Exodus 19.4-6 (read before Exodus 20.1-17)
4You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, 6but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”
Rev. Steve Goodier tells a story about a mother and a daughter trying to navigate the difficult years of teenaged rebellion. The girl’s rebelliousness seemed to grow greater with each passing month. Finally, the situation reached full blown crisis level when she was arrested for drunken driving. Her mother was called to the police station and she went—filled with sadness, worry and anger—to bail her daughter out of jail.
They didn’t speak until the next afternoon.
Mom broke the tension by giving her a small gift- wrapped box. Her daughter nonchalantly opened it and found a little rock inside.
She rolled her eyes and said, “Cute, Mom, what’s this for?”
“Read the card,” Mom instructed.
Her daughter took the card out of the envelope and read it. Tears started to trickle down her cheeks. She got up and lovingly hugged her mom as the card fell to the floor.
On the card were these words: “This rock is more than 200,000,000 years old. That is how long it will take before I give up on you.” [anonymous story told be Steve Goodier, http://stevegoodier.blogspot.com/2012/08/no-strings-attached.html]
This mother did not say, “I will love you if…” That’s not love, because love has no conditions. Love will not be revoked, not be taken back if you fail in some way. She loved her daughter, no ifs, ands or buts about it. Her love for her daughter was so deep and so true that she would never give up on her.
Perhaps at first blush it is not obvious what the connection might be between this story and our reading from Exodus. After all, aren’t the Ten Commandments a set of rules that the people of Israel must follow as their end of the covenant made with God at Sinai? Often, we do treat these commandments as stipulations, things we must do to please God and guarantee the continuation of the covenant. We think of the covenant as a contract between two parties, and the commandments as our end of the bargain. But this is the wrong way to think about covenants.
Contracts are essentially self-focused. Two parties enter into a contract, each agreeing to give as much as necessary to fulfill the goal of the contract, but no more. Each party is seeking their own benefit; there is mutual benefit to be sure, but each party is primarily focused on what they get out of the deal. Thus, if one party fails to uphold its end of the bargain, contracts can, generally speaking, be broken. In particular cases, this is, of course, subject to the stipulations of the contract and to relevant laws. Nonetheless, breach of contract can bring an end to the relationship. The failure of one party to fulfill their obligations voids the contract and removes the other party’s obligation to fulfill their end of the bargain.
But covenants are different. Covenants cannot be so easily broken, because covenants are not dependent on the actions of the parties, so much as they are dependent on the character of the parties and their positive disposition to one another.
Think of the mother in the opening story. What governs her response to her daughter? Is their relationship a contract? If so, she has every right and reason to terminate the relationship. But this is not what she does, because that is not the nature of their relationship. She is bound to her daughter in a covenant of love. Her commitment is not dependent upon her daughter’s actions, but upon her character and her love.
I believe that we should view the Ten Commandments as part of a covenant of love and not read them as contractual obligations that we must uphold or else God will not uphold God’s side of the agreement. The Ten Commandments are not the conditions of the Covenant; they are not the cause of God’s graciousness toward God’s people. Our observing the Ten Commandments does not cause God to love us and it certainly does not obligate God to bless us or to fulfill our wishes.
The Ten Commandments, and indeed, the entire Mosaic Law, is Israel’s response, and our response, to God’s graciousness. Notice how the Commandments are introduced: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…” The Covenant between God and Israel already exists, before the giving of any commandments and before any act on the part of Moses, Israel or their ancestors. The Covenant begins with God’s act of choosing Israel. It was God who called Abraham and Sarah and declared that they would become the grandparents of many nations and that because of them, and through them, all peoples of the earth would be blessed. It was God who heard the groaning of the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt and, remembering the covenant with Abraham, Issac and Jacob, determined to free them. [Ex 2.24] It was God who called to Moses from the burning bush and commissioned him to go back to Egypt and confront Pharaoh. It was God who convinced Pharoah to let the people go; God who brought them through the Reed Sea and saved them from the Egyptian army; God who led them in the wilderness and feed them with manna from heaven. Before giving them the commandments, God reminds them of all that God has done for them. It is as if God says, “I have called you. I have delivered you. I have led you. I have already, graciously, committed to be in covenant with you. In response, here is how you should live.”
So, the commandments aren’t the conditions for the covenant. They are the response. Because God chooses in the freedom of love to enter into relationship with us, we, God’s people throughout the ages, respond by seeking to follow God’s guidance, to walk in God’s ways, and to live according to God’s will.
John Calvin pointed out this truth. The Ten Commandments serve as a sort of guidebook, showing us how to live as the people of God, how to live in response to God’s grace. They are, in the Biblical phrase, “a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.” They direct and instruct us how we should live as the community of the Covenant and Christ.[1]
Of course, we never fully succeed in keeping the commandments and living in the way pleasing to God.
But thankfully, the Covenant is not conditional. It is not contingent on our obedience, our goodness, our righteousness. [Barbara Brown Taylor, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2, 75] If it was, God would have long since washed the Divine hands of the arrangement. But like the mother in our opening story, God does not give up on us because of our unfaithfulness and disobedience. God is eternally faithful to God’s promises and to those whom God loves. It will be 200,000,000 years times 200,000,000 years and more before God gives up on us and stops loving us. The Covenant is an expression of God’s free choice and loving commitment; it is an expression of who God is and what God is like. The One who choose us in the first place will not abandon us, because God is faithful, trustworthy and God’s very character is that of steadfast love that endures forever.
Thus, the commandments are given, not to restrict or confine us, but to guide us so that we might thrive and have abundant life. They are meant to free us from those things like pride, a false sense of self-sufficiency or self-importance, anger, the desire for vengeance, lust, greed and the like—those things which keep us from fulfilling our full human potential. They are like fences on the edge of steep cliffs that steer us clear of danger. Susan Robb has a friend who offers a similar analogy for the rules parents establish for their children. She suggests such rules to “walking across a narrow bridge over an expanse of turbulent water. A bridge with guardrails gives you a greater sense of security than one without them. And,” she says, “in a way, that security gives you freedom. It reduces the likelihood of your losing your balance and falling off the narrow bridge. You’re free to walk across that bridge without fear [because you’re free from danger]. You have something to hold on to as you make your way.” [Robb, Remember, p. 38]
God’s commandments are like this, steering us away from destructive ways of living and thus freeing us to live more abundant, meaningful and fulfilling lives. For example, it doesn’t take much reflection to realize that “coveting a neighbor’s oxen, lawnmower, car, or spouse does not make for a happy and healthy community, an abundant life, or a good example to the world.” [48] Coveting leads to greed, jealousy and rivalry and can result in antagonistic feelings, the rupture of relationships, theft, adultery and even violence. Thus, says Robb, “God delivers these commandments…to offer us a gift, an opportunity to grow in our relationship with God and with each other as God’s children.” [47] The Commandments are words that give life and freedom.
Thus, these commandments call us to a way of life that reflects God’s own character. The Ten Commandments correspond to the two Great Commandments cited by Christ. The first four commandments are concerned with our vertical relationship to our Creator: they deal with love of God. The last six relate to our horizontal relationships to other humans: they deal with love of neighbor. These are sometimes referred to as the two tables of the law. Neither table is complete without the other: love of God must be expressed in love of neighbor and love of neighbor must be grounded in love of God. The Ten Commandments, and all of the Laws, are intended to be guidance steering God’s people away from the ways of death and leading them into the paths of life. And as they walk those paths of life, they will grow ever more into the image of the One who is the Source and Goal of life.
Doug Bratt illustrates this point with a story about an EMT named Jack Casey: A dentist had extracted EMT Jack Casey’s tooth under general anesthetic when he was a child. The procedure had terrified him. However, a nurse told Jack, “Don’t worry; I’ll be right here beside you no matter what happens.” When he awoke from surgery he found her still standing right next to him.
Nearly twenty years later people called Jack’s ambulance crew to the scene of a terrible accident. Jack crawled inside the flipped pick-up’s cab to pull the driver out of the wreckage.
Since gasoline was dripping all over the place, there was a real danger of fire. The driver kept telling Jack how afraid he was. So Jack told him, “Look, don’t worry. I’m not going to abandon you.”
After Jack had rescued him, the shocked driver told him, “You were an idiot. My truck could have exploded and burned up both of us.” Jack answered that he felt he just couldn’t leave him, just as his nurse had earlier felt she couldn’t leave him. [Doug Bratt, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/lent-3b-2/?type=old_testament_lectionary]
Jack Casey was imitating, imaging the nurse who had shown him such compassion and faithfulness. In the same way, when we show care and love for our neighbors, we are imitating God who compassionately and faithfully cares for us. As Gerald Janzen puts it, in living out the Commandments which guide our horizontal relationships with our fellow humans, we “image God [by honoring] God’s image in one another.” [Exodus, Westminster Bible Companion, 149] So, as Doug Bratt points out, more than simply imitating the nurse, “Jack Casey’s faithfulness gave the accident victim, his ambulance crew and others a glimpse of the God who stays right beside God’s people to the very end of measured time and beyond.” [Doug Bratt, Ibid.]
God is abundantly gracious and eternally faithful. God’s covenant is everlasting and God’s steadfast love endures forever. God’s commandments are gifts to God’s people, offering guidance that revives the soul, bringing joy to our hearts and leading us in the ways of life. Let us respond to the God who first loved us and first reached out to make covenant with us, by keeping the commandments, so that we may learn to better love God with all that we have and all that we are and to better love our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.
[1] This is the third of three uses for the Commandments identified by Calvin. The first two are: 1) they act as a mirror showing us our sin and thus our need for God’s grace; 2) they act as a fence, in that the commandments are a good guide for civil laws governing our common life and restricting our actions against each other. I drew this information from an old sermon which cited no source. I believe the source may have been Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2.