“The Law that Liberates: the Ten Commandments Today”: (5) “Respecting your heritage ... and respecting your neighbours’ right to respect theirs” (Exodus 20: 1-2, 12)

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Of course, there are all the obvious things about this commandment, the sorts of things that our wider secular culture celebrates.  And this commandment is at least in part about the quality of our family relationships, whether these relationships are within nuclear families, within extended families, or within non-conventional families.  

But, as the man who sells steak knives on TV always tells us “And there’s more ...”.

There are a few other things that jump out from this commandment.

One has to do with our attitudes toward the aged generally.  This commandment invites us to affirm the dignity of older people.  In today’s society, people are living much longer than in previous generations, and remaining healthy and vital for much longer as well.

 

·         As a result, to live in the light of this commandment means that we should never assume that older people automatically lose the ability to contribute to society.  Here in Australia, community groups of all sorts simply would not function without the voluntary involvement of retired people.  (And I’m concerned that the trend toward a later retirement age will cripple many community groups that are dependent on the excellent volunteer work of retired people.)

·         To live in the light of this commandment also means that we as a society should ensure that those older people who can no longer be independent still have a good quality of life. 

This commandment invites us to affirm the dignity of older people. 

“And there’s more ...”.

Other cultures who lived in the same area as the Jews during this time would have had similar commandments within their traditional wisdom.  But one thing was unique to the Jews; one thing that was expressed in three words:  “and your mother”.  Other cultures would have emphasised respect for the father as part of a sacred obligation.  For the Jews, by including respect for the mother as a sacred obligation alongside respect for the father, a revolutionary element of equity and fairness was added to this parental respect, making it far more contemporary than may appear at first sight.  This equity and fairness is just one of the many ethical gifts that all humanity has received from the Jews.

“And there’s more ...”.

The Scriptures (particularly the Hebrew Scriptures) often use the language of “fathers and mothers” (or in shorthand “fathers”) to speak of all one’s ancestors.  So, it’s not too difficult to see this commandment as including the command to honour one’s heritage.

As a result, this commandment is particularly relevant to those of us with the privilege of living in a multicultural society such as Australia.  (And I believe that it is a privilege to live in a multicultural society.)  For us, this commandment should be seen as including an encouragement to honour your ethnic heritage in its fullness and, as part of the richness of our community life, to respect the right of your neighbours to honour theirs.

 

·         to have a thrill of pride at the skirl of the pipes and also to try to grasp the same emotion that your neighbours experience at the sound of the didgeridoo or the shofar, or at the sound of the haka or the call of the muezzin;

·         to cultivate your taste for speculaas or Guinness, and to affirm your neighbours’ taste for beef vindaloo,

·         to follow Arsenal with a passion, but not to think it too odd that someone else may follow Juventus or the Mets,

·         to celebrate Hogmanay or Thanksgiving Day, but not to get uptight when some of your neighbours celebrate Ramadan or Passover.

“And there’s more ...”.

Of course, to honour your father and mother does not mean that you necessarily agree with your ancestors in every way.  This commandment is not a command to continue with every idea of the previous generations.

 

·         This commandment does not authorise you, if your parents were racially prejudiced, to keep up those prejudices and pass them on to the next generation.

·         This commandment does not authorise you, if your parents were prejudiced against Catholics, or Jews, or Muslims, or Mormons, or Freemasons, or gays, or lesbians, ... or anyone, to keep up those prejudices and pass them on to the next generation.

This commandment is not an excuse for one generation to keep up the prejudices of the previous generation.  You do not honour your parents by perpetuating all the prejudices of their generation.

Then God spoke all these words:  I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ...

Like each of the commandments, this commandment is closely linked to God’s self-identification as the God who liberates slaves and turns them into free people.

For slaves, their most significant relationship is not with their families ... with parents ... with partners ... with children.  For slaves, their most significant relationship is with the person who owns them.  That is the person to whom the slave owes honour. 

For any person to be able to give honour to the members of their family (or – for that matter – to anyone else in a significant relationship) is in itself a sign that the person is not a slave, but someone who is free.

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

In this commandment, we celebrate God who liberated a gang of slaves, made them a nation of free people, and gave them a history.

 

In the first post in this series of articles, there is a general introduction to the series.

“The Law that Liberates: the Ten Commandments Today”: (4) “For God’s sake, take care of yourself.” (Exodus 20: 1-2, 8-11)

Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labour and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work ...

For many of us, ... possibly most of us, ... and this includes myself, ... when we hear these words, we react negatively to some of the extreme ways in which this command has been kept.  Whether the extremes are seen in

·         the ways in which Orthodox Jews or Seventh-Day Adventists observe Saturday, or
·         the ways in which some Christians used to observe Sunday;
many of us are much more aware of the ways in which this commandment can be used to restrict our lives than to enhance them.

There have been examples, both within Judaism and (more often, I’m afraid) within Christianity, of people who have made this commandment into a joyless burden.  Some people have tried to turn this commandment into one more religious hurdle over which people were taught they needed to jump to please a god who expected people to jump over religious hurdles.  This attitude was what Jesus protested against when he declared in Mark’s gospel that “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”  (Mark 2: 27, NRSV)

But even though Jesus made such a pronouncement, there have been many examples of Christians who have turned the observance of the Lord’s Day into an onerous burden, rather than as an occasion for joy.  

Some of you may have lived in places that had restrictive laws as to what you could and couldn’t do on a Sunday.  In many areas of the United States, these laws were rather aptly known as “Blue Laws”.  (And there are really very few people who were sad to see these laws go – including many people of Christian faith.)

Some of you when may remember, from when you were small, visiting a relative found in many extended families, a lady - often a maiden lady - known as “the religious auntie”.  Now, this lady was formidable.  She had strong views on just about everything, including which other denominations were within the pale and which were beyond the pale.  She led a fairly austere life, by choice, all week. 

But then, on Sundays (or Saturdays if she happened to be Seventh-Day Adventist) her regular weekday austerities seemed vaguely libertine by comparison.  And, if you were a child whose family was visiting this aunt, you knew that your afternoon would not be spent in play, but in sitting in your good clothing on a hard-backed chair, being seen but not heard.  Meanwhile, your aunt told the other adults about the deficiencies in her minister’s view of the doctrine of the Atonement. 

And, for this aunt, she felt that spending a Sunday afternoon in such a joyless way was the most appropriate way to keep the commandment about the sabbath.  As you can probably tell, I dare to disagree with this formidable maiden lady, strongly. 

It all links up with the opening words of the Ten Commandments, the words with which I’ve introduced each of these talks:

Then God spoke all these words:  I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ...

God identified Godself, as I said in the first talk, as the One Living God, the God who liberates slaves.  The people who received these commandments were a group of liberated slaves and their children.  Each generation was told to regard themselves as liberated slaves.

A quick question:  What do slaves do that defines them as slaves?

Answer:      They work ... all the time.

Another quick question:   How often do slaves get a day off from work?

Answer:      Hardly ever.

This weekly workless day was a sign of liberation.  Free people have the right to take a day off. 

Linking the weekly workless day with worshipping God was a recognition that God was the source of liberation. 

The Sabbath celebration for the Jews was a celebration of liberation.  That is why, even taking into account the abuses criticised by Jesus, there was (and is) normally a sense of joy and celebration in the Jewish Sabbath that was frequently absent from the austere Puritan Sabbath.

And what does this all say to us?

In our culture in recent decades, we have become a society of workaholics.  For many reasons, many people in our culture have forgotten what it is to enjoy leisure. 

The social scientists who said thirty years ago that people today would be have four day (or even three day) working weeks by now would be shocked to see the six day (and even seven day) working weeks that are becoming the norm in many occupations.  The reasons are many: ... economic, ... political, ... psychological, ... and others.  The average person in employment today is spending more time at their work, enjoying their work less, and accomplishing less.

As well, when people do have some leisure time, an increasing number of people appear just as rushed during their supposed “time off” as they do in their working days.

We have become a society of workaholics.

In the face of this reality, today’s commandment provides us with an alternative.   We are told:

You are more than your employment, much more.  God created you to live, not just to do a job.  Rest.  For God’s sake, take care of yourself.

And I did not use the previous sentence lightly. ... For God’s sake, take care of yourself. ... The instruction to rest is linked with our recognition of the God who liberates.  There is an real connection between our care of our own well-being and our relationship to God.  Taking care of our own need for rest and recreation (re-creation) is part of our worship of the God of liberation.  So, when I said “For God’s sake, take care of yourself,” I meant it so that our self-care was literally for the sake of God:  God who liberates us ... God who calls us to take care for our own well-being.

Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labour and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work ...

Despite the joyless Sabbath of our Puritan ancestors, this is not just another pious task.  This is not an onerous burden.  This is not just some religious hurdle to jump over.  This is not just another barrier between the super-religious and the rest of us. 

Instead we have an invitation to enjoy leisure.  We have an invitation to see our lives as far more than our work. We are encouraged to see the leisure we enjoy as intimately related to the God who liberated a gang of slaves, moulded them into a nation of free people, and gave them a day off.

For God’s sake, take care of yourself.

In the first post in this series of articles, there is a general introduction to the series.

“The Law that Liberates: the Ten Commandments Today”: (3) “Conscripting God for your own crusades” (Exodus 20: 1-2, 7)

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

In the old Authorised Version of the scriptures, this commandment refers to taking the name of the Lord “in vain”.

What does this mean: ... to “take the name of the Lord ... in vain”, ... or to “make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God” ... ?

Is this commandment mainly about using God’s name - or other sacred names - for the purpose of profanity, or, as they say before the movies on TV, “coarse language” (and, in many cases, “frequent coarse language”).  Is that essentially what this commandment is all about?

I believe that this is only a very small part of what this commandment is about.  You can say many things about using the name of God – or other sacred names – for the purposes of profanity:

·         It’s a sign of ignorance.
·         It’s a sign of a poor vocabulary.
·         It’s a sign of a lazy mind.
·         It’s very, very obnoxious.

But it’s really only a very small part – I’d say maybe about ten per cent at most – of what this commandment is all about.

But, then, this is not the only way in which people have focused only on a small part of this commandment.  I’ll give two examples.

The first example is that in ancient times – and even to the present day - the Jews became so sensitive to this commandment against making wrongful use of God’s name that they decided that God’s name was too sacred to pronounce at all.  Whenever the Hebrew word for God’s name (Yahweh) was found in the text of scripture, the person reading scripture substituted the Hebrew word Adonai, meaning “The Lord”. 

In the time of the Jerusalem Temple, the name Yahweh was pronounced only once a year in Jewish worship:

·         only on the Day of Atonement,
·         only in the small central room of the Temple called the Holy of Holies,
·         only by the High Priest,
·         only with no one else around,
·         only speaking in a whisper. 

Today, the name Yahweh is not spoken at all by Jews.  Jews find the use of the name Yahweh offensive.  In recent decades, some translations of the Bible, such as The Jerusalem Bible, have used the name Yahweh in the Old Testament as the name for God.  (As a result, The Jerusalem Bible is not a translation that is appropriate to use when Christians and Jews worship together.)

The second example of people focussing only on a small part of this commandment involves a Christian group.  The Society of Friends (also known as the Quakers), believed that an appropriate way to keep this commandment was to refuse to take any oath in a court of law or for any other civil purpose.  In the early centuries of their movement, many Quakers have gone to prison as a matter of conscience rather than taking a civil oath and, in their own mind, making “wrongful use” of God’s name.  The contemporary provision for secular affirmations in courts of law and for other civil purposes stems, in large part, from the influence of the Quakers.

Now, just as I don’t think this commandment is about the use of religious swearwords, neither do I think it is about the use of civil oaths.  Neither is this commandment about a God whose very name is too holy for mere mortals to pronounce.  So what, then, is this commandment about?

I’ll tell a story about a theological student and one of his teachers.  Decades later, the student is now a retired Uniting Church minister.

At the time of the story, this man was a theological student in his final year of studies.  He was telling his teacher, the late J.D. Northey, formerly Principal of the Congregationalist Theological College, about the kind of ministry he wanted to undertake after his studies.  The student said, “Not only is this what I want to do, but it’s what God wants me to do.”

Principal Northey was furious:  “Never use God as an excuse for doing what you want to do anyway.”

And this, I believe, is the main focus of what this commandment is all about.

·         This commandment is not really about civil oaths.
·         This commandment is not really about a God whose name is too holy to pronounce.
·         This commandment is not really even about the obnoxiously ignorant use of God’s name, or of any other sacred name, as “coarse language”.

This commandment is about using God “as an excuse for doing what you want to do anyway”.  This commandment is about conscripting God as an unwilling draftee for our own crusades.  When we do this, this is when we really “make wrongful use of the name of the Lord ...”, when we really “take the name of the Lord ... in vain”.

There are many examples of this wrongful use of God’s name both in history and in our own day.  I’ll name a few examples.

There were those people in many countries who believed that white people were superior to other people.  They believed that white people had the right to enslave people of other races, or to segregate people of other races to limit their contact with white people.  Many of these people tried to make God an unwilling conscript in this crusade by twisting various passages of scripture to justify these policies.   They took “the name of the Lord ... in vain”.

There are churches who proclaim what they call a “gospel of prosperity”.  They say that if you really have genuine faith, material prosperity will follow.  These churches say that wealth is a sign of God’s favour.  They twist various passages of scripture to make their point.   These churches may be doing well for themselves.  (Churches who tell people what they want to hear usually do.)  But they also “take the name of the Lord ... in vain”.

When people tell others that they will be do God’s will if they fly a jet plane into a skyscraper or if they set off a car bomb outside a crowded disco, they too “take the name of the Lord ... in vain”.

As well, when politicians (in any country) who glibly speak of a war (with all its death and destruction) as somehow fulfilling God’s will, these politicians also “take the name of the Lord ... in vain”.

One day, I heard a sermon.  It was back in the mid-1980s, during the first wave of public knowledge of AIDS.  The man preaching rather glibly claimed that AIDS was God’s will, sent as a punishment to its victims.   

Afterwards, I wrote the man (Unfortunately, he was a Uniting Church lay preacher.) and I told him that I believed his comments were an exercise in blasphemy.  God’s will is health and wholeness for all creation.  Illness is never God’s will.  God doesn’t work that way.

I believe, very firmly, that this man took “the name of the Lord ... in vain”.  He tried to conscript God as an unwilling soldier in own crusade.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

This commandment isn’t really about the use of religious swearwords, as ignorant and obnoxious as they are.  In a real way, this commandment is an invitation to us to allow God to surprise us with God’s agendas, rather than for us to make God an unwilling and passive conscript for our own agendas. It’s an invitation to us all to let God be God. 

 

In the first post in this series of articles, there is a general introduction to the series.

“The Law that Liberates: the Ten Commandments Today”: (2) “Cutting God down to size” (Exodus 20: 1-2, 4-6)

In the Book of Exodus, chapter twenty, we read verses one and two, and four through six, from the New Revised Standard Version:  

 

Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;... 

 

You 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. You 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, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

 

A successful businessman attended a church service one day. The sermon that morning, as it happened, was on the topic of the Ten Commandments. He sat quietly through the sermon, and the rest of the service that followed. On arriving home, he went into the bathroom, lit up a cigar, and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He took a deep puff on his cigar, looked himself straight in the eye, and said, “Well, at least I’ve never made a graven image.”

 

This is one of three jokes that I know about the Ten Commandments. One interesting thing about the joke is that it’s the only one that doesn’t focus on the commandment about adultery. Another interesting thing about this joke is that the businessman in the bathroom was probably wrong. He probably made - and worshipped - many graven images in his lifetime. In many ways, we all do.

 

As we hear in Exodus:

 

You 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. You shall not bow down to them or worship them ...

 

In its earliest understanding, this commandment focused on the gods worshipped by the Israelites’ neighbours.  

• These gods were very tangible. Their images were made by human hands, fashioned from wood, or stone, or clay. Their worshippers associated the physical image with the actual god in a real way.  
• These gods were also very local. They were located in specific places. They were worshipped by specific communities of people. These gods were believed to be concerned only for these limited communities.  
• These gods were also concerned for limited areas of human life. Communities worshipped one god for agriculture, and another god for commerce. There was one god for war, and another god for fertility.
• As well, these gods were not very demanding. They were there to give the worshipper success in what the worshipper wanted, with no ethical demands. 

 

These gods were very limited, gods of a very manageable size, small-g gods, godlets.

 

When the early Jews were commanded against making these idols, it was a warning against trying to cut God down to size, against trying to turn the Big-G God of liberation into just another small-g godlet. They were warned “Don’t just pray to a god of agriculture for good harvests – or to a god of fertility for many descendants - if you don’t want the living God to challenge you to practice social justice in your personal and national lives.”

 

However, people generally being rather literally-minded, this command soon focused on the actual images. And so, for centuries within Judaism, there has been – and still is – a great reluctance to use the images of people o other living creatures in religious art. Synagogues today are often decorated with great restraint. 

 

This is not just a Jewish concern. Some groups within Christianity also have a tradition of reluctance to use the images of people or other creatures within a worship setting. This is particularly so with groups whose origins were within Calvinism or the Puritan movement in Britain.

 

And, as well, Islam has also received from Judaism a strong aversion to images of this sense of restraint in the use of human or animal images in worship settings. Muslims probably go the furthest today in avoiding the use of these images.

 

But, I do not think that this commandment today is really about the use of visual images in religious settings.

• I do not believe this commandment is about what happens when a worshipper prays in front of a crucifix or a statue of a saint in a Roman Catholic church.
• I do not believe this commandment is about what happens when a worshipper prays in front of an icon in an Eastern Orthodox church.
• I do not even believe this commandment is about what happens when a worshipper prays or meditates in front of a statue in a Hindu or Buddhist temple.

An educated worshipper in any of these traditions knows that the physical image is essentially a visual aid, and not the actual object of devotion.

  

When we limit this commandment to such activities, we miss a great deal of its point, its point against trying to cut God down to size.

• There are many who worship a god who is only concerned for a limited community of people, a godlet whose love is limited to people of a single race, a single nation, or a single religion. They have made an idol, a small-g god.
• There are many others who worship a god who is only concerned about limited areas of human life, a godlet (for example) who is concerned about issues of personal morality but not about issues of social justice. They have made an idol, a small-g god.
• There are many others who worship a god who is just there to give what the worshipper wants, with no ethical demands, a godlet who promises material prosperity without a call to practice justice. They also have made an idol, a small-g god.

 

It is very easy to violate this commandment without carving a statue and putting it up on a pedestal. All we have to do is to take something that is far less than God and lift it up as an object of worship. People worship some strange things: ... the race of which one happens to be a member, ... the nation of which one happens to be a citizen, ... the gender of which one happens to be a member, ... scientific and technological progress, ... market economics, ... other economic systems, ... theological systems, ... and so on. People worship the strangest things, with some disastrous results.

 

And this may well explain the comments at the end of this commandment, about future generations being punished for the sins of an earlier generation. When people make an idol out of a race, or a nation, or an economic system, or some notion of progress, the result of the idolatry causes a sense of resentment on the part of those who are damaged or, at least, excluded by idolising the race, nation, or system. This resentment often affects events years, decades, or centuries later. Historically, a future generation is punished for the sins of its ancestors.

 

As I said, people worship the strangest things. This commandment challenges us not to cut God down to size, but to affirm the one Living God that has a far greater love and concern than any small-g godlet of our own making.

 

Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;...

 

You 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. You 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, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

 

 

In the first post in this series of articles, there is a general introduction to the series.