THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: 3 MEDITATIONS

With so many today fighting about the public display of the Ten Commandments, it seems appropriate for us to spend time prayerfully and thoughtfully reflecting on them.  These 3 meditations from Exodus 20 will be helpful.  As you reflect, keep in mind Jesus’ teaching as given in Mark 12:28-31.  When asked which was the greatest commandment, he didn’t quote any of the Ten Commandments.  Instead, he said the greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength (from Deuteronomy 6:5), and the second was like it, to love your neighbor as yourself (from Leviticus 19:18.)  The Ten Commandments teach us how to love God and love your neighbor.  (In Scripture, including Jesus’ teaching, ‘neighbor’ refers to the widow the orphan, the alien, and anyone who is in need and also neighboring nations.)
 
Meditation 1: Exodus 20:1-7  NO OTHER GODS
Then God spoke all these words:
2I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3you shall have no other gods before me.  4You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.  7You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
 
The Ten Commandments are among the most well-known passages of Scripture and the subject of lots of debate in the U.S. today.  We argue, not about their role in our lives and how live them, but where to display them, missing the point.  If they’re to play a role in our lives, and that’s critical, we must learn and take them to heart, rather than arguing about where to display them.
 
The foundation for “all these words” God spoke is: “I am the LORD your God” who redeemed you.  For the Christian there is only one Redeemer, and that’s Jesus, no one and nothing else.  We know this, but it’s easy to slip up and look to a human to save us.  It happened to Israel; it can happen to us, in fact, is happening today.  Thus, God’s Words begin with three commands against idolatry: “you shall have no other gods before [besides] me,” make no graven image, and don’t take God’s name in vain.
 
The fact that there are three commands against idolatry suggests that God knows how easy it is for us to make God into an image we can control.  If our ‘God’ is manageable, can be readily understood, hates and loves the same people we do, that’s an idol, a false god.  When we claim that a political candidate, a mere human, can save our nation (and I hear that often this election year), we’ve created an idol, replaced the eternal Savior Christ with a temporal and inadequate human savior.  The LORD who redeems is beyond our control, beyond our ability to even imagine.
 
“You shall have no other gods.”  What could become an idol in your life?
 
Meditation 2: Exodus 20:8-11  REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY
8Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.  9For six days you shall labour and do all your work.  10But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.  11For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
 
“For the most part, contemporary Christians pay little attention to the Sabbath.”[1]  This was true of the Christian home I grew up in.  A day of rest, work-stoppage for all members of the community, animal and human, slave and alien, never crossed our minds.  We went to church and then did our own thing, even if that meant doing work.
 
Ignoring the sabbath isn’t a smart idea.  True, we’re not saved by keeping the sabbath, or any of the other commands, for that matter.  We’re saved by grace, through faith in Jesus.  Yet, in a sense, sabbath rest is salvation.  It saves us from becoming workaholics, getting caught up in greed for more money to buy more stuff.  It is, writes Brueggemann, “the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society” because it’s a summons to defy contemporary society that is driven to make more, have more, be more.[2]  It’s odd that those who demand public display of the sabbath, very rarely, if ever, quote this 4th command about the Sabbath
 
Sabbath rest is far more than defying cultural norms about taking a day off, or giving us time to refresh for the coming workweek.  That’s not why God commanded the sabbath.  God blessed and consecrated one day a week because “in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day.”  Our God is not a workaholic!  God is a Sabbath-keeping God and made restfulness not restlessness the center of life for creation.  When we rest in a weekly rhythm, we’re choosing to side with the God of rest; we’re choosing life over death, for ourselves and for our world.  Perhaps that’s why this command has the most words in it!
 
How can you take a weekly rest, work-stoppage, despite the cost?  Plan to do it.
 
Meditation 3: Exodus 20:12-17  YOU SHALL NOT…
12Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
13You shall not murder.
14You shall not commit adultery.
15You shall not steal.
16You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
17You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
 
The last six commandments, five beginning with you shall not, have to do with loving our neighbor.  Our familiarity with them (and these are the ones I hear listed most often by those arguing for public display) means that we often fail to pay obedient attention to them.  Take a moment to pay attention now and wonder: Which one do you think is the most challenging and why?
 
The tenth commandment, and the longest of these final 6, is a prohibition against covetousness.  Brueggemann describes coveting as the act “that is the ultimate destruction of the neighborhood, for coveting generates mistrust and sets neighbor against neighbor.”[3]  Notice the repetition of the word neighbor (3 times) in this command.  Coveting is more than a wishful longing for what another has.  It includes “forceful action to secure what is craved.”[4]  We are commanded to protect our neighbor, to love them as we love ourselves, the commandment Jesus named as the second greatest because it is like the first—loving God (Mark 12:28-34), not forcefully take their stuff.  The 10th commandment is surprisingly comprehensive.  It includes: not coveting another’s house (i.e., the socioeconomic means of the household), another’s spouse, means of production (slaves, donkey, ox).  It then ends with a sweeping and inclusive phrase, “anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
 
Covetousness is greed, greed run amuck.  And greed, as Paul twice warned, is idolatry.[5]  Thus the last commandment brings us back to the first three that prohibit idolatry.  Breaking the 10th command is also breaking the commands against idolatry.  We’ll only resist idolatry when we resist greed, and only resist greed when we resist idolatry, whatever form it takes in our lives.  And the command that will help us get it right, is the 4th command—Remember the sabbath and keep it holy.
 
[1] Brueggemann, Walter.  Sabbath as Resistance.  2014, p. ix.
[2] Brueggemann 2014, p. xiv.
[3] Brueggemann, Walter.  Sabbath as Resistance.  2014, p. 69.
[4] Ibid, p. 70.  [5] Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5.

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