Sunday, 15 March 2009
Lent 3B
The Rev’d Lloyd Prator
New York City


For the past few weeks, we have been focusing on the great figures of the Old Testament — Naaman the leper, Elisha and Elijah the prophets, Noah, and Abraham and Isaac. Today, we meet Moses, the lawgiver.

The thing about people who are chosen by God for specific duties, the people who get their shoulders tapped by the finger of God, these people generally get their lives pretty thoroughly messed up. Moses, for example, had to put up with forty years of wandering around with the worst bunch of complainers one could ever imagine. When they weren’t raising hell about running out of food and needing water, they were longing to go back to Egypt, where they believe they should have stayed and left well enough alone. As soon as Moses took a few days off to go do some mountain climbing, Aaron, his brother, got the drawings for a Canaanite god statue and directed the Israelites to build this little bovine idol they called the golden calf. If Moses had any spare time after trying to keep peace among his contentious clan, he spent it arguing with God that these difficult people should be spared and saved.

And, at the end of his life, God did the cruelest thing of all. He took him up on a very high mountain and showed him, off in the distance beyond Westchester, the promised land. And told him that we would never live to see it. Take a good look, said God, this is as close as you’ll ever get to the promised land. And, in his 120th year, he croaked.

When God calls you, your troubles have just begun.

But I doubt that Moses would have had it any other way. There were these little moments that made it all worthwhile. Like the time when God told Moses that he would be passing his way, and might get a little glimpse of his glory. Seeing God was so dramatic an experience for these primitive people that Moses knew he had to take in just a little bit of the view. So he hid himself in the cleft of this rock formation, and later told his friends that the hand of God had shielded him as God passed by so that he would not be overcome by the glory. And, when God passed by, Moses got a glimpse of what he somewhat delicately described as the “backside” of God. And it was apparently quite a backside, because years later he could only talk about it in terms of awe and wonder.

And, because no one had ever known what to call God, Moses felt he was really in the inner circle that day when God told him his name at the burning bush. His name was something like “I am”, or more accurately, “I am what I damned well want to be.” And it was like having God’s email address; now whenever he wanted God, he could dial him up and get right through — no busy signals.

But the greatest moment of all for Moses was the day that God told him what he really wanted from people. Just ten things. And these ten things, commonly called the ten commandments, or “the law” form our first reading today.

Now religious law has always caused trouble for Christians. Last week we looked at some of its’ implications. The matter of religious law is one area where we differ most distinctively from our ancestors in Judaism. The gospel, today, is a kind of parabolic statement about what we think of the law. In the gospel, Jesus is pictured over turning the tables of the money changers, and, as the story is commonly called, cleansing the temple. Cleansing the temple is a symbolic way of suggesting that Christianity is going to throw over some aspects of Judaism and make a new beginning.

Why did we need to change our attitude toward religious law? Paul gives us the answer in the second reading. He says that he knows that the law is good, but there is in himself, a force which is almost like a second personality, forcing him to do the thin he does not want to do. Part of the conflict we have with the law, the most painful part, is that the law reminds us of our failure to keep the best standards. Having the law reminds us of how far we fall from its standards. The law reminds us of our failure and reminds us that we are not the best we could be.

So, what did Christians do? Did we just scrap the law and go it on our own? Nope. Not a chance. The church just took a different perspective on the law. What we might call a eucharistic perspective. Obedience to the law was not going to be the way we worked our way into salvation. Rather, our first assignment as Christians was to accept that a new, lasting relationship with God had been given to us as a gift. And as a sign of our thankfulness for that gift, we could go back to the law and do the things required by the law as a way of giving thanks for that gift. The law becomes a tool of giving thanks to God.

So, for Christians we still keep the law, but it does not gain us anything. Anything that could be gained has already been gained. Obeying the law is a way of giving thanks.

Let’s take a look at a few of the commandments that might claim some of our interest.

Honoring one’s parents. An ancient Jewish saying goes this way: There are three partners in everyone’s creation: God, a father and a mother. Thus parents are God’s partners in creation and conceiving and rearing of children. Thus parents share in the divine responsibility and in the honoring that God receives. You honor God for your creation, you also honor your parents. This commandment is the only one in the list that has a blessing promised along with it, long life and general well being will follow those children who respect and honor their parents. This blessing is important because it reminds us that honoring one’s parents is a process, an evolving story of a relationship, an activity that changes as time passes and one gains maturity. You don’t honor your parents in the same way at fifty that you did at fifteen.

Some parents don’t deserve much honor because of the way they behave. If you have such parents, you honor them by honoring the standards which they fail to meet, by being honest and clear with them when they fail, and by holding in your mind’s eye the standard of mature parenting to which all parents should be subject. Sometimes you honor failed parents by remembering the standards they failed to meet.

Respecting the sanctity of life. The commandment is that we not kill irrationally, not that we do not ever kill. There are times when Christians do kill. You can kill to protect the lives of the innocent. It is justified to kill to protect ourselves against those who would attack and kill us. Despite what the pacifists would have us believe — the church has always made a place for the idea of just war to stop the growth and spread of tyranny. But even in the light of these clear occasions when killing is justified, the church has always asserted that human life is sacred and every other course of action should be exhausted before a life is taken.

Avoiding adultery. This commandment is principally focused upon breaking the covenant of marriage, or adulterating, watering it down by having other relationships which erode and threaten it. This commandment is not about promiscuity — that sin is called the sin of fornication, and is something else, indeed.

Hebrew thinking about marriage evolved over centuries. Early Hebrews practiced polygamy but, by about the thirteenth century B.C., it was customary for a pious Hebrew to have only one wife. The sacredness of relationships is held up from then on as a value of Jewish-Christian culture.

The commandment against adultery is about preserving community. Marriage, and I suggest, any other committed, permanent monogamous relationship is, in fact, a Christian community in miniature. Two people in love are the smallest community imaginable. Such an intimate relationship should always be characterized by forgiveness, renewal and recommitment. That is why an ancient rabbi once said that success in love is more than finding the right person, it is a matter of being the right person.

Just in the light of these three commandments, consider what we Christians are called to do. To honor our parents because they give us life, for which we are thankful, and nurture, for which we are grateful. Not to murder, because to wantonly kill another is to fail to give thanks for the image of God planted in that person’s soul. To avoid adultery, because intimacy is a gift of God and requires our nurturing stewardship in order that it may grow and flourish.

In every case, these commandments direct an inner inspection of motives, actions, and desires. What we find there may well motivate us to do a little housecleaning in the interior temple. And the best way to undertake that interior cleaning is to invite in the one who is the greatest cleanup artist of them all, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the father and the spirit lives and reigns now and forever.