How many of you know the Ten Commandments? What do you know about them?
It’s relatively common knowledge - available in Sunday School and via movies and TV specials - that God gave the commandments to Moses after God led the Hebrew people out of Egypt,
and that they were written on stone tablets.
And - despite the fact that the Biblical text does not actually call this set of proclamations, instructions and prohibitions “commandments” - these have become the most famous “commandments” around. Just ask Google.
The idea of these commandments has become set in stone - in our culture if not in our courthouses.
So most of us know them; if not word-for-word, at least what they’re about.
(Without looking at any of the paper you hold in your hands) how much can you remember? How much can we remember, together, of those “Ten Words,” those famous “commandments?”
In no particular order: God’s identity, no idolatry, careful with the name of God, honor parents, keep Sabbath, no coveting, no adultery, no murder or killing, no stealing, no false testimony…
Here we have a strong moral foundation, a commitment to one God. Core principles, widely recognized and honored. Could we ask for more?
And if we’re keeping these, could God ask for anything more?
Well, yes.
Very much yes, to both questions.
If you read this story in the Bible, in Exodus, you’d notice that there’s a moment of pause where our assigned reading stops today - a pause in which the majority of the rescued Hebrew people tell Moses that this commanding God is scary and Moses should just explain to us all what God wants, so that we don’t have to get that close to God.
And then the commandments - the words, the speech of God - pick right back up.
God picks up with instructions about worship and altar building, and goes on commanding and instructing for pages and pages; for hours on end. Specific rules about property crime, treatment of slaves, sacrifice and offering, lawsuits and economic justice, sabbaths and festivals…and the proper furnishing, decoration, and care of the tent of worship.
All of that before God ever carves commandments in stone for Moses. Which suggests that all of that (more, really) is carved on those two stone tablets you’ve seen in the movie.
God most certainly asks for more.
And so do we.
God’s people have nuanced and analyzed, developed and debated the application of these commandments, questioned them, and demanded more, from the very first moment we tried to live with them. Moses never got a break from conveying and interpreting the law of God. And Jesus fields questions about God’s commandments throughout his ministry on earth.
No doubt as long as humans go on thinking up new ways to do things, someone will be asking for God’s commandments about those things. That’s why the Roman Catholic Church demands that the Pope weigh in on reproductive technology, whether pets go to heaven, and what to eat on Fridays.
The truth is, these commandments aren’t a stone wall or a bedrock at all.
These “Ten Words” of God’s that we hear today are just the beginning of a conversation;
a conversation we have with God in every situation and language and time and place known to humankind.
A conversation that God keeps having with us.
It’s not a quiet conversation, either, but a fierce one.
One that sometimes shatters our confidence, our righteousness, and our expectations, the way Jesus did on that visit to the Jerusalem Temple that we heard about this morning.
It’s a wild and shocking moment,
Jesus throwing over tables, scattering money and animals and people right and left,
literally whipping up the crowd.
literally whipping up the crowd.
It’s dangerous for him, and for anyone in his way,
and it’s a natural, fundamental part of the conversation between God and God’s people that starts with those famous words we heard a few minutes earlier: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,…you shall have no other gods before me.”
It’s not a specific one of those famous “commandments” that Jesus is challenging that day in the Temple, but rather the way that God’s people have shaped the conversation to suit ourselves: to ease our worship and our obedience to God into something more convenient than overwhelming, and distracting ourselves with details instead of risking our whole hearts to the relationship.
We do that still, of course,
and often more by accident than purpose.
Because a face-to-face, honest, and unlimited conversation with God can be just as scary now as that mountain of thunder and darkness which God’s people encountered when Moses first went to hear God’s words and commandments.
A conversation with God, by God’s very nature, isn’t cozy or casual, but fierce.
There are a group of people based in Seattle whose business is to foster “fierce conversations.” They teach models and techniques to make any conversation more honest, creative, accountable, productive and real, because their belief is that not every conversation will change the world, but any conversation can.
It’s powerful stuff that they teach, and it’s changed things for me.
Their Fierce Conversation training is aimed at businesses and institutions, but whether they know it or not, the original fierce conversation, the conversation that absolutely changes the world,
is the conversation between God and us;
the conversation that opens with “Ten Words” on a thunderous mountain, embraces upheaval and change and death and resurrection, and includes you and me, right here and now.
It’s a great thing that we teach ten commandments in Sunday School and debate them in court,
but we kid ourselves if we ever think that knowing these - or even doing these - is enough.
Because those “Ten Words” are only the beginning of a conversation, a conversation God wants us to keep having.
The Fierce Conversations business people have a spiritual truth they tell you in the most secular of training: that the conversation is the relationship.
And so if we drop out of the conversation or distract ourselves with details, when we make the talk small or the conversation casual, we’re denying our relationship, whether we mean to or not.
I don’t think we want to do that to God, but sometimes - even often - we do.
But if we’re lucky, when that happens,
Jesus comes bursting in, tossing over the tables, whipping up a storm,
shaking us back into risking our whole hearts to this relationship with God.
Let Jesus shake you, too, today.
Listen with your soul for the thunder and the awe of God’s invitation to conversation, and risk your most honest, fierce, real response.
Because the conversation IS the relationship,
and God won’t give up on relationship with us.
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