Re-cutting the Commandments

Sunday, Oct 23 2011

Speakers: Rev. James M. Rand

Scripture: Exodus 34:1-10, Matthew 22:34-40

You know the sign in a china shop: “You break it, you buy it.”  Or a parent admonishing a child: “You made this mess.  Clean it up.”

That’s what God says to Moses.  “Cut two tablets of stone, like the former ones – which … you … broke.”  You!  Broke!

Almost 900 years ago, the Jewish scholar Rashi paraphrased that verse, saying, “You smashed the first tablets, now go carve some more.”  God is scolding Moses.

Apparently, there’s enough anger to go around.  Moses is mad at the Israelites for making a golden calf and worshiping it.  That’s why he smashed the Commandments when he came down the mountain.

At the same time, God has had it “up to here” with Moses.  Those Commandments were precious, not disposable.  No one else had ever created such succinct and perfect laws.

I’m not saying God’s wrath was entirely fair, or that Moses deserved the brunt of it.  A jury of his peers might have acquitted him.  I mean, the guy was provoked.

What I’m saying is that the two tablets of the law aren’t the only things broken.  The holy covenant that holds everyone and everything together is fractured too.  What needs repair is the whole relationship between God and the people, and among themselves – especially between Moses and the “stiff-necked” nation (as he often called them).

God is reluctant to have any part of them any more.  The divine wrath still smolders.  The people can go on toward the Promised Land for all God cares.  But God won’t accompany them.

Moses intercedes – begging God to forgive.  And finally God does relent.  God vows to start over, beginning with new tablets and new commandments.

The difference is, God won’t do it alone this time.  Humans have to do their part, starting with Moses cutting new tablets on which God will write.

All of that tells me two things.  One is that we humans are accountable for our actions – in a china shop, in our mess-making, and with God. We cannot presume God’s mercy, as if God is incapable of anger.  Whatever grace we encounter from God is always dynamic, always forged in the give-and-take between God and us. As one modern scholar writes: “There is no predictability or inevitability about divine grace” (Fretheim, quoted by Brueggemann, NIB.)

We are accountable for our actions – accountable to God.  That’s the first thing I see.

The second is that, despite the risk, the danger, and human failings, God’s mercy prevails.  When called upon, God cuts and re-cuts the Commandments, and the underlying covenant that binds us together.  God does this many times – and always with human help.

* *

The first time, of course, is with God and Moses, as Moses pleads for God not to abandon the people, and God agrees to remain steadfast.

But it happens again centuries later, when the prophet Jeremiah declares, “The days are … coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with … Israel … It will not be like the old covenant I made with their ancestors … when I took them out of Egypt … but I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts …”

Instead of writing on tablets of stone carved by Moses, God vows this next time to inscribe the covenant straight onto human hearts.

         “… And I will be their God and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:31-34).

Ezekiel then continues that stone vs. flesh theme, saying, “I will remove their heart of stone [the old covenant!] … and give them a heart of flesh” (Ez. 11:19).

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus goes at it yet again, re-cutting the commandments in a way that heightens human accountability:

• You have heard … [commandment] ‘You shall not murder,’ but I say [new commandment], whoever is angry with a sister or brother is liable to judgment …
• You have heard [commandment], ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ but I say [new commandment], whoever looks at a woman with lust is guilty …
• You have heard, ‘You shall not swear falsely,’ but I say don’t swear at all …”

Like a raw diamond, cut and re-cut, cut and re-cut over centuries to expose the gleaming facets, the prophets and Jesus chisel the Commandments slowly and carefully to a more refined and perfect essence. Stroke by stroke they reveal the glistening gem at the center of the law.

That work culminates in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 22, where Jesus takes one last expert whack at the Commandments.  When asked (in a not-so-innocent way!) what is the greatest commandment, he offers not one but two  responses – two commandments of equal value and importance, saying, “You shall love the Lord your God, with heart and soul and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

With that answer, he makes it clear that life under God is shaped less by law than by love.  The best expression of the law (covenant law) is the exhibition of love … in all relationships.

With God.  And with each other.  With the One who is “above,” and with neighbors all around.

I hope you see the progression through Scripture.  Out of the original shattered tablets, the Bible leads us slowly but surely to see the law as that which is written on our hearts, embodied in human flesh, and enacted in love.

Another way to put it is that the Commandments help us choose to live with each other and with God as God lives with us.  They invite us to live and act (to the fullest extent we are able) like the One who is:

merciful and gracious, slow to anger,

abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,

keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,

forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

That’s our model – the model expressed in Exodus 34.  Jesus just says it in fewer words: “Love God.  And love neighbor.”  It fulfills all the law and the prophets.

* *

If I mention the name, Roy Moore, it may ring a distant bell.  He was the judge in Alabama who defied American civil law about 8 years ago, to install a 2½-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom.

Indeed, there is some significant popular opinion in this country that the Commandments ought to be displayed in courtrooms and city halls and schools and parks, to reflect the ethical origin and center of many laws and values we hold dear as a nation.

But I would suggest that Judge Moore was addressing the wrong problem with that granite monument.  The biblical issue (from Moses, to Jeremiah, to Jesus) isn’t where to display the Commandments, but how to live them.

And to that, Jesus says, “With love – for God and neighbor.”

 * *

It is interesting as well, that when God gave the Commandments the second time, some changed.

A few laws are the same.  If we read all of Exodus 34 we’d see some we recognize.  But others mean nothing.  For every phrase about keeping the Sabbath, there’s also a one about dedicating one’s firstborn male to the Lord.  And for every lingering prohibition against having other gods, there’s something about not mixing the blood of sacrifice with leaven.  (Any of you ever broken that commandment?  Nobody?  I’m relieved!)

But, you see, it’s not neatly and perfectly given.  The various laws get worked out over time.  Some stay.  Some go.  God’s relationship with us and ours with God is a matter of trial and error – falling short, being forgiven, starting over.  Like I said before, it’s not a static relationship, but dynamic.  It’s an ongoing process.

The only constant, even in the fiercest moments of God’s anger, is that every commandment and every action is premised on love.  If a particular law doesn’t add to or build on that love, it gets discarded. (Blood of sacrifice mixed with leaven?  Gone!)

Love is the standard Jesus set with his own life and death.  It’s the guiding principle of our life with God.  It’s the way God is with us (I’ll say it again): “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”  And it is the way we’re to live with each other as people of faith, striving to love neighbors as much as ourselves.

Such love is the goal of the church.  That love, not just programs or salaries, is what we ask you to support with your stewardship dollars.  We ask you to live it – back it up – in real terms.  We ask that because that love is the underlying message each time we baptize a baby, welcome a new member, send people in mission, forgive sins, or commend a departed spirit to God.

We’ve come a long way since the days of Moses.  But we still live in a world where tablets of the law are broken and human hurt runs deep.  What holds us together and keeps us going through it all is that we see that glistening diamond at the center of it all, telling us that God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

And that we too can be all of that.

To the glory of God.