The Words
Third Sunday in Lent - March 23, 2003
By Father James
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19:7-14
Romans 7:13-25
John 2:13-22
The Ten Commandments or Decalogue are so familiar to Christians that to speak of them is perhaps to excite only yawns. But they are this morning the subject material of our lessons, and I invite you to follow the progression of the commandments either in the First Lesson in the insert or within the Book of Common Prayer, page 317.
The commandments are prefaced with the identification of who God is, “I am the Lord your God;” the One who set you free from the slavery of Egypt. This God was known to the Israelites; they could point back to days of slavery and know that this God had cared for them, saved them, redeemed them from the terrors and hopelessness of slavery and oppression and given them the joy of freedom and self-determination. They would remember that the commandments to come were not meant to re-enslave, but to order their freedom.
Once we get beyond those commandments, which refer directly to our duty to God, those that say:
Thou shalt have none other gods but me,
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image,
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain,
Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.
we come to those words, which refer to our duty to one another.
Honor thy father and thy mother,
Thou shalt do no murder,
Thou shalt not commit adultery,
Thou shalt not steal,
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,
Thou shalt not covet.
These six words are the ones we normally think of when we think of the Decalogue. These six make up the rules we set in our homes, in our institutions, in our communities, in our nations. They embody universal ethical principles without which civilized intercourse cannot endure.
These duties to others are also the easiest part of the Decalogue. We can accomplish them – or can we?
Honor thy father and thy mother. We teach this to our children, hoping they won’t forget when we are old. I think usually this commandment is understood to refer to the duty of young children. Believe me, from their young age, the children of the ancient Jewish people held their parents in great respect. The parents saw to that. But the point of the commandment was survival, survival of the family, the clan and the nation. In the nations of the East, 3000-4000 years ago; as parents became old they were often neglected, ousted and sent off to die. The commandment strikes at that issue.
My maternal grandmother was 94 years old when I visited her some years ago. She lived with my aunt, her daughter, and I thought, how wonderful that she had yet no fear of the nursing home. There she was, at home, free to join in the laughter and the tears, a part of all that surrounded her. She had many more visitors, because people do not dread to visit in a familiar home. And her daughter was modeling for her children, that parents live out their lives in their children’s home.
Thou shalt do no murder. Life was cheap among the Bedouin bands. Is it less today? Adultery and the need to hold the family together; need I comment? Stealing, false witness, covetousness? Ask a lawyer!
Familiar we are with these six. Are we able to keep them ourselves, in our societies, in our nations? We only prove, as people have at all times, the impossibility of upholding the very laws we value.
As to loving God, heart, soul and mind, as to having no idols, as to keeping the Sabbath, even the Lord’s Day, as a day solely for remembering the goodness of God, you don’t need to ask a lawyer, or even a priest, but only yourself. We not only fall short, it often appears that we do not really even hold them as goals anymore. We love God as we love motherhood, the flag and apple pie. It is in the interest of family and the community, albeit a little quaint, but nice, as long as love for God does not interfere with our social life, our business, our sleep, our school activities, our pleasures and our individual routines.
St. Paul understood this pretty well, I suspect. He found himself in the same predicament. “We know that the law is spiritual,” he said, “But I am not spiritual. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Have you ever had that experience? I have. St. Paul recognized that the law set up a standard of which he fell so far short, that without help he was lost. “Wretched one that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
But St. Paul had gone one step beyond most of us, I suspect. He had become intensely aware of his own sinfulness. Some of us wonder if the word sin is not just another quaint word no longer applicable to us today. We tend, rather, to parrot blithely; “I’m O.K., you’re O.K.” “I’m doing the best I can.” “Surely God, if there is a God, will understand that.” “No one can ask for more.”
Jesus was angry with those who set their own priorities above those set by the commandments. He drove them out of the temple with a whip he had fashioned from cords. God help us if he were to stride through here this morning. Blessed Jesus meek and mild? Hardly. I doubt I know a man with the personal human courage of Jesus of Nazareth. But he must have felt Paul’s futility; he too must have realized that this anger accomplished nothing. And perhaps that realization, the memory of his great tirade through the temple urged him on toward death, death for us hawkers, instead of anger toward us.
He realized, as did St. Paul, as do we, that we need a savior more than we need a judge.
The psalm appointed for today expresses beautifully the Jewish attitude toward the Law, the Torah, the teaching of God. We can assume that Jesus and Paul shared that response:
The law is perfect and revives the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are just.
The fear of the Lord is clean.
The judgments of the Lord are true, more to be desired than gold.
The law expresses God’s very character.
The law was God in action. In action leading a people out of the land of Egypt, in action teaching a band of Bedouins what it meant to be the chosen of God. God in action at Mt. Sinai in cloud and fire and thunder.
To desire the Torah was to desire God Himself – for the law embodied God. The law was a form of grace, the law was God, and before the law the devout always knew they were human, sinful and unacceptable.
Franz Kafka tells the story of one who stands before the law:
Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. “It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.” Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: “If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.” These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose, and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: “I am only taking it to keep you from thinking that you have omitted anything.” During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly, later as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his years-long contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper’s mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker of whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man’s disadvantage. “What do you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, “so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.” (From Before the Law)
Jesus, that man who knew the heart of God. Jesus, that man who was the word of God. Jesus, that man who was the love of God. Jesus learned through the exercising of his temper at those in the temple that the rest of us need a savior more than a doorkeeper or a judge.
A few years ago, I wrote to my spiritual director a long letter. I needed to write that letter, but it was hurried and not as carefully considered, as I would have preferred. In that letter, I attempted to describe where I was, what was happening to me. I displayed my ignorance, and I knew it. I disagreed with some previous recommendations and then after the letter was gone, I repented of some of the things I wrote; for from a book I had panned came some bits of life I had not dreamed existed.
I needed to write the letter and I needed my director to be able to accept the “me” portrayed therein, but after it was written and posted, I regretted my urgency. No answer came in a week, and something in me said, “write and say you were wrong.” Two weeks passed and still no response. I knew that she didn’t know how to respond to such a letter. After the third week I knew that our relationship would have to end, because spiritual direction by mail is, at best, difficult. At four weeks, I was wondering whom else I could find in the area. Then, five weeks came, and a response in the mail. I dreaded what I might read and I let the letter lie overnight until morning, when I could be alone to face whatever it brought.
I opened that letter carefully because it mattered. She had been busy. My ignorance was not unacceptable at all – it was corrected, yes, but no matter. My judgments of earlier direction were matters of value. I was still acceptable. Thankfulness flooded my being, as did tears of joy.
Of course, this says a lot about who I am. It speaks volumes about my need for acceptance from mother figures, from father figures. It says worlds about my human condition, and I wonder, reverently, if it doesn’t speak pertinently to yours. You see, we need acceptance more than we need criticism. We need love more than Torah. We need a savior more than we need a judge.
The law is spiritual, while we are not. It is important for us to see ourselves in the light of who God is, but that will never lead us to Him. Like Kafka’s peasant, we will dawdle our life away for fear of rejection, for fear of what we cannot see, unless we catch a glimpse of the God who saves, who loves us without qualification. Jesus caught that vision and it led him to death on a cross asking forgiveness for those who did not know, no anger there, only acceptance – even for the thief dying beside him.
The Law remains, but Jesus has shown us a way through its maze of standards to the loving side of the God it tries in words to portray – the God who, undeserving as we are, grants us entrance to his presence and receives us as loved family.