If you will recall in my homily the week following Ash Wednesday, I pointed out that if we set out on the Christian way there is a new scale of loyalties. Our relationship to Jesus Christ is a relationship of love and there is a certain exclusiveness in love. When a person begins the Christian way, that person must realize that Jesus Christ must have first place in his or her life. Implicit in that is the following question, “Are you willing to pay the price? What is your share of the cross?” In order to answer it, we need to first ask the question, “What is demanded of me?” Jesus admonished his followers to “Count the cost!”
We have read and heard all too often challenges to our nation’s doctrine of Separation of Church and State. Neoconservatives have pushed to install the Ten Commandments onto public property and have defied court edicts to remove this symbol where installed. It seems ironic that legislators, who have been the loudest in support of having the Ten Commandments in government buildings, when asked if they could recite them, were not able to do so.
This is not to say that being able to recite them is a true test of one’s religious faith; nor is the ability to recite the Bill of Rights or sing our National Anthem a sign of one’s loyalty.
However, I think it is well to look at matters which are the bases of our core beliefs and refresh our thoughts lest they become rusty and no longer useful.
Our Lord recognized the importance of the Commandments and particularly the First Commandment.
There are many attitudes towards the Ten Commandments, most of them hostile. If we were to be open and honest, I suspect that many of us would see the Commandments as the words of a tyrant…harsh laws that place before us an impossible goal of moral perfection.
But is this true…what do the Commandments say to us today? Are they still central to Christian living, despite what the “new moralists” are saying? Are we justified in making them the point at which we try to relate the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the important ethical questions of our day?
Joy Davidman*, the wife of the late C.S. Lewis, writes, “much of the sickness of our age comes of regarding the law as a set of narrow prohibitions instead of a positive command to courageous life and the love of God.” Rather than seeing the Commandments as a negative restraint on life, I hope to be able to show that they set us free to discover the best in life. If taken seriously, they look more like grace than law, more like freedom than bondage. G. Campbell Morgan**, the great Bible scholar, profoundly observed, “…with God, law is the expression of love.”
The Ten Commandments do not allow us to become lost in generalities… they are specific and are personal. Through them we hear the voice of the living God, addressing us in a thoroughly pointed and direct way about the concrete problems of our lives. They are intended to point us constantly towards a pattern of life that is both healthy for ourselves and helpful for the world. The Commandments can become guidelines for the fine art of living, the road map for Christians beyond the Resurrection.
Most people, when they think of the Ten Commandments, think of it as a series of “shalls and shall nots.” It is seldom noted that the Ten Commandments begin with an affirmation of love. Whenever the Jews looked at the Ten Commandments they saw first the Exodus, the symbol of God’s love.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage"(Exodus 20:2).And so it must be for the Christian community. We too must see God’s law with eyes that have seen His love in Jesus Christ. For us the preamble to the Commandments must always be,
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life”(John3:16).
With God, the law follows His acts of redemptive love. His love for man is too great to allow Him to send man into the world without His divine guidance and counsel. The law is God’s love expressed in a concrete way, so that man might be tenderly and lovingly led into those patterns of living that result in the fullest realization of life.
The Commandments are a call to restrain the things in our nature which lead to personal destruction rather than joy, to death rather than to life. They are a reminder of a basic truth… that the enemy of life is most often to be found within us. Paul was speaking of this inner evil when he said of his own nature, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15).
Most of the great evils of the world come from within man, from the outworking of his nature. Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander”(Matthew 15:19). Hardly a day goes by that we do not read about people who have lost loved ones through some man made events. Daily drive-by and road-rage shootings in all corners of the Los Angeles area and around the state; and within our memory, the massacre at Virginia Tech University, the Columbine High School in Colorado, the Jewish Care Center in our San Fernando Valley, the hospital in Anaheim, the Wedgewood Baptist Church near Fort Worth; the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City; the multi-pronged 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon in our nation’s capital; and the high-jacked airliner over Pennsylvania; the terrorist attacks in London, Madrid, Indonesia and other incidents around the world***; the massacre of the little school children two years ago in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, PA. Many of those seeking closure over the loss of loved ones are having to relive the horrors as they are unfolded once again in investigative public hearings.
I can envision many of those who lost loved ones saying. “I am so bitter that my bitterness is destroying me.” And so it will unless it is restrained. It is human for one to be bitter in a great personal loss, but they will only survive if that bitterness is conquered.
A newspaper article following the carnage in 1999 at the Wedgewood Baptist Church demonstrated the spiritual strength of that congregation in dealing with their loss. Over the front door to the church hung a banner: “Let the healing begin.” The funeral service opened with a prayer “…that many may be saved by the lives and deaths of these martyrs.” Their pastor, Al Merideth exhorted his congregation “…to focus on your faith, to get your mind off the pain, and just hang in there. Don’t expend too much energy trying to understand what happened…the other night. Believe that our loved ones are with the Lord today.” The mother of one of the young seminary interns said, “We are not angry and we have peace that God is in control. While she was with us, she was a joy and a delight.”
The Amish people live a very simple life…they do not have electricity, they travel by horse and buggy. Many of the things we consider necessities of life, our radio and television, computer, etc. they have no need. They do not accept outside charity and care for their own. In this instance, however, they have accepted money to pay for the medical care since they do not have insurance. They bore wonderful witness of their Christian faith. In addition to providing immediate care for the families of the victims, they also brought the family of the assailant into the fold of care and requested that money be set up in a fund to care for the widow and children of the man who created the carnage.
The Commandments are a call from God to restrain our natures. Doing what comes naturally is alright for animals, but not for men and women who have been created in the image of God and who are destined in Christ to be sons and daughters of God. They have a living faith to carry them through deep waters of life. Those words and actions from Texas and Nickel Mines demonstrate a people living out their faith in the face of a most personal tragedy.
The first tendency of our human nature which God speaks to is our inclination to turn from the worship of the One true God to the worship of a multitude of false Gods.
“You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).Our world is filled with gods that beckon to us...that seek our allegiance… that attempt to lure us away from God. God gave man freedom of choice.
There can be no such thing as goodness if we are not free. Goodness lies in the choice between the higher or lower things. Sin is the deliberate action of man in disobedience of God. Man’s perpetual tendency is to move away from God towards the gods of the world. But God will have no part of the drifting…He commands a total loyalty.
God entered the world Himself in the person of Jesus to reveal His nature. When we answer the claim of Jesus, we are answering the claim of God. When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment, He said the first: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”(Matthew22:37). God will accept nothing less, for He knows what many have yet to learn; that in turning from God we turn from LIFE to death but in turning to God we turn from death to LIFE. Amen.
References: Adapted “The Fine Art of Living;” 092299, 062304, 110806, 041107;
The Holy Bible, (RSV).
*Joy Davidson (1915-1960): A radical Jewish convert to orthodox Christianity; author of “Smoke on the Mountain” and award winning poet, “War Poems of the United Nations;” died of cancer July 13, 1960.
** G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945): An English Congregational minister who had been rejected by the Methodist Church; colleague of Dwight L. Moody; renowned Bible scholar; from “The Ten Commandments,” ‘The severity of the loving God is the necessary sequence of His infinite love
***Nicholas Berg (Beheaded in Iraq May 11, 2004)
Daniel Pearl (Beheaded in Pakistan 2002)
Pan Am Flt. 103 (Destroyed over Scotland by North African terrorists)
Marine Barracks (Destroyed in Beirut by terrorists)
U.S. Embassy (Destroyed in Kenya by terrorists)
U.S. Embassy (Destroyed in Tanzania by terrorists)
U.S.S. Cole (Attacked in Middle East waters by terrorists)
