Sermon: "What Freedom Looks Like" (Preface to the 10 Commandments), September 12, 2021

Preacher: The Rev. Ryan Slifka
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17

Introduction to our Sermon Series on the Ten Commandments.

Well, here we are. Today is the first day in our eleven week series on the Ten Commandments. We're going to spend a Sunday on each commandment until we've done them all.

Now, my guess is that some of you may not be as excited about a series like this as I am.

I told my completely irreligious neighbour, for example, that I was doing a series on the Ten Commandments, and they sort of scrunched up their nose and said “okay...?” and then proceeded to quickly change the subject.

My friend's reaction was mild compared to a Wisconsin man I read about recently.[i] He was given a deferred jail sentence for removing a big stone copy of the commandments from the local courthouse. He tied a big chain around them and sped away with his pick up truck, commandments in tow. His defence was that the Commandments constituted a “public nuisance.” As a specifically religious document, this had no place on government property, a violation of the separation of church and state. An example of religion weaseling its way into what should be a secular, neutral, legal system. A simple scrunched nose wouldn't have properly expressed his displeasure, clearly. It was a 400 horsepower-type situation.

What's so wrong with the Ten Commandments? Why do they elicit such a negative reaction?

Part of it is the ardent secularism and skepticism of our age, embodied by our truck-driving tablet thief. In this view, religion itself is divisive, dangerous. And the Commandments are—at best—a relic of a primitive past that we've now, thankfully, transcended.

Another part is that some of us have experienced them as a kind of weapon. To beat people up with, or manipulate them. “Do this, or else.” Someone once called this “teeth-grittin' Christianity.”[ii] “Thou shalt not” can be an easy excuse to accuse, shun or condemn. The Commandments embody a self-righteous legalism. Cruelty and hypocrisy easily follow suit.

And yet another part is that as a culture we hold high a very particular view of individual freedom. We are culturally libertarian, in that we see things like laws or commandments—especially religious ones—as impinging on our freedom, which is the freedom from external restraints, the ability to do and act as we wish. In this view, the Commandments are not only outdated and irrelevant for modern life. They are oppressive at worst, stifling at best.

Outdated, judgmental, oppressive. The Commandments won't exactly win you dinner party companions these days.

Now, as Protestant Christians, this shouldn't exactly surprise us. Our particular branch of Christianity finds its roots in the Reformation of the 16th century. One of our core convictions is a constant return to close readings of scripture. Because we know that—fallible, self-centered human beings as we are—we can always take a good thing and twist it into something not-so-good. Perhaps most especially the things of God.

To that end, this morning I want to make it very clear: the Commandments are indeed good. The great Reformer Martin Luther—who kicked off the Reformation—said that the Ten Commandments are a summary of everything a Christian needs to know about salvation… along with the Lord's Prayer and Apostles' Creed.[iii] From the beginning their format has made them easy to remember and internalize. Our grandparents in faith often held on to them with holy reverence and fearful awe. But they understood them as fundamentally good. Good because they come from a good God, whose purpose is our good. And indeed the good of all creation.

Now, where do we get this idea? Well, it's all there in what scholars refer to as “the Preface.” Now, just like in any book you pick up, a novel, or history book, or poetry, the preface sets out the purpose of that work. It tells you what the point of it is, what it's trying to accomplish. Same case with the Commandments. They have a preface, and it goes like this:

“God spoke these words,” it says. “God spoke these words. I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Everything else that comes after—each Commandment—is meant to be interpreted and understood in light of this statement. “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

If you know the story of the Exodus you'll know that God meets up with Moses in the first place with the singular intent of freeing Moses' people from slavery in Egypt. Four-hundred years of back-breaking labour. Torture, hunger, degradation. All the suffering, all the pain, the oppression. The remarkable thing is that God comes to Moses and says simply that “I have heard the groaning of my people. I will come down, I will free them.” And it all happens, plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the destruction of the Egyptian army. But the truly remarkable thing is that the Israelites have done nothing to conjure God. They haven't had to be good, holy, or righteous. God has chosen them, not the other way around. God moves out of compassion, God moves in response to their suffering.

So this isn't some cruel and capricious Creator simply laying down the law so he can crack some skulls when people step outta line. Or some kinda immature parent who plays favourites with the good kids.  The God who gives the Law on Mount Sinai is the God who hears the cries of those who suffer. Who sees those who are imprisoned and—without any merit, deserving or earning on their part—acts to liberate them. To deliver them from their captivity.

Which is to say we shouldn't understand the commandments as burdensome, or oppressive. The Israelites aren't trading one kind of slavery with Pharaoh in Egypt for another kind of slavery in the wilderness with God. This God's about breaking chains, not forging new ones. Relieving burdens, not increasing them. This is a God who cares about human beings, who is moved by their predicament, and is actively invested in their freedom. “I am the God who brought you out of Egypt.” This is who God is.

This is the story the preface tells. This God isn't about tying a few extra slabs to your already overloaded pickup truck, so to speak. This God is a god of freedom.

Now, again, our culture sees freedom only as the absence of rules or regulations. Some call this the “libertarian” view of freedom. Philosophers often call this “negative” freedom. Freedom from restraint, freedom from outside interference. Conservatives generally apply this economically, whereas liberals apply it socially. So it might seem a little strange to us that this God who is apparently all about freedom celebrates it by carving a list of ten “dos and don'ts” into solid rock. Doesn't quite compute.

But the Commandments imagine freedom differently. Rather than negative freedom, Biblical freedom would be termed by philosophers as positive freedom.[iv] Rather than freedom from Biblical freedom is—generally—the freedom to. The freedom to be, the freedom to act according to our true nature.[1] The great 5th century pastor and teacher, St. Augustine referred to the Commandments as “the Christian's charter of freedom.”[v] Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that the commandment of God “not only forbids, but also permits: not only binds, but also sets free.” Bonhoeffer, who died in a Nazi prison camp after using his Christian freedom to join a plot to remove Hitler from power.[vi] One theologian, the late Paul Lehmann, said it like this: “the tonality of [the Ten Commandments] does not sound like, 'this you must do, or else.' It sounds, rather, like 'Seeing that you are who you are, this is the way ahead, the way of being and living in the truth, the way of freedom.'”[vii] The Commandments paint a picture as to what life with this freedom-loving God is like.

Think about the commandments themselves.

Remember how back in Egypt you were makin' nothing but bricks sun up to sun down, breaking your back until it killed you. No such thing as a stat holiday. Because I brought you outta there, you don't have to work yourselves to death anymore. You're gonna have a sabbath day. Rest is gonna be built right into the calendar and the very fabric of creation.

Back in Egypt old people were expendable once they couldn't lift a shovel anymore. You're different. Because I brought you out of Egypt, fathers and mothers will be honoured with pride of place, for their service and their wisdom.

Back there just about anything could get you killed. Your masters were arbitrary and cruel with their punishments, men and women were mowed down like grass. Since I brought you outta there, though, human life to you is gonna be so valuable that you'll stop at almost nothing to preserve, protect, and promote this precious gift.

Back there your wives, daughters, and mothers were the objects of rape and abuse. Your whole lives were a massive theft of labour, and you'd steal from eachother when there were barely any scraps to spread around. Your whole lives revolved around the lie that you were treated like less because you were less, and you spent all your lives fantasizing and dreaming that you had just a little bit more.

That's what life was like in slavery, but you are children of the living God… and you were borne out Egypt on eagles' wings because you were born for more than this. On account of who I am and what I've done for you, you not longer have to live and act like slaves. And instead you're gonna be the people of fidelity, generosity, honesty, dignity and deep contentment that I made you to be… when I thought you up before space and time were even a thing. Trust in me, walk with me in my way and only then you'll know what true freedom actually is.”[viii]

The Commandments paint a picture as to the kind of life that’s possible with this freedom-loving God. Then or now.

It’s a life where we don’t have to scramble every moment of every day, but can take rest for granted.

A life where the elderly and anyone else who can’t take care of themselves doesn’t have to be discarded, or isolated, but given true pride of place as the wisdom and memory of the community.

A life where we aren’t driven by our most violent impulses, but deeply formed by grace and forgiveness for just and unjust alike.

A life where sex is not a commodity or means to an end, but the gateway to intimacy and familial love. A life where we don’t have to steal, or hoard to much, nor fear that there will never be enough, because in God’s world there’s always enough to go around.

The Commandments paint a picture as to the kind of life that’s possible with this freedom-loving God. Right here, right now.

Because, friends, at their heart, the commandments are a gift, they are good news. Because they are authored by a good God, who desires only our good. The Commandments are not intended to be oppressive burdens or excessive punishments, or stuffy old obligations, because they are given to us by a God would go to hell and back to bring freedom to his children. Not just freedom from, but freedom to. The freedom to overcome our worst instincts, and to step out of self-centeredness and selfishness. The freedom to become who are created to be. Destined to be. The freedom to be good. Like the good God who made us.

May that same good God have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.[ix]

AMEN.

[i] https://flatheadbeacon.com/2020/11/24/man-pulled-kalispell-ten-commandments-monument-found-guilty/

[ii] Fitzsimmons Alison, as relayed by Fleming Rutledge.

[iii] Thomas Oden, “No Other Gods,” in I am the Lord Your God: Christian Reflections on the Ten Commandments, ed. Carl Braaten and Christopher Seitz (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 41.

[iv] I’m grateful to the theologian Katherine Sonderegger,who made the distinction in a course on interpreting “difficult Biblical texts.”

[v]    Quoted in Fleming Rutledge, “Rules of the Freedom Game,” in The Bible and the New York Times (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1998), 105.

[vi]   Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: MacMillan, 1965), 277.

[vii]  Paul L. Lehmann, The Decalogue and a Human Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 85.

[viii] “As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil.” 1 Peter 2:16.

[ix] Refrain from the Ten Commandments in The Book of Common Prayer used in this morning’s service for confession.