It’s no wonder that Psalm 19 is paired in our lectionary today with the Ten Commandments. As the stars structure the night sky, the commandments have become the moral structure for so much of our world. We might not describe them like the psalmist does, as better than gold and sweeter than honey. But we enjoy their “rightness” and their clarity. I remember memorizing the Ten Commandments as a young child in Sunday School. I have grown up with their clear “shalls” and “shalt nots” putting their stern stamp on my moral fiber.
The 10 Commandments don’t just provide us with order and measure in our personal lives. In the Christian West, they moved long ago into the realm of civil order. In the 9th century CE, Alfred the Great prefaced his code of Saxon law with them, and the Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Hobbes used them in formulating his understanding of the social contract. Given their structuring function and their tie to our laws, it’s no wonder that some Christians today want to post them in the local courthouses. It’s not just the history of the Commandments that we proclaim, however, when we clamor to make them a public monument. We are using them as a cultural shorthand, as a symbol and an icon of God’s influence in our society.[1]
“There is something greater than the moral relativism of the post-modern world,” these signs proudly proclaim. “This house, this city, this court is grounded in God’s immutable Law. So there!”
The louder the opposition protests that religious statements don’t belong in public places, the more some Christians insist that the presence of the 10 Commandments are all that stand between us and chaos. They have become a cultural symbol of order and measure.
Order and measure. How we seem to long for it. The policeman Javert, in the musical drama Les Mis, sings a song that uses Psalm 19’s imagery: “Stars/ In your multitudes/ Scarce to be counted/ Filling the darkness/ With order and light./ You are the sentinels/ Silent and sure/ Keeping watch in the night/ … You know your place in the sky/ You hold your course and your aim/ And each in your season/ Returns and returns/ And is always the same.” Javert is obsessed with order, with the order of the law. For him, a criminal like Jean Valjean, the man for whom he spends his life hunting, will always be guilty, no matter how Valjean has repented and reformed his life. For the lawman Javert, grace and mercy are signs of weakness. They upset the balance of reward and punishment. As Javert continues in his song: “And so it has been and so it is written/ On the doorway to paradise/ That those who falter and those who fall/ Must pay the price!/ Lord let me find him/ That I may see him/ Safe behind bars/ I will never rest/ Till then/ This I swear/ This I swear by the stars!”[2]
I wonder, though … Do the stars require such a vow? What the psalmist loves about God’s commands is not really the order that they bring to earth. What the psalmist loves is the trusting relationship with God that the commands teach us. It’s the divine voice in the heavens that comforts him. It is the glory of God that shines in the stars—not just their order and precision. The psalmist loves the stars because they reflect the light of their trustworthy Creator. How easy it is to latch on to the Ten Commandments, posting them in public places, or even just using them individually as a measuring stick. We use them to measure our rightness of our souls. (Or even more often, to measure the souls of our neighbors!) How easy it is to hold onto the commandments for clarity. How challenging it is to live deeply into the trusting relationships that they imply.
We need to remember that the structure that the 10 Commandments give us is not based on reward and punishment. The only mention of punishment is found in God’s warning that God is a jealous God. God doesn’t need to use sticks and carrots to motivate us to hear God’s words. The motivating factor is trust. It’s found in the recognition of God’s authority as our Creator. It’s found in remembering all the times that God has saved us, all the times that God has been with us in our troubles.[3]
Indeed, in the original Hebrew, God gives us not ten “commandments” but ten “words,” ten “words of instruction.” These words are the only words spoken directly by God to all of God’s people together. While a commandment can be barked out and thrown at us as an order to be obeyed, words of instruction are teachings. They are heard through the building of relationship. “Now that I have brought you up out of slavery in Egypt,” God explains to God’s people in today’s reading from Exodus, “it is time for you to learn how to live in covenant with me. Here’s who I am; here’s how time should unfold in this community; and here’s how you should relate with one another and with me in this world that we share.”[4]
First, here is who I am: I am your creator and sustainer. You mustn’t allow anything to come between you and me. I alone can satisfy your longing. As the creator of all that is, I can’t be manipulated by your words or by any magical incantations of my mysterious name. Nor can my name be used to show that I am on your side.
Secondly, here is how you are to structure your time: As the sun crosses from day into night, so will your time with me follow a healthy pattern. Your time will be ordered for the building up of relationship, with me and with your neighbor. Right relationship involves participating in a time of rest, the Sabbath built into creation itself. You also need to keep the story going between generations, so that wisdom can pass unimpeded from parent to child forever.
And finally, here is how you are to order your common space: This community space must not be a space for the destruction of human life through killing. Neither must it be for the destruction of family bonds through adultery. No one, not even the powerful, may take what does not belong to them. Justice must reign, with impartial judges and credible witnesses who will protect the cry of the vulnerable among you. You are to be satisfied with all that I have given you, and your care for your neighbor must show in your actions. It must fill even the secret recesses of your hearts..[5]
In our children’s Godly Play story of the 10 Commandments, the commandments are called “the 10 Best Ways." And when the storyteller has finished laying them out before the children, all of the pieces together form a heart. The Ten Words are a gift from God, a gift of love, a life-giving gift. In Les Mis, it isn’t Javert who best exemplifies the right relationship described in the 10 Commandments. It’s Jean Valjean, the redeemed criminal, who turns from hatred to live a life of grace and love.
As a young girl, I learned to love the stars because I saw them from the secure perch of my father’s arms. We too have a secure perch in the arms of our Heavenly Father, cradled in God’s 10 Best Ways. As Christians, we have been adopted into God’s Covenant and are heirs of God’s promises. May we rejoice in the glory of the stars, free from fear and recrimination. May we work to live lives of right relationship with God and with one another.
[1]Patrick Miller, The Ten Commandments (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 2.
[2] http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/lesmiserables/stars.htm
[3] The Torah: A Woman’s Commentary (New York: Women of Reform Judaism, 2008), 416.
[4] Martin Buber, quoted in Johanna Van Wijk-Bos, Making the Wise Simple (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 2005), 160.
[5] Much of this interpretation of the commandments is found in: W. Sibley Towner, “Exegetical Perspective on Exodus 20:1-17 in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 78-79.
No comments:
Post a Comment