob wrestled with the angel and in amazement declared, “I have seen God and lived.” So did Moses in the burning bush that did not burn up. Here at Sinai, the Israelites were afraid to hear God’s voice, “Do not let God speak to us or we will die.” Only Moses and Aaron had the ears to hear and live amidst the sound of God.

Not too many people carry around gods in their back pocket anymore, not even Southern Baptists. But most of us do carry around “ultimate concerns” that are not ultimate - money, power, comfort, entertainment, achievement, even sex. God is infinite and there is an infinite number of ultimate concerns that crowd out wittingly or unwittingly the only Ultimate Concern possible. Two gods are very heavy to carry because each has a claim on pulling you in an opposite direction. There is an incredible lightness of being with One God who carries you in an eternal gesture of grace.

Judge Roy Moore in Alabama has never figured out that “You shall not make for yourself a graven image” means him, that the 2-1/2 ton monument of the Ten Commandments he had placed in front of the Alabama Supreme Court was an idol on its own merits. Nobody ever pretends an idol is alive. Nevertheless, an idol is a physical representation of an idea that eventually becomes more important than the idea. Judge Moore is convinced that removing his monument was tantamount to rejecting Christianity, and now he is taking his beautiful Vermont granite incarnation of the Ten Commandments on the road. Are we supposed to worship the monument itself, Judge Moore’s kind of faith, his resolve to crush those pinko liberals? Does God really ever get a chance to be worshiped when there is a beautiful stone in the way?

The Jews never write out the name God in full, and when they read the name of God in the Torah they call God “Adonai” or “Lord.” The name is too sacred for our lips to utter. God is on our lips an awful lot, and when we try to appropriate the authority of God for our own uses, it is in vain. When we go to war with prayers to God - whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist - no profanities can be more in vain.

I trust Judge Moore will not travel or show his monument on a Sunday, or on a Saturday, for that matter, since the Ten Commandments are originally Jewish. Do we still remember why there is a sabbath day of rest? For the humane reasons of rest and recreation and revival, naturally, and we have eroded that practice very well, thank you. Even we ministers are often guilty of not taking a sabbath day in which we do nothing. As usual, I am preaching to myself. But what is the real reason why we keep the sabbath day holy? Because in doing so, we imitate God. Who knows what else we might discover in the behaviour of God if we learn to do nothing like God?

How we honour our parents does not follow the same protocol as previous generations. Many of us live at a significant distance from our parents, and most parents would prefer not to have their 35-year-old child living at home with them permanently. And just what do you do with Jesus’ new command that unless you leave your father and mother and act as if you do not have parents any more, you cannot follow Jesus?

Just what Christian principle was demagogue televangelist Pat Robertson trying to demonstrate when he urged the Bush administration to assassinate Venezuela President Hugo Chavez? What does “kill” actually mean? Do people kill in war, is the execution of hardened criminals killing, and how do you count the results of a police shootout? Stanley Hauerwas noted that there can only be a “just war,” because the only alternative is murder. The anti-abortion caucus only has validity and integrity if all killing is murder.

“You shall not commit adultery.” I am not going to go there right now, except to remember Jimmy Carter, Democratic nominee for President in 1976, being interviewed by Playboy magazine. He admitted that he had indeed “lusted in his heart” and that in Jesus’ understanding that was spiritually equivalent to adultery. Jimmy Carter, through his activities in Habitat for Humanity and in numerous international mediations, has demonstrated what it means to be Christian in the public arena. If he knows that he is an adulterer at heart, then most of the rest of us are as well.

There seem to be lots of definitions of what “stealing” is not, from insider trading to private schemes, so I guess we have to work on that one some more. There are few liars in a church, “bearers of false witness,” for we are gossiping so much we seldom have time or the energy to lie.

“You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour.” Who are we kidding? We all covet virtually every day, wanting something belonging to someone else, but in our economy we can often get one. Covetousness is never satisfied until we learn and feel that we only need ourselves. We do not need anything external to our being to make us worthy of God’s love.

The Commandments are never a simple contract one can sign without reading. They are diverse and different, subtle and plain bold. A good person is not automatically able to perform all of them. I don’t care if you do believe in the Ten Commandments; it is whether you do them that matters.

The Commandments are a struggle for the holiest of saints. It is the saint who recognizes how inadequate and insufficient have been her efforts at obeying certain commandments. We’ve got a lot of work to do before we can wheel a monument of the Ten Commandments around the continent. If you struggle with even one commandment, however, then it is easy to accept your neighbour who has broken two or three.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan