Then God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.”

Philippians 3:4-14

Even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

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There are two versions of Christianity so wrong and goofy and out of step with God’s character that if they went out of business, we would all be so much better off.

The first is joyless Christianity. This is the Christianity of those of us who have just enough religion to make ourselves miserable. Joyless Christians don’t really worship God but worship ourselves worshiping. Joyless Christians tend not to deify God but our own virtue. Pretending to be upright, we joyless Christians are really uptight. And that’s what makes joyless Christianity so dangerous. Joyless Christianity is no laughing matter because those who are themselves repressed become themselves repressive.* They want the 10 Commandments to enforce God’s rule which, if you pay attention to their pronouncements, really means their political agenda, their rule. Joyless people are frightening, particularly the religious variety.

But there is another version of Christianity that is equally dangerous. This version also gives God a bad reputation. Let’s call it Christianity that is “authoritarian” rather than “humanitarian.”* This is the kind of Christianity that is more fascinated with God’s power than God’s love. It is a kind of Christianity that believes God’s commandments are for control rather than freedom. This is the Christian who is astonished not by God’s gift of salvation but God’s ability to harm God’s enemies who break God’s rules, never thinking the rules come from God’s love rather than God’s egotistical need to demand conformity.

Our Old Testament Lesson this morning was the Ten Commandments or the ten words as they are sometimes called. And you can see these dreadful versions of Christianity—the joyless and the authoritarian--work themselves out in relation to the Ten Commandments. Joyless Christianity approaches the commandments or laws of God as merit badges to
show that you are more virtuous than others. Authoritarian Christianity thinks that the Ten Commandments are the same as God and that the Ten Commandments in their thinking, like the Bible, are to be worshiped. They should be posted on the school walls, on the courthouse columns, in order to show who is “boss.” And we all know that “The Boss” has basically been, in our North-American context, the white, middle-aged or older male along with the women who stand by them.

Authoritarian Christianity pushes the rules as a way to maintain societal and economiprivileges. Sometimes authoritarian Christians, though, are simply telegraphing their inner anger and fear of change. Think about it though. Verse 1 of chapter 20 reminds us the God who gives the rules is the God who first made Israel free. The Ten Commandments were not for keeping people “in line” as much as for the world to see how the people freed by God live out this freedom in relationship to God and their neighbors. Their obedience was born of the joy of freedom. The Ten Commandments didn’t replace one form of bondage with another. Look, obedience is a good thing. Obedience is a mark of wisdom. But, surely, we can see the difference between a wise obedience infused with joy and a blind obedience encased in fear. In a world of pain and death, full of mysteries so beyond my reasoning, I can easily see trusting and obeying what I cannot understand.

But blind obedience, I can’t appreciate at all. I still think the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son is a terrible story and has no positive heroic aspect at all except to show how blind people can be in their religious obedience. I don’t think my faith in God nor my following God’s commandments requires me never to question God. I believe questioning God is sometimes a legitimate and beautiful form of prayer. Questioning God takes God seriously as the sole authority of our lives. Greater than our rules, our conscience, our family of origin is the God who is beyond the God of our preferences.

Too often it is the case the god we never question is not the living God but the god we have made to look like us. Too often, unquestioning obedience in religion leads to blind obedience regarding other people, institutions, and one’s own government. Listen to one man’s words, words which sound like every parent’s dream: I was brought up by my parents to give due respect and honor to all adults, particularly older persons, no matter which social classes they belonged to. Wherever the need arose, I was told it was my primary duty to be of assistance. In particular I was always directed to carry out the wishes and directives of my parents, the teacher, pastor, in fact all adults including household servants without hesitation, and allow nothing to deter me. What such persons said was always right. Those rules of conduct have become part of my very flesh and blood. With this strict, authoritarian Christian upbringing, Rudolph Hess went on to become for three years the director of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. What kind of obedience to what kind of God.

The Ten Commandments in their original context express a joyful obedience to a freedom-giving God. The Lord has just delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery. God had called Moses to go to Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go.” Remember? There were negotiations, plagues, flies, frogs, and the like. Finally, Pharaoh says to the children of
Israel, “Leave, skiddadel, and don’t come back.”

That’s where we come in this morning with this Old Testament Lesson. Israel is out in the desert, free from slavery, ready to worship and say, “Thank You!” But it has been so long since anybody has worshiped the true and living God, they’ve forgotten how. Is God into formal or contemporary worship? Incense and robes or Hawaiian shirts on the part of the worship leaders? Traditional hymns or praise songs?

Moses says, “I’ll go up on the mountain and get directions for the service. Well, we are ready for church, God. We are all here, with bright shiny faces, all in our places. What sort of service did you have in mind? What kind of worship pleases you?” Moses asks God. There is lightning, smoke. God says, “Write this down.” Not because God is a “my way or the highway” kind of God or because God thinks being powerful is better than being loving, God doesn’t say write this down. It’s the opposite. God calls Israel to obey in order to remain free, in order to make and keep human life human. It’s out of love for others, not an insistence on being obeyed, that God gives the laws and commandments. It is a humanitarian form of obedience, not a blind, authoritarian obedience that worships itself obeying.

We now have much evidence in our society, in the chaos that afflicts so many lives, that our generation has proved the continuing validity of these ten ancient words or commandments. They are not commandments for power’s sake. They are commandments for love’s sake. Think about the Enron debacle. A man from Houston told a Methodist bishop: “When you’ve got a bunch of arrogant people who think they are just a bit too smart for conventional accounting practices, that the rules are made for uncreative dummies, you’ve got disaster.”

Look, friends, the rules are there for our greater good, not because God is frightened by our freedom. It’s a false tyrannical freedom that scares God on our behalf. That’s what the Ten Commandments are about. They express the wisdom of lives that work, about fully alive, joyful lives, called together to be the people of God who shine like light in the darkness, not to embarrass or shame or condemn but to show the way.

The commandments were Israel’s way of freeing its children, passing on to their childre what they had experienced in being set free by the LivingGod. Israel loved its children enough to show them the way, loved its youth enough to say you need not always reinvent the wheel of morality and the good life. Thank God, not everything is up for grabs. God loves us enough to give us the rules that work.

Sure, you can obey the rules and still die young, still get cancer, still have your heart broken and your dreams crushed, still be filled with questions for God. The rules don’t work in that sense--the sense that if you perfectly keep the rules, you are rewarded. No, they work in the sense that if you follow them, you sense God’s hand on your shoulder, not to control you but lovingly guide you home, and as you go you discover a playfulness
that rejoices in making and keeping human life human.

* Bill Coffin, Living the Truth in a World of Illusion